SBJ Unpacks: NHL sponsor roster grows to 75 brands

Tonight in Unpacks: As the NHL heads into its Global Series weekend, it carries with it a roster of 75 brands, with two notable sponsors joining up for this season, reports SBJ’s David Broughton.

Also tonight:

• Euroleague CEO says continent doesn’t need NBA Europe
• Sports Media Pod: American’s Tim Pernetti talks football
• How Travis Murphy is helping sports navigate immigration
• Op-ed: A secure fan is a repeat fan

Listen to SBJ’s most popular podcast, Morning Buzzcast, where SBJ’s Joe Lemire discusses MLS’ upcoming vote on a major calendar change, Athletes Unlimited adding two expansion teams, Versant’s first major college sports deal with the Pac-12 and more.

PUBLISHING NOTICE: The Nov. 14 edition of the SBJ Betting newsletter will not run on Friday. The newsletter returns next week.

The NHL heads into its final Global Series presented by Fastenal games -- a pair of matchups between the Predators and Penguins at Avicii Arena in Stockholm -- with 75 corporate sponsors.

The league’s global sponsor roster grew to a dozen partners for the 2025-26 season with the additions of Sony and luxury watchmaker Norqain. Notable sponsors for the weekend series include Sweden-based Unibet and Mercedes-Benz, the league’s official car in Sweden and the presenting sponsor of the NHL Global Fan Tour in Stockholm. PPG (a sponsor since 2017), Chemours (2018), AWS (2021) and Bally’s (2021) did not return this season.

With NBA Europe likely to be greenlit in the coming months, the EuroLeague CEO said in a just-released Leaders In Sport podcast that “we don’t need a new league” and insinuated that if the two sides can’t collaborate on a business approach, “I’m really afraid that we will harm the basketball in Europe.”

Speaking Tuesday on the “Leaders Worth Knowing” podcast, EuroLeague CEO Paulius Motiejunas said the NBA is “following the money solely,” implying the American league has a commercial-first agenda that is the polar opposite of the EuroLeague’s basketball-first approach.

“We definitely appreciate the way that the NBA’s running the business in the U.S. and how amazing they grow the product, whether it’s the TV contract that they signed and there’s many, many things,” Motiejunas said. “But we need to understand it’s Europe. And we have this know-how that we can sit down and share [with the NBA] … It is just a matter of goodwill and listening to each other."

George Aivazoglou, the NBA Europe and Middle East managing director, said last month that -- along with FIBA -- the league continues to have “good-faith” dialogue with the EuroLeague, while NBA Deputy Commissioner Mark Tatum has disputed the notion that the venture is just money-driven.

“Just to be clear, we think there is a commercial opportunity, but the reason that we’re doing this is not primarily commercial,” Tatum told international media on Oct. 21. “…We see an opportunity to continue to accelerate the growth of basketball across Europe and to serve fans that aren’t currently being served today.

“We think, for example, if you look at the EuroLeague, or the top-tier league in Europe today, there are no franchises at all in the UK. There is no permanent franchise in Paris. There is no permanent franchise in Rome, in Berlin. So, these are some of the biggest markets in Europe that aren’t being served with a top-tier basketball league. That is our focus, is to create, one, clarity in the ecosystem, right?”

Motiejunas’ main concern, then, is the likely disruption NBA Europe would cause to the EuroLeague, considering four of its franchises -- Real Madrid, Barcelona, Fenerbahçe and LDLC ASVEL Villeurbanne -- all have expiring contracts with the EuroLeague after the 2025-26 season and could flee to NBA Europe for its launch in 2027. Motiejunas previously told the Wall Street Journal that two-thirds of EuroLeague teams are losing money, and Eurohoops has reported that Real Madrid is estimating a €38M (US$44.2M) financial deficit this coming season, its biggest loss ever.

In addition, almost 90% of European basketball teams are ineligible to compete in the EuroLeague, whereas every team could potentially qualify for NBA Europe -- a development that could ultimately turn NBA Europe into the top-tiered league on the continent, supplanting Motiejunas’ league.

For his part, Motiejunas said “it’s fair to say” he has had no recent discussions with NBA Commissioner Adam Silver or Tatum, adding discussions between the two entities are “not as deep and not as far” as he had wished. Sources, however, maintain the NBA has met multiple times with Euroleague over the past several months, including a public chat --posted on Instagram--between Motiejunas and Silver in Abu Dhabi this early October.

It’s conceivable, too, that Motiejunas is threatened that EuroLeague’s direct competitor, the FIBA-led Basketball Champions League, could potentially have one or two teams qualify for NBA Europe–possibly pushing EuroLeague even further down the region’s basketball totem pole.

