Good morning and happy Wednesday. We have what appears to be a breakthrough in the industry: a women’s sports-focused regional channel in Portland. I’m really excited to see the growth of the product, spearheaded by Fire and Thorns owner RAJ Sports.
My SBJ colleague Tom Friend has more below. — Ethan Joyce
In today’s edition of Power Up:
- Health and wellness app Koomba signs True Sports Group
- Netflix to use Nielsen audience numbers for MLB games
- Fire, Thorns collaborate on women’s sports channel in Portland
Youth and college sports health and wellness app Koomba signs major club network, True Sports Group
Koomba, a health and wellness platform for youth and college athletes, recently began a collaboration with True Sports Group to make its resources available to more than 30,000 athletes through its network of club sports.
Founded by former college athletes and supported by former NCAA Chief Medical Officer Dr. Brian Hainline, Koomba has amassed a network of more than 150 providers in sports psychology, mental performance and nutrition. Its AI platform, which is available through a tiered subscription, matches users with a support network based on their individual goals and experiences.
“Why have these sports psychologists, sport dietitians and mental performance coaches been reserved for the elite of sport when there’s so much downward pressure on youth and college athletics in a really big way?” Koomba CEO Greg Milnarik said. “So for the last couple of years, we partnered with Brian to build basically a healthcare platform for the athlete identity where we connect large youth sports organizations to providers in ongoing online work.”
Koomba is starting with lacrosse, soccer and volleyball with plans to expand to flag football next. It works with seven colleges, including Bates, Bowdoin and Middlebury, in addition to youth sports organizers like True Sports Group.
The startup is a graduate of the Headstream Accelerator funded by Melinda Gates’ Pivotal Ventures. It has raised a round of angel investment and plans to seek strategic capital from family offices with sporting ties this spring. Among the angels is Chris McGowan, who has held EVP and higher titles in all five major North American men’s pro sports leagues.
‘The godfather of athlete mental health’
At the NCAA a decade ago, Hainline led the creation of a set of best practices for supporting student-athlete mental health. The document was so well received that it led to his invitation by the IOC to co-chair a summit on the topic for Olympic athletes.
What he found, particularly at the time, was that “coaches were very poorly educated about mental health,” Hainline said. “They really understood how to logically talk about performance but didn’t understand the bi-directionality of mental health and performance.”
Without a government-led ministry of sport, the 54 Olympic national governing bodies in the U.S. are the caretakers of the development pathway. Though they all are signatories to the USOPC’s American Development Model -- a coaching education framework for youth sports -- Hainline said few really adhere to it, leaving an opening for a platform like Koomba’s to assist with that implementation.
“With Koomba, what I’ve really been emphasizing is that it has to be grounded in the American Development Model, doing developmentally appropriate activities,” he said. “With regard to mental training and so forth, your ability to rest and recover is as important as physical training. You add the nutrition aspects in there because a lot of athletes have what’s called relative energy deficiency, which actually negatively impacts performance and mental health and the like.”
Upon embarking on a listening tour to youth clubs a few years ago, Koomba’s founding team discovered a few recurring themes.
“Number one, not one athlete said they want another static app that tells them what to do and how to do it with no real infrastructure behind it,” Milnarik said. “Number two, pretty much everyone communicated a desire to talk to someone that looks like them, sounds like them, and fundamentally understands the athlete identity, athlete experience.”
Milnarik noted the growing concerns of performance anxiety and the pressure to get recruited and said solutions to date had been lacking.
“Parents don’t want more advice -- they just want more tools,” Koomba growth lead Russell Chase said, adding that the negativity surrounding private equity’s infusion into youth sports is potentially overblown. “The more money and the more resources that are coming in and done appropriately, this can be a superpower for a lot of organizations, operators that are focused more on youth sports.”
Netflix to use Nielsen audience numbers for MLB games
MLB games on Netflix this season will be measured by Nielsen, sources tell SBJ, meaning the industry standard for viewership measurement will be used for the Home Run Derby, Field of Dreams Game and Yankees-Giants on Opening Day. Netflix, which offered no comment on the news, is entering the first season of a three-year deal with MLB, paying around $50M annually.
