SBJ Unpacks: ESPN, Big East reunite with digital rights deal

Tonight in Unpacks: The Big East and ESPN signed a six-year deal that will see the conference and network reunite for the first time since 2013, bringing content to ESPN’s DTC platform set to launch in the fall, reports SBJ’s Austin Karp.

Also tonight:

• Cardinals to launch luxury travel, hospitality offering for road games
• Mexico-U.S. final marks best Gold Cup game ever in English, helps Fox Sports to record tourney audience
• Olek Loewenstein has TelevisaUnivision pushing the envelope with soccer properties
• ROAR riding wave of positive feedback from mixed-use development white paper with Klutch, RBC

Listen to SBJ’s most popular podcast, Morning Buzzcast, where Abe Madkour looks at Joe Castiglione’s decision to retire as Oklahoma AD, how the Chiefs are growing their event business, where the Rays could play if they go deep in the postseason and more.

The Big East and ESPN are reuniting in a six-year deal that will give added content from across 22 sports to the network’s direct-to-consumer platform set to launch in the fall. The pact, which will be with ESPN+, does not include a linear component, as those deals were struck a year ago with Fox, NBC and TNT Sports. This deal, which is not a sublicense (done directly with the conference), will see 25 non-conference men’s basketball games stream on ESPN+ (ESPN’s DTC service is inclusive of ESPN+) starting with the 2025-26 school year. The tonnage within the pact, which was previously with FloSports over the last three school years (under the Big East Digital Network banner), is a minimum of 75 women’s basketball games and 200 Olympic sports events. Sources close to the situation said that a rights fee is involved, and the Big East will produce all streamed games.

Proskauer’s Benjamin Freeman repped the Big East in negotiations alongside Commissioner Val Ackerman. Handling talks for ESPN were SVP/Programming & Acquisitions Nick Dawson and Director of Programming & Acquisitions Mallory Kenny.

The Big East’s relationship with ESPN dates back to the conference’s first national deal in 1980. That deal ran until 2013, when the Big East went to Fox Sports after the seven Catholic schools broke off from the football schools.

The Arizona Cardinals are launching a luxury hospitality offering for road games, leveraging owner Michael Bidwill’s Gridiron Air charter flight business to serve fans wanting to see the Cardinals play outside Phoenix.

Cardinals Premier Travel, recently announced to season ticket holders, will start with one game in the 2025 season, the Nov. 3 “Monday Night Football” game in Dallas. Pricing starts at $2,500 for the silver tier, $4,500 for the gold tier and $6,000 for the platinum tier.

Bundled hospitality experiences built around tickets are nothing new in sports, but the Cardinals believe the private planes are a differentiator. Customers will fly to Dallas on a Gridiron Air-owned Boeing 777, painted in Cardinals red and white (they’ll use one of two identical planes not in use by the team that weekend).

Among other selling points in the package, that means the charter flight will return to Phoenix immediately after the conclusion of the Monday night game -- “just like the team,” Bidwill says -- which wouldn’t be possible if you depend on commercial flights.

“We think our packages are incredibly compelling for fans,” Bidwill told SBJ. “We make it simple and turnkey, and we take away all of the hassles in dealing with ground transportation and getting back that night after the game.”

The idea came from Bidwill’s desire to better monetize the aircrafts, and is being overseen by Cardinals SVP/Ticket Sales & Service Joel Adams. To put the package together, the Cardinals also enlisted help from Legends -- which will host a reception in Dallas with Cardinals retirees and team execs -- and the Cowboys to ensure ticket availability, which are in the lower level, club level or suites depending on the package. The trip includes two hotel nights, gift bags and merchandise.

The Cardinals declined to discuss the precise economics of the travel business line, but Bidwill said results of the pre-sale indicate the first flight will be profitable. “We know the demand is there, people are doing their own travel already,” he said.

Indeed, several teams and league execs say there appears to be a post-pandemic trend of fans specifically building plans around their teams’ road games at new scale.

The Falcons offer tickets to one road game each season to its club season ticket holders. Both the N.Y. Giants and Cowboys license their brands to independent businesses -- Big Blue Travel and Star Sports Tours travel, respectively -- who offer road trip packages around those teams. But officials believe the Cardinals are first to use private chartered planes and own the businesses themselves.

