SBJ Unpacks: Inside OKC’s surreal journey to the NBA

Tonight in Unpacks: From plans such as MAPS to Hurricane Katrina to season-ticket waiting lists and a $950 million arena in the works, the NBA and the Thunder’s path to Oklahoma City has been a wild ride, as SBJ’s Tom Friend details in this early look at next week’s magazine.

Also tonight:

• College baseball hits CWS primed for a boost from House settlement
• What’s next in the NFL C-suite after Brian Rolapp’s exit?
• 2025 NWSL Championship headed to San Jose
• Bringing Counter-Strike to Austin

Listen to SBJ’s most popular podcast, Morning Buzzcast, where Ted Keith closes out the week with highlights from the final day of the Brand Innovation Summit, San Jose landing the NWSL’s 2025 title game, NBA Commissioner Adam Silver’s comments on Finals viewership and more.

SBJ PSA: We’re making a final call for 2025 New Voices Under 30 nominations. The deadline for submitting people for consideration is 11:59pm on Monday, June 16. To nominate, go here.

The only college town in the NBA wants you to hand over your eardrums.

The start of the 2025 Finals was greeted by a rumbling prairie thunderstorm — which explains the name the Oklahoma City Thunder — but meteorology only tells half the story. How the league got to this place, otherwise known as “Loud City,” is all about wannabe economics. Or about a penny going a long way. Or, to be even more blunt, about begging and borrowing.

It takes all kinds to create a 30-team league, but if the country’s 25th-ranked NBA market walks away with the Larry O’Brien Trophy this month, somebody ought to write a book. Oh wait, the mayor already has.

His name is David Holt, he wears a Thunder necktie and his book “Big League City: Oklahoma City’s Rise To The NBA” is a look-back at an inconceivable business template that included a knock on David Stern’s door, a hurricane, broken Seattle hearts and another pivotal matchup with Indiana 34 years ago. You couldn’t make this up, which is why he sat down and wrote it.

The point is, win or lose to the Pacers, the city has already won. A new arena is scheduled to open just north of the current Paycom Center in 2028, and the incessant chant “OKC … OKC" will undoubtedly move across the street with it. That and the team’s 18,000 season-ticket base, which includes a waiting list of 2,000-plus.

“In American life, having a team in the NBA, NFL or MLB is the closest thing we have to bestowing a blue ribbon on our top cities,” Holt said, standing in the Thunder’s main office. “And your first team changes your identity, takes you to a different level. It becomes your calling card, your credibility that you’re a real city in American life.”

If Holt’s implying that, pre-NBA, OKC wasn’t a real city (“Well, downtown was dead,” he said), he’s also emphatic that everything changed when Indianapolis took Oklahoma City to the woodshed in 1991.

“People don’t invest in, visit or live in cities they’ve never heard of. So having the Thunder and then going to the NBA Finals means you’ve heard of us, right?”

—  Oklahoma City Mayor David Holt

It had nothing to do with sports. That year, both cities were finalists to house a United Airlines maintenance facility that could create 7,000 jobs, and OKC voters even approved a sales tax that would line United’s pockets with a reported $200 million if they came. Indy won the bid.

Oklahoma City Mayor Ronald J. Norick was informed by United that Indianapolis was everything it wasn’t — a city with an NBA and NFL team and more than just one downtown hotel (all OKC had was a Sheraton). But Norick wanted to see for himself. So he flew to Indy, saw Market Square Arena and the then-Hoosier Dome and decided to replicate it. Penny by penny.

He drew up the Metropolitan Area Projects — otherwise known as MAPS — which would call for a 1-cent sales tax to fund nine downtown initiatives, including a new arena. Who would play there? They’d figure that out later.

The proposal passed in December 1993, and even after the horrific 1995 bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building, the city carried on. The arena, known then as the Ford Center, finally opened in 2002, its only tenant being the Central Hockey League’s Oklahoma City Blazers. By 2004, the arena football Oklahoma City Yard Dawgz became tenant No. 2. So new mayor Mick Cornett went to see then-NBA Commissioner David Stern about tenant No. 3.