The streaming platform has only used Nielsen ratings for its Christmas NFL games to date. Other events on Netflix like boxing, tennis and Alex Honnold’s “Skyscraper Live” have not been measured by an accredited ratings agency, and the industry has treated such audience number releases pushed by Netflix with a certain level of skepticism. Using Nielsen for MLB will put advertisers at a little more ease in Year 1 of a new media deal. It remains to be seen whether other upcoming sports on Netflix -- including its MMA debut with Ronda Rousey vs. Gina Carano, a Floyd Mayweather-Manny Pacquaio fight and the 2027 FIFA Women’s World Cup -- will also use Nielsen or another non-accredited data service.
Fire, Thorns collaborate on women’s sports channel in Portland
RAJ Sports, which owns the WNBA’s Fire and the NWSL’s Thorns, is creating a joint broadcast home for both teams on Gray Media’s Fox 12 Plus in Portland, essentially turning the channel into a rare local female sports hub.
“I’ve never seen a regional women’s sports platform like this,” said Lee Berke, the president and CEO of LHB Sports, Entertainment & Media, Inc., who advised RAJ Sports on the transactions. “There is a national Women’s Sports Network, but I have not seen anything on a local basis. It’s indicative that the time has come.”
The Fire also struck a coinciding deal with Kiswe to launch a team-branded DTC app, which will stream non-nationally televised Fire games, along with bonus storytelling and experiential fan content. The overall model -- with Raycom Sports producing the linear broadcasts for Gray and with Kiswe handling the digital side -- is on par with what NBA teams such as the Trail Blazers, Jazz, Suns, Mavericks and Pelicans have done.
Like those NBA teams, RAJ Sports and its owners Alex Bhathal and Lisa Bhathal Merage will receive undisclosed rights fees from their linear and digital partners, Gray and Kiswe, respectively. But, unlike the NBA deals, they can monetize it through two teams and with as much shoulder programming as possible, such as pregame and post-game shows.
Assuming the WNBA settles its collective bargaining dispute, there could also be -- in the near term -- episodes related to the Fire’s upcoming expansion draft and airings of the “Epicenter of Women’s Sports” podcast with former Thorns G Karina LeBlanc.
“It’s somewhat indicative of Portland as a market in that ... there’s just a desire for women’s sports content,” RAJ Sports Managing Dir Mike Whitehead said. “... Where the country, where the world is today with women’s sports, Portland was 10 years ago.”
Fox 12 Plus had been the broadcast home of the Thorns, and this deal not only adds the Fire, but places select Fire games on the more widely viewed Fox 12. The overall package was ideated and executed in-house by myriad executives, including Whitehead; Berke; RAJ Sports EVP/Commercial Strategy & Business Development John Torris; Gray Local Media Regional VP & GM Corey Hanson; Fire President Clare Hamill, Fire SVP/Marketing & Communications Kimberly Veale; and Thorns President of Business Operations Alexis Lee.
“It sort of came about in part by just where the marketplace was heading,” Berke said. “If this was five or seven years ago and it was Portland, then you might talk to NBC Sports Northwest. You might talk to Root. Neither of those are in existence anymore. But it’s not just the absence of those. It was definitely all of us trying to figure out where the audiences are, what screens they want to use, and what drives the most resources and revenues for their regional media business.
“The WNBA is now just a critical part of regional sports media and broadcasting and distribution. I was involved in helping the Indiana Fever set up their network when they launched a couple years ago, and you’ve got huge audiences. They skew young. They love not only broadcast TV; they really love to follow on streaming. And so all those things impacted the strategy we came up with and went forward on.”
Because the Thorns’ digital rights belong to the NWSL, their games cannot be included on the Fire’s DTC app, although the Fire’s app could potentially stream Thorn-centric shows.
“At Kiswe, we believe that fans want more than just a place to watch a game, they’re looking for community,” said Kiswe CEO Glenn Booth. “…It is about building a dedicated digital destination where the team and its fans can connect.’’
On the linear side, the Fire and Thorns’ partnership with Fox 12 Plus could eventually morph into the equivalent of a women’s sports RSN.
“Could it be a 24/7 network? I mean, it could,” Whitehead said. “Our plan is to just get it up and running and kind of get through the kinks and see how we do. And then really just continue to evaluate, continue to see how we can make it better, expand on it, grow it. And we’ll see where it takes us.”
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