SBJ Unpacks: An NFL turf war in Maryland

A football fan in Laurel, Md., looking to catch an NFL game in-person has two easy options: travel 20 miles to M&T Bank Stadium in Baltimore for a Ravens game, or go 16 miles to check out the Commanders at Northwest Stadium in Landover. Around town, both teams’ jerseys, flags and bumper stickers are common sights, especially with both clubs in the second round of the playoffs.

But as far as the NFL business is concerned, the town is exclusive Commanders territory. The Ravens can’t sell sponsorship deals there, can’t do community-building activations like a youth flag football league there, and a Ravens logo in any customer-facing business relationship could trigger league discipline.

That’s because Laurel is part of the Commanders’ “home marketing area,” their zone of exclusive rights to promote and monetize NFL football. Laurel sits in the extreme northern corner of Prince George’s County, which along with neighboring Montgomery County, comprise the Maryland suburbs of Washington, D.C. For decades, the Commanders have had exclusivity in both counties.

The Commanders have a strong claim to those regions — their home stadium is based in Prince George’s County, and they were the only NFL team in the region from 1984 to 1996. But the Ravens do, too — no other team is blocked from commercial activities less than 25 miles from its own locker room, and you’ll see plenty of purple in those counties at any large public gathering.

In a dispute that’s reached the highest levels of the NFL, the Ravens are pushing to change the boundaries, arguing they unreasonably limit the club’s growth prospects at a time of maximum popularity and on-field success. Owner Steve Bisciotti has been personally involved in seeking a change.

The Commanders and owner Josh Harris have pushed back on any proposed changes so far, sources said. Harris has argued he bought the team just two years ago at a price ($6.05 billion) that, on some level, reflected the lack of local competition in Washington’s Maryland suburbs, and that it’s unfair to change it now. Both teams declined to comment; the NFL did not reply to a message seeking comment.

If anything changes, it would need to happen in the next year or so. The NFL resolution that defines home marketing areas, last renewed in 2011, expires at the end of the 2025 season, and another renewal would likely be long-term. The Ravens hope to convince the league and other owners to support some change from the status quo before then, sources said.

Initially, sources said, Commissioner Roger Goodell ’s staff proposed a true shared market, like how the two New York and Los Angeles teams operate. In this vision, both Washington and Baltimore could sell across the region but no other teams could. Harris rejected this out of hand, sources said. 

Now, Bisciotti and the Ravens are hoping to steer the debate toward winning rights at least in the two all-important Maryland counties. The Ravens see themselves as Maryland’s team, but Prince George’s and Montgomery each have roughly one million residents and comprise one-third of the state’s population of 6.2 million, and an even greater share of its wealth.

Ironically, this dispute may matter more in principle and politics than profits. Sources said even a favorable change in the boundaries would only marginally affect Baltimore’s local sponsorships sales, a secondary bucket of revenue compared to national media/sponsorships and ticket sales.

But it rises to an owners-and-commissioners level because it forces the league to choose between two long-held goals: 1) Protecting small market teams like Baltimore and 2) Ensuring that wealthy mega-markets like Washington are fully monetized. It’s also a delicate dance in owner politics, arguably the riskiest part of Goodell’s job.

These rules have existed since the Ravens were founded in 1996, but the controversy has emerged anew this decade. For much of the past two decades, former Washington owner Daniel Snyder was so unpopular — and the team so futile, with just two postseason victories this century entering the 2024 playoffs — that the team’s commercial prospects were limited. Meanwhile, the Ravens’ consistency (15 division titles and two Super Bowl championships) generated substantial organic fan growth across the Washington region.

But now, Harris has given the Washington area a reason to reunite with the team. The Commanders won their first playoff game in 19 years on Jan. 12, and their flashy star quarterback, Jayden Daniels , is four years younger than his Baltimore counterpart, MVP candidate Lamar Jackson . Perhaps most importantly, the Commanders and Harris’ related organizations have built a sophisticated, aggressive sales operation that intends to vigorously pursue opportunities.

“It’s a weird situation,” one source said. “People aren’t used to having both the Commanders and the Ravens good.”

The closest parallel elsewhere in the NFL was in the San Francisco Bay Area, before the 49ers moved to Santa Clara in 2014 and the Raiders decamped from Oakland for Las Vegas in 2020. Then, the 49ers and Raiders had heavily overlapping HMAs where they could both sell, but they operated under a gentlemen’s agreement that they would not activate and sell in each other’s home cities. 

The debate near the nation’s capital has cooled in recent months, possibly due to the Commanders’ momentum in developing a new stadium project. The location of the stadium is a big part of the HMA equation — in less crowded parts of the country, a team’s HMA is simply a 75-mile radius from a stadium. If the team moved into a new venue at the old RFK Stadium site in Washington, D.C., its natural territory would only shift 9 miles to the west and would still include all of those two Maryland counties. But, two insiders speculated, it may enough open the door to a mutually acceptable resolution.

