SBJ Unpacks: USGA taking media rights to market

Tonight in Unpacks: With its exclusive negotiating window with NBCUniversal closing without a deal, the USGA is heading to the market to find its next media rights partner, reports SBJ’s Josh Carpenter.

Also tonight:

• New deals give NWSL marketing momentum heading into opening weekend
• Sports Media Podcast: CBS’ Wally Szczerbiak fixes college basketball
• Angel City 2.0: The NWSL’s most valuable club enters a new era
• Op-ed: The catalyst for F1 teams’ path to the podium

Listen to SBJ’s most popular podcast, Morning Buzzcast, where Abe Madkour discusses the apparent finalists to buy the Celtics, the simmering labor issues with the WNBA, CBS and TNT selling out of March Madness ad inventory and more.

The NWSL heads into its 13th season with 13 sponsors after adding Unwell Hydration and E.l.f. Beauty to the roster last week, giving the league its biggest-ever opening weekend sponsor portfolio.

Unwell was developed by Alex Cooper, co-creator of the “Call Her Daddy” podcast on Spotify, and debuted earlier this year. In 2024, E.l.f. Beauty became the top-selling mass cosmetics brand in the United States. It’s the first league-level sponsorship deal for each brand.

Nike is the league’s most-tenured sponsor, with a partnership that dates back to the 2013 inaugural season.

Human resource management company UKG, a league partner since 2022 and former title sponsor of the league’s opening weekend UKG Challenge Cup, did not return this season.

This week’s Sports Media Podcast brings on CBS college basketball analyst Wally Szczerbiak just in time for March Madness.

The former NBAer (who’s also the color commentator for Knicks broadcasts on the MSG Network) joins co-hosts Austin Karp and Mollie Cahillane to play a game of “If you were Czar of College Basketball for a day,” as Szczerbiak offers his viewpoint of how the sport can stand out of football’s shadow -- and what not to mess with when it comes to March Madness.

Excerpts have been lightly edited.

Does college basketball gets its due? “It does for me, because I’m all basketball. I know the goal is to reach the casual fan a little bit more. And what I loved about this season ... just the matchups at the beginning of the year were massive. Every night, there was a top-five matchup or top-10 matchup. And with the new NIL rules, with the new transfer portal, with so much money running around in college basketball and moving around in college basketball, players and coaches and teams and schools are motivated to play big games early on in the season and be on big TV networks and try to generate as much revenue for the TV networks as possible. ... And it’s carried through the regular season, and as a result, this year is going to be the best NCAA Tournament.”

How to drum up more interest in college basketball: “There has been a suggestion to lengthen the regular season a little bit. I know coaches want to coach their guys for more games. It gives you a little bit more of a chance to blend your team together, because right now, the season is 30-35 games, and with the transfer portal, it takes some time for your guys to mess and gel. And there was this suggestion of Mark Pope, the coach at Kentucky, to lengthen the season to 40 games. Now, again, you run into competing with football, which is obviously very dominant, college and pro, but at the same time, I don’t see any downside to it.”

Would an expansion of March Madness help college basketball? “The way the tournament is operating now, it’s awesome. To me, you get 68 teams, that’s plenty. When I played in ’99, we made the tournament of 64, and the play-in has added a little bit of drama. And that’s one of the reasons people are asking for more expansion, because of the drama the play-in has brought. Now, ultimately, you cannot sacrifice the product, which is the Final Four, the Sweet Sixteen, and you don’t water down the first couple rounds leading to the Sweet Sixteen, the Final Four and the Elite Eight, and if you can generate more revenue, maybe it makes sense.”

Angel City’s rapid rise from a pandemic-era startup to the most valuable women’s sports organization on the planet is the stuff of fairy tales — or a Harvard Business School case study, at least. Through a combination of bold branding, celebrity ownership, community outreach and purpose-driven marketing, an all-female trio of sports industry outsiders developed a unique blueprint for how to launch a sports franchise.

It even had a storybook ending: the sale of a controlling interest at a record valuation of $250 million to highly accomplished broadcast journalist Willow Bay and her husband, Disney CEO Bob Iger.

