Friday Dump 🥟 - The Sacramento A's, Fox's tourney, Caitlin Clark vs. Angel Reese

Sup, 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.

C’mon dap us up.

🔴 Oakland can’t catch a break. *Hey Siri, play “Goodbye My Lover” by James Blunt* 😢. Ladies and gentlemen, it’s official, the Oakland Athletics will play their final season in Oakland this year. A’s owner John Fisher and Sacramento Kings owner Vivek Ranadivé, who owns the minor league team in Sacramento, announced the A’s will play their home games at Sutter Health Park from 2025 to 2027 before the permanent move to Las Vegas in 2028. The A’s also negotiated a fourth-year option to stay in Sacramento for 2028 as there are initial indications of potential stadium delays in Sin City. Why is all of this happening (besides the fact this might be one of the biggest dumpster fires in all of sports)?

• Last year, and three years after the former Oakland Raiders (NFL) made the same move to Las Vegas, the 30 MLB owners unanimously approved the relocation of the A’s to the same area. Whenever relocation occurs, it’s always gut-wrenching for the fans. But it seems like John Fisher never really cared (he hasn’t attended a game in nearly a year 😳).

  • For decades, A’s fans have been extremely frustrated with higher ticket prices, losing seasons, and the franchise consistently unwilling to spend money to make the team better.

  • For years the A’s stadium, Oakland Coliseum, has been a dump. From it’s opening in 1966 until today, barely any renovations have occurred.

  • Which makes sense, as there have been many disputes to reach a contract with the city for a new stadium.

• Unfortunately a new contract couldn’t be agreed upon, which prompted the move (oh and revenue increase potential as Vegas would naturally provide an increase of ticket sales, advertising revenue, etc.). Even though, the move to Vegas was inevitable, Oakland attempted to keep the club around through 2027, since their lease would be up with the Coliseum at the end of this year. The proposed term sheet was offered to the club:

  • A 5-year $97M total extension fee (which was later dropped down to 3-year $60M total) — this was a radical difference from the current $1.5M annual rent the team pays.

  • A provision for the club to sell its 50% share in the Coliseum complex, allowing for future development to occur on the site.

  • A further provision for the A’s to bear the costs of field updates when the United Soccer League’s Oakland Roots play at the Coliseum.

  • An elimination of previously stated demands by the city to retain the A’s name and team colors, and to have an MLB guarantee of a future expansion team.

🟡 Fox feeling lonely without a tournament. Look out college basketball junkies because another tournament is on the horizon. On Wednesday, Fox Sports and entertainment company AEG are joining forces to launch the College Basketball Crown (CBC), a new men’s 16-team tournament that will begin March 2025 in Las Vegas. Fox and FS1 will air the games and AEG will serve as the presenting sponsor. The tournament will feature schools that failed to qualify for the men’s NCAA Tournament with two automatic qualifying teams from the Big Ten, Big 12, and Big East + 10 at-large qualifiers selected by a committee. Wait…are these the 3 conferences that already hold multiyear media rights deals with Fox?! What a coincidence!

• This tournament gives Fox an opportunity to be involved in postseason play as men’s March Madness rights are held by CBS and Warner Bros. Discovery through 2032.

  • Not to mention, ESPN has renewed rights for the upcoming women’s NCAA Tournament, which has lately become a gold mine (see 🟢 below) for the network.

• Let’s not get it twisted though. This won’t come close to competing with March Madness. In fact, it’s main competition will be the National Invitation Tournament (NIT), which has been around since 1938.

• But the strategy Fox and AEG are using couldn’t have come at a better time to pluck eyeballs away from the NIT.

  • The NIT is arguably at it’s lowest point, as 17 schools declined invitations to this year’s event for various reasons.

    • One of those reasons: the tournament conflicted with the opening of the transfer portal, and some chose to focus on developing their rosters for next season instead of playing in an overall meaningless tournament.

Enjoying this really awesome newsletter? Share with your friends & family!

🟢 The year of women’s college basketball. If there’s any newsletter that has given women’s college basketball its flowers, it’s this one (not to toot our own horn, of course). But my goodness, to have predicted this would have just been on the border of insanity. Caitlin Clark and her Iowa Hawkeyes walked into Albany, NY and got their revenge win over Angel Reese and the LSU Tigers on Monday. It was the most-watched women’s college basketball game ever recorded. The Elite Eight game averaged a staggering 12.3M viewers, blowing away the record 9.9M viewers set by the two teams in last year’s championship game. It just so happens, ESPN’s telecast of the game was also the most-watched women’s basketball game ever in nearly 30 years, and appears to be the 2nd most-watched of all time (snaps to that!).

• According to NBC, only its telecast of Team USA’s 1996 gold medal victory over Brazil at the Atlanta Olympics pulled more viewers (averaging ~19.5M viewers).

• However, let’s compare to how these numbers did versus other sporting events:

  • It topped the 11.9M average for NFL’s Thursday Night Football on Amazon Prime Video in 2023.

  • It beat every college football game of the 2023 regular season except Fox’s broadcast of Michigan–Ohio State (averaging ~19M).

  • It beat the average viewership for the NBA Finals (11.7M on ABC), World Series (9.1M on Fox), and the Stanley Cup Final (2.6M on TNT).