April 4, 2024

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March Madness is hurling toward a historic set of Final Fours, but one network is making plans to get off the bench next spring. … Billionaires in charge of pro tennis events are hitting pause while merger talks continue. … Skateboarding is trying to figure out its place in the Olympics. … And WNBA team values are skyrocketing, so says the league’s commissioner

— Eric Fisher [[link removed]] and David Rumsey [[link removed]]

Fox Adds to Jumbled College Hoops Postseason With New Tournament [[link removed]]

Journal Sentinel

The madness of March might take on a whole new meaning this time next year.

The already-muddled landscape for postseason college basketball is gaining another new entrant as Fox Sports and AEG have finalized plans to introduce the College Basketball Crown, a new 16-team tournament that will begin in 2025 in Las Vegas.

The event, many months in active development [[link removed]], will feature teams that do not qualify for March Madness. The Big Ten, Big 12, and Big East each will have two guaranteed slots for their member schools, with the bracket then filled out with other at-large participants. Games will be played between March 31 and April 6 next year at the MGM Grand Garden Arena and T-Mobile Arena, and they will be aired exclusively on Fox and FS1. The timing is between the Elite Eight and the championship game of the men’s March Madness.

The latest effort specifically extends the network’s relationships with the Big Ten, Big 12, and Big East—three conferences for which Fox already holds multiyear rights deals. It also gives Fox an opportunity to be involved in postseason college basketball as men’s March Madness rights are held by CBS and Warner Bros. Discovery through 2032, while ESPN recently renewed [[link removed]] rights for the women’s March Madness through the same season.

Fox Sports branded the new tournament a move to “evolve and elevate the sport.”

The tournament is also a blow to the National Invitation Tournament, which has existed since 1938, is owned and operated by the NCAA, and is aired by ESPN. But the NIT is arguably now at its weakest [[link removed]] condition in its long history, as 17 schools were said to have declined [[link removed]] invitations to the event for various reasons. Not only does the NIT have far less prestige than March Madness, but the event also conflicted with the opening [[link removed]] of the transfer portal, and some schools chose to focus on developing their rosters for next season.

Without the lineage of the NIT or the obvious allure of March Madness, the College Basketball Crown faces an obvious challenge to find a foothold among fans. Other competing events, such as the College Basketball Invitational, hold far less status among fans and schools, and the CBI also requires an entry fee to participate.

ATP-WTA Merger Talks Stalling Potential Tennis Expansion in U.S. [[link removed]]

Desert Sun

As professional tennis stakeholders consider accepting billions of dollars from Saudi Arabia to potentially merge the top men’s and women’s tours, the billionaires who run said tournaments Stateside, and elsewhere, are left in a holding pattern.

The top men’s and women’s players will be back together again at the Madrid Open later this month, but one needs to look no further than this week’s women’s-only event in South Carolina, where No. 5–ranked Jessica Pegula gave her support for an ATP-WTA merger during an interview [[link removed]] with Front Office Sports. That tournament, the Charleston Open, is one of three owned by Ben Navarro, the founder of Sherman Financial Group who carries a net worth estimated to be $3 billion.

Navarro, after trying to buy [[link removed]] the Carolina Panthers in 2018, shifted more focus to tennis. In ’22, his family office, Beemok Capital, spent $300 million to buy the Cincinnati Open (formerly the Western & Southern Open). Then last year, he considered [[link removed]] a $400 million deal with the city of Charlotte to move that co-sanctioned ATP-WTA out of Cincinnati.

With deep pockets and a heavy interest in sports, it would seem inevitable that someone like Navarro, whose daughter, Emma, is the No. 20–ranked women’s tennis player in the world, would keep expanding their portfolio. But the uncertainty of what the professional game will look like in the next 12 to 24 months is giving some pause. “It would be hard for us to try and say, ‘Hey, we’re going to try and get there right now.’ We don’t know what ‘there’ is yet,” says Bob Moran, the president of Beemok Sports and Entertainment. “But once we have a better understanding of what ‘there’ is, then I think we’ll regroup and see.”

In the meantime, some tournaments could be missing out on crucial investment. Beemok is contributing $260 million toward improvements at the Lindner Family Tennis Center in Cincinnati and spent $50 million on recent renovations in Charleston. For Beemok, eventual expansion could be another look at Charlotte—a “great city” with powerful fan and corporate bases, Moran says—but it’s clear any new opportunities will make sense only after any theoretical merger takes place. “I do believe we need to be one tennis,” says Moran, emphasizing that bringing tournaments’ rights and governance together would be the “right thing to do.”

