SBJ Unpacks: Billie Jean King and Ilana Kloss -- partners in progress

It is the day of the 2023 FIFA Women’s World Cup Final in Sydney, and Billie Jean King is on the move.

Down under with her wife and longtime business partner, Ilana Kloss, as guests of FIFA, King spent extended time on the Stadium Australia pitch before the historic match — which drew more than 75,000 fans, rounding out record attendance of 1.98 million for the tournament — conducting interviews with international media, imparting perspective on the impact of Title IX and the wave of momentum behind women’s sports to anyone who requested an audience.

Amid the throng, Stephanie Rudnick, head of public relations for MKTG and Angel City FC, the NWSL club in which King and Kloss invested in 2020, remembers a quiet moment as King stopped to drink in the scene.

“She looks around, and she’s like, ‘Wow, look at all these young women. This is unbelievable.’ She goes, ‘God, I really wish they understood how we got here today,’” Rudnick said. “I said, ‘I think they know who you are.’ And she’s like, ‘No, they don’t. No way. And that’s fine. I don’t need them to know who I am.’”

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Rudnick was surprised by the sentiment. Of course, the average spectator at a global sporting event should know of King, a 39-time Grand Slam winner in her playing days and, in the decades during and after, a champion of inclusivity based on gender, race and sexual orientation. That should be especially true at a seminal moment in the modern ascent of women’s sports, for which King has played a foundational role for more than 50 years. But as Rudnick, King and Kloss walked toward the stadium tunnel, something telling happened. A contingent of young fans spotted King and began thunderously chanting her name. 

“She was shocked,” Rudnick said. “To the rest of us, it’s like, ‘How is she shocked?’ … But these were really young people. They were probably in their teens and 20s, maybe 30s, a couple parents. I was so heartened to see that she was just gobsmacked.”

King, 81, has every reason to stop and reflect on her successes. Her achievements speak for themselves. Her impact spans multiple generations. Both extend well beyond sports.

But sit with her a while, and the passion that has made her a resonant leader for so long is palpable. King and Kloss now have their heads down and hands in as many buckets as ever: minority ownership of the Los Angeles Dodgers, Sparks and Angel City; leadership roles stewarding the Professional Women’s Hockey League and Billie Jean King Cup; and continuing as the guiding hands of the five-decade-old Women’s Sports Foundation and ever-evolving Billie Jean King Enterprises.

In King’s eyes, there is too much yet to be conquered to rest on her laurels, or ride into the sunset. She has an unrelenting energy to continue, in her words, moving the ball forward while she’s here, so that it can continue rolling once she’s gone.

“I always think I’m beginning,” King said, when asked to title this chapter of her life. “I know it’s the end, age-wise, but I always feel like we’re beginning. Every morning I wake up, I can’t wait.”

Partner In Progress

No one is more inextricably tied to King’s personal and professional affairs, nor more responsible for the practical implementation of her vision for a more equitable world, than Kloss.

The couple married in 2018, but they have been together for more than four decades and share connections that spin even further back. Kloss, a top-ranked doubles player in her tennis playing days (a career she said was inspired by King), was at the Gloucester Hotel in 1973, years before their romantic involvement, when King made her famous stand in founding the WTA.

“I remember being in that room, with 63 other people, and Billie saying, ‘We have to have one organization and one voice, and we have a chance to really go places,’” Kloss said. “It was never a question that I was going to sign. If it was good enough for Billie Jean, it was good enough for me.”

On a brisk December afternoon at their present-day home base, a skyscraping apartment on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, Kloss has just returned from hitting in the neighborhood with a friend and has meetings lined up in the afternoon, including a call with League One Volleyball (LOVB), the volleyball property that launched this month and in which King and Kloss also have invested. For now, the two sit kitty-corner at their dining room table.

“She never stops,” King says with an affectionate sigh.

Indeed, there is much to be done.

The BJK-Ilana Dynamic

King remains laser-focused on causes she has worn on her sleeve since the day she decided to commit her life to fighting for equality. Expanding leadership opportunities for women and people of color. Driving investment to women’s sports. Educating the next generations on the history of progress toward those aims, without a strong knowledge of which, she often says, you cannot shape tomorrow.