Either way, there is the sense the NBA could crystalize its European venture in mid-January, likely while the Grizzles and Magic are playing against each other in Berlin (Jan. 15) and London (Jan. 18). Raine Group and JP Morgan are expected to soon take NBA Europe to market, with sources saying the NBA is pursuing franchise fees between $500M and $1B. That price tag has been characterized as steep to EuroLeague teams.

“We have been running the best league in Europe for 26 years,” Motiejunas said on the podcast. “We need to protect the sport, we need to protect the clubs, we need to protect the fans. And I keep repeating that we don’t need a new league.”

On this week’s pod, host and SBJ media reporter Austin Karp is joined by Tim Pernetti, commissioner of the American Conference, as they dig into the latest with college football. Plus, Karp gets into whether anything is close with the YouTube TV-ESPN standoff, the end of the ESPN Bet experiment and Unrivaled adding another night of action.

The NFL’s first game in South America was a rousing success, with the Philadelphia Eagles and Green Bay Packers drawing a sellout crowd of 47,236 in 2024 at Corinthians Arena in São Paulo, Brazil. As the league prepared to return in 2025, it ran into some new red tape.

Earlier this year, Brazil introduced a visa requirement for U.S. nationals, meaning hundreds of players, coaches and staff now needed individual travel authorizations. A single paperwork error or delay could have been catastrophic.

Enter Travis Murphy, a former U.S. diplomat who now helps sports properties navigate the complexities of cross-border movement. As the NFL expands its international efforts, the league is leaning more on its relationship with Murphy and his boutique advisory firm, Jetr Global Sports + Entertainment, to ensure it all goes smoothly.

“A lot of these travel issues are complicated, and some of the casework we get into is really complicated,” said Brendon Plack, the NFL’s senior vice president of public policy and government affairs. “Travis brings expertise to the league and has really good connections with the U.S. State Department and with other governments that can help get the paperwork in order.”

Murphy worked at the intersection of sports and immigration in both the government and private sectors before founding Jetr Global in 2022. From 2009 to 2016, he served in a variety of diplomatic posts for the U.S. State Department, including stints at embassies in the Ivory Coast, Ecuador and Suriname. He also led the department’s Sports Diplomacy Division, recruiting current and former professional athletes and coaches to travel overseas to conduct camps and programs for underprivileged and at-risk youth.

He left the government for a job in international government affairs at the NBA. For nearly six years, Murphy oversaw the league’s relationship with the departments of State and Homeland Security while managing immigration and visa matters by advising and assisting teams, players and staff.

Before Murphy founded Jetr Global, sports organizations seeking specialized help with immigration issues often turned to expensive corporate law firms lacking specialization in sports. While Jetr also bills hourly or has retainer agreements with clients, Murphy believes Jetr’s understanding of both the sports industry and immigration ensures work is done more effectively and efficiently.

“There’s a real appetite and interest for doing things a different way,” Murphy said. “The corporate law firm model of charging exorbitant rates for an attorney to do many things that are non-legal in nature, I just think that’s becoming increasingly an outdated model.”

Plack said the NFL had worked with a handful of small law firms but has found Jetr Global to be a “one-stop shop” for the league’s international travel needs. The firm’s work for the NFL, which has scheduled 17 international games across nine countries since the start of the 2023 season, ranges from handling routine visa issues to putting out fires that arise in the weeks leading up to overseas games.

“‘There was a passport that slipped through the cracks and needs to be expedited through the State Department. Can you help with that?’ Or maybe it’s a foreign-born player who has a passport from a foreign country that needs to be updated and they’ll help troubleshoot that with the right embassy or consulate,” Plack said.

The NFL is just one of the sports organizations that has turned to Murphy for help with global travel-related issues since he founded D.C.-based Jetr Global. He has helped Duke University and the Phoenix Suns with thorny immigration issues involving South Sudanese center Khaman Maluach. His firm also secured travel authorization for 20 national teams across three host countries for the 2023 World Baseball Classic, and obtained Japanese entertainer visas for USA Basketball’s 3-on-3 team less than a month before a FIBA event. The firm now has nine full-time employees and three part-timers.

In addition to serving individual clients, Murphy has been an advocate in Washington, D.C., for sports-friendly immigration policy. While at the NBA, he was part of a coalition that successfully pushed for a “national interest exemption” to COVID-19 travel restrictions for athletes and other sports-related travel. In his private practice, he is focused on several reforms that will broadly benefit the U.S. sports industry.

