The NBA is hoping to capitalize on an August lull in the sports calendar by releasing the schedule for the 2023 In-Season Tournament.

Although the basic formatting is already known, ESPN will air a special NBA In-Season Tournament schedule release show on Tuesday at 3 p.m. ET. Games will begin on Nov. 3 and conclude in Las Vegas on Dec. 9.

Fans will get a first look at the groupings and potential paths to the final. Teams will compete for $18 million. 

The extra push is designed to fuel TV and social media conversations to keep basketball in the spotlight two months before the season begins, filling the space behind other efforts to create year-round interest, including the Las Vegas NBA Summer League, NBA Con, and the always dramatic free-agency season. 

Must-Watch Television?

This fall, ESPN will broadcast the inaugural In-Season Tournament with fellow NBA media rights partner Turner — but the tournament could end up as a broadcast package of its own when the league sorts out its next media deals, which will start in 2025.

Viewership could determine how lucrative an In-Season Tournament package would be worth to interested parties. This past season, a doubleheader of games from the NBA Play-In Tournament averaged 2.6 million viewers across ESPN and ESPN2 — up 14% from the comparable play-in games in 2022.

The WNBA will take its next steps toward expansion this week when commissioner Cathy Engelbert visits Denver to meet with a group pushing for a new team in Colorado.

Denver was among the cities Engelbert mentioned to Front Office Sports earlier this year as potential targets.

On Wednesday, the group — which includes Denver-based IMA Financial Group chief executive Robert Cohen — will show the WNBA potential venues for play and practice, according to the Denver Post. 

Along with Denver, other markets the WNBA is considering are the Bay Area, Nashville, Toronto, Charlotte, Philadelphia, Portland, and Austin — the latter of which is currently seeking investors for a potential ownership group. 

Not So Fast?

Expansion could come as soon as 2025, but Las Vegas Aces star A’ja Wilson, the WNBA’s reigning MVP and Defensive Player of the Year, recently told FOS she thinks the treatment of the league’s current 144 players should be prioritized before adding new teams or expanding roster sizes.

The Aces will host the New York Liberty on Tuesday night in the WNBA Commissioner’s Cup final at 9 p.m. ET on Amazon Prime Video. Now in its third year, the in-season tournament awards $30,000 to each player on the winning team, while the runners up will get $10,000 each.

Aces-Liberty also represents a possible WNBA Finals preview, as the teams have the two best records in the league with about a month left in the regular season.

The biggest entity in college football is potentially headed to the biggest boom town in sports, another sign of fast-changing conditions across the business of sports — but one that comes with some challenging optics.

The Big Ten Conference is considering shifting its football title game from its traditional Indianapolis setting to Allegiant Stadium, home of the Las Vegas Raiders, with a bidding process still in its early stages.

If completed, the move would extend the ongoing sports expansion in Las Vegas and perhaps more directly represent the conference’s new coast-to-coast footprint. It also follows several other NCAA events now regularly held in Sin City or scheduled for there, including several Pac-12 Conference football title games, college basketball’s Final Four, and college hockey’s Frozen Four.

The conference’s contract with Lucas Oil Stadium, home of the Indianapolis Colts, expires after the 2024 game, but any future decisions beyond that haven’t been made.

Despite the widespread availability of online sports betting, the move would also bring another major college football event to an epicenter of gambling — just as college football is grappling with the negative effects like never before.

Not All That Glitters Is Gold

Amid the ongoing sports growth in Las Vegas and the robust local fan support enjoyed by the champion Vegas Golden Knights and the Las Vegas Aces, the Raiders are still working to find their footing in Nevada.

A Saturday preseason game at Allegiant Stadium against San Francisco was heavily overrun with 49ers fans, repeating a situation that occurred at the facility late in the 2022 regular season.

One of the most influential private equity investors in sports and entertainment is reviving a long-discussed move to go public, further escalating its already lofty ambitions.

The Luxembourg-based CVC Capital Partners — which owned Formula 1 prior to Liberty Media’s takeover — had previously looked at initial public offerings at multiple points over the last two years, but backed off due to what were seen as unfavorable market conditions, including last year’s market plunge following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

But after raising more than $28 billion for its ninth private equity fund targeting Europe and the Americas, CVC Capital Partners’ current strength has reportedly sparked renewed consideration for a potential stock listing in the Netherlands before the end of the year. 

A final decision hasn’t been made.

CVC Capital Partners’ varied sports-related interests include equity stakes in:

• Bruin Capital

• France’s soccer governing body

• Indian Premier League’s Gujarat Titans

• La Liga

• Premiership Rugby

• Six Nations Rugby

• Sports Illustrated and Reebok parent Authentic Brands Group

• United Rugby Championship

• Volleyball World

• WTA

The IPO would help CVC Capital Partners expand the scope of its operations beyond an initial focus on buyouts. It is one of the largest private equity firms in the world with about $153 billion of assets under management.