Takeaways from a resolution; The future of the Rays and SBJ Daily turns the page on Volume 30
Sure, I know it's a cliche, but I hope you'll meet me in St. Louis, September 19th to the 21st, SBJ's Drive Conference. I've heard from a number of you already. If you're there, want to meet up, let me know, I'd love to see you. And this is your Morning Buzzcast for Tuesday, September 12th. Good morning, I'm Abe Madkour. Well, September 12th is a special day in sports business. On September 12th, 1994, 29 years ago today, a publication was launched out of a townhouse in Falls Church, Virginia, that focused on the business of sports. From the beginning, this publication faced long odds from a very skeptical audience, uncertain if they needed to pay for news they felt they already knew, but it quickly became something of a hit. And the phrase of quote, "Have you seen the Daily Today?" resonated through the sports industry.
Yes. Today marks the Daily, SBJ's Daily entering volume 30 and going into its 30th year of publishing. It was started by Jeffrey Pollack. And on that first day in Virginia, there was Pollack, Founding Editor, Steve Billefor, Assistant Editor, Chuck Todd, who signed off so gracefully from Meet the Press on Sunday. There was our Director of Marketing, David Abrutyn, and yours, truly myself. Many of you know the names of Pollack and Abrutyn who remain in the business today. I remember getting up around 3:45 in the morning, driving to southeast Washington DC to a huge newspaper warehouse and picking up hard copies of newspapers that were delivered from around the country. I took them to our office in Virginia. We put them on a table, we read them, we clipped them. We later summarized them to make up The Daily. We also searched AOL, which had a number of newspapers as part of that service. I remember calling one staffer's father to have him fax us stories from the Boston Globe. And yes, The Daily was faxed back then.
Steve Billefor had a rule, no more than 14 pages in full. There was no Morning Buzz. There was certainly no Buzzcast. There was no website. We would fax The Daily every day. And on that first day, we published the first issue around 11:30 that morning, and our lead was about the pending MLB player strike. As the fax was being delivered some people called to complain about why we were monopolizing their fax machine with all this paper. But I remember another call in particular. Very shortly after we published a major league baseball owner called immediately, asked for Jeffrey Pollack and told him, "I love this thing, but no way you can do this again tomorrow. There's not enough news." Pollock's response was something like, "Okay, watch us." And yes, we did have another issue that day and continued on now for 29 years.
If you ever get the chance to read the oral history of how the Daily Publication started, it's in the December 9th, 2013 issue of Sports Business Journal. If you'd like it, let me know, I'll send it to you. The ethos around The Daily remains the same after all these years, cover the coverage to allow all of you to make more informed business decisions. As someone who's been here for every single issue over those 29 plus years, it's been an amazing journey and there's a lot more to do, but we couldn't have done it without your support. So thank you for reading. The Daily Begins, its 30th year of publishing today, September 12th.
Let's move on. I really kicked myself around 9:00 AM yesterday when I realized I did you all a disservice. I failed to make the connection on Monday's Buzzcast that the start of the NFL Season's Monday Night football schedule was surely an impetus for a deal to get done between Charter and Disney. The NFL is the main driver to resolve these disputes. Yes, Disney and Charter would miss some college football games and the US open tennis, but they were not going to stay dark for the NFL. And there was no way ESPN was not going to have that game widely distributed. And so I should have known that. And on mid-morning on Monday around 10:00 AM CNBC's David Faber broke the news that Charter and Disney were close on a deal and the official deal followed shortly after Faber's announcement. That meant more than 13 million more cable homes had access to Bill's Jets.
Now, I'm not in a position right now to say who won or who lost, but most media and financial analysts gave the early nod to Charter, but both Charter and Disney got some of the things they were looking for. Disney will provide its streaming services to Charter's subscribers at a wholesale rate giving Spectrum subscribers like me, maybe an incentive to stay with the bundle. Disney also agreed to narrow the bundle of channels it gives or it sells to Charter. It cut out networks like Freeform, Baby TV and Disney Jr. Those are kind of out now. All of ESPN's branded networks and FX are certainly part of the bundle package.
