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Morning Edition

February 19, 2025

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This winter’s MLB offseason featured a record contract for Juan Soto. But agent Scott Boras blasted the other end of the spectrum, as five franchises have payrolls under $100 million. We explain his case and baseball’s wide disparities.

— Eric Fisher [[link removed]], David Rumsey [[link removed]], and Colin Salao [[link removed]]

Scott Boras Calls Out MLB Owners As Vlad Guerrero Jr. Faces Free Agency [[link removed]]

Nick Turchiaro-Imagn Images

MLB’s offseason hot-stove period, now giving way to spring training camps, contained plenty of big-dollar deals, and even a historic one with Juan Soto. In the eyes of some agents and stars, however, it’s still not enough.

Scott Boras, agent to Soto and many other MLB players, lamented the spending patterns [[link removed]] over the winter that still have left five clubs with sub-$100 million payrolls for the 2025 season according to current luxury tax calculations [[link removed]].

“You’ve got a number of teams that are spending below $100 million,” Boras said on the Foul Territory podcast [[link removed]].“Last year, there were six teams spending below $100 million, and the money they get from the general fund is above that.”

Boras particularly has been on the frontlines of the spending patterns. After initial success with Soto’s $765 million contract with the Mets [[link removed]], a $182 million pact for pitcher Blake Snell with the Dodgers, and another for $210 million between the Diamondbacks and pitcher Corbin Burnes [[link removed]], he later saw Alex Bregman [[link removed]] and Pete Alonso [[link removed]] sign for far smaller deals than first envisioned.

It’s hardly a new scenario for Boras to push for MLB clubs to spend more on players. Rather, it’s been a big element of the mega-agent’s public profile for years. The roughly $330 million payroll gap between the ultra-powerful Dodgers [[link removed]] and bottom-dwelling Marlins going into the new season, however, raises additional levels of questions about player spending.

“It’s not small market–large market. It’s how much of your revenues are you spending on a 40-man roster to show your fans you’re committed,” Boras said.

Angst in Toronto

Blue Jays superstar Vladimir Guerrero Jr., meanwhile, has formally turned down a contract extension offer that would have kept him in Toronto, and he is now set to become a free agent in November. The 25-year-old (who is represented by Magnus Sports, not the Boras Corporation) is poised to be one of the leading available players [[link removed]] after the 2025 season, but he failed to find common ground in initial contract talks with the Blue Jays.

“They have their numbers. I have my numbers,” Guerrero said Tuesday.

“I want to be here. I want to be a Blue Jay for the rest of my career. But it’s free agency. It’s business. So I’m going to have to listen to 29 more teams, and they’re going to have to compete for that,” he said.

Toronto GM Ross Atkins, however, defended the team’s efforts.

“I am confident that we exhausted the communication, the ideas, the thoughts, and communicated every dollar,” he said. “The offers that we made for Vlad would have been record-setting and would’ve made him one of the highest-paid players in the game.”

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Jenny Cavnar: Breaking Barriers in MLB

Major League Baseball’s Jenny Cavnar made history last year when the then-Oakland Athletics named her as their lead play-by-play announcer—the first woman ever to hold that position in MLB.

This week on Redefined [[link removed]], Jenny joins hosts Leslie Osborne and Arielle Houlihan to share her journey—growing up in a baseball family, stepping into the role right after having her first child, and navigating both praise and criticism from fans.

Presented by LYCRA® Brand—the essential fiber in your favorite activewear brands, including lululemon—Redefined celebrates multi-dimensional women stretching boundaries and redefining success in sports and beyond.

Watch the full Redefined episode here [[link removed]].

Super Bowl LIX Sets Yet Another TV Ratings Record [[link removed]]

Mark J. Rebilas-Imagn Images

Super Bowl LIX keeps setting TV ratings records, even more than a week after the Eagles denied the Chiefs the NFL’s first Super Bowl three-peat with a resounding 40–22 victory.

A record 182.8 million unique viewers watched at least one minute of the Super Bowl on Fox and other platforms, according to the latest Nielsen measurements released Tuesday. Last year, Super Bowl LVIII had a comparable reach of 182.2 million unique viewers for Kansas City’s 25–22 overtime win against the 49ers.

That new mark arrives after the full-game viewership average produced a record audience of 127.7 million [[link removed]], up from 123.7 million viewers last year—at the time a record of its own.

Kendrick Lamar’s Super Bowl halftime performance garnered a record 133.5 million viewers [[link removed]], the largest halftime audience ever recorded.

Spread the Wealth

While Fox was where the vast majority of viewers tuned into Philadelphia’s dominant performance, the addition of new broadcast avenues and refined measurement techniques significantly contributed to the record numbers.

Tubi, the Fox-owned streaming service, averaged 13.6 million Super Bowl LIX viewers, part of an overall digital audience of 14.5 million that was also available on the Fox Sports app and NFL+.

There were also two Spanish-language telecasts, after Fox cut a deal with Telemundo [[link removed]] to produce its own feed, in addition to the Fox Deportes broadcast.

