SBJ Unpacks: Verizon taps Justin Toman for ‘top job in sponsorship’

Tonight in Unpacks: With Nick Kelly stepping away from Verizon to start his own agency, the firm has found another SBJ Forty Under 40 honoree to take his place in the coveted role of VP/partnerships, reports SBJ’s Terry Lefton: Pepsi’s Justin Toman.

Also tonight:

• Fashion editor Kyle Smith is helping the NFL find its style spotlight
• CBS cuts back PGA Championship final round ads
• Michele Kang rebrands Lyon women’s team
• Op-ed: Women’s boxing puts in the work, earns brighter spotlight

Listen to SBJ’s most popular podcast, Morning Buzzcast, where Josh Carpenter opens Sports Business Awards week with a look ahead at Wednesday’s ceremony and then digs into the feeling of inevitability that he’s seeing with PGA Championship winner Scottie Scheffler, highlights from the WNBA’s season-opening weekend, a “dismal” crowd at the Preakness and more.

Pepsi Head of Sports Marketing JUSTIN TOMAN is moving to Verizon to head that company’s extensive sports and entertainment marketing portfolio. Toman will start June 2 as VP/Partnerships at Verizon, the title recently vacated by NICK KELLY, who’d served just over two years in that role before leaving last week, to start his own agency.

At or near the top on Verizon’s sports marketing agenda: activation around the 2026 FIFA World Cup in North America.

“Pepsi and Verizon have two of the bigger and most extensive portfolios, so I just feel lucky to be able to work on both,” Toman said. “Verizon’s a great brand and a great place to jump into.

“Of course it’s tough to leave a place you love, but it’s a phenomenal scenario, and an amazing company and I get to do what I love doing at a great place that’s tech forward, which I love.”

Toman, an SBJ Forty Under 40 honoree in 2017, was at Pepsi for 18 years, 12 of which were in sports.

Toman will report to Leslie Berland, Verizon CMO. Pepsi’s plans to replace Toman were not immediately clear.

On a rainy Monday evening in New York City earlier this month, many of the world’s most famous and glamorous people gathered at the Metropolitan Museum of Art for the annual Met Gala, one of the tentpole events for the celebrity fashion elite.

Eyes, cameras and Instagram accounts were all trained on the red carpet, where the stars included everyone from Kim Kardashian and Rihanna to Simone Biles and Lewis Hamilton. It’s a singular opportunity for fashion designers and celebrities to make their mark. For newcomers, it’s a chance to carve out a spot in the discourse, and for the veterans, it’s a platform to cement their status as style icons. This year, nine current or retired NFL players participated, the most of any league, including Saquon Barkley, Joe Burrow, Stefon Diggs, DeAndre Hopkins, Jalen Hurts, Justin Jefferson, Colin Kaepernick, Jonathan Owens and Russell Wilson.

The mere presence of NFL or other pro athletes in a luxury fashion context isn’t unusual; former New York Giants cornerback Jason Sehorn appeared at the Met Gala as early as 2003. But historically, these appearances have been driven by the players, their agents and personal commercial relationships, with little involvement from their teams or leagues. This year that changed — because behind the scenes, helping all these players, was an NFL employee.

Kyle Smith, a 31-year-old stylist, was overseeing his first Met Gala as NFL fashion editor. It’s believed to be the first title of its kind for a major pro sports league, and a culmination of key trends for sports, athletes and Smith’s improbable career path.

“I love it,” said Smith, who mostly ignored sports until he joined the league six years ago as a wardrobe assistant at NFL Network. “I can’t believe this is my job.”

Smith started the day around 9 a.m. at the Met’s media briefing to ensure he understood the theme, “Superfine: Tailoring Black Style,” on an intimate level, and to get an early look at exhibit and museum space. All players had their own personal stylists, but Smith played a detailed coordinating and support role, creating behind-the-scenes content, suggesting collections they might not have seen and helping them with fittings.

Smith also briefed the players on the details of their outfits and the theme, so they were ready for media questions on the red carpet. In particular he helped Hopkins, wide receiver for the Ravens, prepare talking points for how he embodied the night’s theme. Then he saw them off. “I’m a proud mother, waving goodbye to them as they get in the car and have their last looks and head off to one of the biggest nights of their career,” Smith said.

