Closing Bell

A pair of high-ranking officials from both the PGA of America and PGA Tour have emerged as top candidates for the vacant LPGA commissioner position, sources told SBJ on Thursday.

PGA of America COO Craig Kessler and Korn Ferry Tour President Alex Baldwin are now seen as the leading candidates to replace Mollie Marcoux Samaan, who stepped down from the position earlier in 2025.

Kessler has only been at the PGA as its COO for a little more than two years and is seen as a rising star in golf’s executive ranks. He’s an SBJ Forty Under 40 honoree for 2025 and also was said to be in the early mix for the PGA of America CEO role that eventually went to Derek Sprague late in 2024.

Kessler, a Harvard MBA grad, was also the COO at Topgolf from 2016-2021 and currently serves on the National Golf Foundation board.

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The 2026 Milan-Cortina Winter Olympics will have “an operating budget of about” $1.9B, a $112M increase from the previously stated amount. The budget “does not include construction of competition venues” like the $131M sliding center in Cortina d’Ampezzo and the new Santa Giulia ice hockey arena in Milan, which could cost nearly $330M, “nor big infrastructure projects involving roads and railways.” The IOC “will also contribute about” $1B in additional funding for the Games, while the Italian government is funding more than $1B “in infrastructure development to improve access to venues.” Unlike recent Winter Games in Sochi (2014), Pyeongchang (2018) and Beijing (2022), “most of the 2026 venues are in place and have been used for years for World Cups and world championships.” The operating budget for the 2022 Beijing Games “was estimated at about” $4B (AP, 4/10).

The long-running legal saga between the US Soccer Federation and Relevent Sports is “at its end” after Relevent filed yesterday to “dismiss the case from federal court.” The case, which was originally filed in 2019, “represented the last remaining legal hurdle to allowing worldwide domestic soccer leagues to play regular-season games within the United States, and its dismissal with prejudice means the path is now cleared for those games to take place.” The two sides have discussed dismissing the case “since Relevent agreed to a settlement without prejudice with Fifa.” Relevent’s contention was that US Soccer’s “refusal to sanction foreign domestic league games in the United States, and Fifa’s policy barring domestic league games from taking place outside their home territory, amounted to violations of the Sherman Antitrust Act.” The terms of the settlement “are not yet know” (London GUARDIAN, 4/10).

Farm equipment company Sukup Manufacturing “will be the new title sponsor of the Iowa IndyCar Race Weekend” at Iowa Speedway. Sukup has previously been an associate sponsor during the weekend and has also sponsored the track’s Indy NXT race. Hy-Vee was the event’s title sponsor in 2022, 2023 and 2024, and the grocery chain announced in July 2024 that it would renew its title sponsorship. But in February, the company and IndyCar announced that Hy-Vee would drop its title sponsorship in lieu of becoming a “significant sponsor.” The NTT IndyCar Series is scheduled to race at Iowa Speedway July 12 and 13, marking the fifth time in six years the series is scheduled to race twice in the same weekend at the 7/8-mile short track (DES MOINES REGISTER, 4/10).

Penske is considering a “team-friendly plan” where it would “shoulder” new-car costs, for IndyCar teams that are interested, and “spread the reimbursement over multiple years to alleviate the financial burden.” If the idea “becomes a reality, team owners would enter into loan and repayment agreements” with Penske. IndyCar teams are “bracing for a wave of new-car costs whenever Penske Entertainment and its chassis partners at Dallara introduce the successor for today’s DW12 chassis.” Penske’s idea of shouldering the costs is “still at an early stage, and some of the finer details have yet to be defined.” With teams able to acquire bank loans of their own, there’s “an assumption the Penske plan would come with a more favorable interest rate.” Penske Entertainment CEO Mark Miles said that “if it were to happen, it would involve direct dealings with Penske rather than engaging a bank to arrange loans for teams on behalf of the series” (RACER, 4/10).

The International Tennis HOF and Google Arts & Culture have released a new digital exhibit called “Serving Tennis History,” which is backboned by 30,000 digitized pages from editions of “American Lawn Tennis” magazine published between 1907-1951.

The exhibit is the culmination of a four-year collaboration between the ITHF and Google Arts & Culture, through which Google Arts & Culture supplied a tabletop scanner for the ITHF and a contractor who manually scanned the magazine pages and covers. The exhibit’s digital portal includes stories that thread together key points in tennis history chronicled by American Lawn Tennis; it also includes an artificial intelligence assistant underpinned by Google’s NotebookLM tool that fields user queries and produces both written and audio responses sourced from the archives.

“The mission of the Hall of Fame is to preserve the history of tennis, and a big piece of that for us is also providing access for people around the world to be able to learn about that history,” Julianna Barbieri, the ITHF’s SVP/Content & Partnerships, told SBJ at a launch event in NYC. “We want everyone to [visit the museum], but we also know that we need to provide that as a searchable resource online.”

The project fits into a broader focus by the ITHF on modernizing its facility (in Newport, Rhode Island) and operations. An eight-figure capital raise the ITHF initiated in 2018 has gone towards several improvements around the grounds -- including court refurbishments and renovations to the museum -- as well as digitizing its 25,000 artifacts in storage.

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Premier League club Aston Villa FC has reached a multiyear partnership with Legends to support the growth of the club as it modernizes and transforms its home stadium, Villa Park. Following the redevelopment of 17 premium hospitality spaces and strong renewals in the 2024/25 season, Aston Villa has appointed Legends to support the sales and vision of the premium hospitality offerings at Villa Park. In addition to the newly expanded premium hospitality spaces, Villa Park redeveloped several fan areas, such as the new Fanzone and expanded store. Additional work is ongoing at the new warehouse events venue, which will provide both matchday and non-matchday experiences and can transform into a live music venue (Aston Villa).