Now, Charter will pay more. They agreed to higher rates, a figure that's not disclosed, and ad supported ESPN plus will be available to Charter Spectrum subscribers who subscribe to a tier that includes other sports channels such as RSNs. Additionally, this is very important, when Disney launches it's direct to consumer version of the full ESPN channel, Spectrum Subs will have access to that. That's exactly what Charter wanted. So while this deal is done and completed, it will not stop the stress in the Pay TV universe. This deal may be a model for the future, but this will be a constant threat to the future of sports. I do want to thank everybody for their suggestions on new services and new offerings I should subscribe to. I'm just pleased my Spectrum service fully restored.
We talk about how everyone in sports, teams, leagues, media companies, brands are all looking to identify with the younger audience. We saw that ESPN and NFL do the Nickelodeon broadcast. We saw what ESPN and the NHL did on Big City Greens around animation and the NHL. Well now Disney is linking Toy Story to its NFL game when it airs its first exclusive NFL game on ESPN plus on October 1st. Now that Falcons, Jags game, which will be from London, will be on ESPN Plus in that 9:30 Eastern Time window. That's part of the NFL International Series.
So with that game, Disney will do a Toy Story fun day football feed at the same time on ESPN plus, Disney Plus and NFL plus. So there'll be a replicated on field gameplay from the game that will resemble Toy Story. And each player, each announcer will have animation. There'll be graphics, scoreboard, penalty, celebration, they will all have a Toy Story theme. So this is another step to bring younger viewers, that younger demo closer to sports and you'll see more of this as this generational divide is one of the biggest concerns on the minds of the leading executives in sports business.
Let's shift to baseball. Could the future of the Rays start to become a little bit more clear and could that mean a potentially new owner? We all know about the uncertain future of the Rays, but recently Ray's owner, Stuart Sternberg said the team is willing to pay more than half of the cost of a proposed 1.2 billion ballpark in St. Petersburg and he believes he can get a deal done by the end of the year. Now because this investment would be north of $600 million, Sternberg said that the team has been actively seeking investors to provide some of that financing in exchange for equity in the team. But some people are wondering if that includes Stuart Sternberg selling the entire team. And he said that while it's not his intent, he is willing to at least listen.
So why is this big? Why is this important? First, it's one of the first times I remember Stu Sternberg being so clear about his potential in possibly selling the entire team. Two, it's also one of the first times I've heard him say just how much the team is willing to pay for a new ballpark and $600 million of private funding is a significant figure. The other 600 million, they're looking for public funding and public support. But this is the first indication that could jumpstart some form of communication, some form of negotiations and talks and potential progress on keeping the Rays in St. Petersburg potentially with a new owner. But again, keep your eye here as Stu Sternberg becoming a little bit more clear on his intent for the Rays.
Let's end on a couple of quick hitters. Endeavor and the WWE expect to close their long reported deal to form TKO Group Holdings. That's today Tuesday, September 12th. So you'll see this new TKO being traded on the New York Stock Exchange, of course, under the symbol TKO. The company is valued at $21 billion. Of course, it's a subsidiary with Endeavor owning 51% of the company, WWE will control 49%. TKO will be overseen by Ari Emanuel, who will be the CEO of TKO. But that starts trading today under the ticker symbol of TKO.
And finally, a company that continues to make some pretty interesting moves in sports, Playfly Sports continues to invest and now has added sports media veteran Lindsay Amstutz as President of Media and Partnerships. This is a big hire. Amstutz is a 2018 SBJ 40 under 40 honoree. She'll oversee a lot of divisions. She'll oversee home team media. She'll oversee Playfly Digital, Playfly Access and Playfly Premier Partnerships. She will also head up the expansion of new media alliances for Playfly. She most recently was Chief Media Officer and Head of Integrated Marketing at One Team Partners. She's had management roles at Fox Sports, the NBA, the Los Angeles Sparks. Now she joins Playfly Sports. Like I said, Playfly continues to make some big moves and investments in the sports business. And so that is your Morning Buzzcast for Tuesday, September 12th. I'm Abe Madkour. Thanks for listening to the Buzzcast. Please stay healthy and be good to each other. I'll speak to you tomorrow.