Friday Dump 🥟 - NCAA prop bets, DC arena rollercoaster, Yahoo's soccer play

Author

Michael Sheinfeld
March 29, 2024

We’re not worthy, Friday Dump 🥟

Each Friday, we’ll breakdown 3 sports business stories that have caught our eye throughout the week. They will be assembled in the following format:

🔴 - Stories that make us stop, think, and question.

🟡 - Stories with a hint of risk and unpredictability.

🟢 - Stories that make us feel good to go and empowered.

Let’s ball out.

NCAA President Charlie Baker (left)

🔴 NCAA not a big fan of prop bets. How timely! Just days after we release a case study on sports betting and news dropped of the NBA investigating Toronto Raptors player, Jontay Porter, for unauthorized proposition betting (a.k.a. prop bets or in-play bets), the NCAA dropped the hammer. NCAA president, Charlie Baker, said Wednesday they will ask officials in states that allow prop bets on college sports to ban them. What are prop bets you might ask? (Great question, Susie Q!). Prop bets are a type of side wager on parts of a game or event that may have nothing to do with the final outcome. For example, you could bet on a punter kicking for a certain number of yards during a quarter, or a basketball player making a certain number of 3-pointers in a game, or a tennis player winning a game within a match by a certain score. Sounds like a pretty simple fix, right? Well…

  • Since everyone here read the last UB post, we all know state laws vary widely on sports betting, a direct result to legalize sports betting following the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2018 decision.

    • The Court ruled it was unconstitutional for Congress, through the Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act of 1992, to compel states to deny sports betting when there was no federal standard (i.e. it’s up to the states to determine their own sports betting laws)

    • Given this law, it won’t be an easy route for the NCAA.

      • To give you an idea, according to Forbes:

        • 27 states + DC allow sports betting on college sports.

        • 25 states + DC allow March Madness player prop bets while 13 other states forbid those same prop bets.

        • Of states that allow sports betting on college sports, 12 states + DC forbid bets on in-state college teams.

In a dumpshell…add this now to the list of “harder than ever to govern”. In principal, this is a fine idea. Do we really need to be placing prop bets on how certain players achieve certain numbers during games? Wouldn’t it be best to for all parties involved to be able to place bets on only college game lines and over/under point totals?

Baker’s case is solely to keep the integrity of the games intact, which makes sense. But the fact that these decisions need to be made by individual states, could throw a wrench in that exact call to action.

On the flip side, states are well aware of how good sportsbooks, casinos, and gambling watchdog companies are about catching “bad actors”. And ultimately, that could be the difference between passing state-wide legislation to ban prop betting or hiring watchdog companies to investigate and make examples of coaches, players, etc. who take this too far.

🟡 Welcome back home, Caps and Wiz. Congrats DC you might have done it! After weeks of speculation, the Washington Wizards and Washington Capitals will remain at Capital One Arena through at least 2050 if an agreement between principal owner of the teams, Ted Leonsis, and DC Mayor, Muriel Bowser, passes the DC Council. A letter of intent was signed on Wednesday between Leonsis and the city to formalize the agreement after there were plenty of talks the teams would be moving to Virginia at an undeveloped site in Alexandria’s Potomac Yards. Long story short: the initial deal hit a major roadblock in the Virginia Senate as L. Louise Lucas, the chairwoman of the Senate Finance and Appropriations Committee, very much opposed the deal (I guess she’s not the biggest fan of major construction, paying higher taxes, and fun? 🤷🏻‍♀️). So what moved the needle to stay in DC besides Lucas yelling from the mountain tops?

  • Below are the provisions agreed upon between Leonsis and Bowser:

    • Monumental Sports and Entertainment (Leonsis’ parent company) will receive $500M in cash from the city to renovate Capital One Arena, which opened in 1997.

    • $15M more to improve the alley that connects the arena to the Gallery Place building next door.

    • An additional 200,000 square feet of space in the arena and the Gallery Place building.

    • Safety improvements, including the presence of 17 DC police officers patrolling the arena area two hours before and two hours after game time.

    • Monumental will gain control of the Entertainment & Sports Arena (currently owned by the city) in Southeast Washington.

      • Monumental wants to enlarge player spaces and make changes to the arena’s schedule.

      • The WNBA’s Washington Mystics and G League’s Capital City Go-Go will continue to play at the arena, but Monumental will have the ability to move four games per season and all playoff games to Capital One Arena.

    • New restrictions on noise, loitering and vending around Capital One Arena.

    • Monumental also put plans in motion to build a new practice facility for the Wizards.

In a dumpshell…savvy move by the billionaire. No wonder Leonsis is so successful. He pulled the oldest trick in the “interview” book — go shopping for other offers around the area, only to come back to find a better offer from your original employer (apparently it can work with local governments as well).

Overall, the provisions laid out are all needed. As a former DC resident (yeah we went there), Capital One Arena is in a great location. It’s in the center of downtown DC, in Chinatown, with easy access to public transportation. However, since the pandemic, Chinatown might as well be renamed to Ghosttown. Retailers have fled, businesses have dropped their leases, and crime/homelessness has increased in the area. We’ll see if these provisions can bring back a once admired neighborhood.

One other thing to watch is how this agreement affects DC’s chances of adding the Washington Commanders as a tenant. The wheels are already in motion for another stadium, but this could further complicate things for the NFL team to get further investment to move from Maryland to DC — and let’s be honest, football is king. DC might end up making the wrong choice, as the ROI is greater and more lucrative compared to basketball and hockey.

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🟢 Yahoo! strapping those boots on tight for the World Cup. Yahoo! wants to make a name for itself again. And what better way to do that than having Yahoo Sports increase their soccer content ahead of the 2026 FIFA World Cup (fyi it’s being held in the United States, Mexico, and Canada 😉). A partnership was announced between Yahoo Sports and OneFootball — the Germany-based global soccer media platform backed by soccer clubs like Real Madrid, Manchester City, and FC Bayern Munich. This partnership will essentially be a new hub for 24/7 soccer content.

  • OneFootball’s news and analysis will be delivered to Yahoo Sports’ ~90M users across the web, mobile, and sports app.

  • The co-branded Yahoo Sports-OneFootball hub will also provide soccer coverage from OneFootball’s library of original and partner content and its newsroom, which operates in six languages.

  • OneFootball was founded in 2008 and partners with more than 200 soccer clubs, leagues, federations, players, and broadcasters to bring its content to hundreds of markets worldwide (i.e. these guys know soccer).

  • The media platform will debut this summer, while more content offerings will be announced as the World Cup gets closer.

In a dumpshell…for years now Yahoo! has been extremely slow to react. With combinations of mismanagement, poor acquisitions, and not taking advantage of golden opportunities — the thought was this company is cursed.

But now, we’re starting to see the strategic gears moving! With the World Cup coming up, Yahoo! views soccer, especially within North America, as a growth opportunity. And the timing couldn’t be better. Not only is the World Cup right around the corner in 2026, but other tournaments like, Copa América in 2024 and the FIFA Club World Cup in 2025 are even closer. To be able to partner with an established brand and media company, like OneFootball, puts Yahoo! in a situation where they can deliver relationships and traffic for more and more advertisers as people flock to this new platform as soccer becomes more popular.

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