“We’ve got so far to go,” King said. “Leadership is really important to me for women. Let’s face it, we’ve never been president of the United States. We [have] very few CEOs. … Representation absolutely matters, because when people see it, they can be it.”

King and Kloss have been that representing force for many. So, in pursuit of continuing progress on those fronts, Kloss has dedicated herself to stewarding King’s legacy through their business endeavors.

In this vein, the couple has a saying that aptly describes their dynamic: Billie dreams it, and Ilana builds it.

“For me, Billie is the stalwart visionary, who’s thinking around the river bend, thinking about the future. Very aspirational as well as inspirational,” said Portia Archer, CEO of the WTA and a member of the Women’s Sports Foundation’s board of trustees. “Ilana is focused on the action, on doing, on the strategy, and operationally implementing the vision and the aspirations that Billie might espouse. Their combination is really potent together.”

Kloss, the daughter of a salesman, is a skilled, relational businessperson, according to those who work for and with her; a no-nonsense negotiator, but also the type who will call an old colleague 20 years after selling to them and still remember the name of their dog.

For King, relationships have always been paramount, so in this way — and many more — they align.

But they are also complementary.

“If you don’t agree with me, you tell me. No putzing around,” King said to Kloss. “I like that, because then we’re honest and we have good feedback, and it’s the way to build. You can’t build if you’re just bullshitting each other all the time.”

“Billie has this amazing ability to see things from up here, and to be able to see all the pieces from 60,000 feet,” Kloss responded. “If I’m trying to solve something, she’ll always give me an idea, or a suggestion that I hadn’t thought of, and the light will go off. Most of the time, she’ll speak it and I will go do it, whether it’s get on the phone or get the right people to the meeting.”

King is quick to mention their involvement with the PWHL as an example. After Kendall Coyne Schofield rung King and Kloss for counsel on how to address North America’s hardscrabble professional women’s hockey landscape — an initial call Kloss answered from the concourse of a Los Angeles Lakers game — the couple’s advice was rooted in King’s experience forming the WTA.

“Right off the bat, it was, ‘You need one voice, and collectively, that voice needs to be the voice of the best players,’” Coyne Schofield recalls them repeating. “Following that was, ‘You need to create an association for that one voice, so that one voice can be united.’”

King and Kloss, together, provided repeated encouragement to players and eventually were instrumental in connecting them to billionaire multiproperty sports owner Mark Walter for financing. At launch, the PWHL was the first professional North American women’s sports league to have a collective-bargaining agreement in place before its debut. 

Retired Ballard Spahr partner John Langel, who represented the PWHL players union in CBA talks (as he did for the U.S. women’s national ice hockey team and U.S. women’s national soccer team in negotiations with their federations in the past), recalled Kloss being particularly hands-on in helping players craft the vision of the league.

“I can’t think of many calls that I was ever on, and I was on almost every call for four years, that Ilana was not on,” Langel said. “But you never got the sense Billie wasn’t plugged into all the goings-on.

“When Billie speaks, everyone listens. There is a power there. And it’s not just ceremony. It’s substantive. She’s been in those wars. I never went to a meeting with either of them — and certainly with both — where they weren’t fully prepared.”

In this way, King and Kloss are a powerful team. King, the face, name and messenger; Kloss, the operator pulling levers behind the scenes.

As Stan Kasten, who touches many of King and Kloss’ endeavors as president and CEO of the Dodgers, part-owner of the Sparks, PWHL advisory board member and BJK Cup board member, put it: “Ilana is more of the velvet glove. Billie Jean is the iron fist.”

BJK Enterprises Takes Root

King loathes talk of legacy. To her, the word amounts simply to a measure of how others think or speak about a person. But she does contemplate the ticking clock, and what more she can do and leave behind in the time she has remaining.

“I’m always saying, ‘I’m going to be out of here soon, so everything we do has got to matter for the future generations.’ That’s how my brain works,” King said. “It’s the accomplishments and things you’ve left here that can grow and continue that matter.”

Kloss interjects.

