Morning Buzz

Mavericks minority owner Mark Cuban has taken his “increasingly public dispute” with majority owner Patrick Dumont “to court, accusing his business partner of shutting him out of the team’s plans for a new arena and other lucrative development opportunities.” A new court filing alleges Dumont “engaged in ‘adversarial business practices’ and asks a Dallas County judge to force the Mavericks’ ownership to disclose details about its planned Valley View arena development, financing and corporate structure.” Cuban believes he “still has a right to be involved in the Mavericks’ business opportunities.” He filed a petition in Dallas County this week to “review the contract to buy the former Valley View mall site to build a new basketball arena.” Cuban also “requests details on how the arena project will be financed and to see the corporate structure behind the team’s real estate deal.” Cuban’s petition “escalates what has been more than two years of dysfunction between the Mavericks’ largest shareholders and possibly complicates the team’s plans to build an arena at the site.” The filing comes over a month after the Mavericks signed an option agreement to purchase approximately 104 acres of the former site of Valley View mall, “dealing a blow to efforts to bring the team downtown.” However, the petition could “lay the groundwork for lawsuits to stop the sale” (DALLAS MORNING NEWS, 7/8).

Former Liberty Media CEO Greg Maffei and Skylark founder & CEO Danny Epstien are “launching a new team-based horseracing league that will draw on elements” of F1 “in an attempt to draw in younger sports fans and gamblers.” Maffei, who was “instrumental in dramatically raising F1’s profile,” is “seeking to raise” $30M ahead of the launch of Horse Racing League in February. HRL will “consist of 10 teams of eight horses, trainers and jockeys.” Sources noted that Godolphin, the horseracing business founded by Dubai ruler Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid al-Maktoum, has “agreed to buy one of the teams” for $6M and “could also back the league’s fundraising.” Founding team owners also include WinStar Farm, owned by Excel Communications founder Kenny Troutt, and a separate group consisting of Florida Panthers owner Vinnie Viola. The competition, which will initially hold its races in the U.S., “aims to sell teams to celebrities and major brands.” The first season will feature a prize pool of more than $10M. HRL will “buy 80 horses and hold an NFL-style draft to divide them among the 10 founding teams, which will be able to trade them during the season.” The league “plans to generate revenues through sponsorships, betting, merchandise, hospitality and the sale of media rights” (FINANCIAL TIMES, 7/8).

Maffei spoke to CNBC about the new league, saying horse racing in the U.S. “still an enormous business and there’s an enormous fan base,” but “a lot of it is concentrated on things like the Kentucky Derby.” Maffei: “There’s enormous interest, but some of it’s episodic and we’re trying to capture both the fan interest that’s in big events like Kentucky Derby and bring continuity across the season, with continued interest.” Maffei noted the plan is to start with “three days of racing initially [and] targeting getting to six days of racing,” and “on each day there will be four events, two on turf and two on dirt.” On growing interest in the new league, Maffei said, “We’re going to definitely lean on social media and we have some plans to introduce some celebrities who will own parts of these teams and show their true interest in horse racing and hopefully the fans will follow” (“Squawk Box,” CNBC, 7/9).

A first round of bids to buy the Seahawks were reportedly due last week, and while “there has been no news concerning the sale since, it’s possible those bids are being dissected this week” in Sun Valley, Idaho, at Allen & Co.’s annual conference. Allen & Co. was hired by the Seahawks to lead the process of the sale, along with the law firm of Latham & Watkins. Among those present in Sun Valley this week is Seahawks Vice Chair Bert Kolde, who “has often been the point person for Chair Jody Allen in handling matters related to the Seahawks.” In addition, “either confirmed in attendance or expected to be in attendance” are NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell and Patriots owner Robert Kraft, who is a member of the NFL’s Finance Committee, which is “generally entrusted with reviewing bids to buy teams and providing recommendations to the entire ownership group for votes.” All of these factors “could make it the perfect place to begin hammering out the details of a possible sale, or at least reviewing them” (SEATTLE TIMES, 7/8).

Fox Sports and Telemundo combined to average 16.9 million viewers for the first-ever Round of 32 at the FIFA World Cup. That’s on par with what ESPN/ABC/ESPN2 drew for the “Monday Night Football” package last regular season. Fox and FS1 accounted for 56% of that audience, averaging 9.5 million viewers for its 16 games. Linear TV was the overwhelming majority of that audience within Fox Sports. Meanwhile, Telemundo accounted for 44% of the Round of 32 audience, averaging 7.4 million. However, like in the group stage, streaming on Peacock accounted for half Spanish-language audience (3.7 million).

Joaquin Duro, Telemundo’s EVP/Sports & Head of Streaming, notes the streaming numbers have all drawn well over what the 2022 and 2018 World Cups did combined. “We planned this,” Duro told SBJ. “We created a marketing campaign to target every single Hispanic -- not just Spanish-dominant -- but the bilinguals as well. And you’ve seen the people that we’ve had from Sofía Vergara to Marcello Hernández to John Leguizamo targeting these folks.

Duro, an SBJ Power Player around the 2026 World Cup, also gave credit to his team for creating a Spanish-language interface on Peacock with customer service, merchandising, vertical video, Multiview and more to keep audiences coming back (with some reports saying that 20% of the Peacock audience claim English as their first language).