Ben Fischer can be reached at bfischer@sportsbusinessjournal.com.

NCAA President Charlie Baker wore the look of a man who has seen plenty over two years on the job. Shepherding the usually glacially moving NCAA into the modern era can have that effect.

But of the battles Baker, the former Massachusetts governor, has faced, the coming conversation around future governance structures may have as significant an impact as any issue the NCAA has touched since Baker dove headfirst into the swirling tides of college athletics.

“Let’s face it, everybody in the [Power Four] is going to be participating in institutional NIL,” Baker told Sports Business Journal as he sat in a ballroom in the cavernous Gaylord Opryland Resort in Nashville at the annual NCAA Convention. “Not everybody in D-I is going to be doing that, right? … They should be in a position to make decisions that might differ from what other people would choose to do within D-I.”

A plan brought forward by the SEC that leaked last week calls for a new look to the governance system that would include shifting the rights to manage postseason championships, including the men’s and women’s basketball tournaments, from the NCAA to the Power Four. (The College Football Playoff is already outside NCAA jurisdiction and run by the FBS conferences). 

“The decision is up to the [Power Four],” Atlantic 10 Commissioner Bernadette McGlade said. “If they want to separate from the NCAA and become their own association under their umbrella of the CFP, they certainly have the wherewithal and the wealth to do so.”

The conversation around governance and whether the Power Four should have a larger piece in those discussions isn’t new. Baker proposed the prospect of a new subdivision when he dropped his “Project DI” in 2023. 

That sentiment has percolated in the background in recent months, while murmurs of a push from the four leagues had gained steam more recently.

The exact motivations behind the proposal remain undefined, but industry insiders suggest the move was, at the least, an effort to start a conversation around the increasingly cavernous divide between those leagues and the rest of Division I.

“Right now, we’re very much in the information gathering stage,” said Illinois Athletic Director Josh Whitman, chairman of the Division I Council. “What the SEC submitted is one of many proposals that has been put forward by a variety of different groups and that will be considered as part of the overall effort, along with the other ideas that have been introduced. It’s a process.”

Whatever the actual process Whitman alluded to is, the fear among those outside the Power Four is the lasting ramifications not just on governance and oversight, but how it might affect the NCAA men’s basketball tournament.

The men’s tournament is the NCAA’s crown jewel, bringing in billions in revenue and providing one of the more prominent platforms in sports. That kind of spectacle carries weight.

“As long as we don’t kill the golden goose,” quipped VCU AD Ed McLaughlin, “it will all be OK.” 

The governance conversations in Nashville also came just days ahead of the College Football Playoff national title game on Monday in Atlanta, where FBS commissioners are expected to meet to discuss future format and potential changes to the 12-team field.

Those around the NCAA ecosystem are paying attention to those discussions, with good reason.

Talks around changes to the men’s and women’s basketball tournaments have closely mirrored those CFP conversations regarding expansion, automatic qualifiers and, frankly, appeasing the SEC, Big Ten, Big 12 and ACC.

The CFP payout structure, for example, was previously weighted in that 80% of revenue went toward the Power Four and the former Pac-12 and split evenly among those leagues, while the Group of Five conferences were given the remaining 20% to split.

That has since shifted to a model in which the revenue is distributed along the lines of 29% each to the Big Ten and SEC, 17% to the ACC, 15% for the Big 12, 9% to the Group of Five and 1% to Notre Dame.

“The [Power Four] commissioners have said, even with their interest in evolving the championships and the governance structure, that they don’t want to change the automatic qualification for conferences, and that they feel committed to that.”
— Dan Gavitt, NCAA senior vice president of basketball

The financial structure of the NCAA Tournament, meanwhile, is functionally broken into two categories: the Equal Conference Fund and the Basketball Performance Fund. The former pays out the 32 leagues with automatic bids to the tournament evenly, while the latter is the units system that rewards postseason victories by round, up until the national title game.

Is there a world where the NCAA or Power Four conferences could rewrite the rules to take a bigger chunk of those dollars?

“There’s a strong consensus that [the Equal Conference Fund] should remain,” said Dan Gavitt, NCAA senior vice president of basketball. “The [Power Four] commissioners have said, even with their interest in evolving the championships and the governance structure, that they don’t want to change the automatic qualification for conferences, and that they feel committed to that.

“But format and revenue distribution could be looked at, and ultimately it’ll be a decision by the membership and those above me … because we do look and follow what’s happened with CFP, right? They’re similar events and the same schools and conferences, by and large. We have to be open-minded and recognize what’s happening in another major sport.”

