Abe Madkour:
Friday night in Las Vegas, we held SBJ's annual Forty Under 40 gala with over 400 people on hand at the Primrose Ballroom at the Aria Resort to honor the executives who will be shaping the future of sports business. The event was hosted by NFL Network's Cynthia Frelund, and four honorees were inducted into the SBJ Forty Under 40 Hall of Fame. That means they've been named to the list three times. That's Monumental Sports' Zach Leonsis, the Raine Group's Colin Neville, Riot Games' Whalen Rozelle, and Major League Baseball's Morgan Sword. It was a great night all around, more on sportsbusinessjournal.com.
And tonight, Monday, a big night for playoff baseball. You have a Game 6 in Philadelphia and a Game 7 in Houston. And this is your Morning Buzzcast for Monday, October 23rd. Good morning, I'm Abe Madkour. Thanks for listening to the Buzzcast.
Well, the Lionel Messi season storyline is over, and it ended with more than 66,000 fans here in my hometown of Charlotte at Bank of America Stadium on Saturday night. It was a big event in Charlotte. It was a big event for Charlotte FC as the team won the game, qualified for the playoffs for the first time in franchise history. The team tried to sell as many tickets as possible and they opened up Bank of America's upper bowl section, which is normally closed for most matches.
Now, Messi is expected to play in Inter Miami's two exhibition matches in China. That marks the first time Inter Miami goes on a foreign tour. It's been interesting to see the different points of view of Messi's season with Inter Miami. Yes, the team had a good record with Messi. It won the League's Cup championship, but they didn't make the playoffs and some feel that his season almost limped to the end. Now, the question is how he feels about next year and how much he prepares and how much he leans in to his MLS experience, so we'll continue to watch that.
But for MLS, a successful season, the league drew nearly 11 million fans for an average of more than 22,000 fans per game. Both are new league records, not just the overall fans, but the per game average. The league has worked very hard in improving its ticket sales and attendance was up 5% from last year. And yes, Inter Miami was a key driver as the team became the first MLS team to average more than 30,000 fans a game on the road and it's six away games after Messi joined the team, they average more than 45,000 fans on the road. That's a tremendous number.
Meanwhile, Atlanta United, again led MLS in attendance averaging more than 47,000 fans per game. That continues its streak of having led MLS in attendance in all of its six seasons in the league. Amazing. And an MLS record, 14 teams average more than 20,000 fans a game. Now this is interesting, of Europe's Big Five Leagues, only the Premier League and the Bundesliga have more teams with averages of more than 20,000 fans a game. They had 18 teams each and MLS had 14 teams average more than 20,000 fans. This data is from Soccer America and it shows a strong year at the gate for Major League Soccer.
The league continues to grow. Get ready for San Diego Football Club or San Diego FC. That's the expansion team that will take the field in 2025. It'll be the league's 30th team. The club announced its name and its colors and its brand in San Diego over the weekend. By going with its football club name, San Diego becomes the 11th MLS team to be a football club or use FC in the name. The club has a 20-year lease to play at Snapdragon Stadium and it will have the first pick of dates for home matches after San Diego State football and concerts. San Diego could be a good market for soccer as the USL Club in the market, the Loyal is one of the USL's most successful franchises, but it will leave the market next year.
Meanwhile, more than 5,000 fans were in attendance for the team's name unveiling and the club set an MLS record for merchandise sales as $200,000 worth of merchandise was sold on Saturday. The club had to shut down its online store after two hours because of the overwhelming demand. So San Diego FC, MLS' 30th team, and it will have natural rivalries in Southern California, of course, with the Galaxy and LAFC, and San Diego could be a very strong market for MLS.
Let's shift to the WNBA, and speaking at Forty Under 40, one of the biggest applause lines of the night was when we noted Las Vegas was the home of the WNBA champion Las Vegas Aces. The room erupted in applause and it shows the interest in the W and that was evident in the viewership numbers around the finals. Game 4 of the WNBA finals between the Aces and New York Liberty averaged nearly 900,000 viewers. That's a strong number. It's the most watched WNBA Game 4 Finals on record. That number was up 124% from Game 4 in 2022. The entire finals averaged more than 725,000 viewers, making it the most watched WNBA finals in 20 years and the numbers were up more than 35% from last year. This was the most watched postseason in 16 years for the W.
But even with those numbers, there are some who feel the W could have had even more impact on pop culture and had greater viewership had the games not aired up against football. Two of the four games aired right in the middle of an NFL Sunday, which certainly didn't help increase viewership. One columnist called for the WNBA to take greater control of its schedule and its next media deal. Remember, its current deal ends in 2025 and yes, the league should have more control about when and where it schedules the games in its WNBA finals and even the league's marquee match-ups. I'm sure a few would disagree with that suggestion, but overall, a very strong end to the WNBA season.
Let's talk about a sports entity that doesn't make the Buzzcast a lot, but is much talked about in sports business circles, that is Overtime. Overtime is about to launch a high school women's basketball league this summer called Overtime Select. That'll be its fourth league that Overtime has launched. Remember, there's Overtime Elite for boys' basketball, OT7 for football, and OTX is for boxing. Now, Overtime Select will be an 18-league of female players ranging from ages 14 through 18. A complete roster of a hundred players will be finalized in the next few months and games will be staged at Atlanta's Overtime Elite Arena over the course of four weekends this summer. So again, we mentioned the strength of the WNBA. We've talked about the strength of women's college basketball, so women's basketball obviously is hot and that, of course, has led to this decision to start Overtime Select, another league launched by Overtime.
I did receive some text messages from sources who were in Austin for the United States Grand Prix at Circuit of the Americas. Overall, the weekend drew 432,000, still a very strong number, but down slightly compared to last year's weekend, which had more than 440,000 over the three-day weekend. This year, about 432,000 for the F1 race at Austin. And now, of course, all eyes point to the F1 race in Las Vegas next month.
And finally, we'll end with this. I have always admired basketball player Andre Iguodala for his off-the-court efforts. Yes, he's very strong on the court throughout his career, but he's been very active off the court with the players association and also his business efforts. He's been out front throughout his career in the use of technology and in investments in sports, and now that he has officially retired from the Warriors and the NBA, he said he will spend most of his time focused on his recently founded Mosaic, which is a $200-million early stage venture capital firm where he serves as a general partner and it's focused on investments in fintech, healthcare and sports. And they are investing in early stage startup companies. They've already invested in 10 companies, including some sports and media properties.
Iguodala also recently invested in the expansion NWSL franchise, Bay FC, and he joined Steph Curry and Marc Lasry's ownership group of the San Francisco TGL golf franchise. So he's been pretty active investing in sports teams, investing in sports organizations, and so he's an interesting former athlete now to watch. Iguodala will be speaking on his investment strategy at our deal makers and sports event in Washington D.C. in late November, but Andre Iguodala, obviously, someone to keep your eye on.
And so that is your morning Buzzcast for Monday, October 23rd. I'll be in New York at our Game Changers Conference over the next couple of days. Hope to see many of you there. My colleague, Joe Lemire will bring you the morning buzz Tuesday and Wednesday. I'll talk to you on Thursday. Until then, stay healthy, be good to each other. Have a great week.