SBJ Unpacks: Jeremy Bloom settles in as X Games CEO

This week’s Sports Media Podcast brings on an athlete-turned-CEO, Jeremy Bloom, the two-time Olympian who’s now running the X Games. Co-hosts Austin Karp and Mollie Cahillane talk with Bloom about his first experience at the helm of X Games Aspen last week and working with media entities such as ESPN and Roku.

This excerpt has been lightly edited for clarity.

On his first X Games as CEO: “I always wanted to compete at the X Games, but unfortunately, freestyle skiing wasn't part of it. But it was incredible. And the highlight certainly was the incredible things that our athletes did. There were a number of times that our athletes landed tricks that have never been landed before, by anybody in human history. Those are the moments that really made the X Games what the X Games is today, and it was a beautiful thing, to watch those athletes risk everything to put on a great show.”

On the roles of ESPN and MSP Capital: “[ESPN is] our linear partner. We're on ESPN and ABC, and we're grateful to them. ... A lot of people don't realize that we're not owned by ESPN anymore, but it's important to note that MSP Capital owns McLaren F1. They've seen a lot of value creation over the past seven years. They also own the Suns, a large part of it, and a bunch of pro soccer teams. ... I'm excited to execute their vision.”

On X Games majority ownership moving from ESPN to MSP Capital: “Back in the day, it was perfectly fine to have 15 hours on ESPN and ABC, and everybody would sit in front of their TVs and watch it. But viewing behavior has changed significantly over the past several years. Our audiences are consuming in lots of different ways, some on linear, some on streaming platforms, some on social media like Instagram and YouTube and Facebook and TikTok. It's really our responsibility as a league and as an organization to bring our content, our athletes' content and our events, to them, where they want to consume. And streaming's a big part of that, and Roku has 90 million active subscribers. It's massive. They really are the front door to streaming. And so it was a great first-time partnership.”

One of the key remaining conference realignment dominos has seemingly stabilized.

ESPN is set to extend its base deal with the ACC through 2036, sources confirmed to Sports Business Journal on Thursday, marrying up end dates with the network’s separate ACC Network deal. ESPN had until Feb. 1 to pick up the 20-year contract, first signed in 2016. The network declined to comment.

ESPN's David Hale and Andrea Adelson first reported the news.

Documents that surfaced during the league’s ongoing legal dispute with Florida State revealed the current base ESPN contract -- previously believed to be in place until 2036 -- actually expires in 2027 and included a look-in provision the network needed to exercise by early this year.

ACC Commissioner Jim Phillips was asked about the ongoing discussions with ESPN ahead of last week’s College Football Playoff national championship game in Atlanta. Phillips was on site as part of meetings involving CFP brass discussing the first 12-team playoff and potential changes that could come down the line. Those meetings included a presentation from ESPN stakeholders.

“Going well,” Phillips said. “Going well, but nothing else to report right now.”

ESPN’s re-up with the ACC creates a significant stabilizing effect within the Power Four and across college athletics at-large, not least of which includes the league itself.

Had ESPN declined its option, it’s possible schools like FSU and Clemson -- which is also embroiled in a legal battle with the league -- could have sought to leave, seeing it as a way to invalidate the ACC’s grant of rights that runs through 2036.

The ACC’s financial health was also tied to whether ESPN exercised its option. The league reported $706.6M in gross revenue in 2022-23 ($44.8M per football-playing school). It did, however, remain well behind the Big Ten (almost $880M) and SEC ($852.6M) -- a gap that will only likely increase as each of those league’s new television deals begin to bear returns.

That said, the league has worked to be creative in helping to bridge the gap and incentivizing those schools that bring more value in media discussions. This year, for example, marked the first of the ACC’s “Success Initiative,” a pool of millions of dollars that rewards schools for basketball and football success.

The ACC has also recently added a slew of sponsors, including Geico as the presenting partner of the league’s football championship game and T. Rowe Price as the exclusive sponsor of its men’s basketball championships through 2027.

