Morning Buzz

NEW YORK — SBJ Tech Week in New York City began last night with a celebration of the fourth annual Sports Business Awards: Tech.

Industry executives piled into the Hard Rock Hotel in Manhattan to celebrate the most impactful sports innovations of the year in a ceremony hosted by StatusPro co-founder, ESPN analyst and former NFLer Andrew Hawkins, who took home an SBA: Tech trophy for Best in Immersive Technology last year. The energy in the room was palpable throughout the evening, spiking with a standing ovation for the NBA’s Chris Benyarko, who took home Technology Executive of the Year. OneCourt, the startup pioneering accessibility technology for blind/low vision fans at sporting events, also won two awards, including the coveted “Sports Technology of the Year” -- and was honored as one of SBJ’s 10 Most Innovative Sports Tech Companies.

Here is the full list of winners:

Best in AI — Elevate Performance & Insights Cloud (EPIC)

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NEW YORK -- OneCourt earned two victories at SBA: Tech on Monday evening, winning Fan Experience Technology of the Year before claiming the night’s ultimate award, Sports Technology of the Year.

“I leave you guys with one thing, which is where would we all be without sports?” said OneCourt COO Antyush Bollini to the crowd during the Sports Technology of the Year acceptance speech. “It’s a huge part of all of our lives. And there’s so many people who can’t access it in the same way as us. So let’s keep doing this.”

Founded in 2021 by a quartet of Univ. of Washington students, OneCourt has steadily pushed its way into many professional sports and raised awareness about accessibility in the process. The startup’s mission has focused on including a blind and low-vision community that’s been easily overlooked in an industry that produces must-see moments.

OneCourt first connected with sports fans in venues. Its thicker, tablet-sized device can take game-tracking data and turn it into haptics. The vibrations, paired with a surface featuring the field of play’s outline, become a low-latency play-by-play experience.

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NFL owners will gather today in Orlando for a one-day meeting at which they are expected to award the 2030 Super Bowl to Nashville and the 2028 Draft to Minneapolis, green-light more international games and make a point to Chicago and Illinois lawmakers now considering the Bears’ next steps on a new stadium.

Nashville’s first Super Bowl will come at the conclusion of the third season of operations for the new $2.1B Nissan Stadium now under construction, marking a watershed moment for that city’s growth as a major cultural and entertainment destination. NFL insiders have expected this for more than a year.

As SBJ exclusively reported in April, league planners and its business partners have expected for weeks that the 2028 Draft will go to Minneapolis.

Also, owners are expected to sign off on Raiders limited partner Egon Durban’s deal to buy an additional 25% interest in the team from other minority investors, making his stake close to 40%. The finance committee already approved that deal.

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The Bears “still considers” Arlington Heights, Ill., and Hammond, Ind., as the “only two viable sites” for a new stadium, a point the team will “reiterate” Tuesday when they update the 31 other NFL teams at the league meetings. The Bears updated the NFL Stadium Committee on the two sites in a virtual meeting three weeks ago. Then, as is the case now, the Bears stressed that Arlington Heights and Hammond were the “only two realistic locations for their domed stadium.” The team has said that it “plans to decide between the two in late spring or early summer.” The Illinois General Assembly is “set to adjourn at the end of the month,” and the clock is “ticking” for the Senate to pass the mega-projects bill that would allow the Bears to negotiate a property tax break with Arlington Heights (CHICAGO SUN-TIMES, 5/18).

Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker expressed confidence that the megaproject legislation that could bring the Bears to Arlington Heights “would get done.” He said he “put the structure of a deal together with the Bears” and now the Senate “has some work to do.” Pritzker said the Senate will “no doubt” make some changes to the bill, adding he expects “we’ll see something before May 31″ and that both the Senate and House will “vote on that.” He also “leveled criticism” at Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson, saying “he has ‘no plan’ to keep the Bears in the city” (CHICAGO DAILY HERALD, 5/18).

The SCORE Act has been “pulled from the House floor voting schedule this week,” according to sources cited by Ross Dellenger of YAHOO SPORTS (X, 5/18). The Congressional Black Caucus spoke out in “unanimous opposition to the bill” Monday afternoon, which “presented questions about whether the SCORE Act would, in fact, advance to the House floor.” The move is “another setback for the college sports legislation.” There had appeared to be “momentum in the House” for the act heading into this week. A rules vote was “tentatively scheduled” for Wednesday after a rules committee meeting on Tuesday. The bill faced an “uphill climb regardless of what happened in the House” (ON3, 5/18).

After bringing in Jason Benetti as its lead broadcaster for its MLB game inventory, NBC Sports is adding another accomplished MLB play by play voice to its roster.

The company will announce on Tuesday morning that Dave Flemming, the longtime lead radio play-by-play voice on KNBR for the S.F. Giants as well as a college basketball and football and MLB and golf commentator for ESPN, has joined NBC Sports as a play-by-play voice for MLB Sunday Leadoff games on Peacock and NBCSN. Flemming has also been the play by play voice for the MLB International telecast of the World Series since 2022

Flemming will debut for NBC Sports this Sunday for Peacock’s broadcast from Toronto between the Pirates and Blue Jays. His resume also includes calling Major League Baseball on FOX and serving as the play-by-play voice of Stanford football and basketball.

Among the big moments Flemming has called for the Giants -- three World Series appearances and Barry Bonds’ 755th career home run. He also calls games on television for the Giants broadcasts on NBC Sports Bay Area. Like Benetti’s relationship with the Tigers, Flemming will continue to call games for the Giants away from his other work.