Baker isn’t shy about his support of change to the NCAA. That, at least in part, is why he’s been a vocal proponent of the pending House settlement despite the massive philosophical shift it will bring.

And while he’s seemingly amenable to a system that grants the Power Four increased autonomy, expect there to be caution when proceeding with any possible changes as to who oversees the NCAA Tournament.

“It’ll get sifted through by this group that’s working on it,” Baker said of the proposal. “But I haven’t heard anybody say they think championships are broken.”

The LPGA has hired Elevate Talent as its search firm to find a replacement for former Commissioner Mollie Marcoux Samaan, while also officially announcing its search committee. Elevate early last year acquired SRI, a global search firm and talent optimization agency based in the U.K., for an undisclosed price. SRI's 70 employees joined Elevate Talent, which is headed up by Elevate Talent chairman Liz Moulton.

The eight members of the search committee are player directors Ashleigh Buhai, Stephanie Meadow and Stacy Lewis and LPGA Player President Vicki Goetze-Ackerman, who was also on the search committee that hired Marcoux Samaan. Louise Ball, Michele Meyer-Shipp, Madi Kleiner and Board Chairman John Veihmeyer are also on the committee.

Elevate Talent in the last year has also been hired by, among others, the Orioles, AEG, MLS, BSE Global and Angel City. Elevate on Thursday acquired search firm Bowlsby Sports Advisors.

Tom Brady has nine seasons left on his contract with Fox Sports, and he isn’t going anywhere, his agent told SBJ exclusively today. “Tom has had a tremendous amount of fun working with Fox this year, and he’s really excited about the future with Fox and his growth on their team,” Don Yee said. “And this year was the first year of a long relationship.”

I asked him directly: Does that mean he intends to fulfill the term of his contract? Yee: “Yes.”

Yee’s remarks come as commentary around Brady’s dual roles as broadcaster and 5% limited partner in the Raiders reaches a fever pitch during the coaching carousel/playoff season. He sits on the team’s coaching search committee, which has reportedly targeted Lions OC Ben Johnson as a top candidate, and is preparing to call the Lions-Commanders playoff game Saturday.

Much commentary has centered on the perceived conflict of interest, but speculation over Brady’s future at Fox is driven more by supposition around the simple demands on his time and interest. The Athletic’s Richard Deitsch even predicted Brady wouldn’t make it to a second season in the broadcast booth, much less all 10.

The comments from Yee are noteworthy because Brady’s longtime agent keeps a low profile and has not spoken publicly about his client’s job at Fox until today. 

Raiders owner Mark Davis has said, “ I want Tom to have a huge voice,” and that Brady will be “somebody who can oversee the big picture.” But Davis also acknowledged in December that he would “not get in the way of Tom’s job.”

Brady is one of several committee members on the coaching search, and NFL policy prohibits him from becoming a Raiders employee. A new coach/GM tandem would presumably expect to call their own shots. So despite the picture being painted in the desert, it’s fair to wonder how much time Brady will really give to the Raiders in the long term, especially in light of Yee’s remarks. 

• The NFLPA offered buyouts to about half its 150 employees, and leadership suggested that involuntary job cuts could be coming if enough workers don’t accept the offer, sources tell SBJ's Ben Fischer.

• The Cubs will wear a “Blues Alternate Uniform” next season, featuring baby blue jerseys, reports SBJ's Mike Mazzeo. It marks the first time the Cubs will wear baby blue on the field since 1981.

• Morgan Stanley is Unrivaled’s latest sponsor after signing a deal that will place company’s branding on the playing court’s pole pad, writes SBJ's Tom Friend.

• S.F.-based private equity private equity firm Sixth Street, the owner of NWSL club Bay FC, is seeking to acquire or launch additional women’s soccer clubs around the world as part of a newly launched initiative called Bay Collective, notes SBJ's Alex Silverman.

• With Victor Wembanyama and the Spurs expected to be treated “like the Beatles" during the NBA’s Paris Games next week, the opposing Pacers are launching a swath of activations designed to even out the rooting interests at France’s Accor Arena, reports Friend.

• The Heat named Hard Rock Bet as their official sportsbook, joining a Florida sponsorship portfolio that includes the Jaguars, Panthers and Daytona International Speedway, writes SBJ's Bill King.

• Tech consultant and service firm Next League acquired AI firm Edge3, a move that creates a new college sports practice for the three-year-old company, reports SBJ's Ethan Joyce.

• UFC President and CEO Dana White is expected to attend next week’s inauguration of President-elect Donald Trump, a spokesperson tells SBJ's Adam Stern.

• USA Judo hired Corinne Shigemoto as its new CEO, elevating a former judoka, coach and executive to lead the national governing body, writes SBJ's Rachel Axon.