“But people have to know about it,” she said. “That’s the problem.”

That idea is at the root of BJK Enterprises, a now 7-year-old sports consulting, marketing and investment firm branded in King’s image.

Kloss had been party to previous efforts to burnish King’s legacy, such as the 1998 renaming of the year-end WTA Finals trophy to the Billie Jean King Trophy, or the 2006 rededication of the campus where the USTA hosts the U.S. Open to the USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center. 

But, in Kloss’ eyes, there is always more to do. In 2018, Kloss, who is BJK Enterprises’ CEO, and King launched the firm with an initial focus on managing King’s docket of personal projects, public appearances and partnership portfolio, the latter of which now includes Adidas, e.l.f. Beauty, Gainbridge, Microsoft and QVC.

“Our company was built on the philosophy of Billie,” Kloss said. “A lot of our business started with representing her and helping to build her brand and looking at legacy, which she hates. But we think about it, because we want to be sure that, beyond our time here, all of this wasn’t for nothing, and that it helps propel others forward.”

At the time, King and Kloss had just invested in the Dodgers and divested from World TeamTennis, an all-consuming labor of love along its at-times tumultuous run because of the couple’s shared passion for its team-based format and the equal platform on which it placed men and women. King founded the league in 1974 with her ex-husband, Larry, and was its commissioner from 1984-2001, making her the first female commissioner of a professional sports league. Kloss served in that role from 2001-18.

“If you wanted [to work with] Billie Jean, you had to [work with] World TeamTennis,” Kloss said of King’s mentality during that time. “That’s how ingrained it was in her. And it actually was who she is. Men and women working together on a team with a common goal.”

As the story of their involvement with the Dodgers goes, King and Kloss were speaking with Walter, the team’s controlling owner, at a fund-raising dinner in Chicago hosted by tennis instructor Kamau Murray, when Walter, who also owns the Sparks, asked King if she was interested in investing in the WNBA team. 

King responded, “Why not the Dodgers as well?”

Since that time, King says Mark and his wife, Kimbra, have changed her and Kloss’ lives. Not only have the Walters embraced King and Kloss as limited partners in the Dodgers and Sparks, they are financially backing the PWHL and have infused fresh investment into the BJK Cup, the national team-based tournament formerly known as the Federation Cup and renamed for King — a seven-time winner as a player, including its first edition, and four-time winner as a captain — in 2020.

“She’s just been a tremendous asset with everything she touches,” Kasten said of King. “Her constant theme — and we’ve heard this a lot in the last few years, particularly with PWHL, where she makes the point, which is so important — that, ‘You people who are investing in women’s sports, it’s not a charity. Don’t think about it like that anymore. This is a business. And it’s a really good business.’ No one can make that point the way Billie Jean can.”

As this chapter began, Kloss says now, it was the right time to spin off something new in BJK Enterprises.

“We had all this experience, and we had all these amazing young women coming to us, and we put together a really great team of people that can connect up and connect down — athletes, partners, owners, investors,” Kloss said. “But I think that getting to the table as part of the Dodgers ownership really gave us that security and knowledge base of being able to lean in in a big way.” 

Branching Out

Since 2021 BJK Enterprises has gained momentum in areas beyond King’s personal portfolio, particularly women’s sports-related consulting and sponsorship sales.

Among its consulting clients, BJK Enterprises provides sponsorship sales support to the PWHL and BJK Cup Ltd. For the PWHL, BJK Enterprises has facilitated partnerships with Tiffany & Co., Bread Financial and e.l.f. Cosmetics (a brand under the e.l.f. Beauty banner) — “high-profile” partners, in the words of Amy Scheer, the PWHL’s senior vice president of business operations, that have helped raise the league’s standing.

“They’re present at so many events. They have so many contacts. And I think, actually, just saying, ‘OK, they’re great because they help develop partnerships,’ is not representative of all they do,” Scheer said. “That’s just one part of Ilana and Billie’s impact on us.”

Others, Scheer added, are the couple lending an ear when she needs guidance, or a hand when she needs a contact. Case in point: King and Kloss introduced Scheer and London-based marketing agency Pitch International, which has helped the PWHL expand its broadcast presence into Europe.