“We’re in a good place,” Phillips told SBJ of the discussions with ESPN in October. “We continue to talk about ways we can garner and create more value for both of us since we are 50/50 partners.”

Thursday’s news means each of the Power Four conferences have media deals that will take them into the end of the decade. The SEC’s deal with ESPN that began this year runs through 2034, while the Big Ten inked its own agreement with Fox, CBS and NBC that carries through 2029-30. The Big 12’s current extension with ESPN and Fox isn’t up until 2030-31. 

The Pac-12 and Mountain West, which have each faced their own varying levels of conference realignment-based changes, are both in the market for their own media rights deals.

The NFL recorded its lowest number of concussions in 2024 since the league began tracking them electronically in 2015, NFL EVP Jeff Miller said Thursday.

The milestone represented a 17% year-on-year decrease from 2023, according to Miller. He and NFL Chief Medical Officer Dr. Allen Sills attributed the dip to several factors, including new equipment and rule changes introduced in 2024.

On the former front, Sills said 35% of players upgraded their helmets to “a helmet that we and our engineers would judge as safer,” in 2024, up from figures in the teens in 2022 and 2023. Half of those players, Sills added, upgraded to altogether new helmet models.

The 2024 season was also the NFL’s first allowing players to don Guardian Caps over the top of their helmets in games. (The league began requiring the soft-shell helmet covers for preseason practices in 2022 and has expanded that mandate in the years since.)

Sills said about 20% of players played with the covers and that the league found no “negative effects” of wearing them, but added the sample size was too small to take away firm conclusions on the benefits of the caps.

“The first order for us is making sure we didn’t see any negative effects, or anything that were unintended consequences,” Sills said. “We did not see any of that.”

As for rule changes, league executives said the evidence shows the “dynamic kickoff,” introduced this year, was successful in creating more active plays while decreasing injuries.

According to Miller, the raw number of kickoff returns rose by 332 (up 57%) year-over-year in 2024 and the league saw its most kickoff return touchdowns (7) since 2021. The number of player games missed because of injuries sustained on kickoffs (down 12%), as well as the rate of concussions (down 43%) and lower extremity strains (down 48%) on kickoff plays also decreased.

“The goal, as we modeled this play with the [NFL] Competition Committee, was to reduce some of those spaces – and, therefore, some of those speeds – with the expectation we would have fewer injuries as a result,” Miller said. “Importantly, too, we wanted to bring that play back into the game, increase the kicks returned.”

Other highlights:

• Miller said the dynamic kickoff data has already been shared with the competition committee and will be reviewed further. It would require approval from at least 24 teams to continue the change in 2025.

• Time lost to lower extremity strains decreased 14% in 2024, and Miller said there were “no significant changes to most other injury groups.” He added: “QB injuries were down a bit year-over-year, which is good news; and we did see an increase on shoulder injuries, which is something we’re going to spend some time diving into to try to better understand between now and the [NFL Draft] Combine.”

• The NFL found no difference in lower extremity injuries in 2024 that “could be attributed to surface,” Miller said – be them synthetic or natural grass.

• Miller on the NFL’s ban of “hip drop” tackles: “I think it was a good first year on the hip drop… There’s more to do there. We believe, we think, we hope that behavior change has started, but more to do in terms of enforcement of that. We’re still seeing injuries as a result of hip drop tackles, but hopefully we’ve begun improvement in that area.”

The NWSL has officially awarded an expansion franchise to a Denver-based investment group led by IMA Financial Chair & CEO Robert Cohen for a record-setting fee of $110M. The yet-to-be-named Denver team will begin play in 2026 alongside a Boston franchise whose owners secured their spot just 16 months ago at less than half the price ($53M). 

Between the nine-figure expansion fee and the yet-to-be-determined cost of building a soccer-specific stadium and training facility, the group’s upfront financial commitment is unparalleled in women’s sports. 