“We’re not just implementing the policy as it stands, but also trying to influence that policy and trying to create advantageous outcomes for sports teams, leagues, federations and these coming events,” Murphy said. “It’s about creating a landscape where policies are in place and the recognition exists that this is an area that we, as a country, want to prioritize.”

One key area of Murphy’s focus is reducing barriers to entry for major global sporting events. After more than two decades without a FIFA World Cup or Olympic Games, the U.S. is set to host both over the next three years. Other global events, including the 2027 Military World Summer Games and 2031 FIFA Women’s World Cup, will collectively bring millions of visitors to America.

“A longer-term hope of mine is that we can create some sort of temporary visa around these sporting events, some sort of electronic travel authorization that many other countries have, or some sort of visa class that’s specific for these events,” Murphy said. “I do think the World Cup will expose some of the cracks that we have in the system that we can then patch for ’27, patch further for ’28 and just improve year over year.”

Three questions with Travis Murphy

What inspired you to found Jetr Global?

“I was fortunate enough to work on the Hill, to work as a diplomat and then to work at the most international American sports league at the NBA. So, I just had a unique combination of experiences that put me in a position where I could see this need existed and saw an opportunity to fill a space and a specialization that didn’t previously exist.”

What is the one thing you’d change about U.S. immigration policy if you could?

“A better appreciation for the role that sports plays in modern geopolitics and our own society and, as such, carve-outs for professional athletes. … I would like to see a less onerous process for professional athletes that are traveling to essentially only contribute value to our society.”

How ready is the U.S. government to host the 2026 FIFA World Cup?

“We have a decade of coming global sporting events, but this kicks that off, and the eyes of the world really will be on us. I’m concerned that we’re not putting ourselves in the best position to maximize this opportunity.”

Intersport has earned a reputation over the years as a production and event powerhouse, somewhat to the disadvantage of its sponsorship consulting, activation and related experiential sides. Looking to raise the profile of that part of the agency -- which has been known as “Agency Services,” encompasses some 80 employees and possesses clients such as JP Morgan Chase, Heineken and Under Armour and properties like the James Beard Foundation -- it is being rebranded as Intersport Partnerships and Experiential.

Jim Kenyon has been named the first president of that division. He has been at Intersport since 2010, most recently as EVP. Over the past 34 years, he’s worked at agencies such as McCann-Erickson, Starcom and Relay Worldwide.

“Our work has been solid. We just want to add some definition, [some] efficiency and make sure people know more about who we are and what we do,” Kenyon said. “We don’t lack in confidence, but maybe we lack arrogance, which isn’t a bad thing.”

A biz dev “head of growth” new hire, who will report to Kenyon, is also planned.

Under the reorg, Kenyon reports to COO Ryan Robinson, and a few who have been Robinson’s direct reports now report to Kenyon. Brian Graybill remains president of the whole of Intersport.

A few weeks ago, AXS rolled out a two-person duo to handle the prep required for the LA28 Games and a continued effort to grow globally.

The company shifted Alex Hazboun into a new chief innovation officer role and added Nikhil Bobde, formerly of Meta and Microsoft, as its CTO. Hazboun will report to Bobde and lead a team focused on next-gen technologies and other forward-looking initiatives, while Bobde will oversee AXS’ global tech organization and guide its scaling efforts.

Bringing in Bobde attaches a true titan of scaling to this ticketing platform. Bobde helped Facebook Video and Messenger support a nine-figure user population. In a way, there are some similarities between that work and what will come for AXS for LA28. But to him, there’s a different level of importance around proximity for both time and space at those Summer Games. If Instagram went down for 5-to-10 minutes, sure, users might complain, but eventually it would return, and users would resume their journeys. That’s not the case for supporting sports.

“When we are supporting games that are of global nature and everyone is relying on it, the availability bar, I would say, is even higher,” Bobde said. “The latency bar is even higher.”

Hazboun, who’d occupied the CTO role for nearly 10 years, pointed out that the company has expanded from a mostly U.S. and U.K. footprint to now running through much of Europe and into Japan and Australia. That created an effort to bolster all the business units throughout the world, which, as you can imagine, puts a premium on looking forward and innovating. It’s why this pairing was necessary going forward, said Hazboun.

“Being frank about it, that’s why we formed this role,” Hazboun said when asked about AXS’ innovation roadmap, highlighting a need to be bullish on future-ready experimentation. “Ultimately, it’s about really making sure we make [future-ready experimentation] front and center and part of our DNA.” More of that will surface as the LA28 Games approach, with Hazboun saying that AXS’ international reach will be a benefit as the worldwide event hits North America.