But for those with skin in the game, Angel City’s triumphant sale wasn’t an ending, just the start of a new chapter: one that comes with higher expectations both on and off the field.

“We’re not done yet,” said Julie Uhrman, the Angel City CEO who co-founded the team along with venture capitalist Kara Nortman and actor Natalie Portman. “They’re excited coming into Angel City at $250 million, but we’re all committed to getting it to a billion-dollar valuation.”

Since joining the NWSL in 2022, Angel City has averaged more than 19,000 fans per game at BMO Stadium, leading the league in attendance in two of its three seasons. In its first two seasons, Angel City’s annual revenue dwarfed that of its counterparts across the league. The $33 million that sources close to the club said the team earned in 2023 is believed to have been more than double that of its closest peer.

Angel City, however, must overcome a hurdle to growth affecting most NWSL teams. While the team plays its home games in one of North America’s most highly regarded soccer-specific venues, it is a tenant of MLS club LAFC, rather than a controlling operator or owner.

Angel City increased revenue marginally year over year to $35.4 million in 2024. Meanwhile, the Kanas City Current tripled its annual intake, driven by its opening of the league’s first purpose-built venue, CPKC Stadium. That put the Current neck and neck with Angel City at the top of the league’s revenue rankings, demonstrating the impact of venue control on growth potential.

“We don’t control our stadium, we don’t control real estate and other assets,” Uhrman acknowledged. “But I think there’s an opportunity to continue to grow the brand of Angel City, which plays out in merchandising and licensing, and as we do that, increases the value of our partnerships with sponsors.”

Ahead of Bay and Iger’s first full season at the helm, the club has hired new leaders to extract maximum performance on both the business and sporting sides of the organization, with longtime Boston Consulting Group executive Carmen Bona joining as president of business operations and longtime NWSL coach Mark Parsons coming on as sporting director. Both will report to Uhrman, who was elevated from president to CEO.

The team also made what sources close to the club characterized as a mid-seven-figure investment in infrastructure, leasing a nine-acre site at California Lutheran University, previously utilized by the Los Angeles Rams, for up to four years and converting it into the largest dedicated training center in the NWSL. It marks a major step forward for the club, which for all its off-field success, has yet to win a playoff game.

“By providing this performance center, [we’re] really removing all barriers and questions and excuses from the team to perform,” Uhrman said. “We also invested on the [sporting] staff side, so that’s been really exciting. It’s the one area of Angel City that we weren’t able to deliver on Day 1.”

The sale of naming rights to the new training center, along with space on the team’s currently vacant training kit, are low-hanging revenue opportunities for Bona as she takes over Angel City’s day-to-day business operations.

The Madrid native and lifelong soccer fan spent more than a decade at Boston Consulting Group, advising sports and entertainment clients on how to adapt their businesses to the rapidly changing media landscape. Prior to joining Angel City, she led strategic growth initiatives at United Talent Agency, including the acquisition of global soccer representation firm ROOF.

Bona praised Angel City’s founders and early business leaders for creating a brand that fans identify with, and translating that enthusiasm into league-leading ticket sales and sponsorship revenue. She believes the key to taking the next step, however, is less glamorous.

“When you launch a new team, it’s a lot more about that storytelling and that brand building,” Bona said. “Now, we’re at the time where that’s probably not going to be enough for the next wave of growth, and we’re going to need to just put a lot more thought into the analytics that we need to develop in-house and provide to partners, the processes and CRM, and all those boring acronyms.”

Uhrman, meanwhile, is continuing to think big — something her new oversight role allows. While she declined to share specifics, she said she is engaged in conversations with Bay and Iger about how to leverage Angel City’s brand equity to reach new audiences globally.

“Those have been really fun conversations with Willow and Bob,” Uhrman said, “who both, in their own right, know what it’s like to be a part of global brands.”

Women’s sports investment firm Monarch Collective has increased the size of its first fund to $250M, with further investments coming from both existing and new limited partners.