Next, he shifted into the content production side of his job, editing NFL Media’s own social and digital coverage of the day, which attracted 37 million impressions and 1 million engagements across 26 total posts. Those pictures — glitzy, much-shared images of football stars taking their turn as fashion models — sit at the cutting edge of modern NFL marketing, which is focused on finding new fans for its work off the field as much as on.

The night was a huge success. During an otherwise slow time on the NFL calendar, the league and some of its key stars were in the limelight again — this time with their helmets off, out of uniform and showing some individuality.

“It all ties together, the ways in which we’re engaging more casual fans, fans who may not be watching football on Sundays, who might be coming in from different aspects,” said Ian Trombetta, the NFL’s senior vice president of influence marketing, and Smith’s boss. “It all ties really well together from a fan development perspective, and then clearly there are commercial opportunities connected to fashion that are almost too many to number at this point.”

Under CMO Tim Ellis, the NFL has been pushing a “helmets off” strategy of marketing its players for years. Its key verticals are gaming, music and fashion, areas where players have natural interests that can be leveraged in a strategic way by team and league marketers.

At the same time, Smith said, generational changes in sports culture and athlete norms have opened a window for widespread participation from players.

“Until very recently, it felt like if you were interested in fashion, you couldn’t be interested in sports,” Smith said. “It felt like those worlds were very disconnected, and I think with Gen Z, Gen Alpha, we’re realizing you can be very multifaceted, and you can be interested in both. It doesn’t take away from each other. In fact, they really go hand-in-hand and help each other.”

Smith, born in New London, Conn., and raised in Los Angeles, where he still lives, got his start in 2016 as an assistant to celebrity stylist Karla Welch, whose clients include Justin Bieber, Amy Poehler and Olivia Wilde. He also interned at the fashion house Amiri and opened his own studio before joining NFL Network six years ago.

There, in between his job of helping network talent choose their clothes, he started to notice the “tunnel fits,” the clothes players wear as they enter the stadium hours before a game. Putting live cameras on players at that moment in a pregame show is a TV tactic at least two decades old, and usually is just a backdrop for a few stats or projections about the upcoming game.

But Smith saw it through the eyes of a stylist, not a football fan. He realized that some players take those moments to share their personality with the world before putting on a helmet and uniform and participating in the ultimate team sport. He was intrigued and inspired.

“I remember watching tunnel fits and I think it was [longtime Saints defensive end] Cam Jordan, he was wearing something so crazy,” Smith said. “I was like, ‘This person’s so cool. I want to know more about him.’ And then it was also [quarterback] Cam Newton. I was like, ‘Those hats are so crazy, what’s he doing?’ I wanted to know so much more and get into the culture of football.”

Under Welch, Smith saw how her clients used fashion strategically to advance their personal brands, which in turn created business opportunities. Take Bieber, for instance. Once it became clear that he was a clotheshorse, luxury brands came to him.

“Brands would send him anything he wanted; too much stuff, really,” Smith said. “And they weren’t doing that for athletes. I realized there was an opportunity to allow athletes that same opportunity to grow their own brand.”

Smith left the NFL Network after 10 months, but by then he’d created an Instagram account, @playthelook, devoted to players’ styles. It’s now defunct, but it got attention from players — many of whom wanted to be featured — and the league.

In 2021, Smith joined the NFL as a content strategist full time, and today he operates @nflstyle, a decade-old account that originally focused on fan fashions and officially licensed NFL gear, but has since adjusted to feature players’ tunnel fits, too.

Meanwhile, he styles a growing list of players on his own, including Bengals quarterback Burrow and Vikings wide receiver Jefferson. When Smith started as content strategist in 2021, word spread quickly about his expertise and relationships. Burrow’s agents at WME, now WIN Sports Group, came to Smith when they wanted to get him into a GQ Super Bowl party, and later, Fashion Week. Others have come to Smith through player word-of-mouth and media coverage. Burrow, Jefferson and Smith attended the Vogue World fashion show together in Paris last summer.

It was such a hit, Smith was given the newly created title of fashion editor around the start of the 2024 season. The “editor” title suggests a heavy role in content, which he has, but he is also still a hands-on stylist and bridge between the NFL and the fashion world, a critical part of the equation.

The Paris event proved to be a watershed moment for how the NFL sees fashion. Before it began, Smith said many planners were skeptical that American football players should be involved. It was an Olympics-themed event coinciding with the Paris 2024 Summer Games, and football wasn’t part of the sports program. As Smith tells the story, Vogue Editor-in-Chief Anna Wintour settled the debate: “Her note was: If we want American attention, we need to have American football in this.”