Stern agreed to see Cornett in person twice. The commissioner was shown the MAPS blueprint, was told about a plan to build a streetcar system, parks, a four-star hotel, a refurbished convention center.

“At the end of the second meeting, David Stern famously told him, ‘I see an NHL team in your future,’” Holt said.

Katrina Changes Everything

A year later in 2005, fate and Hurricane Katrina altered the outlook. With the New Orleans Hornets needing a home, and fast, OKC and MAPS was top of mind on Stern’s desk. It was fortuitous, too, that OKC native Clay Bennett had been an alternate governor for the Spurs, knew Stern well and led a group that granted the league a revenue guarantee. In a matter of 60 days, the New Orleans-Oklahoma City Hornets were born.

“Sometimes I can still see in my mind: ‘NOOCH,’” Holt said. “That’s how it was abbreviated on SportsCenter.”

The Hornets — though their road uniforms still said “New Orleans” — thrived in OKC. Wherever he spoke, Cornett told the public, “You need to buy tickets, you’ve gotta go to games. It’s your patriotic duty.” The way Holt remembers it, as Cornett’s chief of staff at the time, “we were getting an audition, the kind of which I’ve never seen before or after really in American sports.” The begged and borrowed Hornets ended up drawing 18,168 per game, a 78% rise over New Orleans. What fueled it, in part, was a simple OKC patch sewed on Hornet uniforms.

“I know this sounds kind of pitiful now, but that patch meant the world to us,” Holt said.

After the Hornets left, Bennett bought the Seattle Supersonics in 2006 — and the move to OKC was perhaps unfair but inevitable. By 2008, the Thunder were launched in a market known more for Oklahoma and Oklahoma State college football. For Barry Switzer, not Kevin Durant.

The think tank that included Brian Byrnes, SVP of business operations, had to figure out how to market this newfangled pro team, how to separate an NBA product from a collegiate one. “And what we learned very quickly was we didn’t want to,” Byrnes said.

Byrnes and his staff studied one-team towns such as San Antonio and Green Bay. They wanted to be an NBA town the way St. Louis was a baseball town. “The Spurs, Green Bay and St. Louis gave us the confidence to do it our way,” Byrnes said.

In other words, the vision was 41 homecoming games.

Building In OKC

It began organically. The first Thunder team in 2008-09 (with Durant and Russell Westbrook) started 3-29, and Holt remembers one headline that said, “Oklahoma City still waiting for its NBA team to arrive.” But they reached the playoffs the next season, and, in their first postseason home game against the Lakers, the staff put a Thunder “Rise Together” T-shirt on every seat. They defeated Kobe Bryant that day, and out of superstition, began a Thunder tradition: New XL T-shirts on every seat for every playoff game.

Fifteen years and 69 playoff games later, some fans own all 69 T-shirts — because 36% of the current Thunder season-ticket holders have been there since Day 1. The collegiate rituals at Paycom Center are through the roof. Fans stand at tipoff and won’t sit until the Thunder score. A pastor delivers a pregame prayer and gets an “Amen” from the entire arena. Or the front office will stage a reverse car wash downtown at lunch hour, where fans drive through and have Thunder personnel paint their car windows and plant Thunder flags on their roofs. The lines are generally two blocks long.

Season tickets are the other anomaly. While most of the league prefers profitable mini-plans or single-game dynamic pricing (or allow more inventory to be sold on the secondary market), the Thunder have gladly sold out their season tickets. Byrnes said they save about 2,500 seats for single-game sales, but otherwise — considering Paycom Center sits 18,203 and has its first waiting list of about 2,100 — the building is always filled to the brim.

The season-ticket retention rate is at 98% for next season, but, then again, it’s basically been 90% or more since the Durant-Westbrook days. This season, with the team winning 68 regular season games and reaching the Finals, the franchise has 80 corporate sponsors, up 22% year over year. They’ve sold roughly 21,000 jerseys in the team store since July 1, 2024, and Game 1 of the Finals not only brought in an all-time Paycom Center high of $400,000 in retail sales, but the per cap was $23.27, doubling the previous record.