“I am blown away by the cooperation, the attitude, the enthusiasm that our players have had, and that the people on the team level have had,” Kasten said of King and Kloss’ impact on the PWHL. “We’re all in this wonderful adventure together, and that feeling of sharing what we’re doing together I think comes in large part because of the atmosphere Billie Jean created when she first came to Mark with this idea.”

BJK Cup Ltd., meanwhile, is a joint venture split 51%-49% between the International Tennis Federation and TWG Global (a holding company led by Walter), the latter of which pledged substantial investment into the competition at the entity’s outset. Helmed by CEO Kerstin Lutz, the joint venture has 11 full-time staff. Kloss chairs its board.

“What it’s enabled us to do is to really invest in the competition,” ITF President Dave Haggerty said of BJK Cup Ltd. “[To] ensure that we have the same sports presentation, the same experience for the players [as Davis Cup, its male counterpart], which we have done.”

2024 was the BJK Cup’s first full year acting as the competition’s commercial arm since it was officially formed the previous summer. In that year, it added e.l.f. Beauty as a corporate partner (hat tip to BJK Enterprises, which helped broker prior deals with Microsoft, Tory Burch, Magellan, Franklin Templeton and title sponsor Gainbridge, the last of which helped ensure equivalent prize money on a per-match basis to Davis Cup) and staged the finals in Malaga, Spain, adjacent to the Davis Cup. BJK Cup Ltd. aims to be profitable beginning in 2026.

“The growth is coming now,” said Lutz. “Last year, it was great to have a bit more money that we could reinvest into the property. This is the nice thing about TWG, they’re not constantly on top of our back. They know this needs investment.”

On the brand side, BJK Enterprises is the sports agency of record for e.l.f Beauty, which is quickly expanding its presence in women’s sports. The company’s relationship with King began with collaborations around the 2023 U.S. Open, which celebrated the 50th anniversary of King’s lobbying to ensure men and women were paid equally at the tournament.

“They are truly immersed in the sports world, and they know everybody,” Patrick O’Keefe, e.l.f. Beauty’s chief intigration officer, said of BJK Enterprises. “We believe in them. We trust them. They are incredible. We do calls once a week to really understand where we should lean in, because we can’t do it all, but what we can do is we can find the right places. They understand our brand better than anyone.”

Those endeavors fit under BJK Enterprises’ consulting umbrella, along with additional relationships with Bank of America Private Bank, advising on its women’s sports strategy, and Marvella — a new, female athlete-focused complex coming to Indianapolis — around cultivating private investments and other partnerships.

This vertical, specifically, was born out of King and Kloss’ generosity with their time. The two have been an invaluable resource to the pioneers of several significant milestones in the decades-long progression of women’s sports, and across far more sports than tennis, from King inspiring Julie Foudy and the U.S. women’s soccer teams that fought for better treatment by their federation in the 1990s and early 2000s, to advising Coyne Schofield two decades later (see story, Page 30).

“We actually felt like Billie Jean and Ilana were doling out free advice left and right,” joked Marjorie Gantman, BJK Enterprises’ managing director. “Everyone and their mother that is anyone is calling them and asking them, ‘What do I do? How do I do this? How did you do it?’ And they’re talking to them like 30 hours a week, trying to guide people through different scenarios.”

King and Kloss’ ability as connectors has other applications. Under BJK Enterprises’ talent representation division are clients including Coyne Schofield, former Iowa women’s basketball coach Lisa Bluder, and Top 10-ranked ITF wheelchair women’s singles and doubles player Kgothatso Montjane.

“It’s an eclectic group, but that’s because that’s the way it happens,” said Barbara Perry, BJK Enterprises’ senior vice president of athlete representation and a longtime senior vice president at IMG. “It goes back to relationships, which are so important to Billie and Ilana. That’s how we represent who we do, and it is something we’re looking to expand on.”

BJK Enterprises’ investment vertical is more opportunistic, but it is the vehicle through which King and Kloss notably helped launch the women and sports-focused Trailblazer Venture Studio (in partnership with Elysian Park Ventures, the Dodgers and R/GA Ventures), whose portfolio includes LOVB, media outlet The Gist and others.