That anecdote was surely catnip to NFL owners and Commissioner Roger Goodell, who are investing heavily in exporting the game in pursuit of global media rights revenue. For that to work, the NFL can’t simply be the biggest thing going in the United States; it has to transcend national borders.

“We think about it as a vehicle to open up new paths to fandom, especially in other countries,” Trombetta said. “I’m sure you’ve been to Europe or different parts of Latin America; fashion plays an even bigger role in a lot of those countries than it does in the U.S., or at least many of the cities in the U.S.”

Given the global appeal of flag football, Smith is expected to have an important voice in how the NFL thinks about promoting that sport’s Olympic debut in 2028. “Kyle’s role, and this broader view on fashion, really will play a strong [part] for the storytelling that’s going to come out of that,” said Trombetta.

Smith has no direct reports but is in daily contact with people from a range of divisions at the league, including the social team, consumer products and marketing. Day to day, his work is an eclectic mix of personal styling, content strategy and business. Take one week last November: he started on Monday in Los Angeles watching tape of all the players’ tunnel walks from the day before; flew to Berlin to speak at a fashion film festival; came back to L.A. on Thursday and had to stop by Louis Vuitton to pick up a pair of sunglasses for Burrow; then hit some brand events on Friday.

Then on Saturday, he joined Burrow virtually for a remote fitting (league rules prevent stylists from being with players on game road trips) for the new look they were building for the next day’s game at SoFi Stadium against the Chargers. Burrow would wear a custom suit made by Alo, which Smith had to pick up upon arriving in L.A. from Berlin and send to the Bengals’ hotel before the virtual styling session. The day after that game, Smith was in Dallas to help with a photo shoot with the Cowboys cheerleaders.

In the NFL fan development marketing strategy, fashion is a coequal partner with video games and music. All of those verticals offer similar opportunities to find new fans because their demographics overlap with football’s, and critically, many NFL players are organically interested in those cultures on their own, making it an ideal platform for players to promote themselves alongside the league.

But commercially, the NFL is light-years ahead in video games and music, due to its long-standing relationships with Madden publisher EA Sports in the former category, and with Roc Nation and Apple Music for its halftime show in the latter category. It also means the average NFL business-side employee knows a lot about those worlds and has personal connections at the top of those markets.

Fashion, however, is a different story. “We have tremendous relationships in fashion with licensing partners, with brands like Nike and Fanatics, but in terms of the higher-end editorial components, we didn’t have as much of that,” Trombetta said. “So that’s where Kyle really excels. When we’re talking about Paris Fashion Week or the Met Gala, those are areas that don’t naturally fit within a league operation. You really need to have someone that’s immersed in that space, to elevate and find the different angles to bring players in, or just what the natural storylines could be off of it.”

The big commercial payoff for the league is in brand reputation, which (it hopes) opens new doors to sponsorship sales and licensing. “It’s opening the eyes of new partners who wouldn’t normally see the NFL as being a natural place for fashion, and some of the different opportunities for us. You’re seeing more luxury brands, companies that 10 years ago wouldn’t necessarily look at the NFL in that light,” Trombetta said.

Historically, fashion houses have not played in sports much. But the NFL’s real payoff may not come from a conventional sponsorship or licensing deal with a fashion house, but rather from a “halo effect” that over time pushes the NFL’s brand further up market, said April Guidone, COO of SMAC Entertainment, which represents Diggs among other top athletes.

“So maybe you’d see a Porsche start to evaluate the NFL opportunity where if they didn’t have this fashion alignment, you wouldn’t necessarily have that,” Guidone said. “It doesn’t have to be luxury fashion for a commercialization opportunity, but luxury brands in other categories could see the NFL in a different light.”

While Smith works to push the cutting edge of elite fashion, the NFL also has tried to develop a spot in the grassroots scene. Since 2020, NFL teams have been allowed to work outside the primary league licensing relationships to collaborate on limited runs of clothes made by local designers, for sale only in their markets. For instance, the Rams launched a line with L.A. streetwear brand BornxRaised.

While those relationships lack the global star power of, say, Fashion Week or the Met Gala, executives say they are valuable tools to develop team affinity locally.