“People don’t invest in, visit or live in cities they’ve never heard of,” Holt said. “So having the Thunder and then going to the NBA Finals means you’ve heard of us, right? Billions of people will pay at least a passing glance to what happens here the next couple of weeks.”

The irony is that Indianapolis, the city that inspired MAPS, is OKC’s Finals opponent — the rematch no one ever knew about. There’s now a 4-star Omni Hotel across the street from the arena, and 30 others where there used to be just one. Population in the metro area since 2010 is up 224,939 according to the census bureau, and Holt reminds anyone who will listen, “There are 19,500 cities towns and villages in America, and we’re bigger than all but 19 of them.”

There’s no denying it as another prairie thunderstorm rolls in: They’ve come a long way since NOOCH.

The smoke rose, pyrotechnics flared and cowbells tolled. In a scene largely reserved for Saturdays in the fall, Mississippi State welcomed new head baseball coach Brian O’Connor in a way few programs can.

The rigs and grills that facilitate the smoky haze that hangs over the outfield at Dudy Noble Field during the spring were opened to owners for tailgating. Concession stands poured $5 domestics and offered $3 hot dogs and nachos.

Those who donated to MSU’s “State Excellence Fund” in levels that ranged from $100 to $5,000, too, were rewarded with everything from commemorative baseballs and cowbells to Bulldogs jerseys.

O’Connor glanced out at the crowd, a smile cresting on his face, and summed up the scene at one of the sport’s cathedrals succinctly.

“Wow,” he mustered. “The Mecca of college baseball [is] right here in Starkville.”

The optics of O’Connor’s ballyhooed arrival from Virginia to Mississippi State were unique, sure. Few, if any, places can mimic the pageantry and fervor for baseball on display at Dudy Noble Field — albeit a similar scene will play out in the tailgate-like atmosphere at the College World Series in Omaha this week.

And while baseball isn’t the moneymaker its gridiron or hardwood counterparts might be, the sport enters a new-look college sports ecosystem as a winner in the passage of the House settlement earlier this month.

“Baseball is really the biggest example of a sport that’s kind of double dipping in this post-settlement world, because you’re having to solve for [three things],” South Carolina Athletic Director Jeremiah Donati explained. “Where football [and basketball] is strictly the rev-share component of NIL, baseball is kind of all three — it’s traditional NIL, it’s rev share and it’s ‘How fast can you add scholarships?’ and ‘How many?’”

Donati’s point, that baseball might be better off in a post-House settlement world, is layered.

The sport was long hamstrung by the 11.7 scholarships it was limited to under previous NCAA rules. In the new environment, where scholarship limits are a thing of the past, that’s opening a door for those willing to back extra scholarships up to the new roster limit of 34 players (down from 40).

South Carolina, winner of back-to-back CWS titles in 2010 and 2011, is slated to fund scholarships at or near the 34-man limit. Cross-state rival Clemson, too, is expected to be in the same ballpark.

Florida State, which turned in a more than $300,000 surplus on baseball in FY 2024, per its latest NCAA financial filings, meanwhile, is expected to jump to around 25 scholarships.

Reigning national title winner Tennessee, too, is likely to boost its scholarship number greatly, though a final number is still being ironed out, AD Danny White said.

How good is the influx of scholarships for the sport? That’s up for debate.

“A simple answer is, you’d think there’d be less parity [with Power Four schools funding more scholarships],” said Craig Keilitz, executive director of the American Baseball Coaches Association. “Then you look at this year’s NCAA Tournament, it’s probably as much parity as I’ve ever seen it.

”But with more scholarships means the better programs that have more money can offer more of the superstars. You look up and down — if it’s the SEC, the ACC, the Big 12 — they can gobble up more of those guys."

Beyond scholarships, the financial commitment to baseball coaching contracts and facility improvements has continued to balloon in recent years.

Tennessee’s Tony Vitello became the highest-paid coach in America last year, receiving a new deal worth $3 million annually. O’Connor’s deal with Mississippi State puts him in the same stratosphere at $2.9 million per year.

Eleven of 15 SEC head coaches made north of $1 million in 2025, and every coach in the league made $700,000 or more, per The Tennessean. Four ACC coaches also made more than $1 million this year, including North Carolina’s Scott Forbes at $1.7 million.