Tiger Woods Signs First PGA Tour Player to Wear Sun Day Red [[link removed]]

Sun Day Red

Tiger Woods has signed the first endorser for his burgeoning apparel company Sun Day Red, and there are plans to soon build out a full roster of professional players like top golf brands Callaway, Nike, and Adidas, among others, have.

The chosen one is Karl Vilips, a 23-year-old Australian rookie who will make his PGA Tour debut this week at the Mexico Open. Vilips is a former No. 1-ranked amateur player, like Woods once was, but their biggest connection comes from Stanford, where both played their college golf.

Sun Day Red launched last May [[link removed]], and Woods has been the only pro golfer to wear the brand at the highest level of professional golf (although Vilips was spotted wearing a Sun Day Red polo back in October). Woods split from Nike [[link removed]] at the end of 2023 following a 27-year relationship.

The Tiger Effect

Vilips, currently ranked No. 253 in the world, earned his PGA Tour card by finishing No. 19 last season on the second-tier Korn Ferry Tour, making $340,000 and winning one tournament in Utah in August. He was born in Indonesia but grew up in Perth and moved to the U.S. when he was 11.

“He was perfect for the first, and as we expand, we’ll look for people like him, who have great stories,” Scott Frost, Sun Day Red’s head of marketing, tells Front Office Sports.

With Woods, 49, limited in his playing capacity, Sun Day Red is looking for younger golfers to represent the brand on golf’s biggest stages. “Not to say we won’t ever have other big names in the brand,” Frost says, “But for now, we want to build it from the ground up.”

Sun Day Red doesn’t have a specific number of golfers it would like to sponsor, but the company has “fielded a lot of calls” from agents and players inquiring about working together, Frost says. Expect Woods and Co. to remain patient in choosing their next player. “We’re not really going out and seeking folks,” Frost says. “I think we’re lucky to be in a situation where we can kind of hand-pick.”

Seeing Red

Sun Day Red has already beat its first-year revenue goals, Frost says, despite almost exclusively being a direct-to-consumer business. There are plans to sell Sun Day Red in high-end retail locations starting this summer.

In Sun Day Red’s young life, the brand has already dealt with multiple trademark disputes around its Tiger-like logo, including from fellow sports apparel company Puma [[link removed]], as well as Tigeraire [[link removed]], a company that makes cooling products for athletes.

Woods still has the trademark rights to his “TW” logo that was made famous during his Nike days, although the launch of Sun Day Red has distanced the golfer from that branding.

ONE BIG FIG Justice for Joe

Denny Medley-Imagn Images

$25,000

The fine amount that the NFL has rescinded from Texans running back Joe Mixon, related to comments he made about the game officials after Houston’s AFC divisional playoff loss to the Chiefs. Mixon said, “Everybody knows how it is playing up here. You can never leave it in the refs’ hands. The whole world see, man.”

However, when the NFL initially fined Mixon, the league misattributed a different quote to him—former Bengals receiver T.J. Houshmandzadeh had posted on social media, “Why play the game if every 50/50 call goes with Chiefs. These officials are trash and bias”—before revising the reason for the fine.

On Tuesday, the NFL ruled that Mixon “did not necessarily publicly criticize the officials.”

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Conversation Starters Nike and SKIMS unveiled a new brand for women called NikeSKIMS. Take a look [[link removed]] at the release. Phillies star Nick Castellanos, who is signed through 2026, has decided to represent himself as his own agent. He told reporters he doesn’t “feel intimated” about talking to employers. Check it out [[link removed]]. Shaquille O’Neal arrived at the NBA All-Star Game with a robot escort. Watch it here [[link removed]]. Editors’ Picks NBA Looking to Women’s Basketball to Fix All-Star Malaise [[link removed]]by Margaret Fleming [[link removed]]The league is floating a one-on-one tournament days after Unrivaled wrapped theirs. Could Tee Higgins Be the Only NFL Player Franchise-Tagged This Year? [[link removed]]by Alex Schiffer [[link removed]]NFL teams appear to be using the tag sparingly this winter. Pac-12’s ‘Transformational’ Next Media Deal Will Have Multiple Networks [[link removed]]by Amanda Christovich [[link removed]]Gould confirmed the conference will have more than one partner. Question of the Day

Will Vladimir Guerrero Jr. sign the biggest contract of any MLB free agent next offseason?

Yes [[link removed]] No [[link removed]]

Tuesday’s result: 26% of readers watched the NHL’s 4 Nations Face-Off over the weekend, while 26% chose not to watch anything, 17% tuned in to the Daytona 500, 16% watched the NBA All-Star Game, and 14% caught all three events.

Advertise [[link removed]] Awards [[link removed]] Learning [[link removed]] Events [[link removed]] Video [[link removed]] Shows [[link removed]] Written by Eric Fisher [[link removed]], David Rumsey [[link removed]], Colin Salao [[link removed]] Edited by Matthew Tabeek [[link removed]], Or Moyal [[link removed]]

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