SBJ Unpacks: Detroit shows PWHL it has a future in the Motor City

Tonight in Unpacks: Some of the most ardent women’s hockey fans are showing up in Detroit for the PWHL’s Takeover Tour, and they have an agenda: Making a case for an expansion team, as SBJ’s Irving Mejia-Hilario writes in this week’s magazine.

Also tonight:

• Fanatics Studios opens with LA28, Fox, ESPN, MLB among partners
• RWJBarnabas nabs Red Bull N.Y. facility naming rights
• NBA riding broadcast TV to big gains
• Op-ed: The importance of logistics for global events

Listen to SBJ’s most popular podcast, Morning Buzzcast, where Joe Lemire discusses the return of Brooks Koepka to PGA Tour events under a special program, NASCAR racing back to the future for its Cup Series postseason, Fanatics launching a film studio and more.

The PWHL is using each stop of the Takeover Tour as a live-market test ahead of expansion for the 2026-27 season, and Detroit continues to make one of the strongest cases.

With plans to add two to four teams next year, PWHL executives are evaluating cities like Detroit for sustained fan demand, corporate support and arena viability — metrics that go far beyond single-game attendance.

“Detroit is Hockeytown,” said Amy Scheer, the PWHL’s executive vice president of business operations, who was at Little Caesars Arena on Jan. 3 for the league’s sixth stop on its 11-city, 16-game Takeover Tour across the U.S. and Canada. “The folks at the Red Wings and Ilitch Sports have just been amazing partners to work with. This arena is beautiful. The fans are great. We feel like home here.”

As the league progresses toward its inevitable expansion, Scheer travels to as many games as she can. Little Caesars Arena has been a staple of the Takeover Tour since its inception in 2024.

When the Vancouver Goldeneyes defeated the Boston Fleet 4-3 before an announced crowd of 9,624 on Jan. 3, many fans held signs demanding that the PWHL bring a team to Hockeytown.

The city’s passion for women’s hockey is evident throughout, with fans from downtown to the QLine streetcar donning team and league merchandise, including PWHL beanies. Inside the arena, the atmosphere intensified, with fans of all ages chanting “We want a team!” while cheering for their favorite players.

Detroit has consistently ranked among the PWHL’s top-tier Takeover Tour markets, with its two prior games each setting U.S. attendance marks for professional women’s hockey, according to the league. The city also boasts a premier venue in Little Caesars Arena. If the PWHL placed a team in Detroit, it would add another NHL-caliber building to the league’s venue mix.

Still, Detroit lags behind other potential markets, particularly in Canada, which has drawn sold-out crowds in Vancouver (19,038) and Quebec City (18,259) and benefits from smaller venues better aligned with the PWHL’s typical attendance.

Despite its strong appeal, Detroit is judged on the same business, fan and infrastructure metrics as any prospective market, Scheer said. Beyond attendance, the league evaluates merchandise sales, social media engagement, arena quality, travel logistics and corporate community support. As part of that process, the tour includes both a weekday and weekend game in Chicago, Edmonton and Halifax to compare attendance patterns.

When the Takeover Tour wraps up in early April, the league will compile its data and present it to the PWHL board to determine which cities will be awarded franchises. Scheer said the league remains quiet on which markets are leading contenders. The PWHL has been linked to several cities and is expected to announce new markets in March or April.

“When we get to 12 teams, we’re done expanding, I think, for quite a while,” Scheer said. “But the No. 1 reason for the Takeover Tour is building audience. It doesn’t have to be about expansion to do these. We’re already in conversations with several cities for next year already, and so I don’t see the Takeover Tour slowing down anytime soon.”

In Detroit, the PWHL would have at least a few players eager to make the city a permanent stop.

“Personally, I would like Detroit, just because [of my] home ties to here,” said Vancouver Goldeneyes defenseman and Michigan native Mellissa Channell-Watkins. “But again, we’re just excited that we have the ability to expand, if that’s what we choose to do.”