Monarch’s debut fund, believed to be the first ever raised to invest specifically in women’s teams, leagues and rightsholders, was originally a $150M vehicle. The firm’s leadership, managing partners Kara Nortman and Jasmine Robinson, opened it to further fundraising late last year, largely due to pressure from their existing investors. Nortman said Monarch was aiming to reach at least $200M but instead wound up hitting a pre-set hard cap of $250M.

“We first and foremost wanted to make sure that [existing investors] that wanted to sort of double down and put more capital to work had room to do it,” Nortman said. “And then there were a handful of new LPs who really spent the time to build a relationship with us in advance that we thought would be great additions.”

The majority of new capital is from existing investors, including Melinda French Gates’ Pivotal Ventures, Sarah Harden of Hello Sunshine and former Netflix exec Cindy Holland. New investors include former Ernst & Young public policy exec Beth Brooke and Rockefeller Foundation EVP of programs Elizabeth Yee, who was recently the lead investor behind Cleveland’s bid for an NWSL expansion team.

The further investments come on the heels of Monarch acquiring minority stakes in three NWSL teams: Angel City, BOS Nation FC and the San Diego Wave. The NWSL’s private equity bylaws currently cap funds at three team stakes, so Monarch is now eyeing further opportunities elsewhere, mainly in the WNBA and European soccer. Nortman added that Monarch has spent time on cricket and golf, among other sports. She declined to comment on reports that the firm has explored a minority stake in Chelsea FC’s women’s team.

Nortman stressed that the newly raised capital will not impact Monarch’s core strategy, wherein it hopes to provide both capital and strategic input where possible. She added that the firm will likely make no more than eight investments out of its first fund, and that some of Monarch’s investors will coinvest alongside the fund when possible.

“We want to be able to show up and support any size transaction in women’s sports and be able to put the right amount of capital behind the things we’re going into,” Nortman said. “But we can also show up with a much smaller check than many others and be focused, and not have that small check be one of 20 or 30 things in our portfolio.”

As conference tournaments meld into March Madness, it’s a good time to note that marketing dollars allocated to men’s and women’s basketball at big-time schools, conferences and athletes reached $200 million for the first time, per data from SponsorUnited.

While acknowledging “some murkiness” between NIL and school deals, SponsorUnited CEO Bob Lynch said that around 75% of those dollars for men and women are going to the schools and conferences.

Across college basketball, SponsorUnited’s top categories for NIL deals are:

1. Athletic apparel (Adidas is the top spender)
2. Apparel (non-athletic) (such as Kim Kardashian’s Skims brand)
3. Sports drink (Coca-Cola’s Powerade is No. 1)
4. QSR-chicken (chicken specifically, with Raising Cane’s on top)
5. Consumer electronics (JLab and JBL lead the way, largely due to their breadth of offerings in portable/Bluetooth products, especially headphones)
6. Skin care/cosmetics (Johnson & Johnson’s Neutrogena and MAC Cosmetics are the top spenders)
7. Banks
8. Snacks
9. Broad-based consumer packaged goods
10. QSR-burgers

Brands promoted the most via social media attached with NIL deals in college basketball are:

1. Epsilon, a data/marketing services owned by Publicis (50 athletes posted)
2. Powerade (42 athletes posting on behalf of the Coca-Cola brand)
3. Fifth Third (the regional bank had 30 athletes posting)
4. Raising Cane’s (25 NIL athletes posting)
5. Skims (21 athletes touting the brand via social media)

For schools, the top three active categories remained:

1. Auto
2. Financial services
3. Insurance

With the top five categories for schools, however, was a very B2B focused category making its debut -- construction/industrial. That category was No. 4 and includes HVAC and heavy equipment rental companies, with largely regional brands. Health care was No. 5, knocking our QSRs (there’s got to be something significant about the intersection of those two categories).

