Closing Bell

Fox Sports heads into tonight’s U.S.-Venezuela game on the heels of a record-setting World Baseball Classic audience on Sunday night, as sources tell SBJ that the U.S.-Dominican Republic semifinal on FS1 will end up drawing around 7 million viewers.

That figure on Sunday easily passes the prior record of around 5 million for the U.S. win over Mexico in pool play last week, which was on the Fox broadcast network. Sunday night’s game also had stiff competition from The Oscars on ABC. The U.S.-D.R. game is the best baseball game of any kind to air solely on FS1 since Game 6 of the 2019 Yankees-Astros ALCS drew 7.5 million. The record for any audience on FS1 is Game 7 of the 2017 Yankees-Astros ALCS at 9.9 million viewers.

Tonight’s U.S.-Venezuela game on Fox will look to also top the 4.48 million for the Japan-U.S. final from 2023, which aired on FS1. The WBC has competition tonight from the NCAA Men’s First Four on truTV, including a Texas-N.C. State game that will feature Dick Vitale’s NCAA Tournament debut alongside Charles Barkley and Brian Anderson.

Ticket prices for Tuesday’s World Baseball Classic championship between the U.S. and Venezuela in Miami are “soaring by the hour.” The game is slated to begin at 7pm ET at loanDepot park. It has been a “festive atmosphere in Miami the past two days” for the Dominican Republic-U.S. and Italy-Venezuela semifinals, and the “raucous crowds are sure to return” for the final (WMTW-TV, 3/17).

Here is a snapshot of ticket prices on resale sites as of Tuesday afternoon:

• SeatGeek: $349-$16,138
• StubHub: $358-$11,653
• Ticketmaster: $380-$6,658
• Vivid Seats: $373-$6,691

March Madness is here and it’s already leading to plenty of social media conversation. The Univ. of South Carolina’s Social Media Insights Lab has debuted its “College Sports Pulse” rankings for men’s college basketball on the heels of Selection Sunday. The rankings are being generated through a partnership between South Carolina and Sports Business Journal and will be featured in SBJ throughout the tournament.

The Pulse analyzes millions of posts across major social media platforms to measure how much attention each team is generating in the national social media conversation and how fans are reacting to it (positive or negative).

Three key measures -- net sentiment, volume (number of posts) and engagements (likes, shares, etc.) -- are gathered through the process before being run through a proprietary formula that determines overall influence on a 0-100 scale.

A score of 100 does not represent a “perfect score,” but reflects the school that generated the strongest overall performance in the dataset for that window -- not because it represents a maximum or perfect value. The index is scaled so that the No. 1 team each week is set to 100, and all other teams are scored relative to that leader.

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The WNBA and WNBPA are believed to be over 4% apart on their split of revenue share, sources told SBJ Tuesday, a marked gain that the sides will continue to hash out as talks resumed Tuesday.

Early indications were that the sides might take Tuesday off to recalibrate after nearly 100 hours of collective bargaining over the past week. But sources said the negotiations have begun again in earnest.

When the latest face-to-face negotiations began a week ago on March 10, the players had requested 26% of the revenue pie, with the league refusing to budge from a number just under 15%. But, while that divide has been roughly cut in half and there was recent belief leaguewide an agreement was imminent, nothing has finalized.

Commissioner Cathy Engelbert has twice set soft deadlines for a deal, saying if there was no agreement in place, the season schedule would be impacted. The first deadline was March 10, and the second was a week later this Tuesday. But there is still no term sheet.

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Gotham FC will host the Washington Spirit on July 15 for The Queens Classic at Citi Field. CarMax will be the presenting sponsor of the game. The match will be the first women’s sporting event at the home of the Mets. It will kick off at 8pm ET on ESPN and ESPN Unlimited (ESPN App) in Spanish. Gotham FC will earmark a combination of discounted and free tickets to the event for community nonprofits and fans from underrepresented populations (Gotham FC).

The match will be the NWSL’s first at Citi Field and is “part of a growing trend of annual big-event games at MLB and NFL stadiums.” It marks the third straight year the league has played a regular season game in an MLB venue, following contests at Oracle Park in S.F. in 2025 and Wrigley Field in Chicago in 2024 (ESPN.com, 3/17).

American Family Field will “get a 20,000-square-foot addition that will be available for event rentals for the general public” during the Brewers’ offseason and as an “amenity to season ticket holders during the season.” Wisconsin Professional Baseball Park District Facility Manager Brian Dworak said that the new hospitality area will be “added to the exterior of the first base side.” He added that construction is “expected to start within the next couple of weeks and be completed in early 2027.” Hunzinger Construction was awarded the construction management contract for the hospitality addition. The hospitality addition is “one of the three largest projects” at the ballpark included in a $500M funding package Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers and the state legislature agreed to in 2023. The other projects involve “winterizing the stadium for year-round events and creating a multi-purpose plaza in an area outside the outfield” (MILWAUKEE BUSINESS JOURNAL, 3/17).