In all, BJK Enterprises has more than doubled its own revenue since 2021, and secured more than $35 million in sponsorship revenue for women’s sports properties. It is a small business, with fewer than 10 full-time employees and less than $10 million in annual revenue, but now growing and diversifying. Kloss estimates that, at its outset, 70%-75% of BJK Enterprises’ revenue was attributable to King’s personal deals; now, those account for closer to half.

“To have a sustainable business, it can’t just be Billie,” she emphasized. “We’re going in the right direction.”

Reflections

The conviction that drives King to continue to achieve has been with her since her earliest days, starting with a childhood epiphany to fight for equality for the rest of her life.

“She had a vision, that she even had [as a child], when she said, ‘I want to be No. 1, and I want to win Wimbledon, and I want tennis to be inclusive,’” said Chris Evert, an on-court rival of King’s in the early days of the WTA who grew into a friend and mentee. “Who is like that? I don’t know anybody else that’s like that. She had a gift. She was born to be a leader, and she was born to lead women, period.”

“She’s the most important athlete of the 20th century,” added Bob Kain, King’s longtime agent and IMG tennis head, who rose to co-CEO of the company in the early 2000s. “She changed the global sports landscape for women and girls, which therefore changed the global sports landscape.”

Key to that legacy is King’s passion for just causes and early cognizance of the business side of sports, which she developed during the days of running Tennis for Everyone tournaments, World TeamTennis and womenSports magazine, and building the Virginia Slims Tour and WTA from scratch (see story, Page 28).

But the most significant underlying factor in King’s multigenerational resonance, according to those who have known her longest, is her knack for building and maintaining relationships.

“She’s one of those people whose brain sees way down the road and knows what needs to happen, and then she’s good about pulling together the people that can help make that possible, whether that’s funders or organizers or logistics people or sponsors,” said Stephanie Tolleson, former senior corporate vice president at IMG and former board chair of the Women’s Sports Foundation.

“But I think the reason she’s so successful in terms of those leadership roles and getting people to partner with her is because she really takes the time to listen.”

For that reason, Tolleson jokes, King can be “hell” to travel with. “Ilana and I always laugh,” she said, “because we’re walking through Grand Central Station, and she’s stopping to talk to the guy at Dunkin’ Donuts because she knows that his mother had surgery the previous week.”

The USTA even has an unofficial rule for when it shepherds King between public appearances at the U.S. Open, according to Stacey Allaster, the tournament’s director and a longtime mentee of King’s: For any time block on King’s schedule, add 30 minutes.

“Whether you are a security guard at the U.S. Open or the chairman of the USTA, she has this ability that, when she’s speaking with you, she somehow can reach into your heart and make you feel that you are the only person in the world,” Allaster said. “She’s always asking questions — ‘How are you doing? What’s happening in your life?’ — and then she captures something from those prompting questions, and then can deliver back an inspirational recommendation.”

This quality has made King the right mentor for several generations of women’s sports leaders. Foudy, as one example, remembers King consistently checking in with her during and after the U.S. women’s soccer team’s labor battles that King helped catalyze.

“She is the thread that runs through everything with women’s sports, and she does this for so many sports,” Foudy said of King. “I lived it firsthand. But I watch her, and I see her, and the energy she still has at 81 is just remarkable.”

Now, investment in women’s sports is booming bigger than ever, particularly at the elite level, from Angel City’s record valuation for a women’s sports property set last year ($250 million); to lucrative new media rights deals recently signed by the NWSL (four years, totaling $240 million) and WNBA (11 years, totaling at least $2.2 billion); and the new properties cropping up seemingly by the day, such as the well-capitalized 3-on-3 women’s basketball league Unrivaled. 

To which King says: Finally, you guys are awake!

“You didn’t have billionaires [decades ago]. You had millionaires. There’s so much more money around,” King said. “And now they want to invest in women’s sports. Not just, ‘Oh, I’ll give you a token.’”

