Closing Bell

The league is “openly considering the possibility of moving” the Emirates NBA Cup in-season tournament championship game “away from Las Vegas for next season,” according to sources. That decision “is a recognition that the neutral-site approach has lacked the energy and enthusiasm, at least to this point, the league initially hoped it would.” There have been “empty seats for most of the eight games that have been played in Vegas across the last three seasons,” and the atmosphere “hasn’t been the same” as the home games played in the quarterfinals -- which is “what led the league to announce that change for next season back in September” (ESPN.com, 12/15).

Mets owner Steve Cohen, in tandem with Hard Rock International, received final approval Monday from the NYS Gaming Commission for their $8.1B Metropolitan Park project, which includes a casino adjacent to Citi Field. The development is projected to be finished in June 2030.

Amid protests, the NYSGC approved Hard Rock, Bally’s (Bronx) and Resorts World (Queens) for downstate N.Y. casino licenses. Each will pay an initial $500M licensing fee.

“Since the day I bought the team, the community and Mets fans have made it clear to me that we can and should do better with the area around the ballpark,” Cohen said in a statement. “Now, we are going to be able to deliver the sports and entertainment district that our fans have been asking for.”

Metropolitan Park, on 50 acres of Citi Field parking lots, will include a Hard Rock Hotel with a casino, sportsbook, restaurants, bars, a 5,650-seat music venue and a Taste of Queens Food Hall. It will also create 25 acres of public green space, 23,000 union jobs, $1B in community benefits and infrastructure improvements including a revamped, ADA-accessible 7-line train station, according to Metropolitan Park officials.

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Commissioners of the Big 12, SEC, ACC, Big Ten and Pac-12 “filed an affidavit in support of NCAA eligibility rules” ahead of a hearing today in the Patterson case, which “seeks to overturn the NCAA redshirt rule and grant players 5 full seasons.” The hearing today -- transpiring in a Tennessee courtroom -- “could go a long way in a judge granting” Vanderbilt LB Langston Patterson’s request to suspend the redshirt rule for football players ahead of the January transfer portal window. The NCAA sent a memo to members today related to the hearing, noting that “there is no request for broader preliminary injunctive relief on behalf of all DI student-athletes and the court is not expected to address eligibility for any other student-athlete” (X, 12/15).

It didn’t take long for the Orioles to begin marketing $155M signing 1B Pete Alonso. On Friday, the team welcomed its newest player to Baltimore with 19 combined billboards and media walls placed around the city and county.

Alonso’s afternoon press conference was streamed on the Orioles’ official website, social media channels, MASN+ and MASN TV. The team’s platforms also shared a behind-the-scenes look at his first day. His No. 25 jersey has been available as of Monday for purchase at the Team Store at Oriole Park.

The team said its Birdland Member representatives have been busy fielding calls from season-plan members and first-time buyers.

Baltimore’s busy offseason has also included a trade for OF Taylor Ward and the $28M signing of closer Ryan Helsley. The Orioles are also involved in adding starting pitching. They were a middle-of-the-pack payroll team ($165M) last year.

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Orreco, an AI-powered performance science firm in Ireland, has acquired computer vision startup Data Driven Sports Analytics and raised a $4M Series A extension from Mavericks minority owner Mark Cuban, Enterprise Ireland, pro athletes and existing investors.

A recent graduate of the Comcast NBCUniversal’s SportsTech program, Orreco will also participate in the upcoming cohort of MLS Innovation Lab that will be formally announced shortly.

The primary motivation for the investment and acquisition is Orreco’s work on Motion Signal, which collates a wide variety of data inputs to identify injury risk. The AI algorithms consider everything from sources of external load, such as GPS wearables and video-based biomechanical analysis, to internal measures such as Orreco’s biomarker tests.

Motion Signal is showing increasing promise to work in real-time to help flag soft-tissue injuries before they happen — everything from hamstring strains to, potentially, even non-contact Achilles and ACL tears.

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Americans are “increasingly concerned about the growing influence of the sports gambling industry and remain wary of its effect on the games they watch,” according to a Washington Post-Univ. of Maryland poll. These negative trends “cut across almost all groups.” Overall, 36% of Americans “say the increasing number of states allowing people to bet on sports is ‘a bad thing’ -- up from” 23% in 2022 -- “while the share of those saying it is ‘a good thing’ declined” from 23% to 14%. Roughly half of Americans (49%) are “neutral on the question of good versus bad, down from” 54% three years ago. The poll “took place in the aftermath of gambling scandals in MLB and the NBA earlier this year.” The public also “does not differentiate much between the relative harm of prop bets versus more traditional outcome-based wagers” (WASHINGTON POST, 12/15).

With Olympic and women’s sports threatened by a changing collegiate model, ESPN analyst Jessica Mendoza joins SBJ’s Rachel Axon to discuss the future viability of those programs. An Olympic gold medalist and All-American in softball, Mendoza looks at how colleges can continue to support non-revenue programs, the role of media rights in funding those sports and the opportunity ahead in LA28.