Fox drew 3.73 million viewers for Mexico’s win over the U.S. in the final of the Concacaf Gold Cup on Sunday night, marking the best English-language soccer match on U.S. airwaves since 6.02 million viewers watched Argentina-Colombia in the Copa America final last summer on Fox. Mexico-U.S. is also the best Gold Cup match ever in English. Two years ago, Fox drew just 1.11 million viewers for the Mexico-Panama final (the best Gold Cup final not involving the USMNT in English). Back in 2021, FS1 carried the U.S.-Mexico final, with the game drawing 1.79 million. The full Gold Cup across Fox, FS1 and FS2 this year averaged 474,000 viewers (31 matches), marking the most-viewed Gold Cup since Fox acquired rights to the event. That figure is up 21% from 2023 (393,000 viewers) and up and up 27% from 2021 (373,000).

TelevisaUnivision President of Global Sports Olek Loewenstein stopped by the SBJ Sports Media Podcast a couple of days ago for a wide-ranging conversation around soccer, rights deals and the growth of women’s sports.

Digging into the conversation, here are my three biggest takeaways.

The DAZN deal is paying off -- with potentially more to come

Back in February, TelevisaUnivision teamed up with DAZN to air 18 FIFA Club World Cup matches across its Spanish-language networks -- a move that Loewenstein says has “surpassed expectations.”

“It’s been a great success for us and we’re not surprised, but for sure very happy that it surpassed our expectations,” said Loewenstein. “What we built is a partnership. We produce the 63 games for DAZN beyond the ones that we had on screen. We built that partnership and the foundation that we wanted to keep consistency in what we had in Spanish-language for the market.”

Next up, TelevisaUnivision will be sublicensing some UEFA Champions League games over to DAZN, which Loewenstein said is consistent with a trend in the marketplace.

“We’re starting to get to know each other, and we’re probably going to transition into something a little bit more formal with the Champions League, and if that works, who knows?” said Loewenstein. “Maybe in the future there’s bigger things between the two of us.”

Women’s soccer stands on its own

TelevisaUnivision is in the midst of the UEFA Women’s Euros, and recently signed a deal with Concacaf through 2030 to bring a slate of that governing body’s women’s soccer -- including the Gold Cup and Copa America -- to the marketplace. “For the first time, we’re giving them the exposure,” said Loewenstein. “For the first time with Concacaf, we were able to strike a standalone deal for women’s football. Women’s football used to be a plus one of our larger deals.”

After seeing “great interest” growing on the women’s side in Mexico, TelevisaUnivision also put around 20 games from the women’s league south of the border on free-to-air TV, and have now begun testing in the U.S.

“It’s getting great traction,” said Loewenstein. “The product on the field is just phenomenal. The commercial side just needs to catch up, and it’s starting. You have clients and partners that only invest in women’s soccer, which is great.”

Loewenstein also pointed to Netflix’s deal for two iterations of the FIFA Women’s World Cup, saying it complements TelevisaUnivision’s efforts. “You’re talking about hundreds of millions of dollars [invested] in women’s soccer, which is not very far from the collective amount spent in men’s soccer,” said Loewenstein.

Liga MX remains king

For Loewenstein and TelevisaUnivision, Liga MX is still the golden goose. The company now has the rights to 15 of 18 teams. “It’s one of, if not, the most important property that we have for multiple reasons,” said Loewenstein.

Loewenstein pointed to the heavy viewership the Mexican league has in the U.S., noted the Premier League audience is only just starting to catch up. “NBC has done a great job,” said Loewenstein. “The thing is that it’s like comparing apples to oranges. The Mexican league is played in primetime. There’s way more inventory in the Mexican League. Only the best games of the Premier League get distributed on free-to-air, so you can’t really compare.”

Liga MX was one of the first properties Univision acquired when the sports network launched in 2012.

It’s not easy to move the needle with a white paper. In fact, it’s completely possible that the modern acronym “TLDR” -- “too long, didn’t read” -- was invented because of a white paper.

But Klutch Sports, RBC and ROAR (Revenue Over and Above Replacement) generated some buzz with the sports-adjacent mixed-use development white paper they released in early April. So much, in fact, that ROAR, led by Adam Grossman, is adding mixed-use developments to its advisory offerings. The nascent company also received an undisclosed investment from Kern Egan and his agency, Multiplier, that directly resulted from the white paper and ROAR’s added focus on mixed-use development.

ROAR’s business is monetizing and generating incremental revenue growth from sports assets. Mixed-use development expertise will slot into ROAR’s advisory offering, sitting alongside its product development and sales platforms.