As for SponsorUnited’s most-searched companies categories across the board (aka, places where property sellers are looking for new money):

1. Sanderson Ford (an uptick for the Arizona-based dealer was apparently generated by their Sanderson Ford Baseball Classic featuring Oregon State, Indiana, UNLV and Xavier)
2. Ororo (an Australian apparel company, specializing in battery-powered heated clothing)
3. Ring
4. Shake Shack
5. Ramp (a fast-growing corporate fintech brand)
6. Raising Cane’s
7. Eli Lilly

It might have been surprising to see Ndamukong Suh sitting on the SBJ Tech Week stage if you hadn’t scanned the agenda. The engineer and entrepreneur is every bit the imposing figure he was in the NFL, spending 13 seasons in the league with multiple teams and winning a Super Bowl with the Buccaneers. He still looks like he’s in playing shape

His second act (he last played in the 2022-23 season) is one that will be infused with technology, the reason why he joined Uplift Labs CEO Sukemasa Kabayama and Orreco CEO Dr. Brian Moore for a greater conversation on the impact of AI on athlete performance and training.

Former players like Suh are becoming more and more significant in sports tech. And for an industry that is still working to boost its diversity, technology can continue to be an opening door for various slices of the population -- the athlete included.

Athletes have had increasing influence in tech via investment throughout the last few years. CiCi Bellis created her venture fund Cartan Capital to focus on a sports and health tech portfolio. Bucks’ star Giannis Antetokounmpo has done the same, creating Build Your Legacy Ventures and has invested in companies such as asset-management platform ScorePlay.

These are just a couple of many that we’ve covered at SBJ as new players in sports investment. Pros are turning their personal branding into successful business models, and sports tech is a fruitful way to add to a portfolio and see a significant return in value.

The athlete presence was felt at SBJ Tech Week not just through Suh but also during Tuesday night’s SBA: Tech ceremony, which featured two former-athletes-turned-co-founders (Andrew Hawkins and Troy Jones) accepting their company StatusPro’s award for Best in Immersive Technology. Their signature product, the NFL Pro Era VR game series, became the fastest-selling sports game for the Meta Quest headset.

Suh’s data advocacy

As for Suh, his entry to tech came through a playing career that introduced him to companies like Oura and Hyperice. He’s since sold a company to Hyperice and is on the company’s board, while advising others. Suh has seen data’s role in sports change and grow massively in his playing career, even while some players might still lag behind in how they’re using it. His greater mission is to keep being an advocate for the boost athletes can get by using the data at their disposal.

“There’s a lot of teammates that, till this day, have no desire in even having the information, let alone even know that it’s readily available for them,” Suh said last week. “So this is where technology can come in handy where it’s saying, ‘These are the things that are afforded to you, these are ways that can be broken down and be advantageous for you at the end of the day.’

“But they still have to want to. That’s the big thing, is that how can I use it, and I have to be the proponent to want to push forward to use this data.”

If Formula 1 has taught us anything over the past few years, it’s that money is king. It means stability, the best engineers working with the best parts, technology, and of course, drivers.

All of which has been lacking at the historic Williams Racing since its co-founder, Frank Williams, stepped down in 2012. Past a buffer period since the transition, it has been a tumultuous last decade for the Grove-based team, with six bottom-two finishes in the last seven seasons (the one outlier being the 2023 season, which saw new team boss James Vowles lead the team to seventh). The team has welcomed drivers who are now notorious as some of the worst in recent history, with Canadian Nicholas Latifi and American Logan Sargeant only accumulating 25 points in total. And it was only until 2024 that the team organized the builds of its F1 cars using an Excel spreadsheet.

But a recent commercial deal may mark a turn in its fortunes. Williams recently announced a new title partnership with Australian software company Atlassian, officially making them Atlassian Williams Racing. This is a huge jump for the team, securing its first name sponsor since its one-season stint with ROKiT. It is the last of many deals Williams has secured since Vowles took charge, with Komatsu, Duracell and Kraken all jumping on as sponsors. And with the hiring of the talented race-winner Carlos Sainz, a plethora of new sponsors are set to join the team.