“This is the largest investment ever made in the history of women's sports globally, and we're really proud of that,” NWSL Commissioner Jessica Berman told SBJ. “We're proud of their commitment and vision and belief in what our league is and can be, and we’re very excited to bring professional women's soccer to the city of Denver.” 

Cohen is a first-time team owner but has a long history in the Denver sports scene. The Kansas native and Texas grad has lived in Colorado for more than 30 years. He founded the Denver Sports Commission in 2001 and is a founding member of the U.S. Olympic & Paralympic Foundation. He has previously been tied to an effort to bring a WNBA expansion team to Denver, and his company  recently became the Avalanche’s jersey patch sponsor. 

Other members of Cohen’s ownership group include Project Level, a subsidiary of Ariel Investments led by former Starbucks chair Mellody Hobson and former Commanders President Jason Wright; FirstTracks Sports Ventures LLC, led by siblings Jon-Erik Borgen and Kaia Borgen Moritz; Kuvare Holdings CEO Dhiren Jhaveri and his wife Neelima Joshi; and Molly Coors, a director at financial services firm AllianceBernstein and the wife of Molson Coors Vice Chair David Coors.  

Cohen will serve as the team’s controlling owner and governor, with Hobson serving as alternate governor. The team has yet to finalize its cap table and has the capacity to take on additional strategic investors. 

The Denver bid was selected from  a field of three finalists that included a Cincinnati bid led by the owners of FC Cincinnati (that also  included WNBA star Caitlin Clark) and a Cleveland bid with Rockefeller Foundation Exec VP of Programs Elizabeth Yee as the lead financial backer. The Cincinnati bid was the most turnkey of the three, as the team would have shared the already-built TQL Stadium with the city’s MLS club, but sources said its offer for an expansion fee wasn’t as aggressive as the other groups. 

N.Y.-based investment bank Inner Circle Sports led the expansion process for the league. 

VENUE CONSIDERATIONS: Cohen’s group is said to be finalizing plans to construct a purpose-built stadium and a training center in the Denver area but has declined to discuss where those facilities would be located until the associated deals are done. Cohen and Berman each alluded to there being a public funding source for the stadium project in addition to what Cohen called a “significant capital contribution” by his group.  

Cohen said the team hopes to publicly identify the location for the team’s stadium in the next two to three weeks. He expects the team to play in a temporary venue – details of which also have yet to be revealed – for two seasons while the permanent facility is built.  

“We've had conversations for close to going on a year now with jurisdictions and city people, as well as the community at large, to try to figure out the right place to put the stadium and the right way to structure a deal,” Cohen said. “Suffice it to say, our vision is around a central location that's easy to get to from across the metropolitan area.” 

The NWSL's willingness to award an expansion franchise without an ironclad stadium solution in place isn’t new. Since being awarded a franchise in 2023, the league's Boston ownership group led by Juno Equity founder Jennifer Epstein has faced  numerous political and legal hurdles in trying to get its planned renovation of the city-owned White Stadium underway. The group  reached a long-awaited lease agreement with the city and its public school system last month but has yet to begin construction with just over a year until its scheduled debut and still faces legal challenges and public pressure. 

“We've had countless meetings and discussions with both the private and public sector here and are very confident that we will ultimately deliver a best-in-class infrastructure plan, both from a stadium and a training facility perspective,” Berman said of the plans in Denver. “There's still more I’s to dot and T's to cross, but our very high bar has been satisfied by Rob and his ownership group.” 

While the stadium in Denver has yet to be built, it would check an important box for the NWSL: being under team control. The KC Current are the only NWSL team that owns its own purpose-built stadium. Another four franchises – the Utah Royals, Orlando Pride, Racing Louisville and Houston Dash – share ownership with a professional men’s team that owns or controls its venue. The remaining nine clubs are non-operating tenants.  

Berman pointed to venue ownership and control as a significant factor in its expansion decision. 

“We need to be thoughtful about curating circumstances where we have control over our infrastructure so that we can facilitate a strategic schedule, which is critically important to our business,” Berman said. “That doesn't mean that every single circumstance needs to be exactly that, but in the context of expansion and with the opportunity that presented it itself here in Denver, there can be no doubt that this was the right answer for the NWSL.” 