More players want to get into fashion, and Trombetta says he expects Smith’s portfolio to keep growing. But they won’t push it too far, keenly aware that this works only if the players are truly interested in fashion.

Guidone, who oversaw revenue and brand management for IMG’s fashion events before joining SMAC, said the NFL needs to resist the urge to center its own intellectual property in the fashion space. “They really have to let go, and let the luxury fashion designers lead and let Kyle lead,” she said.

At the core of Smith’s work is a belief that fashion can help the NFL find new fans. It’s already happened for at least one person: Smith himself, who after a lifetime of ignoring sports has grown close to players such as Burrow.

“I’m so much more genuinely interested in the game itself now,” said Smith. “Because now when I watch, I think, ‘Oh, that’s my friend on the field.’”

CBS cut back on its commercial load -- if only by less than two minutes -- for the final round of the PGA Championship on Sunday, as Scottie Scheffler secured his third major championship by five shots.

SBJ tracked CBS’s commercial load for the final round starting at 2pm (when the final groups were teeing off) and through when Scheffler struck his final putt just before 7pm.

Three types of sponsored segments fell under what SBJ was tracking while following the tournament from Charlotte’s WBTV-CBS -- full commercials that cut away entirely from live play, CBS’s “Eye on the Course” feature (shows ads in a double-box with the competition) and “sponsored by” segments featuring quick voiceovers from play-by-play man Jim Nantz. All times tracked were approximated.

RELATED: Tracking CBS’s commercial load for the PGA Championship at Valhalla

Overall, CBS aired 46 minutes, 55 seconds of commercials during the final round. That compares to 48 minutes, 40 seconds for last year’s final round from Valhalla Golf Club.

On Sunday, CBS had 13 full commercial breaks during the window (33 minutes, 40 seconds). CBS had six “Eye on the Course” segments, each running at 2 minutes for a 12-minute total. And finally, the network aired five “sponsored by” segments at 15 seconds each.

The commercial load was fairly evenly spread out across the first four hours, with each landing between 9 minutes, 30 seconds and 10 minutes, 45 seconds. CBS had just two sponsored segments in the final hour: a pair of full breaks totaling just 4 minutes, 15 seconds.

Kynisca Sports International Founder & CEO Michele Kang continues to shake things up in women’s soccer, rebranding one of the most historic and successful clubs in the sport’s history. The French club formerly known as Olympique Lyonnais Féminin (or OL Féminin) will now be called OL Lyonnes, a portmanteau of the French word for Lionesses and the club’s home city of Lyon. The new name comes with a new crest that features the team’s historic red and blue colors and a roaring lioness’ head.

“As the most successful team, they need their own identity, separate and independent from a men’s team or secondary to somebody,” Kang said.

OL Lyonnes also plans to build a new female-focused performance campus that in addition to female-specific training facilities will include Europe’s first club-led women’s football museum. The club has appointed architects F3 to lead the training center design project, which Kang said doesn’t have a price tag yet but “is not going to be cheap.”

Kang also announced OL Lyonnes will play all its home matches going forward at Groupama Stadium, a 59,000-seat venue where the team would previously only play occasionally. It previously played the bulk of its matches at Stade Gérard Houllier, a 1,524-seat facility located in the Groupama OL Training Center.

Kynisca is a multi-club organization (MCO) owned by Kang that in addition to OL Lyonnes includes the NWSL Washington Spirit and London City Lionesses.

Hold -- the betting industry term for the money sportsbooks are left with after paying out winnings -- was the common topic in Q1 earnings calls of late, as leading operators pointed to the unprecedented success of higher seeds during March Madness.

All No. 1 seeds made the men’s Final Four for only the second time since the NCAA began seeding teams in 1979. It was the first time that seven of the teams in the Elite 8 were seeded first or second. Higher seeds won 82% of tournament games, the highest rate in history.

Because sportsbooks almost always see more money come in on favorites than underdogs, the lopsided run cut into what was shaping up to be a more profitable quarter for all of them.

Analysts questioned whether the algorithms and modeling that underpin sportsbook odds and point spreads might need tuning.

“I’d be asking the same things,” DraftKings CEO Jason Robins said on the company’s first quarter call with analysts last week. “We’ve had a couple of really bad quarters in a row in terms of outcomes. This past quarter was looking great until March Madness. That does happen. We have analyzed everything thoroughly, and we are 100% confident that these are random outcomes.

