May 8, 2024

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It’s been only six years since the broad legalization of U.S. sports betting, but in some ways it feels like a lifetime ago, and several league commissioners are struggling with the impacts of the fast-growing industry. … The mechanics of NASCAR’s new media-rights deals are still being sorted. … WNBA commissioner Cathy Engelbert makes some big news on the long-discussed issue of team charter flights. … It’s the 40th anniversary of perhaps the height of the Olympics-related portion of the Cold War. … Hip-hop legend Flavor Flav joins Front Office Sports Today.

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

Commissioners Grapple with Power Limits Amid Sports Betting Boom [[link removed]]

Candice Ward-USA TODAY Sports

Several pro league commissioners, notably the NBA’s Adam Silver (above), were outspoken advocates for the broad legalization of sports betting before it became a reality in 2018. Now nearing the sixth anniversary of that momentous date on May 14, many of those same commissioners are acknowledging they are still struggling with the limits of their powers to manage the meteoric growth of the industry.

Less than a month after former Raptors center Jontay Porter received [[link removed]] a lifetime suspension for flagrant violations of league gambling rules, Silver said there are still limits to how effectively or broadly the league can govern the situation.

“We only have so much control,” Silver said [[link removed]] at the Associated Press Sports Editors Commissioners Conference this week in New York. “Certainly, prop bets, depending on how precise they are, lend themselves to more shenanigans than other kinds of bets. Now, some of that can be captured through various monitoring, but we also recognize that a large amount of the handle—I’m not sure of the precise percentage—but my hunch is there’s still far more illegal [betting] than legal.”

Even the legal, known level of sports betting is growing massively, reaching [[link removed]] record levels in 2023 with a $119.8 billion handle and $10.9 billion in sportsbook revenue, according to the American Gaming Association.

“There are limits to our control, but we think there should be a regulated framework, where it’s the leagues working together with state oversight groups and the betting companies, whether or not we have partnerships with them,” Silver said.

Baseball Issues

MLB commissioner Rob Manfred recently faced his own gambling-related crisis with the current gambling-related allegations surrounding Ippei Mizuhara, Shohei Ohtani’s former interpreter, that ultimately led to federal charges [[link removed]]. Speaking at the same event as Silver, Manfred similarly said the league is “refocusing” its efforts in light of events occurring over the last several months. Among the areas of focus for MLB, as it is among many other leagues, is prop bets.

“We’ve been on prop bets from the very beginning,” Manfred said [[link removed]]. “When we lobby in states, there’s always certain types of bets that we have lobbied against. I mean, the first pitch of the game, we really don’t want that available as a prop bet.”

Of course, a big component of the relative limitations of the leagues in this area is the lack of provisions such as subpoena power to compel sworn testimony.

“Law enforcement officials have tools available at their disposal that are a lot more powerful than what we have,” Manfred said.

NASCAR’s Media-Rights Deals Worth $7B. But Who Will Air Which Races? [[link removed]]

Andrew Weber-USA TODAY Sports

NASCAR is 12 races into its 2024 season, which is a unique one on the broadcast front. Next year, incumbent partners Fox Sports and NBC Sports will see their race counts drop when Amazon and Warner Bros. Discovery come on board with NASCAR’s $7.7 billion media-rights deals [[link removed]] beginning.

We already know the split of races—14 each for Fox and NBC, five each for Prime Video and TNT/Max—but exactly who gets which events is still being worked. Finding the right balance has become a “heavy area of focus internally,” NASCAR senior vice president of media and productions Brian Herbst tells Front Office Sports.

“The biggest piece for us on the schedule side is that each one of these partners is going to look for tentpole events, and they’re going to look for new markets,” Herbst says. Fox, of course, will still get the season-opening Daytona 500 (above) and NBC the Cup Series championship race. But what about other major events like the Coca-Cola 600 in Charlotte or the Chicago street race that wildly surpassed [[link removed]] viewership expectations in its debut last summer?

“Sometimes you’re able to deliver more to one partner versus another in one part of the year,” Herbst admits. “But you want to make sure that you do right by everybody over the course of the term of the partnership.” There’s still plenty of time to sort everything out, though. Last year, NASCAR released its 2024 schedule in October.

Netflix Bump?

Like several other leagues in the wake of continued success for Formula One’s Drive to Survive docuseries, NASCAR joined the Netflix party this year with the debut of its own show, Full Speed, that chronicled last season’s playoffs. Early data showed that 88% of people who watched Full Speed didn’t watch the 2023 NASCAR Cup Series championship race. Eventually, NASCAR will be able to find out which Netflix viewers ultimately watched Cup Series races this season.

Along with the seemingly new audience coming from the Netflix series, Herbst isn’t too worried about NASCAR’s current base making the switch to streaming for races on Amazon—more NASCAR fans currently subscribe to Prime Video than cable, he says.