Meanwhile, at least 10 Brewers games will “show up on regular ‘over the air’ channels in most Wisconsin markets.” Milwaukee-based WITI-Fox will “simulcast the slate of 10 games,” the result of a partnership with Good Karma. Access to the games will be free. The broadcasts will also “remain available in their usual spots and Brewers.TV,” the newly arranged home for broadcasts with MLB producing Brewers games starting in 2026. The first over-the-air broadcast will the Brewers’ opening day game on March 26 against the White Sox (MILWAUKEE JOURNAL SENTINEL, 3/17).

OnDeck Partners, the Double-A Southern League Montgomery Biscuits and DABOS announced a deal today that will rename the Biscuits’ ballpark DABOS Park. OnDeck, led by CEO Mike Carney, owns and operates the Biscuits and the Single-A California League Visalia Rawhide as part of the Avenue Sports Fund.

A cornerstone of the deal is the Negro Leagues Exhibit at DABOS Park, for which DABOS will serve as a founding and presenting partner. The permanent exhibit is intended to honor the history, legacy, and enduring impact of Negro Leagues baseball in an Alabama city bearing important Civil Rights history.

The Biscuits’ 2026 season in their newly renamed ballpark begins April 7. Maryland-based DABOS has been a leading provider of equipment and supplies, beginning originally in biotech, medical and pharmacological fields in 2017, before branching into retail, restaurants and manufacturing in the years since.

OnDeck Partners was created in late 2025 and is backed by Avenue, which was launched by former Bucks owner Marc Lasry in November 2023. Avenue is also invested in Cosm, Mercury 13, SailGP’s U.S. team, Trackhouse Entertainment Group, and TGL’s The Bay Golf Club, among others. The fund closed in September 2025.

The NCAA Tournament’s First Four gets a “jolt of TV star power that would be worth tuning in for, regardless of the matchup,” as Dick Vitale and Charles Barkley will “pair up for the back half of Tuesday’s ‘First Four’ doubleheader,” a matchup between Texas and NC State. The Vitale-Barkley game is scheduled to tip off at 9:15pm ET from Dayton, Ohio, on truTV. Play-by-play announcer Brian Anderson will call play-by-play and Jenny Dell will be the sideline reporter. Fifteen years in, the results of the First Four “have been mixed, both competitively and in drawing audience attention on TV.” But the First Four had a TV “breakthrough” last year -- its highest-rated set of games ever (THE ATHLETIC, 3/17).

Anderson said of Vitale, “He has had as much impact on college basketball’s popularity than any individual I know. The NCAA Tournament stands alone on its own, but it feels like we righted a 40-year wrong by offering a headset to one of the game’s signature voices for his first NCAA Tournament television experience” (Austin Karp, SBJ).

In response to Iran’s request to relocate its World Cup games from the U.S. to Mexico, FIFA said that such “unprecedented changes” in World Cup history were “not planned to a match schedule agreed three months ago.” FIFA said it is “looking forward to all participating teams competing” as per the match schedule announced on Dec. 6, 2025. Iran’s soccer federation has not canceled its World Cup entry with FIFA, though official comments have “variously suggested the U.S. is unable or unwilling to ensure the delegation’s secure arrival and accommodation.” In comments posted late Monday on the embassy website, Iran’s Ambassador to Mexico Abolfazl Pasandideh “urged FIFA to move the team’s games to Mexico,” saying that the U.S. was “not cooperative on visas.” NZ Football CEO Andrew Pragnell said on Monday he also does not “foresee it as remotely feasible” to move scheduled games to another country, as they are Iran’s first opponent (AP, 3/17).

Mexico President Claudia Sheinbaum, during her Tuesday morning press briefing, said that Mexico “is willing to host Iran’s matches against New Zealand, Belgium and Egypt.” Sheinbaum: “Of course it is feasible. We have diplomatic relations with every country in the world, but we will await word from FIFA before commenting further” (MEXICO NEWS DAILY, 3/17).

The David & Nicole Tepper Foundation donated $250,000 Tuesday afternoon to UNC Charlotte for women’s athletics. The gift was announced at the university’s annual Judy W. Rose Let Me Play Luncheon, which featured Nicole Tepper as its keynote speaker.

The money will benefit various aspects of the Charlotte 49ers’ women sports programs, including health and well-being, training facilities, leadership development and promoting women’s sports, the school said. Of the 49ers’ 19 varsity sports, 10 are women’s teams and nine are men’s teams. There are 200 women student-athletes who compete on those teams.

Chancellor Sharon Gaber, in a prepared statement, said the support from the Teppers “reflects a shared belief in the power of athletics to develop leaders and open doors for our students long after they graduate from UNC Charlotte.”

Nicole Tepper is chief administrative officer at Tepper Sports & Entertainment, the company that owns the Carolina Panthers, Charlotte FC and Bank of America Stadium. David Tepper, a hedge fund manager with an estimated net worth of $23B, is the founder of Tepper Sports.

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