U.S. Soccer formally introduced Mauricio Pochettino as the new head coach of the men’s national team Friday, with the organization’s leaders magnifying the importance of the move.

“This is a monumental day for U.S. Soccer,” federation president Cindy Parlow Cone said.

Pochettino brings top-level experience as a former manager of Chelsea, Paris Saint-Germain, and Tottenham. He begins his duties about 21 months before the 2026 FIFA World Cup is played in the U.S., Canada, and Mexico. Pochettino said he believes there’s plenty of time for him to get the USMNT ready for the global showcase that many are counting on to elevate the sport in the U.S.

“We need to believe we can win and not just win a game, but to win the World Cup,” Pochettino said. “We want the players to arrive on Day One thinking big.”

Pochettino admitted it was a “tough process” working out his new contract, and U.S. Soccer sporting director Matt Crocker labeled the saga “complex.” His salary will be $6 million, according to ESPN, a record for U.S. Soccer. Earlier this week, the federation announced the hire was being supported in significant part by a “philanthropic leadership gift” from Ken Griffin, the founder and CEO of hedge fund Citadel, among other financial and commercial partners.

Great Teamwork

U.S. soccer officials didn’t say how Pochettino’s hire would impact efforts around equal pay. But they did say USWNT coach Emma Hayes, whose salary is $1.6 million, was influential in bringing Pochettino on board. She previously coached Chelsea’s women’s club at the same time Pochettino was coaching the Premier League side.

“One of the most important things we need to aspire to is the women’s team,” he said. “We have Emma, for me, the best coach in the world. They have won everything, and we need to match that.”

When Hayes was hired last year, U.S. Soccer signed her for the same base salary as former men’s coach Gregg Berhalter. It remains to be seen whether her compensation will increase in accordance with Pochettino’s arrival.

The audacious dream UFC president and CEO Dana White had nearly a year ago is now coming true. 

As White attended U2’s concert residency to open the $2.3 billion Sphere in Las Vegas, a technological marvel redefining live entertainment, he immediately began to covet the chance to bring mixed-martial arts to the venue. By November of last year, the event was booked. 

“I’m so in on this, it’s not even funny,” White said last fall. 

Fast-forward to the present, and UFC 306, also known as Riyadh Season Noche UFC, is set for Saturday at the Sphere—led by a bantamweight championship fight between Sean O’Malley and Merab Dvalishvili and backed by a $20 million production budget that more than doubled from the original planned outlay of $8 million. That huge financial escalation owes in no small part to White’s desire to not just be at the Sphere with a fight card, but also combine learnings from the building’s prior concerts, movies, and the recent NHL draft with plenty of UFC’s own identity. 

“Take what you’ve seen already [there], then multiply it by a million. That’s what you’re going to see,” White tells Front Office Sports. “All of the things that have been done there, we’re doing it on one night. I couldn’t be happier with where we are. Now it’s about execution. This is going to be a game-changer where sports and entertainment truly come together.”

Sound and Motion

The staging of an MMA event at the Sphere presents a unique challenge for the venue. The prior concerts—which beyond U2 have included Phish and Dead & Company—and movies have been staged events where the content on the Sphere’s 160,000-square-foot interior screen is entirely preplanned. Even the NHL draft, while containing unknowns with the actual selections, contained a preset order of teams that aided content planning.

The organic nature of the bouts on the UFC 306 fight card requires a different strategy. UFC and Sphere Studios—a California-based operation part of building owner Sphere Entertainment Co. that is controlled by New York Knicks and Rangers owner James Dolan—are concentrating much of their content development efforts for periods between the individual fights, while the action in the Octagon will remain the focus during the bouts. 

The entire production, meanwhile, will be coupled with a live production on ESPN+ pay-per-view for viewers at home. Within all of that, the content focus for UFC 306 will be to extensively commemorate Mexico’s independence from the Spanish Empire, and celebrate that country’s culture and role in the rise of combat sports. 

“There’s been a lot of creative work that’s gone into this, but they’ve created a show that’s really built around the fights,” Joel Fisher, EVP for marquee events and operations for the Dolan-led MSG Entertainment, tells FOS. “There will be stationary ‘worlds’ in the background during the fights, and then interstitial films between the fights. UFC has correctly viewed this as much more than just a sporting event.”

Different Demand

Still, the screen is the star of the show at the Sphere, and ringside seats that are usually the most coveted for a UFC bout have met an inverted dynamic in which higher-up locations are now those particularly in demand. 

“If your back is against the wall and you’re in the last row possible, those actually might be the best seats,” White says. 

Even with that flipped situation, ticket company SeatGeek said UFC 306 is fetching an average resale price of more than $1,700 each—more than double what U2 garnered and nearly 50% higher than Phish. UFC still expects to set a new gate receipt record, topping a $17.7 million haul for UFC 205 in 2016.

Fox Sports continues its quest to take over as many college football TV windows as possible Friday night, when No. 20 Arizona visits No. 14 Kansas State for a prime-time contest on the broadcaster’s main network channel. 

The game kicks off a 12-game Friday night slate on Fox this fall, featuring schools from the Big Ten, Big 12, and Mountain West. While Friday night games are not uncommon in college football, they have typically aired on cable channels or streamers, not networks’ primary over-the-air offering. The move gives Fox another significant game window, in addition to its weekly Big Noon Saturday matchup.

College football is replacing WWE SmackDown, which consistently drew between 2 million and 2.5 million viewers on Fox, but is heading to USA Network as part of a five-year, $1.4 billion deal. Fox Sports president of insights and analytics Mike Mulvihill expects college football to draw similar numbers, if not slightly better.

“Because this will be a three-and-a-half-hour event rather than a two-hour SmackDown, even if the viewership is the same, we have a better monetization opportunity there just because of the longer duration and therefore more commercials,” Mulvihill says.

Game Theory

The Fox Friday night schedule doesn’t feature marquee brands like Michigan, Ohio State, or Penn State, mainly due to the Big Ten’s $7 billion media-rights deals. 

“We had to be really respectful of the fact that when CBS and NBC did their Big Ten deals, they did it with the expectation that they would be able to draft a top-three game every week,” Mulvihill says, referencing the complex system Big Ten broadcast partners use to pick games. “So, we have to make sure we’re not taking games for Friday that should probably be in the Saturday draft pool.” That meant a lot of back and forth with Big Ten commissioner Tony Petitti this spring.

Without the top Midwest schools available, Fox is relying on West Coast schools to fill the schedule. “We’re never really going to be able to do a West Coast home game in the noon window,” Mulvihill says. “So you really want to take this as our opportunity to do a home game at USC, Oregon, the Rose Bowl, etc.”

While most games will begin at 8 or 9 p.m. ET, Rutgers will visit USC on Oct. 25 for an 11 p.m. ET kickoff. Fox chose that late-night start to directly follow Game 1 of the World Series, which could have 10 million viewers or more.

Looking Ahead

Fox should be able to improve its Friday night college football schedule in Year 2, but drastic changes like implementing flex scheduling are not on the horizon.

“That would be really hard, really, really hard,” Mulvihill says. “I think we’re a long way away from asking the schools to have any Saturday-to-Friday flexibility.”