“There are periods where you are going to have quarters -- two three in a row sometimes -- with bad outcomes. But there could be the opposite too. We’ll just have to wait to see if things normalize. I expect they will because they always seem to.”

At FanDuel, winner Florida was the second most bet on team behind Duke, another No. 1 seed.

“We’ve got absolute conviction in our pricing and our structural margin assumptions and that we’re getting that right,” said Rob Coldrake, CFO of FanDuel parent Flutter. “It’s not the first time in history that we’ve had a period of customer-friendly results. ... That’s why we’ve got a business at the end of the day and people keep coming back. Because of the unpredictability of sports.”

Caesars CEO Tom Reeg also pointed to the impact of March Madness favorites winning, but offered a different take on why little could have been done about it.

“Within a season, I’d say, no, [hold can’t be improved],” Reeg said. “But obviously, as the numbers get bigger, you’re going to be more toward your true odds. My point is we calculate hold in blackjack and baccarat over millions of outcomes, and it’s pretty certain. When you’re setting sports odds, we’re all getting better at it, [but] there is a human element in every piece.

“The fact is your customers, the general public, bet favorites, and they bet overs. And you cannot move the lines to the point where you’re going to change that on a broader basis.”

Coming up short

Robins said DraftKings hold for Q1 was 9.5%, well short of the 10.4% “structural hold” that the sportsbook would have expected had results been more typical.

U.S. sportsbooks had a combined hold rate of only 6% in March, according to reports from regulators in the 28 states that have reported results for that month (that’s all but Illinois and Arizona). Oregon does not allow wagering on college sports.

The rate was well below the 8% of last March. Sportsbooks in those 28 states had $760.9 million in revenue on $12.5 billion in handle for the month, a drop of $115.9 million from the $876.9 million they held on $11.3 billion in wagers last March.

It’s not uncommon for hold to swing dramatically from month to month. The nation’s seven busiest sportsbook operators combined for 6% hold twice in 2024, in October and December. They reported hold of double digits in January (12%), April (11%), May (14%), June (10%) and November (10%).

There also was a striking gap in the success rate among the leading books. FanDuel held 10.5%, according to state regulator reports, while DraftKings was at 8.5%. The two lowest hold rates belonged to Caesars (5.9%) and ESPN Bet (6.2%). Variances in the way states credit promotions and tabulate revenue can affect those figures.

The final months of the last two years were especially volatile. November rocketed from 6% in 2023 to 10% in 2024. December plummeted from 11% to 6%.

“Unless there are fundamental changes happening on a frequent basis in sports, structural hold and hold should converge over time,” Robins said. “But part of sports is that there is randomness to outcomes and things happen. That’s why people watch sports and want to bet on sports.”

Growing up in the Starrett City Boxing Club, one of New York City’s premier training grounds for boxing talent, I had the privilege of witnessing the remarkable journey of women in the sport. It was here that I trained alongside Kisha Snow, a heavyweight with incredible talent — powerful, skilled and charismatic. Snow won the New York Golden Gloves to thunderous applause at Madison Square Garden and dominated the amateur scene. Yet, when she turned professional, she faced a harsh reality: There was no real platform for her, little media support and no clear path to a sustainable career.

Around the same time, I formed a friendship with the Stan Hoffman, a manager who guided many world champions, including the legendary Lucia Rijker — one of the most gifted fighters in women’s boxing history. Rijker had a counterpart in Christy Martin, and both were extraordinary athletes. Rijker was with Bob Arum, and Martin was with Don King. Despite their greatness, they existed in separate worlds, often relegated to pay-per-view undercards without meaningful rivalries, except against each other.

However, change was on the horizon. The amateur boxing scene began to evolve for women. National champions emerged, international teams formed, and women’s boxing finally earned its rightful place in the Olympic Games in 2012. This shift mirrored broader cultural changes, as society began to embrace women in leadership roles, highlighted by a woman winning the Democratic nomination for president in 2016.

One Sunday before the 2016 Rio Olympics, I stumbled upon a story about a young Olympic champion preparing for her second Games — Claressa Shields. Her journey inspired me deeply. As an Olympic gold medalist from Flint, Mich., a city grappling with a severe water crisis, Shields’ incredible determination and achievements in the ring made me believe she could carry the sport forward. When she won her second Olympic gold medal, I felt she was destined for greatness. I reached out to contacts at HBO and Showtime, and soon, Stephen Espinoza, president of Showtime Sports, and Showtime Senior Vice President Gordon Hall, responded. Women’s boxing finally had a chance to shine, and Shields became the first woman in the sport’s history to headline a premium cable television event on Showtime.