But the real question is, will all this help? How much do these sponsors mean for the success of F1 teams? To answer this question, it’s important to look back at how teams, which were once in the position of Williams and have risen above, have been affected by their sponsors. Take the formidable Mercedes, for example. When people now think of the German car manufacturer’s team, they think of the eight consecutive constructors championship seasons it dominated, in which it won the drivers’ championship seven times with arguably the greatest driver of all time. But Mercedes struggled in its early years, finishing fourth in 2010 and 2011, then slipping to fifth in 2012. But in 2013, Mercedes struck two big sponsorship deals, a lavish extension with the existing title sponsor Petronas and a new partner deal with IWC Schaffhausen. The added money massively helped its engineers, especially its aerodynamic team, which finally had resources to completely redefine the team’s success. It finished second that year and the rest is history.

But there’s an argument to be made that Mercedes already had the strength of being backed by a car manufacturer, something that historically has helped teams, and a luxury Williams does not have. So let’s look at a team that is still trying to climb its way out of the bottom: MoneyGram Haas.

Haas really teaches us that having sponsors won’t fix everything — they need to be the right ones. The American team has had a bizarre history with title sponsors: the infamous Rich Energy saga in 2019, which ended up lasting less than a full season, and Uralkali in 2021-22, whose tumultuous links with Vladamir Putin resulted in an immediate severing of ties. The latter forced Haas to employ his son, Nikita Mazepin, to drive, someone who is now regarded in the same vein as Latifi and Sargeant. And the team struggled, finishing in the bottom two during those years in which its cars were branded with the two controversial companies. But now with MoneyGram coming in as title sponsor and a reshuffling of management, the team had an impressive 2024, finishing seventh with some stellar performances by German driver Nico Hülkenberg. Its 2025 will be one to watch.

It’s important to understand that having sponsors doesn’t necessarily mean success, and being successful isn’t necessarily a result of having sponsors. Brawn GP’s incredible 2009 season is the prime example, where the team that had significantly less financial backing wiped the floor with the big boys. But it’s known as a fairy tale for a reason. And if you look at the “partners” section of the top teams’ websites or even glance at their livery, you will see a whole lot more there than a team stuck at the bottom.

So, unless Atlassian are embroiled in a massive controversy, things look good for Williams. Of course, sponsorship alone won’t guarantee a path back to the top. Smart leadership, technical innovation and driver performance will all play a role. But securing strong commercial backing gives the team something it has sorely lacked for over a decade — financial stability and the resources to compete. If history is any indication, this could be the start of Williams’ resurgence. Now, it’s up to them to make the most of it.

Arjun Krishnan is a student at NYU’s Stern School of Business.

• Comcast NBCUniversal signed a $3 billion extension with the IOC, reports SBJ’s Rachel Axon, retaining the U.S. media rights for the Games through 2036. The four-year extension keeps the rights for NBCU through another domestic Summer Games and Salt Lake City’s Winter Games in 2034.
• Projected No. 1 NBA draft pick Cooper Flagg did not prove to be a viewership magnet for college basketball’s best rivalry, as neither Duke-North Carolina game this season drew north of 3 million viewers after both did last year, writes SBJ’s Austin Karp.
• Karp also points out in his weekly Audience Analysis that FS1 on Sunday attracted 1.43 million viewers for the NASCAR Cup Series race from Phoenix, marking the best Cup audience on cable TV since Darlington in the fall of 2021 (2.46 million on NBCSN on Labor Day weekend).
• Speaking of NASCAR, SBJ’s Adam Stern notes that its president, Steve Phelps, expects to get similar viewership on the Prime Video platform as it generates on cable TV.
• Roku is doubling down on its women’s sports efforts, adding its first women’s league-branded section, the “NWSL Zone,” writes SBJ’s Molle Cahillane.
• Cahillane also reports that the Aces signed a multiyear deal with Scripps Sports to make Vegas 34 the home of all non-national Aces games.
• Army West Point named Kraft Sports + Entertainment Executive Director of Special Events Phil Buttafuoco as Deputy AD/business development and fan experience. Buttafuoco will oversee external operations areas, including strategic communications, licensing and branding and business development and revenue generation. (Army West Point)