Bobde also expressed some of the underlying romanticism that comes with his new line of work. The emotional connection between fans and the sports and entertainment they crave is hard to compare to anything else, he shared. That alone made the potential of this new role hard to ignore.

“Some of the most memorable moments that we all have in our lives, they’re associated with being at that game with our friends when we won against a very close rival by two points, or being at the musical concert and we have been listening to that artist’s music for years.

“... That high that gives you the pinnacle fandom that you get to experience -- not only just during the event, but also after it kind of lingers on with you, and it becomes part of some of the most memorable moments of your life -- I think that’s what is so unique and inspiring about what AXS does.”

In sports, fan trust has always been the quiet currency behind every ticket sold, every sponsorship renewed and every packed playoff arena. But in an era defined by viral videos, global broadcasts and instantaneous public scrutiny, that trust is a measurable business asset.

When fans attend a live event, they’re not just showing up for the game or concert. They’re opting into a brand experience that begins long before kickoff and extends long after the final whistle. Every security touchpoint — from parking-lot patrols to gate screening to post-event crowd management — tells the fan something about how much the organization values their well-being.

And that message determines whether they’ll return.

“Safety and fan experience aren’t competing priorities anymore,” says P.J. O’Neil, co-founder at Arcus Group. “They’re the same thing. When a fan feels safe, they’re relaxed enough to enjoy the game. That feeling translates directly into loyalty and revenue.”

Security as brand experience

For decades, venue security was treated as an operational checklist, a cost center buried beneath marketing and guest services. But the modern fan experience is more holistic. Today’s audiences expect a balance between visible preparedness and seamless convenience. They want to feel secure without feeling surveilled, and they want to move through a space that feels intentional, not improvised.

From facial-recognition turnstiles to data-informed crowd-flow modeling, teams and venues are increasingly investing in solutions that merge safety with efficiency. These systems reduce bottlenecks, eliminate friction and build confidence. The smoother the entry process, the more positive the emotional association a fan has with the venue.

That sense of psychological safety has financial implications. According to Deloitte’s survey of more than 15,000 sports fans, the top priorities when attending a venue are safety, comfort and cleanliness, view from seats, game quality and atmosphere, and satisfying those “core four” drives stronger emotional connection to the team and more in-stadium purchases.

In other words, security doesn’t just protect revenue — it grows it.

The business of confidence

That trust pays dividends. In a competitive market where fans can easily stream the game from home, live attendance has to offer something more than proximity; it has to feel worth it. That “worth it” factor is built on emotional assurance: I’ll be safe, I’ll be cared for, and I’ll be part of something that values me.

Teams that invest in seamless security infrastructure see measurable returns: faster entry times, lower incident reports and higher renewal rates for premium ticket holders. Even sponsors are paying attention, with many now requiring detailed event safety plans before finalizing contracts.

Designing for safety, not reacting to crisis

Perhaps the most striking shift in recent years is the move from reactive to proactive strategy. Instead of responding to incidents, industry leaders are designing experiences that anticipate them. That design thinking extends beyond security perimeters — it shapes everything from parking layouts to food service lines.

Designing for safety isn’t about reacting to what went wrong last time — it’s about anticipating what could go wrong next. As former Secret Service agent Jason Russell noted on the “Managing Your Perimeter” podcast, “Security is like, we’re always chasing the last thing. Whatever happens tomorrow, we’ll chase that exact incident for a couple of weeks or a year. Then we realize the next one wasn’t like the previous one. We didn’t prepare.”

That kind of reactive loop costs organizations time, money and credibility. True safety design breaks the cycle: it’s intentional, data-driven and built to adapt before the threat evolves.

The takeaway

Fan trust is earned through systems. And in the sports and live-event industries, that trust has tangible economic value. A venue that feels secure retains fans, attracts sponsors and builds a reputation that outlasts the scoreboard.

Because at the end of the day, security is more than a protocol — it’s part of the promise.

A secure fan is a repeat fan. And a trusted venue is one that never has to sell safety; it simply embodies it.

Anna Reahl is managing director and co-founder of Arcus Group, specializing in temporary security perimeters. She has been managing large-scale events for the past 30 years in various roles, including 14 National Special Security Events (NSSEs), and co-hosts the podcast “Managing Your Perimeter.”

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• UFC jumped on the prediction-market bandwagon with a sponsorship making Polymarket the “Official Prediction Market” of TKO’s MMA circuit, along with its Zuffa Boxing promotion, notes SBJ’s Terry Lefton.