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FRONT OFFICE SPORTS TODAY Skateboarding’s Best Trick? Becoming a Mainstream Sport

Danielle Parhizkaran-USA TODAY Sports

At the 2020 Tokyo Games, we saw the debut of skateboarding as an Olympic sport. Its biggest stars will be back at it for the Paris Olympics this summer. A big reason for the sport’s rise is Thrill One Sports & Entertainment, which puts on a series of well-paying, branded skate events around the world. CEO Matt Cohn joins the show today to tell us how his company collaborates with teen athletes to maintain the sport’s renegade spirit while also working with global brands to grow both earnings and audience.

🎧 Listen and subscribe on Apple [[link removed]], Google [[link removed]], and Spotify [[link removed]].

LOUD AND CLEAR That Escalated Quickly

D. Ross Cameron-USA TODAY Sports

“I would say values have gone up at least 10 times, if not more, since I’ve been here, and I’m only four years here.”

—WNBA commissioner Cathy Engelbert (above) on the rising value of the league’s teams during an interview [[link removed]] on CNBC’s Last Call with Brian Sullivan on Tuesday. Engelbert touched on a variety of topics, including the league-wide excitement being generated around this year’s March Madness and the incoming draft class, which will be headlined by Iowa’s Caitlin Clark and LSU’s Angel Reese.

According to Front Office Sports media expert Michael McCarthy, the WNBA—which is negotiating with the NBA for an extension of their current media-rights deals with the Walt Disney Co.’s ABC and ESPN—could also make the case for its own deal [[link removed]] if the league doesn’t get what it wants in a joint deal with the NBA. The WNBA currently earns about $60 million annually from its TV and streaming deals with ABC-ESPN, Amazon Prime Video, CBS, and ION. The Seattle Storm, according to The Wall Street Journal [[link removed]], became the most valuable team in the WNBA after it sold minority stakes to 15 investors in February 2023, valuing the club at $151 million.

TIME CAPSULE April 4, 1997: The Opening of ‘The Ted’

Michael Schwarz-USA TODAY Sports

On this day 27 years ago: The Braves played their first regular-season game at Turner Field, ushering in one of the most unique sagas in stadium development history. The ballpark, located across the street from the team’s former home of Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium, was converted from the Centennial Olympic Stadium (above) initially built for the 1996 Summer Games. That transformation plan included the Braves from the very start of the design process, and it was designed to avoid a white elephant situation with the Olympics facility. But it also required a furious seven-month process of partial demolition and reconstruction to transform an 85,000-seat multipurpose venue into a baseball-specific one seating about 49,000.

But after just 20 seasons at Turner Field—aka “The Ted” and named for former team owner Ted Turner—the Braves were on the move again. The team left the city-based venue for the suburban Truist Park and The Battery, where the team became a highly influential industry model of blending a new sports venue with mixed-use development on a large scale. Turner Field, however, was not left for dead, and it would be remade once more. Now, the facility is known as Center Parc Stadium, is owned by Georgia State University, and went through another renovation to turn it into a 24,000-seat venue for football.

FRONT OFFICE SPORTS AWARDS

Last Call for Entries

This is your final chance to submit your venue for the 2024 Best Venues Award [[link removed]]. The entry window closes Monday, April 8 at 11:59 p.m. ET.

Based on data-driven methodology and backed by Sports Innovation Lab, the list of most innovative and leading venues will be revealed this spring. Don’t miss your opportunity to have your venue considered.

Learn more about the award and submit your venue [[link removed]] today.

Conversation Starters By returning Iowa to the Final Four, head coach Lisa Bluder earned [[link removed]] more than $300,000 in bonuses, a $150,000 raise for next season, and a two-year automatic contract extension. During his 23-year tenure at ESPN, Trey Wingo witnessed the evolution of the sports media landscape, acknowledging that while the network remains a “Goliath,” it is no longer the sole destination for fans. Listen [[link removed]]. A meet-and-greet hosted by NC State stars DJ Burns and DJ Horne at an Applebee’s in Raleigh, N.C., ended up with a packed crowd. Check it out [[link removed]]. Editors’ Picks Retracted Bronny James Transfer Report Takes Media for a Ride [[link removed]]by Alex Schiffer [[link removed]]A false Bronny James report had LeBron playing a different kind of defense. NCAA Exec Wants to Move Up Review of Women’s Tournament [[link removed]]by Margaret Fleming [[link removed]]The women’s tournament could use all neutral sites by next March. Kansas City Stadium Plans in Doubt After Voters Reject Tax Measure [[link removed]]by Eric Fisher [[link removed]]A proposed tax measure was defeated decisively by Jackson County, Mo., voters. Advertise [[link removed]] Awards [[link removed]] Learning [[link removed]] Video [[link removed]] Podcast [[link removed]] Sports Careers [[link removed]] Written by Eric Fisher [[link removed]], David Rumsey [[link removed]] Edited by Matthew Tabeek [[link removed]], Catherine Chen [[link removed]]

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