A major domino in the ongoing efforts to determine the future of professional golf has fallen.

One of the most high-profile bidders looking to potentially challenge Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund as a significant financial partner for the PGA Tour is no longer in the running.

Endeavor’s offer to invest in the PGA Tour has been turned down. 

“We’re not going to be an investor at any level,” Endeavor’s president and chief operating officer Mark Shapiro told Sportico. The PGA Tour confirmed his statement but wouldn’t comment further.

With the PIF seeking to invest at least $1 billion in a new company called PGA Tour Enterprises, several U.S.-based entities have recently emerged as potential alternative investors. Endeavor was among the list — believed to be at least eight companies deep — that also included Fenway Sports Group and Artcos Sports Partners.

Shapiro said Endeavor was looking to lead a group that could acquire a 10% stake in PGA Tour Enterprises. He didn’t say how much that stake would be valued at or how much Endeavor was willing to spend. An interesting wrinkle is that the investment would have come through the newly-formed TKO Holdings, which was created out of the $21 billion merger of UFC and WWE.

Beyond the investment, Endeavor — which already works with the PGA Tour for some commercial sales and tournament management — was hoping to expand that work and have the PGA Tour pay it $25 million per year.

The NFL is embracing streaming more than ever this season. On Sunday, fans experienced the most severe widespread technological issues since the league took a major broadcast package exclusively streaming in 2022.

During the 1 p.m. ET slate of games — a total of nine matchups — NFL Sunday Ticket on YouTube and YouTubeTV had significant buffering problems that lasted into the second half of games.

YouTube acknowledged the problems and released a statement on X about an hour after the games began, noting that “our team is aware and working on a fix. YouTube TV or NFL Sunday Ticket may also be impacted. [We’ll] follow-up here once this has been resolved.”

There was no further update before the conclusion of the early slate of games.

Google and NFL spokespersons had no additional comment on the issues. It’s unclear how many Sunday Ticket customers were impacted but social media was filled with complaints and reports of the problems, and “Sunday Ticket” was trending on X.

Streaming Money

Google is paying $2 billion annually for the rights to NFL Sunday Ticket, and has largely avoided streaming problems before this week. Ahead of the season, the NFL was confident YouTube would be able to consistently deliver the product to fans.

Amazon, which is paying $1 billion annually for the rights to exclusively stream “Thursday Night Football” on Prime Video, has not had any major outages during its broadcasts since its package began last season.

The World Series heads to Phoenix on Monday night after the Arizona Diamondbacks and Texas Rangers split the first two games in Arlington over the weekend. 

This week, one team will be crowned champion after a postseason that has drawn significant scrutiny for its format that saw MLB’s winningest teams — four with at least 99 wins during the regular season — ousted as the league continues embracing change to October baseball.

MLB commissioner Rob Manfred said that this offseason the league will discuss potential changes to the new postseason format that began in 2022. “Enough has been written and said that we have to think about it and talk about it, but my own view is the format served us pretty well,” Manfred said ahead of Game 1 of the World Series.

Tony Clark, the executive director of the MLBPA, would like to see the six division winners of the 14-team postseason be in a better position to advance deeper into the playoffs. The Rangers and Diamondbacks are both wild card teams.

Manfred, however, disagrees. “One of the greatest things about the playoffs in baseball is [that] anybody can win,” he said. “It’s about the competition that takes place in the postseason. I don’t think what happened this year is all that out of line with history.”

It’s unclear when the aforementioned conversations about potential change could take place or whether there would be significant support for alterations to the 2024 playoffs. Manfred also said that two years was not a large enough sample size to make major conclusions about the format.

UEFA is seeing massive fan demand for tickets to Euro 2024 — and could ultimately set an organizational record.

The governing body said it has received more than 20 million ticket requests during the first sales window to the upcoming event, set for June 14-July 14, 2024, in Germany. That pool is vying for more than 1.2 million tickets made available. 

Another sales window will begin in December, when another 1 million tickets will be released to fans of the 21 qualified nations to the tournament, followed by another set of tickets held back for fans of those national teams that qualify for Euro 2024 through playoffs set for March. 

Unsurprisingly, Germany represented the largest source of ticket requests, representing 65% of all ticket applications, followed by England, France, Spain, and Austria. The U.S. provided the most non-European ticket requests.

UEFA received 2.3 million ticket requests for the Euro 2024 final match set for Berlin’s Olympiastadion — a sum 33 times the stadium’s capacity.

Historical Lift

The initial ticket request numbers comparably favorably to results seen for UEFA 2020 prior to the onset of the pandemic. UEFA initially received 19.3 million ticket applications during the general public sales window, then another 9 million applications after the pool of qualifying teams was determined.

That unique event, featuring 11 different host countries, was ultimately played in 2021 after a yearlong postponement and with a range of limited stadium capacities.