On the facilities side, Tennessee is in the midst of a $105 million overhaul of its ballpark. That comes just six years after Mississippi State completed a $68 million renovation of Dudy Noble Field. Florida State, too, is in the process of considering revamps at Dick Howser Stadium. And Vanderbilt, which was the top national seed in this year’s CWS, is renovating and expanding Hawkins Field.

“Baseball is a revenue-generating sport for us,” Florida State AD Michael Alford said. “So how do we grow that revenue? What can we do to enhance that situation to continue to grow that revenue even more?

“We’re looking at facility renovations. We’re looking at premium seating. We’re looking at what we can do to put baseball at the forefront and to continue to grow that sport at Florida State.”

The NIL market for college baseball players, too, has continued to climb.

Learfield’s 2024 NIL Impact report indicated that baseball players received the fourth-most NIL deals of athletes it tracked, behind football and men’s and women’s basketball.

Opendorse’s 2024 NIL industry report also suggested the highest earners in college baseball were making in the neighborhood of $50,000 — again behind football and basketball, but nearly six times more than the next closest sport, softball.

“If NIL and rev share wasn’t a thing, yeah, [baseball coaches] would be like, ‘Holy cow, we’re going from 11.7 to 34,” said Ole Miss AD Keith Carter. “But now they’re like, ‘OK, that’s awesome, but essentially everybody is doing that because everybody’s going to, one way or another, have full-ride scholarships. Now, what’s the rev share look like? What’s the next step?”

How much revenue will be allocated to baseball programs will vary widely. Football is expected to command 75% or more of the $20.5 million cap schools are funding up to the maximum, while men’s basketball is likely to eat another 15% depending on the place.

That leaves a sliver of the cap to be directed toward baseball. But in a world where coaching contracts are skyrocketing and scholarship investments are booming, the sport is well on its way to a cash infusion.

The departure of the NFL’s second-in-command executive kicked off a flurry of speculation about who would replace Brian Rolapp -- and how his broad portfolio might be divided -- and what those moves will say about the pecking order in the league’s front office as Commissioner Roger Goodell enters his 20th season.

As chief media & business officer, Rolapp oversaw the league’s media licensing business, NFL Media, NFL Films, sponsorship and consumer products and 32 Equity, the increasingly important investment arm. Those divisions are the league’s lifeblood. Led by the licensing of live game rights, Rolapp’s divisions generate the $13B in league revenue that was distributed to the 32 teams last year -- and 32 Equity has made the league a meaningful shareholder in growing companies like Genius Sports, Fanatics and EverPass Media.

Who would replace him? In the media vertical itself, Rolapp’s deputy, EVP/Media Distribution Hans Schroeder, would be the closest thing to a one-to-one successor. Schroeder, who joined the league in 2001, would represent continuity for the most critical business partners of the NFL, like Amazon, Disney, CBS Sports and others.

But it would be a big expansion in duties for Schroeder to take on sponsorship/products and 32 Equity as well, insiders say, and most experts I spoke with considered that unlikely. Schroeder lost oversight of NFL-owned media earlier this decade, and is not seen as a popular manager internally, sources said. If Schroeder replaces Rolapp on the media front only and Goodell took a status-quo approach, Chief Revenue Officer Renie Anderson -- who oversees sponsorship and consumer products -- could end up reporting directly to Goodell.

In replacing Rolapp, insiders say, the challenge will be to match his dealmaking ability and general competence, while also finding someone able to connect strategically across the NFL’s other business lines too. Under Rolapp, the league has secured favorable rights deals, which include the valuable early, NFL-side opt-outs in 2029, while continuing to foster new entrants such as Netflix.

Rolapp’s other direct reports include David Jurenka, SVP/NFL Media; Dhruv Prasad, senior VP/Business Development & Strategic Investments (and head of 32 Equity), and Ross Ketover, NFL Films senior executive. Jurenka has a good reputation, but the league has been trying to divest its owned-and-operated media for several years. Prasad is still new to the league, but 32 Equity has become vastly more important to the enterprise since he started and will continue to grow in importance, so he could be in line for a more prominent role.