Fanatics is formally diving into the content production business by partnering with L.A.-based OBB Media to launch Fanatics Studios. The new division, helmed by CEO Michael Ratner, will look to create feature films, documentaries, live event specials, digital series and scripted/unscripted originals. At launch, Fanatics Studios will be partnering on content alongside LA28, Tom Brady, Fox Sports, ESPN, WWE and MLB.

As a content partner with LA28, Fanatics Studios will create film, TV and digital projects, and it also will produce the official Olympic film that will be aired theatrically.

Fanatics is deepening its ESPN relationship, which included production of this past summer’s “Fanatics Fest: All Access” TV special. This new deal comes with a committed number of hours of programming this year and in 2027, including a renewal of the “All Access” special. Fanatics Studios also will assist ESPN and Full Day Productions in producing the ESPY Awards. Fanatics and OBB recently signed a 10-year deal to continue to co-produce Fanatics Fest.

The connection to Brady and Fox came out in September around the Fanatics Flag Football Classic, which is set to air on Fox this March from Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. New elements of that deal include a multipart docuseries following Brady in partnership with Shadow Lion, a production company co-founded by Brady in which Fox took a stake last year. The docuseries, dubbed “One More Drive,” follows Brady as he prepares for the flag event and potential quest to earn a roster spot on Team USA as flag football makes its Olympic debut at LA28.

Fanatics Studios and MLB will begin a partnership as well, including a docuseries alongside Box to Box Films that will launch this spring for the World Baseball Classic.

For WWE, Fanatics Studios will create a number of projects, including an unscripted culinary series with WWE superstars Jimmy and Jey Uso that will be distributed across WWE’s YouTube channels and social media platforms.

Red Bull New York (the MLS club previously known as the N.Y. Red Bulls) has sold naming rights for their new training center in Morristown, N.J., to RWJBarnabas Health. The facility, which is scheduled to open in March, will be known as the RWJBarnabas Health Red Bulls Performance Center.

The N.J.-based health care provider network will also have its logo on the front of the Red Bull N.Y. training kits, a space previously occupied by the Red Bull wordmark, as well as training jackets and specialty warmups throughout the season.

Terms of the agreement were not disclosed, but a league source said it is worth eight figures over the life of the deal, which is at least five years. Vantage Sports Advisors consulted for RWJBarnabas on the value of the training center naming rights.

RWJBarnabas will be designated as the official hometown healthcare system and EMS provider of Red Bull N.Y. and Sports Illustrated Stadium, as well as the club’s MLS Next Pro development team, youth programs and academy. It is also the official health and wellness provider of the Red Bulls Youth Programs.

Red Bull N.Y. also has a separate sponsorship agreement with the Hospital for Special Surgery, which is designated as the official hospital of the club and its academy.

The new Red Bull N.Y. performance center, which was designed by Gensler, could be used as a team training site during the 2026 FIFA World Cup, which would provide RWJBarnabas with additional visibility. The complex sits on an 80-acre land parcel and will include eight full-size outdoor pitches, including a 500-seat match field designated for academy games.

RWJBarnabas has become ubiquitous in professional and college athletics throughout N.J. The health care provider became the first-ever home jersey patch of the Devils in 2024 and a premier partner of Prudential Center. It also holds the naming rights to Rutgers’ sports medicine facility and serves as a sponsor of NWSL club Gotham FC, Princeton, Seton Hall, sports radio station WFAN-FM and several minor-league baseball teams.

The NBA is beginning 2026 with viewership up 18% from the same period last season, as added games on broadcast TV — and fewer on cable — plus another strong Christmas have helped boost gains in Year 1 of a new media deal. Games across ABC/ESPN, NBC and Prime Video have averaged 2.02 million viewers to date, up over what ABC/ESPN and TNT/truTV had at the start of 2025. That average goes closer to 1.8 million if one were to include the nonexclusive games airing on NBA TV.

Looking at regional delivery of games, 17 of 29 teams in the U.S. are seeing season-over-season gains thus far. Many of those teams are currently in business with Main Street Sports Group, which missed RSN payments to a number of those franchises recently.