Big matches among Fox and Telemundo in the Round of 32 included a combined 36.2 million viewers for U.S.-Bosnia & Herzegovina and 29.3 million for Mexico-Ecuador. Even a non-host match like Argentina-Cabo Verde delivered 26.2 million viewers across the two media companies.

Read More >>>

On this week’s pod, SBJ’s Austin Karp and Josh Carpenter reflect on the U.S. and Mexico exits from the World Cup, and how Fox and Telemundo will continue to deliver viewership numbers. Plus, the duo looks at who might want rights to the next iterations of the tournament. Then, Karp and Carpenter address Versant’s recent acquisition of Full Swing. Plus, with MLB All-Star weekend around the bend, MLB Network’s Matt Vasgersian, who will call the Home Run Derby, breaks down Netflix’s debut with the event and what he sees regarding MLB’s labor situation.

FIFA President Gianni Infantino “could face an investigation” by the IOC after rights group FairSquare announced plans on Wednesday to “file a complaint alleging he breached political neutrality rules through his support” of President Trump. FairSquare, which filed an earlier complaint to the FIFA Ethics Committee against Infantino in December, said that it will “lodge the complaint with the IOC regarding Infantino’s ‘repeated breach of political neutrality rules.’” IOC President Kirsty Coventry said on Tuesday that no complaint “had been received to be considered by the ethics commission but added: ‘Obviously, if they do, they would look into it’” (REUTERS, 7/8).

There are tickets remaining for the first quarterfinal matchup of the World Cup, but the price is nearly $1,200. France-Morocco in Boston get-in prices currently sit at $1,198 with 496 tickets available, according to TicketData.com. That price is down 10% over the past three days, 33% over the past seven and 14% since the start of the tournament. SBJ has partnered with TicketData.com to track get-in prices and trends for upcoming games. For additional information on games, visit the World Cup page at TicketData.com.

Premier League club Manchester United “confirmed the club’s new 100,000-seater stadium will be built on land recently purchased from Indurent located around 350 metres away from Old Trafford.” Though the new stadium will not be built on land currently attached to Old Trafford, the club insists that it will “honour the current ground’s history and traditions.” The new ground will be the “centrepiece of what is being called a Stadium District, which will be purpose-built for sport, entertainment and year-round activity, with the new stadium serving as the flagship landmark of the wider Trafford Wharfside development” (MANCHESTER EVENING NEWS, 7/9).

CNN on Aug, 2 will roll out its latest effort in the “Decades” franchise, with a number of high-profile athletes, broadcasters, journalists and authors looking at the past six decades of sports. The six-part series, dubbed “Decades in Sports,” will start with two episodes and then one episode weekly after that.

Among those featured in the series are broadcasters Bob Costas, Al Michaels and Andrea Kremer, Pro Football HOFers Lynn Swann and Drew Pearson, Basketball HOFer Bill Bradley, former WNBAer Diana Taurasi, ESPN analysts Jessica Mendoza and Malika Andrews, journalists/authors Dave Kindred, Joe Posnanski, Michael MacCambridge, Bomani Jones and John Heilemann.

Orlando has “increased its incentive offer to attract TMRW Sports” -- operator of TGL and the soon-to-launch WTGL -- to “relocate its headquarters downtown.” On July 13, the Orlando City Council will consider a pair of incentive programs in an effort to get the company to relocate from its existing Winter Park HQ. Both incentives are “performance-based and would depend on the number of jobs the company creates and maintains.” If approved, TMRW Sports “would relocate to an undisclosed downtown building, bringing 70 existing jobs ... while creating 125 new positions.” The company also “plans to invest more than” $11M in the “build-out of its approximately 40,000-square-foot office.” Neither TMRW Sports nor the city “has identified the building under consideration and said additional details will be released in the future.” Orlando is “competing with several other markets for the project,” including Stamford, Conn.; Charleston, S.C.; and White Plains, Manhattan and Westchester, N.Y. (ORLANDO BUSINESS JOURNAL, 7/8).

Learfield has reached a long-term deal with SaaS platform SponsorCX to aid its 140-plus college clients as they manage expanding portfolios of sports sponsorship deals and navigate emerging revenue opportunities like jersey patches and NIL. Terms of the deal were not shared with SBJ.

Jeff Gosey, Learfield’s SVP/Revenue Strategy & Operations, said the overall discovery and decision-making process that led to SponsorCX started 15 months ago. Learfield and its schools, he mentioned, needed more flexibility and speed around the whole sponsorship process. “We have 130,000 rate card items that we have to manage and 12,000 brand deals a year,” Gosey told SBJ. “... There is some nuance, property of property. We need to be able to do that to best meet our properties and serve our properties, serve our sellers, and serve our schools.”

SponsorCX was founded in 2017 but officially launched its product in 2021. The firm has clients across the top five men’s North American leagues, a group that includes the Sacramento Kings and the Timbers. SponsorCX was founded by Jason Smith. He formerly worked for ISP Sports (a company that ultimately became part of the Learfield ecosystem) during a career in sports sponsorship.

Learfield colleges are currently being trained to use SponsorCX in time for the 2026/27 academic year and football season. A relationship at this scale, Smith said, will help to bolster SponsorCX’s capabilities.

Read More >>>

“‘Burning Fuse’ was the working title for the iconic theme song to this TV series that was later on the big screen.”