Northwestern's new football stadium plans revealed, the Anaheim Ducks have big development plans around the Honda Center and Delta takes advantage of sponsorship deal around LA28.
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Thanks for listening to the Morning Buzzcast this Friday, September 30th, the last day of September. I'm Reginald Walker, filling in for Abe Madkour.
A recent theme on the Buzzcast has been stadium development around Chicago, and we focused on the Bears, but big news on another much-needed new facility in the works outside of Chicago at a venerable institution, Northwestern. I once played a game at Northwestern's Ryan Field when I was a member of the Penn State football team in the early 2000s, and even then, the stadium felt unbelievably dated. Now the Northwestern students, alums, and fans can get excited because Ryan Field is set to be replaced by a new, modern, on-campus stadium in Evanston and be a venue for all types of entertainment and sports events. Renderings show a sharp 35,000 seat stadium with a canopy over three seating decks, and that would mark a major upgrade from the existing 96 year old stadium. The school hopes to open the new facility for the 2026 football season. This would be largely funded by gifts from the Ryan family. Aon Corp. Founder, Pat Ryan, is a Northwestern alum and has been so generous with his alma mater, as well as money from the Big Ten's new media rights agreement. It will be privately financed. The cost isn't set, but it's estimated to be close to $800 million. Northwestern hired Kansas City-based architecture firm HNTB as the lead architect for this project.
Another mixed-use project that is under the radar is in Anaheim, where the Anaheim Ducks and the Samueli family, that owns the team, has the green light from Anaheim City Council to move ahead with OCVibe, a $4 billion development turning parking lots and properties around the Honda Center into a nearly 100 acre entertainment district with 1,500 new homes. This will be one of the more massive team-led mixed-use developments in the U.S., and the goal is to start construction by the end of the year. OCVibe will be anchored by the Honda Center and is planned to include a 5,700 seat concert venue, a public park with an outdoor amphitheater, about a dozen new restaurants and a food hall, two hotels, offices, and the 1,500 apartments. Up to $400 million in bonds will help pay for the development, but those would be repaid by revenue from the Honda Center. Anaheim taxpayers would not be responsible for covering any payments, so this is a massive project that the Ducks are leading.
We talked earlier this week about some of the investments in youth sports, pickle ball, and women's volleyball, and we have more around women's sports with the news that Athletes Unlimited has raised a $30 million funding route, and this is big because it marks the women's pro sports platform's first external capital raise since launching in 2020. And you have big hitters involved, David Blitzer, Kevin Durant and Rich Kleiman's Thirty Five Ventures, Sports Innovation Lab co-founder Angela Ruggiero. If you're not familiar with it, Athletes Unlimited debuted two years ago with a pro softball league and has since added leagues for women's basketball, lacrosse, and indoor volleyball, hosting a total of eight full-length seasons to date. It's seen on ESPN and has corporate deals with Nike, Gatorade, Geico, and Sportradar. They'll use the new capital to focus on developing and growing its existing sports in 2023 before considering expansion to new sports in the following years.
In what is not a surprise but a good item for the Buzzcast, we touched on some of the changes at the Big 12 under Brett Yormark, and they continue as the conference has appointed WME Sports and IMG Media, both Endeavor companies, to lead the conference's content and commercial strategy. WME Sports and IMG Media will lead the Big 12 in its media strategy and negotiations, and we know those discussions are going on now, and that's led by WME's Karen Brodkin and IMG Media's Hillary Mandel. But WME Sports will also assist in developing out the conference's commercial inventory, valuation, and sales, and that will be largely led by Brodkin and Mike Zavodsky, who recently joined WME Sports from the Pistons. Zavodsky and Yormark have a long history together, as they work together for years at Brooklyn Sports & Entertainment, so more new voices in the mix of the Big 12's business.
When thinking about integration sponsors with the properties they support, you rarely see an example like Delta is doing with the LA28 summer games. My description won't do it justice, so you'll have to check out the images at sbj.com, but Delta is the first sponsor of the 28LA Games to take advantage of a unique opportunity offered by LA28 organizers to put its brand images inside the Games' official logo. This was first reported in Ad Age, and yes, you see two logos and both have Delta's wings symbol within the logo. It looks pretty natural and not too obtrusive. It fits, and this remains an option offered to founding brands, the highest level of sponsorship of the LA28 games, at no extra cost. Salesforce and Comcast were also given this opportunity and are working on their logos. This is a valuable asset for Delta and, like I said, unique when it comes to sponsorship creative. Delta's sponsorship deal with LA28 and NBC is worth $400 million over three Olympic games, starting with the first games in 2024.
And can you believe it? The NBA's back. Yes, the NBA Japan Games 2022, presented by Rakuten and Nissan, will take place tonight, Friday, and Sunday just outside Tokyo, where the Warriors will play the Wizards in two preseason games. These are the NBA's first games overseas since the pandemic, and they'll be a big hit in Japan, where Steph Curry and the Warriors ranked number one on the most popular jersey and team merchandise list, and Wizards forward, Rui Hachimura, in 2019 became the first Japanese player selected in the first round of the NBA draft. So this should be a big weekend for the NBA preseason openers in Japan.
To wrap up the Buzzcast, a little housekeeping note. We hope to see all of you in New York for the CAA World Congress of Sports, October 11th and 12th. There's still time to register, so check it out at sportsbusinessjournal.com.
So that is your Morning Buzzcast for Friday, September 30th. I'm Reginald Walker, filling in for Abe Madkour. I hope everyone has a great weekend. Enjoy yourself, be safe, and we'll talk to you again on Monday morning.