With the New York Mets already in the midst of a significant transition after a deeply disappointing 2023 season, the club has turned to a longtime media executive to run its business side. 

The Mets and owner Steve Cohen have hired outgoing Bloomberg Media CEO M. Scott Havens as their new president of business operations. The position has been vacant since Sandy Alderson transitioned to a consulting role last year.

The Mets’ hiring of Havens extends extends a trend seen in many other parts of the sports, particularly major college entities such as the Big Ten Conference and Notre Dame, in which media executives are increasingly being tapped for senior leadership roles. In many instances, that media experience is trumping prior tenure in sports.

This latest hire arrives at a pivotal time for the franchise, less than three months after the Mets also hired former Milwaukee Brewers executive David Stearns to run the club’s baseball operations. Havens takes the business reins as Cohen looks to turn the page on a season that began with an MLB-record $344 million Opening Day payroll but ended with a trade-deadline roster dump and a 75-87 record.

Like all other MLB clubs and the league as a whole, the Mets also are seeking to find a solid pathway for their local media rights. 

SportsNet New York — co-owned by former club owner Fred Wilpon’s Sterling Equities, Charter Communications, and NBC Sports Group — is on relatively solid ground compared to the bankrupt Diamond Sports Group. But YouTube TV dropped SNY this past season, and all regional sports networks are grappling with a new reality in the face of accelerated cord-cutting, making Havens’s media experience that much more valuable.

“He’ll provide a modern vision and strategic direction for our organization,” Cohen said.

Set to begin his new role in January, Havens also joins the Mets as Cohen embarks on an ambitious, $8 billion plan to remake the long-derided Citi Field area with a casino and entertainment complex. 

With the clock ticking toward a Dec. 31 deadline to complete a lease extension at Camden Yards, the Baltimore Orioles and Maryland Stadium Authority are now potentially looking to simplify the deal’s terms.

The Orioles and the public authority that owns Oriole Park at Camden Yards, which opened in 1992, announced a 30-year lease agreement in September that would keep the MLB club at the venerable ballpark — a key move in what was a renaissance season for the franchise, which had a 101-win regular season. The Orioles lost in the Division Series to the Texas Rangers, who went on to win the World Series.

That lease extension included a 99-year development rights agreement allowing the Orioles to bring in private investment to certain public areas around Camden Yards. However, that pact was only a nonbinding memorandum of understanding, leaving critical details such as projected costs and exact uses of the development property unsettled.

As the deadline approaches, talks are now building around a potentially scaled-down lease extension that would bind the Orioles to Camden Yards for at least another 30 years but separate the issue of the development rights, according to the Baltimore Sun, to be picked back up after the lease extension is finalized.

In a sense, the move would bring the matter largely back to where it’s been for much of the past three-plus years, as development rights were one of the key sticking points in prior lease talks between the Orioles and MSA.

The Orioles have long felt that the lease extension and a larger development were fundamentally intertwined, while many Maryland politicians were looking to see a tangible commitment from the team and its chairman and CEO John Angelos, before the granting of additional rights.

As momentum around women’s sports continues to grow globally, U.K. soccer is proving to be a key market in which to invest new money.

Several Premier League clubs are seeking to stoke private equity investment in the Women’s Super League teams they are affiliated with, according to Bloomberg. 

The idea would be to allow outside investors to buy into WSL commercial operations, rather than have EPL clubs completely fund women’s teams. Previously, the FA had reportedly asked EPL clubs to invest more than $31 million in WSL operations.

Meanwhile, Mercury 13 — the new $100 million fund focused on building out a multi-club portfolio for women’s pro teams — remains on the hunt for its first investment after a deal to acquire Lewes FC’s women’s club fell through. The two sides announced the news on Monday. 

Mercury 13, led by entrepreneur Victoire Cogevina Reynal, said it remains committed to investing in women’s soccer, while Lewes plans to search for an alternate investor.

Tickets In Demand

Arsenal is closing in on a significant attendance mark for its women’s teams, with nearly 100,000 fans having already attended four home matches this season. Arsenal women play about half their matches at the same 60,000-seat Emirates Stadium that regularly houses the men’s squad. Arsenal had 54,115 attend its home opener at Emirates Stadium.

Chelsea’s women’s team has averaged over 7,200 fans in five home matches, and Manchester United has drawn an average of 15,306 fans over four matches.

A $250 million expansion plan from the All England Lawn Tennis & Croquet Club is in an even more fragile state after the London borough of Wandsworth voted against the proposal.

Confirming a recommendation from its planning officers, the borough’s council unanimously voted down the bid to build a new 8,000-seat stadium and 39 additional courts, finding that it would “cause substantial harm to the openness of metropolitan open land.”

The 7-0 vote followed nearly three hours of debate and prompted cheers from the public gallery.

AELTC CEO Sally Bolton called the decision “disappointing,” reiterating the organization’s view that the effort would be “one of the greatest sporting transformations for London since [the Olympics in] 2012.”

Wimbledon is the only one of tennis’s four Grand Slam tournaments that doesn’t hold its qualifying events on site — they’re held several miles away at a smaller, 2,000-capacity venue.

The latest ruling is a setback to expansion efforts after prior approval from the neighboring borough of Merton. The 73-acre site spans parts of both Merton and Wandsworth. 

The matter now heads to the office of London mayor Sadiq Khan, with a decision expected by early December on whether to kill the proposal or review it further. That decision now rests with the deputy mayor for planning, Jules Pipe. Khan has personally recused himself following his prior support for the expansion effort.

“To use a tennis analogy, we’re at one-set-all, but we’ve got a long way to go,” Christopher Coombe, a member of Save Wimbledon Park, told the Guardian. “This is a five-set match with no tie-break.”

Larger Trend

London appears to be reticent in letting sports and entertainment development take over its environs.

The latest pushback on Wimbledon’s expansion is consistent with London’s recent refusal to approve the construction of a Sphere similar to the $2.3 billion next-generation venue in Las Vegas.