CAA Icon has served as the Denver group’s management consultant for the proposed stadium project, with Populous as the architect. The franchise has also retained CAA to assist in its search for executive leadership; CAA Evolution as its financial advisory firm; Legends for operations, ticketing and commercial sales; Denver-based Wunder Werkz as its creative agency; and L.A.-based Skylark for communications and marketing. 

BEYOND 16: With NWSL expansion fees and franchise valuations increasing exponentially over the past three years, it is no surprise that the league plans to continue adding teams in the near future. Berman said the league’s board already discussed further expansion at its December meeting (before the Denver deal even closed) and that information on the next round of expansion can be expected "in the coming months.” In addition to Cincinnati and Cleveland, other cities recently linked to NWSL expansion include Philadelphia, Nashville, Atlanta and Minneapolis/St. Paul.

With the Super Bowl approaching quickly, here are some NFL sponsorship data nuggets from the prescient folks at SponsorUnited (SU).

Based on SU’s new SPND platform, the number of NFL teams now surpassing $100 million in annual sponsorship revenue increased from three to five. The Cowboys have long been tops in that area; others in the $100 million club are the Falcons, Patriots, Raiders and Rams, per SU. That means NFL franchises now represent five of 11 North American pro sports teams generating $100 million in annual sponsorships, “solidifying the NFL’s commercial dominance," as SU founder and CEO Bob Lynch puts it.

Even as the rich NFL franchises get richer, the NFL has an edge in sponsorship parity -- the difference between the haves and have nots. SU data shows the revenue gap between the top and bottom quartile of NFL teams is 2X, meaning the top eight teams generate, on average, twice as much sponsorship revenue as the bottom eight. By comparison, the average revenue disparity across the other major U.S. leagues (MLB, NBA, NHL and MLS) is 4.7X, making the NFL the most balanced in sponsorship-revenue distribution.

Category-wise, longtime leaders such as auto and financial services/fin-tech continued to grow, with their NFL sponsorship spend increasing 10% year-over-year. Overall, the total number of brands buying NFL team sponsorships or ancillary media grew by 7.5%, and the average number of sponsorship deals per team increased by 10% to 113.

The most saturated sponsorship categories, totaling deals across team sponsorships, local radio and TV are:

1. Automotive (NFL teams work with an average of 15.5 car brands or dealerships)
2. Law firms
3. Telecom (TV, internet and phone providers)
4. Ticketing platforms
5. Banking/financial services

Outside of those top categories, there seems to be potential. Just 8% of the categories tracked by SU are sold by more than 90% of teams; just 28% of sponsorship categories are represented by more than half of NFL teams.

So many sponsors are looking to social media metrics for evidence of marketing efficacy. Accordingly, it's interesting to note that while in the aggregate, social media followers of NFL players (398 million) rivals teams and league (407 million), but the NFL is far out front when it comes to engagement. SU notes that the NFL collaborated with almost twice as many brands and generates 9x more engagement on brand-related posts (185 million interactions this year).

A potential concern: four of the top five most-followed NFL players are nearing retirement -- #1 Odell Beckham Jr., #2 Russell Wilson, #3 Travis Kelce and #5 Aaron Rodgers.

Athlete mental wellness continues to gain traction, both in the guidelines being established by leagues/governing bodies (such as the NFL and NBA efforts at the dawn of the decade) and the companies pitching in to support schools and franchises, as seen with  Peak AI.

Outside of just being the right thing to do, there’s a straight line from holistic support of athletes and business success. Well-being begats better performance, which begats results, greater fan interest and, ultimately, a product fans will pay for.

Last year, the NCAA released the latest version of its mental health best practices, outlining obligations for all member schools (regardless of division) to create a healthy environment for athletes. Components of that plan included support via resources and connections to mental-health professionals, as well as a screening tool to monitor athlete wellness.