With Goodell under contract for two more NFL seasons and expected to sign an extension taking him into the 2030s, talk of a specific successor is still highly speculative. Still, this moment could tell us a lot.

If Goodell takes Rolapp’s departure as a chance to broadly reorganize the C-suite, it would be a chance to signal his succession vision. Specifically, experts said, if Goodell gives Rolapp’s entire portfolio to any single current NFL executive, multiple sources said, that would be a very strong sign for that person.

Another thing to watch: If any current executive is given new duties seen as a big step outside of their current specialty -- for instance, if Anderson or EVP Peter O’Reilly is given some of Rolapp’s media portfolio -- that would be an indicator that somebody thinks they’re perhaps commissioner material one day, and that would be an opportunity to prove it.

O’Reilly has exceeded expectations handling a remarkably diverse portfolio, which includes the NFL’s critical international division, the Super Bowl and club business -- all top priorities. He is also especially popular on a personal level. Anderson has thrived overseeing sponsorship and products since her promotion to CRO in 2019, and is said to be an excellent relationships manager internally and externally. But both would likely need more experience in media, and arguably labor relations, to be seen as possible Goodell successors.

Don’t sleep on an external hire to fill Rolapp’s shoes. NFL owners place a premium on institutional knowledge and relationships, but there’s signs of that changing as the league becomes more sophisticated and aspires to global relevance. The last two additions to the C-Suite, CFO Christine Dorfler and General Counsel Ted Ullyot, were both outsiders. NFL owners increasingly view themselves without a true peer in sports, so replacing Rolapp from a global media or IP businesses could make the most sense. It could be a chance to bring back well-regarded former NFL execs, such as Chris Halpin or Kevin LaForce, both of whom were considered high flyers before leaving in 2022 and 2021, respectively.

“We have spent some time planning for this change and are confident we will successfully manage the responsibilities while we align our structure to meet our long-term strategic goals,” Goodell wrote in Thursday’s memo announcing Rolapp’s departure, promising more details soon.

The NWSL will hold its 2025 championship on Nov. 22 at PayPal Park in San Jose, where second-year club Bay FC plays its home matches as a tenant of the Earthquakes. It marks the second time in three years the league will hold its title game in California after Snapdragon Stadium in San Diego hosted in 2023. CPKC Stadium in K.C. hosted the match last year.

The decision to award hosting duties to Bay FC comes as little surprise given the massive investment the club’s owners, led by private equity firm Sixth Street, made with its then-record $53M expansion fee in 2023. The team has been a strong draw out of the gate, averaging 13,617 fans per match during its inaugural regular season in 2024. The club is scheduled to host a match later this season at Oracle Park in S.F., where it hopes to set a new NWSL single-game attendance record.

The title game will air on CBS for the fourth straight season and also stream on Paramount+. Google Pixel will make its second appearance as the match’s presenting sponsor.

The league will continue its practice of hosting its championship at a neutral site rather than allowing the higher-seeded participating team to host the match. NWSL Commissioner Jessica Berman has expressed a preference for the neutral-site model from an operational and promotional standpoint.

“This is our opportunity to really deliver what we feel is a best-in-class national event that requires weeks and months of preparation,” Berman said at last year’s championship in K.C. “It’s the reason that the NFL holds the Super Bowl at a neutral site. It’s an opportunity for us to give all of our partners an opportunity to activate and to help us to spread the message of the NWSL and drive all eyeballs to the championship match, which is the pinnacle of our season.”

The NWSL Championship is the latest major sporting event to pick the S.F. Bay Area as its host. The NBA held its All-Star Game at Chase Center earlier this year, and the NFL will bring Super Bowl LX to Levi’s Stadium in February. Levi’s Stadium will also host six matches as part of next summer’s FIFA World Cup.

