Former Utah Jazz owner Gail Miller is leading a Salt Lake City group that wants to bring an MLB expansion franchise to the city in the coming years, ESPN’s Jeff Passan reported Wednesday. 

The group, named Big League Utah, consists of former MLB players and Utah residents Dale Murphy and Jeremy Guthrie, as well as the Larry H. Miller Company founded by Gail’s late husband. 

MLB commissioner Rob Manfred told ESPN in July that he’d “love” to get the league to 32 teams, and Salt Lake City now joins Las Vegas, Nashville, Portland, Charlotte, and Montreal as cities reportedly interested in a potential bid. 

Utah Gov. Spencer Cox is a strong advocate for an MLB team in Salt Lake City. A survey conducted by the Miller Company found Salt Lake City locals picked MLB as their favorite sports league and top choice for an expansion franchise. 

Cox told ESPN, “It would just be meaningful for people who love this sport, who care deeply about it. We’re a baseball state.”

The Miller Company also owns the Los Angeles Angels Triple-A affiliate the Salt Lake Bees, whose 2022 average attendance (5,873) was the 18th-highest in the minors. 

Big League Utah aims to build an MLB stadium in the 100-acre Rocky Mountain Power District between Salt Lake City’s airport and downtown. 

In 2021, Manfred suggested a potential MLB expansion fee would cost $2.2 billion.

Paycor Stadium’s owners are considering all options as they prepare to renegotiate their lease with the Cincinnati Bengals in 2026.

The commissioners of Ohio’s Hamilton County — which owns the venue formerly known as Paul Brown Stadium and leases it to the NFL team — are debating whether to green-light renovation plans for the stadium that has been home to the Bengals since 2000.

The county and the team hired Gensler Sports to do a capital assessment for the potential renovations but also asked the firm to include the possible costs for building an entirely new stadium.

In May 2022, the firm found that basic repairs for upgrades to steel ramps and rails, seats, and electric and plumbing systems would cost upwards of $493 million. Other upgrades such as those to add new luxury lounges, high-end food and drink, signs, and scoreboards, would cost an additional $200 million.

The county isn’t ruling out building a new stadium depending on the results of Gensler’s report, which it has asked to have by December.

The commissioners have expressed their desire for the current or potential new stadium to play host to other events besides NFL games, such as concerts. It also hopes to better integrate the stadium with downtown Cincinnati.

“We have an asset that costs us 365 days,” said Hamilton County commissioner president Alicia Reece. “We’ve got to have events happening as many days as possible.”

The NHL is headed Down Under.

Melbourne’s Rod Laver Arena will play host to the 2023 NHL Global Series, which will see the Arizona Coyotes and Los Angeles Kings face off in two preseason games on Sept. 23-24. The Australian NHL games will be the first ever played in the Southern Hemisphere.

“Nowhere does major events like Melbourne, and that’s why we are able to attract the biggest sporting spectacles from around the globe,” Victoria minister for tourism, sport and major events Steve Dimopoulos said. “Securing the NHL’s first-ever games in the Southern Hemisphere is not only a win for fans but will deliver big benefits for tourism businesses in our city.”

Rod Laver Arena annually hosts tennis’ Australian Open, and Melbourne Rectangular Stadium will be one of the venues for the FIFA Women’s World Cup this summer.

This season, the NHL staged its first Global Series games since before the pandemic, playing a preseason game each in Switzerland and Germany, as well as two regular-season games apiece in Czechia and Finland.

This won’t be the first foray into games outside of North America for these teams.

The Kings have played nine international preseason and regular-season games in their history, most recently with two preseason contests in China in 2017.

The Coyotes have only gone global in 2010, when they played a preseason game in Latvia and two regular-season games in Czechia.

Nearly two weeks into the MLB season, Minnesota Twins, Arizona Diamondbacks, and Cleveland Guardians games can still be found on Bally Sports. 

Fans still have to pay through their TV providers or Bally Sports’ streaming service to watch, and the three teams said in court filings that Bally parent Diamond Sports Group “are functionally holding the clubs captive.”

Diamond Sports filed for bankruptcy protection last month, as the Sinclair subsidiary seeks to restructure about $8 billion in debt. 

• In its emergency filing on Wednesday, attorneys wrote that Diamond Sports continues “to consume the Diamondbacks’ product without paying for it.”
• Lawyers for the Twins and Guardians wrote in an emergency motion filed Tuesday that Diamond is using the teams’ “unique and exclusive intellectual property without paying a single penny for it.”
• Diamond Sports has paid “every single other NBA, NHL, and MLB team other than the amounts due” outside the Twins, Guardians, and Diamondbacks, per the same filing.

In a filing on Monday, Diamond Sports wrote that it expects to request approval to pay “only the reasonable value of the rights” to teams as the bankruptcy case moves forward. Lawyers for Diamond Sports requested a May 12 hearing highlighting “expert testimony on the current value of the rights under the contracts.”

“Only after defaulting on their payment obligations do the debtors even raise the fanciful argument that they can choose to not pay the agreed-upon contractual rate,” lawyers for the Twins and Guardians wrote.