King credits the long trail of Title IX, passed in 1972, in large part for this momentum. Over time, she argues, that legislation has equipped young female athletes with scholarships that allowed them to dedicate themselves to sport and the resources to excel, and so elevated the talent pool.

The Women’s Sports Foundation, which King launched with a check for $5,000 in 1974, must be mentioned in that conversation as well. In its more than 50 years of operation, WSF has donated more than $100 million to programs that expand athletic opportunities for girls and women, and has been a key networking resource for women’s sports leaders (see story, Page 24). It also regularly publishes research on the benefits of athletic participation for women and advocates to protect Title IX.

“[King] set the up the infrastructure early for the funding to be there, via WSF, and the advocacy [for Title IX],” said former U.S. hockey star and former WSF President Angela Ruggiero, who co-founded insights company Sports Innovation Lab in 2016. “I’ve been on Capitol Hill when I was with the WSF. I’ve talked to senators, and we’ve talked about Title IX and why it’s not a sports act, it’s an educational act. The byproduct of the educational act is what we’re seeing today.”

Nowadays, no one would blame King for thinking about retirement. The museum exhibit in which she and Kloss live is evidence of multiple lives well lived. Awards of every vintage from their respective playing careers line the bookshelves. The back study is covered to the inch in artifacts, from a 2009 photo of King and Barack Obama from her Presidential Medal of Freedom ceremony to replicas of the rackets used by King and Bobby Riggs during the 1973 “Battle of the Sexes.”

But that word — retirement — isn’t in King’s vocabulary.

“It’s nonexistent,” King said. “It should be evolution or transitioning to another chapter. There’s always a new chapter coming up.”

King continues, with Kloss by her side, advancing their closest-held causes, building and supporting new enterprises, and working toward personal goals along the way, such as King finishing her history degree from California State University, Los Angeles, where she recently re-enrolled and begins online courses this year.

But it doesn’t hurt to smell one rose as she, Kloss and their cohort of teams and partners stamp on.

“I’m so happy I’m still alive to see this change. Part of my dream is actually happening,” King said. “I knew how slow progress is. I wasn’t sure I’d be around. When you read history, it’s fast. When you live it, it’s slow.”

What They Said

“King’s trailblazing legacy as a tennis icon, coupled with [Ilana] Kloss’ contributions as an executive and former player, has reshaped the landscape of women’s sports, creating opportunities for athletes and fostering greater representation in leadership roles.”

Cathy Engelbert, WNBA commissioner

“[Billie once said to me], ‘When you open a door, don’t just walk through it—hold it open for the next person.’ That philosophy guides everything they do and has deeply influenced my own approach to leadership.”

Jessica Berman, NWSL commissioner

“Billie is probably the most thoughtful visionary I’ve ever met. And Ilana is right there, she complements her so well. They fit.”

Micky Lawler, commissioner, Unrivaled (former president, WTA)

“She’s always had a vision and not been afraid to say what that is. And it’s always been around inclusivity and equal opportunities for all.”

Dave Haggerty, president, International Tennis Federation

“There’s a big difference between vision and conviction. A lot of people have vision. They have great ideas about what they want to see, and they can talk about it, and they can get excited about it, and they can be passionate about it. But the challenge is converting that vision to conviction and doing whatever it takes to make it come true. Billie didn’t see [her vision] happening, so she did it.”

Julie Uhrman, president, Angel City FC

“One of the effects of what she’s done is she’s allowed athletes to be athletes. They don’t have to have three jobs, or work in an offseason at an office job. They can continue to train, optimize their health, make sure that their careers have the maximum impact for them. That was the gift that Billie Jean gave — it was empowering other people, other women athletes in particular, to do their own business.”

Phil de Picciotto, president, founder, Octagon

“Billie somehow has this innate ability to understand when somebody needs a little extra BJK power. What a gift she has given me and to so many other leaders in our industry.”

Stacey Allaster, U.S. Open tournament director (former chairman, CEO, WTA)

The Texans will announce later today they’ve hired Legends co-President & COO Mike Tomon as their third team president, sources said, replacing Greg Grissom four days after he left the organization.