The NCAA required D-I members to provide this by last August. And this November will be the first deadline for schools to prove they’re doing so. With that mile-marker approaching, The Zone is gearing up to test a new feature in its athlete-wellness platform: the Mental Readiness Score. The metric will provide insight into an athlete’s mental state.

Knowing the score

In a walkthrough with SBJ, The Zone CEO and co-founder Ivan Tchatchouwo showed a series of check-in questions that help create the score. Prompts focused on physical essentials like hydration and sleep but also considered ratings for categories such as confidence and energy level. The quick series produces a score (scaled from 0-100) that a coach can see for each player, while the individual student view will show tiered descriptors (such as “Fully Ready” or “Needs Attention”) to take away the pressure of potentially seeing a poor numerical score.

Tchatchouwo said the feature, which The Zone will pilot with select schools as part of its premium platform offering before a future rollout, came as an idea from numerous conversations on different campuses since the company was founded in 2021.

The Zone has a client base of roughly 200 teams at various levels of the NCAA, offering three tiers of its platform: basic, premium and enterprise.

“The biggest thing, and we’re seeing this in all sets of industries and technology in college sports, is how do you harmonize this data to drive value for the athlete but also to drive value for the administration?” Tchatchouwo said.

Coaches will be able to see Mental Readiness Scores for each athlete and a collective score for a team, allowing for responses at the individual and group levels in their teaching and preparation. The Zone’s athlete experience also offers support via breathing and visualization exercises that cater to the user’s preference.

One of The Zone’s biggest triumphs of 2024 came through validation from its own data and research. Tchatchouwo said that athletes who used The Zone 15 times saw their moods “significantly” improve, and that was especially true for women who used The Zone’s platforms. He also added that client schools see up to 3X more access to their athletes via The Zone platform, meaning an increased understanding in what their athletes are collectively experiencing on the mental side.

“What we’re seeing is the athletes that are stigmatized, that don’t talk about it, are getting help from The Zone,” Tchatchouwo said. 

• U.S. Figure Skating confirmed skaters returning from a development camp were among the passengers on an American Airlines jet that collided with an Army helicopter outside Reagan Washington National Airport on Wednesday night, reports SBJ's Rachel Axon.

• Sports took a supporting role in Netflix's 2025 preview event, where the streaming company touted "Raw" and its NFL Christmas game slate but also introduced a number of scripted and unscripted projects debuting over the next month-plus, writes SBJ's Chris Smith.

• Candidates for the IOC presidency made presentations to the membership in a closed-door session in Lausanne, Switzerland, notes Axon.

• FC Cincinnati is spending $1.5 million to add a speakeasy to TQL Stadium, creating 2,000-square-foot premium offering that will be sold on a game-by-game basis when it opens in late summer, reports SBJ's Bret McCormick.

• Black-owned media company Revolt launched a sports vertical, with goals for creating its own flag football and indoor soccer leagues in late 2025 and early 2026 with support from soon-to-be-announced shows and podcasts, writes SBJ's Irving Mejia-Hilario.

• The NHL is creating a new youth-focused program called "NHL Hockeyverse Matchup of the Week," debuting Saturday on the NHL Network in the U.S., Sportsnet in Canada and globally on the league's YouTube channel, notes SBJ's Ethan Joyce.

• Sports Illustrated Tickets is now the Steelers’ fan experience sponsor, continuing its recent sponsorship spending spree, writes McCormick.

• Beginning with this Sunday’s Cook Out Clash at Bowman Gray, Warner Bros. Discovery’s Max streaming service will offer viewers alternate streams of NASCAR Cup Series races called “NASCAR Driver Cam,” which feature feeds from each car, reports SBJ's Rob Schaefer.

• Former WWE exec Stephanie McMahon appeared on "The Pat McAfee Show" to announce a new WWE-centric show, "Stephanie's Places," in partnership with Peyton Manning’s Omaha Productions, ESPN and WWE, notes SBJ's Na'Andre Emerson.