As Shields’ promoter, my perspective is shaped by experience, not bias. Before working with her, I collaborated with world champion Alicia Ashley in Brooklyn, where she won the WBC world title and entered the Guinness Book of World Records as the oldest female boxing world champion. I also had plans for Amanda Serrano, then the WBO champion, and her sister, Cindy, to fight on our local events. Unfortunately, the networks weren’t interested. We had to buy airtime, self-produce shows, and place these fights on TV just to give these incredible women the visibility they deserved.

Shields changed everything. She didn’t just fight in the ring; she fought for equality outside of it with her powerful voice and unwavering presence. Real change doesn’t happen solely through achievements in the ring — it requires leaders who are willing to speak out. Shields transformed the conversation around women’s boxing, inspiring a new generation of fighters.

The impact of her success was evident in the ratings. Shields’ fifth professional fight attracted 410,000 viewers on Showtime, surpassing the viewership of heavyweights Anthony Joshua vs. Joseph Parker. She fought on every major broadcast platform in the U.S., including Showtime, HBO, ESPN and DAZN. Her fight against Savannah Marshall became the most-watched women’s sporting event on Sky Sports.

After Shields’ fight on Showtime, Cecilia Braekhus, one of the sport’s legends, finally made her U.S. debut on HBO — the first time a women’s fight appeared on that network.

During the COVID pandemic, live boxing was limited, and no broadcaster stepped up to support women’s boxing — even Shields was left without a platform. Faced with this challenge, Shields, her manager Mark Taffet and I made a difficult but crucial decision. Together, we promoted an all-women’s pay-per-view event. Shields fought for her second undisputed title at junior middleweight, defeating the then-undefeated Marie-Eve Dicaire from Canada. We used this event to showcase other female fighters across different weight classes — without asking for anything in return. This wasn’t just a business move; it was a leadership decision rooted in a sense of responsibility to the sport and to the women who fight for their dreams.

Since then, women’s boxing has soared to new heights. A few months ago, Shields’ biopic, “The Fire Inside,” was shown in theaters worldwide and is now available on Prime Video. Martin’s movie, featuring Sydney Sweeney, is set to premiere this summer. Even Jake Paul, who recently entered the sport, is promoting an all-women’s event this summer, adding to the excitement and visibility of women’s boxing.

Women’s boxing has come a long way, and I believe it will continue to grow and thrive.

Boxing has always been a powerful vehicle for social change. Jack Johnson, Joe Louis, Muhammad Ali, George Foreman and Manny Pacquiao made the world take notice — not just in the U.S., but globally. The potential for women’s sports to create similar change is greater than ever before.

After immigrating from Ukraine to Brooklyn at age 9, Dmitriy Salita was an amateur boxer and pro who transitioned into promoting, founding Salita Promotions, which recently signed current WBA and WBC Super Middleweight World Champion Franchon Crews-Dezurn, plus reigning Light Heavyweight World Champions Lani Daniels and Che Kenneally. Claressa Shields’ next fight will take place July 26 at Little Caesars Arena in Detroit.

• LA28 added two new sponsors in the past week, signing mattress company Saatva and air-taxi firm Archer (it makes vertical take-off and landing aircraft) as “official supporters” of the Games and Team USA, reports SBJ’s Rachel Axon.
• Levy hired Steve Dolinsky, long known as “The Food Guy” in the Chicago market, where he has covered the food beat for 30 years, writes SBJ’s Bret McCormick.
• McCormick also reports on more food fodder: The Savannah Bananas and Aramark Sports + Entertainment are working on an exclusive concession item, the Banana Dog, for games at its venues during the team’s stadium tour.
• MLB’s inaugural Rivalry Weekend drove fans to ballparks across the country, writes SBJ’s Mike Mazzeo, with total attendance over the 45-game, May 17-19 weekend at 1,608,475.
• Mazzo also notes that MLB Players’ Weekend is back on Aug. 15-17, and players can show off Off-Field Interests, Causes and Appreciation throughout the weekend instead of on specific dates.