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FRONT OFFICE SPORTS TODAY The NBA’s Media-Rights Moment and Flavor Flav’s Water Polo Win

Ron Chenoy-USA TODAY Sports

The loose ball that is the NBA’s next media-rights deal has set in motion a flurry of activity, rumor, and speculation on everything from who will nab the coveted games, to what will become of TNT’s coverage, and where Charles Barkley (above, center) might land. Front Office Sports senior writer and Tuned In columnist Mike McCarthy joins the show to make sense of it all. And bonus: Earlier this week hip-hop legend Flavor Flav offered to sponsor the U.S. women’s Olympic water polo team; today he’s on the show to tell us why—and to drop some spontaneous rhymes.

🎧 Watch, listen, and subscribe on Apple [[link removed]], Google [[link removed]], Spotify [[link removed]], and YouTube [[link removed]].

LOUD AND CLEAR Taking Flight

Brad Penner-USA TODAY Sports

“We intend to fund a full-time charter for this season.”

—WNBA commissioner Cathy Engelbert (above, right), speaking with the Associated Press [[link removed]], about the league’s travel plans this year. The program will cost $25 million per season over the next two years, and it addresses years of intensifying outcry from players about the struggles of traveling on commercial airlines, even amid the meteoric growth of the league. Engelbert had previously said the league needed to be in a proper financial position to allow for regular charters and even enforced [[link removed]] penalties on individual teams that wanted to fund their own flights. But the WNBA is now on the cusp of a large-scale media-rights deal while teams throughout the league have seen massive ticket spikes, in part from the arrival of rookie phenom Caitlin Clark (above, left).

TIME CAPSULE May 8, 1984: A Cold War of Olympic Proportions

USA TODAY

On this day 40 years ago: The Soviet Union announced its boycott of the 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles, in large part a response to a similar U.S. boycott of the ’80 Games, held in Moscow. The move represented a particularly notable episode in a decades-long Cold War between the U.S. and U.S.S.R., and one entering the sports world. Soviet leaders including general secretary Konstantin Chernenko cited “security concerns and chauvinistic sentiments and anti-Soviet hysteria being whipped up in the United States” as a basis for the boycott. The U.S.S.R. would soon be joined by 14 other Eastern Bloc allies and satellite states.

Though the Los Angeles Olympics would still include a then record 140 countries and was a significant media and marketing success for U.S. organizers, the absence of these boycotting countries significantly impacted numerous individual sports that had been dominated by the Soviets. The U.S. in particular won a total of 174 medals in Los Angeles, nearly twice the country’s haul at the 1976 Olympics in Montreal, led in part by the triumph of gymnast Mary Lou Retton (above).

By the time of the 1988 Games in Seoul, the geopolitical situation surrounding the Olympics had changed significantly. A new Soviet regime under the leadership of Mikhail Gorbachev would soon lead to even bigger changes and, ultimately, the demise of the U.S.S.R. itself. With both the Soviet Union and U.S. participating in Seoul, the American medal count dropped back to 94, identical to its count in ’76.

FRONT OFFICE SPORTS AWARDS

Two Weeks Left to Nominate!

Rising 25 is back and it’s time to nominate an up-and-coming young professional changing the game in the business of sports.

The Front Office Sports Rising 25 Award [[link removed]] celebrates the careers of the brightest young stars in the business of sports. To date, we’ve honored 175 individuals and we’re looking for our next group of young stars.

There are less than two weeks left to nominate—nominations are open now through Friday, May 17. Winners will be announced in June.

Nominate [[link removed]] today.

Conversation Starters The Bruins–Maple Leafs Game 7 on ESPN averaged 3.2 million viewers, making it the most-watched [[link removed]] first-round game since 2012 and the largest first-round Game 7 audience in NHL history. Gatorade’s roster of female athletes is growing and now includes [[link removed]] Suni Lee, A’ja Wilson, Caitlin Clark, Paige Bueckers, Serena Williams, and Sydney McLaughlin. Twins pitcher Jhoan Duran has one of the coolest entrances in baseball. Watch here [[link removed]]. Editors’ Picks ‘Indianapolis Star’ Quietly Suspends Writer Over Caitlin Clark Interaction [[link removed]]by Alex Schiffer [[link removed]]Doyel made headlines after an awkward encounter during Clark’s introductory press conference. Another Court Sides With Zion Williamson’s Years-Old Firing of Unregistered Agent [[link removed]]by Margaret Fleming [[link removed]]There isn’t a rigorous or nationwide standard to rep a college athlete. Roger Penske Suspends Four Team Members Ahead of Indy 500 for Cheating Scandal [[link removed]]by Alex Schiffer [[link removed]]The push-to-pass scandal has rocked IndyCar in recent weeks. 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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