NBC saw a strong start with its package on Oct. 21 and hasn’t looked back. That was the best NBA Tip-Off doubleheader in 15 years. Coast 2 Coast Tuesday (primarily regionalized windows) then debuted Oct. 28, with the Dec. 2 Knicks-Celtics game becoming the best pre-Christmas audience for the NBA on a Tuesday since 1996. Across all Tuesday games, NBC is averaging 2.9 million viewers, up 87% from the same Tuesday prime-time window last season. The company would not disclose Peacock-specific numbers for games on Monday night windows, but those are no doubt lower than linear TV had previously.

ESPN and ABC are up 30% season-to-date, albeit with fewer games on cable TV this season under the new media deal. The networks are averaging 2.53 million viewers, which includes the ABC Christmas games and a mix of midweek and weekend games on ESPN.

Prime Video’s debut NBA season is seeing the service average 1.2 million viewers per game. Looking at just comparable windows to last season, Amazon is holding its own — down just 3% from national networks in those windows last season. But in those same comparable windows, viewership among adults 18-34 is up 13%, while adults 18-49 is up 20% and adults 25-54 is up 17%. The Knicks-Spurs Emirates NBA Cup Final remains Prime Video’s best game at 3.1 million viewers.

Like with Prime Video’s NFL games and NASCAR races, the audience is significantly younger than with linear TV. The NBA’s median age on Prime Video is 46.6 years old, which is nearly eight years younger than the NBA on linear TV this season (54.5).

The NBA has also seen a total audience of 115 million people in the U.S. watch national games this season, the best figure for that metric at this point in the season on record (data going back to 2002). The number of viewers across NBC/Peacock, ESPN/ABC, Prime Video and NBA TV is up 85% vs. the same point last year. The NBA has also generated 75 billion video views across social media platforms, up 32% from the same point last season, per data from Videocites.

Topics on my beat that I’m watching closely in 2026:

Consequential court cases

I crossed the Tim Leiweke bid-rigging case (more on that below) off my 2026 watch list, but two lawsuits of major consequence remain — the Mavericks and Stars’ legal tussle in Dallas and the Department of Justice’s antitrust lawsuit against Live Nation.

The Dallas affair is fascinating because the outcome will have a huge say in the city’s sports venue future. Does the DFW metroplex end up with four arenas by 2031? Or can the city of Dallas salvage its relationship with the Stars and keep them in American Airlines Center? It’s the first time in U.S. sports business history that two co-tenants sued each other, and this will be a heck of a precedent regardless of the outcome.

Anyone paying a speck of attention to sports business can grasp the magnitude of the potential DOJ-Live Nation trial. Could the DOJ bust up Live Nation and Ticketmaster? Sit with that for a minute. The impact would reach into every corner of revenue-generating sports.

But I’m still skeptical that the trial ever happens (see, again: Tim Leiweke, below).

Leiweke’s next act

Leiweke’s early December pardon by Trump — “with prejudice,” meaning this legal issue is forever over for the Oak View Group co-founder — has enabled him to approach 2026 very differently than he might have otherwise. His daughter, Francesca Bodie, left OVG last fall, and it’s easy to envision her and her father launching a new investment/project vehicle related to sports and entertainment venue development.

It might not be limited to just creating new arenas, though. This line from the Wall Street Journal’s thorough story — I’m not afraid to admit I deeply wish the story had my byline on it — published shortly after Leiweke’s pardon jumped out (italics are mine): “He said he plans to move forward with a new company and buy a sports team.”

The 2026 FIFA Men’s World Cup

As an American, a soccer fan, a sports business journalist and a close watcher of politics, I’ll just say this: It could be a strange event in so many different ways.

Price elasticity

Full-year 2025 Consumer Price Index data comes out Tuesday, a day after this newsletter publishes, but it’s not hard to imagine that a category way down toward the bottom of the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Excel spreadsheets called “Admission to Sporting Events” will again see notable year-over-year price increases.

From January 2023 to 2024, the cost of live sports attendance jumped 13.5%, then another 6.5% from Jan. 2024 to Jan. 2025.

This is not unique to sports; prices on everything from instant coffee (up 24% from Nov. 2024 to Nov. 2025) to chewing gum (which saw a 10% rise during the same period) to uncooked ground beef (15%) are abnormally high. But it’s an issue that the live sports industry — which still counts as discretionary spending for most people — needs to keep front of mind, especially as it builds new stadiums and arenas with smaller capacities (further ticket prices).