Tomon, a 2015 SBJ Forty Under 40 honoree, will oversee the Texans’ business side. A big part of his portfolio will be the team’s growing interest in a major redevelopment or even replacement for the aging Harris County-owned NRG Stadium, which needs billions of dollars' worth of capital upgrades.

Tomon has been with Legends since 2014, and has been closely involved in developing SoFi Stadium, Allegiant Stadium, the Star in Frisco, Texas, and the Bills’ new Highmark Stadium now under construction. Prior to Legends, he was SVP/Global Partnerships at AEG.

The Texans announced January 23 that Grissom, whose contract was set to expire in March, was leaving; SBJ reported that a search was already in an advanced stage.  Excel Sports Management’s search firm Nolan Partners conducted the search.

MLS is moving its media and broadcast production arm, MLS Productions, to the Studios at WWE, a high-tech new facility in Stamford, Conn. The move, which will centralize the league’s previously dispersed multimedia efforts, comes as the league enters the third season of its 10-year distribution partnership with Apple and expands its relationship with its production partner, IMG. 

“The goal of moving to this new facility is to get everyone into one place, everyone working together, focused on how we produce the same amount of content at higher quality,” said MLS EVP/Media Seth Bacon. “Then, take that learning and evolve that to how do we take the same group of people and figure out to produce even more content at that same high quality, but more efficiently, so that we don't have duplication of efforts between groups, we actually have everyone focused on one goal: telling great stories.” 

Operations at the 30,000-square-foot facility in Stamford, which the WWE opened last April, will include all studio programming for MLS Season Pass (the league's Apple TV-based subscription streaming service), graphics production for more than 600 live matches a year, short-form content for use on the league’s social media channels and additional content to be pushed to the league’s other content partners. Those include the league’s linear simulcasters, which include Fox and Univision in the U.S. and TSN in Canada, as well as non-live partners such as ESPN, CBS Sports, Bleacher Report, YouTube and TikTok. 

“We need to start feeding [our partners] content and feeding the machine so that we get more people engaged with the sport, more people thinking about Major League Soccer, consuming Major League Soccer, because that ultimately is accretive in the form of Season Pass subscriptions, ticket sales, merchandise sales, or equally as important, people becoming stewards of the sport,” Bacon said. 

Under its deal with Apple, MLS took over production of its live match telecasts and shoulder programming. For the first two seasons, studio programming for MLS Season Pass originated from NEP’s Metropolis Studios in Manhattan’s East Harlem neighborhood, while graphics insertion took place in on-site trucks at each individual match. Meanwhile, staffers at the league’s Midtown Manhattan offices produced features and digital content, and additional content work was done remotely. All of that will now take place under one roof, with around 75 staff from MLS, IMG and new graphics production partner AE Live (who replaces Deltatre) based in Stamford. 

Season Pass’ move from Manhattan to Stamford will also mean transitioning from physical studio sets to virtual ones. The move will also ensure the league’s English-language and Spanish-language programming originate from identical sets and feature the same technology. 

“One of the big pull factors for me coming over here was this facility,” said IMG SVP & Dir of Content Stephen Cook, a recent U.K. transplant to Stamford. “It smells like a new car, and it's got state-of-the-art tech, state-of-the-art studio and state-of-the-art control rooms. Every single person I've seen coming into the building has got a big smile on their face.” 

For MLS Season Pass studio programming, IMG will be responsible for above-the-line production functions such as producers, directors, creative and editorial, while Studios at WWE staff will handle below-the-line technical production responsibilities. For on-site live match production, IMG will handle above-the-line functions, with NEP handling below-the-line functions and providing production trucks. 

From a programming perspective, MLS' most significant play for the 2025 season will be the introduction of a featured, standalone match each week on Sunday nights. IMG has hired Tony Mills, a soccer broadcast director with decades of experience at Sky Sports in the U.K., to work exclusively on MLS in Stamford and spearhead the new standalone production. 

“The goal is fan growth and taking advantage of the momentum that we have leading up to the World Cup,” Bacon said. “The new facility we're in is an investment in that growth, something like a match of the week where we produce more content and have a more enhanced production is an investment in that growth, producing exponentially more digital content is an investment in that growth and having more studio programming that lives on MLS Season Pass and off Season Pass is an investment in that growth.”