ROAR’s mixed-use advisory will develop discounted cash-flow models, analysis and recommendations for its sports property clients. Grossman said the company is particularly interested in the mixed-use development possibilities around college sports venues. Former Learfield CRO John Brody, Tony Schiller (founder of Paragon Marketing and now EVP at Playfly) and Mike Morris (former CIO of Legends and CTO for MLB) are advising ROAR.

“The idea of being this entity that can bring all these parties together and help them all speak the same language and guide them to the best possible outcome for all, is really something of interest,” Grossman said. “Real estate assets could be one of the most important assets that impact sports, that are going to be the engine for future enterprise value growth.”

Filling a need

Grossman is seeing -- and trying to fill -- what others see: clear gaps existing between the sports and real estate worlds and between people with a career’s worth of knowledge and others just entering the space for the first time. Machete Group, Hunden Partners, and RCLCo could be construed as competitors in the mixed-use advisory business, but Grossman said ROAR would also like to collaborate with them on some projects.

“The idea of bringing this all together so that everybody is speaking the same language and helping to guide folks in this space is something we’ve seen as a real opportunity,” Grossman told me. “And the idea of not just providing advisory but then helping to commercialize.”

With the white paper, Grossman discovered something I routinely encounter writing for a trade journal -- when you’re in the weeds on a topic, it can be easy to overestimate what people know.

Grossman was struck by the unexpected feedback from people whose daily focus is on sports-adjacent mixed-use development who were impressed by how additive the 25-page paper was to the ongoing conversations around this topic.

“It’s more positive than I anticipated, and from a variety of sources,” he said. “Different people, depending on where they are in the sports ecosystem, have all taken away different, discrete points from that. Some people have taken away the higher level, some people have zeroed in on specific commercialization opportunities or the financing opportunities. ... It’s run the gamut.”

Klutch Sports and RBC, whose sports advisory led by Luana Harris had high-net-worth clients interested in more information about the topic, teamed on the initial idea, then reached out to Grossman, who is an expert in data and analytics. Crucially, he had also written longform content previously, including chapters in several books.

The paper (architecture firm Rossetti contributed, too) arrived just as the industry is craving more in-depth coverage of a topic whose basics have become pretty well established. It included case studies of several mixed-use developments in various states, ranging from built out and operating (Green Bay’s Titletown) to projects still in the earliest phases, like Ottawa’s LeBreton Flats.

What jumps out from the white paper

• The paper used the acronym “SMD” for sports anchored mixed-use districts. It’s much more efficient (and I might borrow it) and an example of the “common language” to which Grossman referred.
• The paper’s research found 37 projects announced across the Big 5 North American sports leagues in 2024; moving outside the Big 5 leagues into the USL or college would grow that number substantially.
• It was interesting to see the range of acreage these projects sit on, with roughly 50% sitting on fewer than 26 acres.
• Deeper information on the alternative funding sources that SMDs attract, including private credit, which could appeal to sports team owners who are more willing to pay higher interest rates thanks to expected internal rates of return (IRR) on the SMDs of up to 30%.
• And a look at the potential impact SMDs have on sponsorship deals, including a roughly 58% increase in new venue naming rights when the venue and the SMD campus are included.

The scale and size of the SMD opportunity is increasingly understood by the sports industry; now is the time for more in-depth information about how to take advantage.

“We said it was a $100 billion opportunity; Jon Fascitelli at SEREGH says it’s a trillion-dollar opportunity,” Grossman said. “The scope of this is enormous for an industry that’s already a several hundred-billion-dollar industry. And the idea that something that’s only starting could have that kind of impact on a hundreds of billions of dollars-a year industry is novel.”

• Learfield announced a multiyear extension with Illinois that will see the company’s on-campus staff in Champaign be integrated into and come under more direct oversight from the school’s athletic department, reports SBJ’s Ben Portnoy.
• The organizers of The Soccer Tournament have agreed to a four-year partnership with U.S. Soccer that makes it the exclusive media and commercial sales agent for the annual seven-a-side competition, reports SBJ’s Alex Silverman.
• Fresno State and The LinkU have agreed to a three-year partnership that will see the NIL platform serve as the processing platform for revenue sharing payments the school makes to its athletes, reports Portnoy.
• The AUSL has equipped all its teams with PitchCom devices to help catchers call pitches during all league games, reports SBJ’s Joe Lemire.
• Edge Sound Research has raised $2.75M in new funding led by Elevate Ventures and including participation by USTA Ventures, the DeVos family, LEAD VC, Cartan Capital and Potential Capital, among other angels in the audio and entertainment space, reports SBJ’s Rob Schaefer.