Morning Buzz

The Bills and Maple Leaf Sports & Entertainment plan to announce a marketing relationship in Toronto on Tuesday, marking the start of the NFL team’s most concerted effort to develop its Canadian fan base since its last regular season game there in 2013.

The event, slated for 2pm ET at BMO Field, will include remarks from both organizations’ top brass followed by a youth football clinic. Bills COO Pete Guelli, MLSE President & CEO Keith Pelley and Bills/CFL legend Doug Flutie will be there, along with new Bills LPs and retired Toronto sports greats Vince Carter, Tracy McGrady and Jozy Altidore. After speeches, the Bills will co-host a youth football clinic for 200 children with the Toronto Argonauts CFL team.

It’s the culmination of lengthy strategic planning inside the Bills’ organization to more fully develop southern Ontario, Guelli said. “It’s the second largest media market in North America and part of our home territory,” Guelli said. “There are reasons to put those two together. We think we’ve transcended Buffalo with the quality of football we play.”

The Argonauts’ Oct. 4 game against the Hamilton Tiger-Cats will carry a Bills theme and a Toronto bar, Real Sports Bar & Grill, is on board as an official watch party destination for the Bills, Guelli said. They are also discussing a Bills-themed Raptors game, and the Bills have arranged a retail activation plan with Peace Collective, a Canadian clothing brand.

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Bears President & CEO Kevin Warren in a letter to season ticket holders Monday “reiterated the team’s plan to build a dome in Arlington Heights,” writing “with finality about the Bears leaving the city of Chicago.” Warren wrote, “Moving outside of the city of Chicago is not a decision we reached easily. This project does not represent us leaving, it represents us expanding.” Warren noted that he “hopes the Bears can finalize their plans for a fixed-roof dome this year.” The Bears also “hope to bid for a Super Bowl, perhaps one played as soon as 2031.” Warren is “pushing for legislation,” which could be decided by state lawmakers either next month or in the spring, that would “allow the team to negotiate property tax payments with Arlington Heights.” The Bears have said they “will pay for the stadium themselves” (CHICAGO SUN-TIMES, 9/8).

Meanwhile, 42 players from the Bears’ 1985 championship team were “on hand” for the team’s season opener Monday against the Vikings. All of them “lined up on the field at halftime as the team showed highlights of their Super Bowl XX victory” and “had a large ‘XX’ lit up in blue and orange with fog machines out there with them” (CHICAGO SUN-TIMES, 9/8).

The NHL Draft will take place June 26-27, though league President of Content & Events Steve Mayer said officials are “in the process of figuring out where” it will take place. The draft for the second straight year will be decentralized after teams voted 19-13 to keep the 2025 format. The Peacock Theater in L.A. is where league execs and top prospects were located awaiting teams’ picks. Mayer said of the 2026 event, “We’re considering a few places. We have a short list. We don’t know whether or not we’ll go to a theater again, or we may go back to an arena” (“The Power Play,” NHL Network Radio, 9/8).

The Univ. of Virginia is set to announce a new five-year extension of its multimedia rights partnership with Playfly through the 2032-33 academic year, sources told Sports Business Journal. Exact financial details of the deal weren’t immediately available, while an official announcement is expected on Tuesday.

Virginia had previously been an Outfront Media Property dating back to 1998 and prior to the company’s acquisition by Playfly in 2020. The school has since worked under Playfly’s banner on varying projects, including creating the Commonwealth Clubs in Scott Stadium.

This deal is a notable win for Playfly, which saw former client USC leave for Learfield in June. The company, however, has signed recent deals with Auburn, Texas A&M, Appalachian State, Butler, Washington State and Penn State.

The Univ. of Oklahoma Board of Regents “will discuss athletic department revenue” during its Tuesday meeting after the school saw a decrease from last year. The agenda lists OU athletics’ revenue at “roughly” $107.4M on June 30, over $12M less than its reported revenue of $119.5M on June 30, 2024. The agenda “lists several reasons for the dip,” which was “primarily due to conference distribution.” OU received $12.5M “in SEC transition distributions compared to the” $38M it received from the Big 12 in FY2024. The decrease is “partially offset” by an $8M “increase in athletic ticket sales.” The agenda also lists a $50M increase “primarily driven by” $32M “in 1Oklahoma payments made to student athletes for NIL” (OKLAHOMAN, 9/5).

Marc Riccio will stay on as CEO of USA Lacrosse through the 2028 Olympics, signing a new contract that will extend his tenure atop the national governing body. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. Riccio has led USA Lacrosse since 2021 and will see its return to the Olympics with LA28 adding the event in its sixes format for its Games. During Riccio’s tenure, USA Lacrosse has grown its youth members, expanded its national teams to 14 from youth up to senior levels and seen then win five World Lacrosse championships.