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Freedom Mortgage has “agreed to be the new naming-rights sponsor” of the Military Bowl. A source noted that the deal is for the “next three years.” Terms are “unknown,” but naming-rights sponsorships for mid-tier bowl games typically run in the “mid-to-upper-six-figure range.” An official announcement will be made Tuesday morning. Go Bowling was the bowl’s most recent naming sponsor. The agreement with Freedom Mortgage “comes early in the calendar,” a “good sign for a bowl game that struggled with sponsorships last year” and drew a record-low 17,016 in attendance for a matchup between Pitt and East Carolina (WASHINGTON BUSINESS JOURNAL, 5/18).

The PWHL is “set to announce” Tuesday that San Jose will “enter the league for the 2026-27 season.” The expansion franchise is “expected to play its home games” at SAP Center and train and practice at Sharks Ice in San Jose. The league needed to “work with the Sharks,” the NHL team that plays at the SAP Center, to “ensure enough home game dates were available at the arena.” The team’s colors will “also be unveiled” Tuesday. A nickname, the front office, the coaching staff and the roster will be finalized in the “coming weeks and months.” Landing a club in California “finalizes the PWHL’s ambitious expansion path for this year” as the league has grown from eight to 12 teams, having previously added clubs in Detroit, Las Vegas and Hamilton, Ont. (San Jose MERCURY NEWS, 5/18).

To no surprise, the president of the parent company for UFC didn’t think much of Ronda Rousey’s 17-second dismissal of Gina Carano, even though he expects Netflix to report “incredible viewership numbers.”

“For us, it was more of a stunt than a meaningful MMA event,” Mark Shapiro, the president & COO of TKO Group Holdings, said Monday at the JP Morgan Global Technology, Media and Communications conference in Boston when asked why the bout wasn’t the right fit for UFC.

The five-match card, which featured four bouts that ended in the first round, was the first MMA event on Netflix. UFC airs on Paramount+ under a seven-year, $7.7B arrangement.

“I don’t believe that a fight like that, just the way it played out, is really good for MMA, especially because it’s Netflix,” Shapiro said. “They have such an incredible global audience and it’s a massive audience. It’s a highly engaged audience that is going to sample, depending on what comes up on the front page with Netflix. For them to then go to that fight and then think that’s what MMA is, I don’t believe is good for the sport long term. And we saw it that way and decided to pass on it. Taking nothing away from the legend, obviously, that Ronda Rousey is, and the win that she got.”

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SeatGeek is officially launching its Game Day Your Way suite, an effort to streamline experiences for fans and provide more immediate insights to teams and venues.

Game Day Your Way pieces together parking, ticketing, entry management, fan communication/marketing. Those pair with key in-venue functions like connected payments, loyalty programs, and wait time projections at F&B options.

These new features -- which were piloted with the Cavaliers and Rocket Arena during the ongoing NBA playoffs -- is now available to SeatGeek primary ticketing clients.

The suite also includes SeatGeek’s Virtual Box Office -- a finalist for the Best in Venue & Franchise Operations Technology at SBA: Tech last night -- which gives operators a mobile-first solution to handle ticketing issues for fans right in the venue.

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World Team Tennis, the co-ed, team-based U.S. tennis league co-founded by Billie Jean King in 1974, is relaunching this winter under new ownership and with a fresh format that organizers say is geared toward modernizing the storied property.

The first event of WTT’s 2026 season -- its first since 2021, when pandemic-exacerbated financial challenges forced it to suspend play -- will be Dec. 2 at Barclays Center in Brooklyn. The rest of the schedule has yet to be announced but will sit entirely in the month of December, according to WTT CEO Stephen Amritraj -- intentionally outside of the ATP, WTA and Grand Slams’ calendars, which generally combine to run from January to November. WTA No. 5 Jessica Pegula is signed on to compete, and Amritraj told SBJ the league has deals with other “top 10, top 20″ players that will be announced later.

“A team concept -- mixed-gender, men and women on the same team, contributing equally to the score -- in tennis is something that is truly special,” Amritraj said. “[The product] needed a sizable revamp for what the actual nuts and bolts of this were going to be.”

Amritraj, the former director of college tennis at the USTA and chief tennis officer at UTR, purchased WTT’s intellectual property via a Charleston-based private equity outfit he founded, Intrepid Sports Group, in 2024 from the league’s previous owners, Eric Davidson and Fred Luddy.

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In this episode of On Stage, Mohamed Mansour, Chair of San Diego FC, Man Capital LLP and the Mansour Group, joins Coy Wire, sports anchor and correspondent for CNN, for a fireside chat on leadership, investment and the global growth of soccer.

Recorded on March 26 at SBJ Business of Soccer in Atlanta, the conversation explores how one of the world’s most accomplished business leaders is helping shape the future of the sport in the U.S. and beyond.

Mansour reflects on his journey building a global business empire while expanding his footprint in sports ownership through San Diego FC and international investments.

Key themes include:

• Global Perspective on Soccer: Why the sport’s long-term trajectory in the U.S. remains so compelling.  
• Leadership & Entrepreneurship: Lessons from building and managing businesses across multiple industries and continents.  
• Ownership with Vision: How San Diego FC is approaching identity, culture and growth as a new MLS franchise.  
• Investment & Opportunity: The increasing intersection of global capital and the sports industry.  
• Community & Legacy: Why sports ownership is about more than business performance alone.  

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Check out some sights from Monday’s Sports Business Awards: Tech ceremony at the Hard Rock Hotel in N.Y.

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“In the 1930s an automobile showroom occupied the first 2 floors of this building at 42nd & Lexington in Manhattan.”