Texas is one of the cradles of competitive gaming in the U.S., with the legacies of studios such as id Software, Ensemble Studios, Origin Studios and Origin Systems and events such as QuakeCon (coming in August) still felt in today’s scene (over 100 development houses, not counting smaller indies, still call Texas home). And Counter-Strike’s competitive scene in the U.S. launched in Texas over 20 years ago. It’s that backdrop that serves as Blast’s first visit to Moody Center later this month for the Counter-Strike Austin Major, its first such event in the U.S. since Boston 2018.

Online qualifiers are underway, with the finals taking place at the Moody Center from June 19-22. Tickets -- 40,000 over the four days -- sold out within six hours of being on the market.

It’s the first esports event for Moody Center, which has become a hot spot not just for basketball but concerts as well. It also marks a concerted effort between the city’s sports commission, Moody’s, tourney organizer Blast and local businesses to cater to what they all hope are tens of thousands of fans. Sixty-five percent of the tickets were from fans outside Texas. Per the Austin Sports Commission, the city’s 15,000 hotel rooms in downtown and 55,000 throughout the region make it a prime locale for hosting events like a Counter-Strike major.

I spoke with various stakeholders -- in this case, Blast VP/Ecosystem Andrew Haworth, Austin Sports Commission Executive Director Drew Hays, Moody Center GM Jeff Nickler (also president of Oak View Group Austin) and Complexity Gaming CEO and founder Jason Lake -- about what it takes to stage a big esports event like the Austin Major in a city that’s never hosted such a spectacle before.

Before diving into the interviews, I did want to note a comment from Lake. While he said Complexity isn’t bringing any members of the Cowboys with them -- Jerry Jones is also a co-owner of the organization -- he wouldn’t be surprised if some Cowboys or other pros show up to the major.

“One thing that’s made me chuckle over the past seven years is how many professional football players are fans of esports players, how many professional athletes in America interact with esports stars,” Lake said, who went on to note that events like these are showing the confluence between pro sports and esports in the U.S., even when there’s not concerted effort to link up the two.

These excerpts have been lightly edited for clarity.

Tapping into Texas’ legacy of gaming

Jason Lake (whose team is based in Frisco): “Perhaps we’re the ‘spiritual hosts,’ as Complexity started playing events in Texas about 22 years ago. We definitely consider America to be home and Texas to be the birthplace of Counter-Strike esports.”

Andrew Haworth: “[For] attendance, Texas is up there for Counter-Strike. While we want to be bold and bring the best entertainment product to fans, we weren’t doing that spuriously -- we wanted to do it somewhere with passion for Counter-Strike. We had to wait for a major to make that splash.”

Drew Hays: “Austin is referred to as ‘Silicon Hills.’ Combined with a new state-of-the-art arena, we knew Austin could be a prime location for esports not just now but into the future.”

Promoting Texas and the U.S. for esports

Lake: “Anytime a tournament organizer like Blast and their partners bring such a significant event to our region, we’re going to do whatever we can to support them. ... American fans love to attend live events. I know the American fans are going to fill the stands and bring lots of energy.”

Jeff Nickler: “The desire was for Moody to be one of the busiest arenas in the country. Under that umbrella, the bulk of our content is music -- it’s one of the five busiest arenas for music in the world -- but our goal was to take that music calendar and complement with every genre of event possible, from sports to music to comedy and now esports. We worked several years to get across the finish line for our first major esports event, and I hope this is just the beginning of a great relationship with Blast.”

Austin’s path to a Counter-Strike major -- and what it means for Texas

Hays: “When esports was first evolving for us and our board of directors in 2018, we went through a strategy session on what type of sporting events we should target for Austin, and esports was No. 1 on the list. ... We went through a number of unsuccessful bids on the lead-up to hosting the Blast.tv Austin major. We’re excited, not just from a promotional standpoint for the city, but also, it’s going to drive huge economic impact to our local economy.”

Lake: “The direct economic impact is estimated to be $30 million. Forty-thousand tickets sold, with 65% from out of state. Any time an American city can bring in that kind of economic impact and that many people from out of state to experience their culture and fill their hotels and restaurants, it’s a big win.”

Haworth: “When booking this, at the end of the COVID period, with Moody Center just coming online as a new venue, we wanted to hit one of the hot spots in the U.S. for entertainment. ... Wanted to bring it back [a Counter-Strike major] with a bang, in one of the most fun, most exciting cities in the U.S. -- Austin’s welcoming.”