Tech-forward publisher Minute Media has reached a deal to acquire VideoVerse and its AI-powered highlight product, Magnifi. Terms of the deal were not disclosed, but Minute Media President Rich Routman described it as a “very meaningful deal” for a competitive asset; VideoVerse raised a $45M investment round in late 2023. Minute Media operates brands such as Sports Illustrated, The Players’ Tribune and 90Min that are best known for their written content, but it also acquired STN Video in Jan. 2024. STN Video has rights agreements with every major US sports league among its more than 250 content providers.

“That is predominantly a distribution and monetization business,” Routman said of STN Video. “The addition of Magnifi allows us to be also involved in the creation part of that. So hopefully, between the technology that we can bring to these leagues and federations, our ability to distribute content in a meaningful way, and then obviously the commercial engine that we already have, we can become a much more holistic partner to these teams, leagues and federations than we are today.”

VideoVerse has more than 300 employees, all of whom are expected to join Minute Media as part of this transaction. Magnifi, which counts WSC Sports as its chief competitor, enables real-time video clipping that is used by FIFA, UEFA and Wimbledon, among others.

“There’s obviously a big portion our business that focuses on building direct-to-consumer audiences, commercializing them through advertising, working with sponsors, and there’s also the B2B side of our business -- we license rights and distribute those,” Routman said. “We want technology to sit at the center of each of those areas, and [we will take] any chance that we have to make that more robust.”

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Scripps Sports-owned ION has a new rights deal to televise Athlos, the women’s-only track and field league backed by investor Alexis Ohanian. The pact will begin with the second iteration of Athlos NYC at Icahn Stadium on Oct. 10. David Sternberg, Range Sports’ co-head of media rights, worked with Ohanian’s Seven Seven Six fund to secure the deal. The N.Y. event also will include an “Icons on ION” pre-race show heading into the primetime event. Runners set to participate in the N.Y. event include Faith Kipyegon, Keely Hodgkinson, Melissa Jefferson-Wooden, Masai Russell, Marileidy Paulino and Brittany Brown on the track side. There also will be some field events for the first time at Athlos NYC, including the long jump (qualifying will take place in Times Square). Athlos NYC will also stream on X and YouTube, with additional streamers to be announced in the weeks ahead.

The addition of Athlos builds on ION’s existing women’s sports portfolio, which includes the WNBA and NWSL. ION is also set to the debut SI Women’s Games, this fall, as well as the Elevance Health Women’s Ft. Myers Tip-Off early season women’s college basketball tournament. Ohanian, the husband of Serena Williams, has long been a backer of women’s sports, as he was an original lead investor in NWSL club Angel City and recently bought a stake in the Chelsea women’s team. He also is TGL’s L.A. GC team’s owner, and has pushed vocally for the addition of women’s competition in TGL.

Three new sports architect hires will help Gensler continue to compete for sports venue design business on a global scale. Chris Devolder, Trevor Bechtold and Edward Mills have all joined Gensler from HOK, with Devolder and Bechtold continuing to work out of the firm’s K.C. office and Mills remaining in the Bay Area. The three add more than 65 years of combined design experience and expertise (Bechtold: college sports; Devolder: soccer; Mills: athlete experience and wellness) to Gensler’s sports practice.

“I think it sends a message to our clients about the ability to really serve on every level and on a much broader geographic scale,” said Jordan Goldstein, co-CEO of Gensler alongside Elizabeth Brink. “From a leadership standpoint, recognizing that the landscape is shifting so fast that for us it’s an opportunity to be proactive rather than reactive to trends.”

Gensler launched its sports practice in 2009 in L.A., before expanding into Washington, D.C., Austin, London, and K.C.

According to Sports Business Journal research, nearly $6B in construction at new and renovated professional and college sports facilities is scheduled to finish in the U.S. and Canada this year. That dollar amount more than doubles in 2026 to $14.2B, headlined by new stadiums for Inter Miami, the Bills, and Northwestern Univ., whose $800M Ryan Field is the most expensive college football stadium ever built.

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Fox Corp. Exec Chair Lachlan Murdoch has “completed an agreement to secure control of his family’s sprawling media empire for decades to come.” The deal -- valued at $3.3B, according to sources -- “ensures” that the empire’s various outlets “will remain conservative after his father Rupert’s death." The deal “comes months after Rupert and Lachlan’s audacious bid to unilaterally change the terms of the Murdoch family’s irrevocable trust and disenfranchise Lachlan’s oldest siblings,” Prue, Liz and James. The bid “initially failed in court,” but “ultimately brought the two sides to the negotiating table.” The agreement “won’t result in any immediate change,” as Lachlan “has already been running the Murdoch business for the past few years.” But it “does clear up the uncertainty around the company’s future by locking in his long-term leadership” (N.Y. TIMES, 9/8).

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