A turning point in Sunday’s AFC Championship game occurred in the fourth quarter when Bills QB Josh Allen tried a sneak on 4th and 1.

The line judges on opposing sides of the play appeared to rule that Allen reached different spots on the field -- one appeared to indicate that the Bills had gained a first down and the other saying he did not. It wasn’t a clear-cut call, and the latter decision prevailed, giving possession to the Chiefs. That was the case even after a video replay seemed to show that Allen gained a first down, with CBS rules analyst Gene Steratore saying on air, “I felt like he gained it by about a third of the football. That was just my take on the play. Tough, tough play.”

The NFL is currently testing down-and-distance measurement technology, but what’s currently being developed with Sony’s Hawk-Eye Innovations wouldn’t solve for this use case -- at least not soon.

Part of the league’s announcement of its new official technology partnership with Sony last summer included testing of Hawk-Eye’s virtual measurement technology. The current iteration of that tech won’t help human officials determine where to spot the ball after a play but will instead focus on expediting line-to-gain measurements for first downs in lieu of the chain gang. In other words, the technology would be used after an official has spotted the ball.

That tech, which uses six 8K cameras, was used for select preseason games and has been quietly tested in every NFL stadium this season, with hopes of possible adoption in 2025. League executives said it was already accurate to within a half-inch as of last July. The UFL with its partner, Bolt6, has been using similar technology.

For now, there is too much occlusion from large football players for the camera-based system to pinpoint the ball’s forward progress accurately enough. The NFL will, however, work with Hawk-Eye on such a system in the future. Hawk-Eye cameras are capable of tracking 29 points on each player’s body -- its SkeleTrack system -- and as that technology is deployed league-wide and trained extensively in American football, that solution could potentially aid officials. SkeleTrack was planned to be installed in only four NFL stadiums for the ongoing season, so it is operating on a much longer timeline.

Another consideration is that every NFL football is embedded with an RFID positional tracker from Zebra Technologies that helps generate the NFL Next Gen Stats data. That sensor, however, has a margin for error of up to six inches, which is not precise enough for this example. Also, because a football is not round the way it is when Hawk-Eye tracks calls in tennis, determining the orientation from a single sensor is more challenging. 

SBJ's Abe Madkour and Monumental Sports and Entertainment's Zach Leonsis discuss our new show, "SBJ Inside the Industry," which debuted tonight on Monumental Sports Network and Monumental+. Episodes will be available on SBJ's YouTube channel 30 days after airing on Monumental Sports Network.

• Rhode Island-based insurance company FM is breaking further into golf through a sponsorship with Rory McIlroy that runs through the 2027 PGA Tour season, reports SBJ's Josh Carpenter.

• Fox Sports continues to keep IndyCar in the limelight with its second driver-focused ad heading into the 2025 season, this one spotlighting three-time Spanish champion Alex Palou, writes SBJ's Adam Stern.

• The Flyers are opening a new retail location at Wells Fargo Center called Gritty’s Chaos Factory ahead of tonight’s game against the Devils, notes SBJ's Alex Silverman.

• LIV Golf's Majesticks GC team is bringing on Castore as its official worldwide apparel sponsor in a multiyear deal, writes Carpenter.

• ESPN+ will air a betting-focused alternate feed from six PGA Tour events this year as part of a multiyear deal with ESPN Bet operator Penn Entertainment, reports SBJ's Bill King.

• The New Jersey Sports and Exposition Authority (NJSEA) awarded a $33.5 million contract to a Hackensack, N.J.-based Creamer-Sanzari joint venture in December to build a second pedestrian bridge at MetLife Stadium in advance of the venue hosting 2026 FIFA men’s World Cup matches, writes SBJ's Emma Grace Jimenez and Bret McCormick.

• The Greater Raleigh Convention and Visitors Bureau will host this summer’s annual Rocket League Championship Series Major esports tournament produced by Blast, bolstering the region’s growing competitive gaming resume, notes SBJ's David Broughton.