Austin’s strategy for the future

Hays: “We’re looking for both [arena events and competitions with conventions, like fighting game event Evo]. This is a great case study for us. From a convention-event perspective, Austin is getting a new convention center in 2029, so we’re looking at all of it. We’re not going to pigeonhole us into one specific type of esports competition.”

Biggest hurdes and learnings for the Austin major

Hays: “Timing. When we submitted our initial bids, we didn’t have the complete package together, whether offsite venue, hotel space, arena load-in dates secured. But we got it all lined up.”

Nickler: “We had no idea of the scope and reach of the fanbase for this type of event. The percentage of fans coming from well outside the market and the percentage of international fans is unique for us. The demand we had not only for public ticket sales but also for premium inventory was through the roof. We fielded hundreds of calls from fans who wanted to buy suites or premium seating or upgraded experiences for this event. The demand for us was on-par for a music residency on the scale of a Harry Styles or Billie Eilish.”

What Moody Centers offers

Hays: “It’s a world-class arena. From a technological standpoint, from a premium seating standpoint, from its location in downtown Austin, it’s one of the busiest arenas in the country.”

Haworth: “[Location] always plays a part. Moving 200 players and 100 of their support staff plus 150-200 staff ourselves, let alone 40,000 fans who bought tickets, [Austin and Moody Center] score high on both of those events. ... Moody is a brand-new venue coming online. When we were booking it, it had the latest and greatest in technology and venue layout. Love its location on a university campus, you’re pretty close by European standards to downtown, so it’s walkable. So many great venues in world and U.S. are on outskirts of the city, so you don’t feel the city’s vibe energy, and you do have that with Moody Center, which is important to the event. ... It’s very easy to load into it, rig and set staging, cabling and internet -- all the stuff that we have to lift and put in backstage that’s usually a pain for the team isn’t a pain.”

Nickler: “It’s a new arena, barely three years old, so it’s state of the art in every single way, from the ease of load-in, because the production for an event of this scale is massive, to build this incredible stage, an adequate seating capacity -- over 15,000 when filled -- and then all those premium hospitality spaces, concessions options, bars that fill out the arena. These folks come to the arena and spend hours upon hours at these events, so having the capability to serve these fans from a food and beverage perspective is huge as well. ... The size and scope of this event, the last major event we did that was multiple days and required a similar lift on technology was the CMT Music Awards, a major televised award show. It would be a good comparison -- multiple days of load-in, a sold-out crowd, a very unique, specific design stage and look for the event. This building was built to be flexible and host any type of event, regardless of bandwidth or technology needs.”

On worries about foreign fans entering the U.S.

Haworth: “I don’t see how the U.S. is really any different than rest of world -- if you’ve got the right process, follow rules and you’re bringing value to a location, I find the world is welcome and open to business.”

• The Stanley Cup Final is headed back to Rogers Place in Edmonton on Saturday night, giving the Oilers another opportunity to cash in on their fans’ fervor and add to the notable business records set during last week’s home games, reports SBJ’s Alex Silverman.
• MLS players could protest publicly during the 2025 FIFA Club World Cup, which begins Saturday in Miami, amid an ongoing dispute over how Club World Cup prize money will be shared with players, writes Silverman.
• FIFA’s Club World Cup is coming to Roblox on Sunday via development house Gamefam’s Super League Soccer, notes SBJ’s Jason Wilson.
• With the Tigers running away with the AL Central, local ratings (through June 9) have jumped 82% YOY, the largest such increase for any U.S.-based MLB team over that span, reports SBJ’s Mike Mazzeo.
• Scripps Sports and the WNBA reached a multiyear agreement to keep ION the home of the WNBA on Friday nights, a deal that has been in place since 2023, writes SBJ’s Mollie Cahillane.
• Forty-three percent of fans who support women’s sports are more inclined to buy a brand if it has a partnership with a female athlete, notes SBJ’s Emma Grace Jimenez from Parity’s “U.S. Women’s Sports 2025: Give The Fans What They Want” study.