Additionally, I’m curious to see if the HOTDOG Act, short for “Honest Oversight of Ticketed Dining and Onsite Grub” Act, goes anywhere. It would direct the Federal Trade Commission to investigate any price gouging in concessions in professional sports.

Practice facility/team HQ mixed-use prospect becoming more prevalent

The Cowboys’ home base in Frisco, The Star, should sit on the same sports-related mixed-use pedestal as the Braves’ development northwest of Atlanta, The Battery.

Practice facility/team HQ-anchored mixed-use developments are en vogue, and the Cowboys were trendsetters. Special mention to the Vikings, who created what’s usually the second stop for any team touring these kinds of facilities for ideas and inspiration, Viking Lakes.

The Chiefs’ recently announced project in Johnson County, Kan., is the latest example, following recent ones from the Browns, Cardinals and Rams.

I bring this up because the Chiefs’ deal with Kansas includes an entire pro sports real estate portfolio, not just a singular stadium, training facility or real estate development, and it’ll be interesting to watch these separate projects — the stadium and its mixed-use development and the team’s HQ and training facility and its mixed-used development — come to life at similar times.

What works in one setting but not in the other?

Which has more community impact?

Which can be a greater economic engine?

We’ll have a nice test case to watch.

Another year of big stadium/arena decisions

This will be another consequential year of stadium and arena decisions. For example:

• The Royals, who are on their own after the Chiefs successfully negotiated with the state of Kansas and Johnson and Wyandotte counties.
• The Buccaneers, whose Raymond James Stadium lease ends in 2028.
• The Bears’ Chicagoland exploratory adventure.
• The New England Revolution’s Everett waterfront stadium effort, which seems to be moving in the right direction.
• The Vancouver Whitecaps, fresh off an MLS Cup finals appearance, are seemingly homeless after their BC Place lease expired, though a short-term extension appears to be in the works after the club and city agreed to explore the possibility of building a new soccer-specific stadium.
• The Mavericks and Stars, whose American Airlines Center leases end after the 2031 seasons.
• The Rays (under new ownership), whose Tropicana Field lease expires in 2028.
• Memphis’ FedEx Forum, where the Grizzlies’ lease ends in 2029 and there has been little movement.
• KeyBank Center and Smoothie King Center, a pair of arenas I group together because they both were put on the backburner by larger NFL projects in Buffalo and New Orleans, and in both scenarios, short-term extension options were activated to secure more time. Both arenas need some TLC.

Ensuring the success of any sporting event involves the precise running of a logistics machine that comprises hundreds or even thousands of separate components. Just a handful of these components being overlooked or unaccounted for could jeopardise the event — and, when it comes to the organisation of events in vastly different geographical locations around the world, there are even more decisions and contingency plans to be made.

Assessing the infrastructure

The precise location of an event, or series of events, can heavily influence the aspects which must be factored into the logistics happening in the background. No matter how remote, how many athletes and pieces of equipment which need to be flown in, and how extensive the planning period required — spectators expect a return on the time and money they’ve invested into attending, and that includes the planning going off without a hitch (at least not one detectable to the public).

An event like the London 2012 Olympic Games is not without its own complex challenges, but one of the saving graces when a major city is hosting the occasion is the fact there’s often a good infrastructure in place already. With five international airports and a network of motorways and major transport links, London is already equipped to welcome an estimated 30 million tourists a year (according to Condor Ferries).

Of course, the additional 2 million Olympic spectators in two weeks were always going to be an exercise in elite logistics management, not to mention 10,500 athletes from 204 regions and — estimated by Olympics.com — an incredible 2 million separate pieces of equipment.

But when you compare this to major events which happen in cities where there isn’t the sort of infrastructure a tourism hotspot builds up over decades, it’s clear to see how much logistics planning has to be adapted depending on the specifics of each event.

Overcoming the hurdles

Five of the six stadiums involved in hosting the FIFA World Cup in Qatar in 2022 were based in capital city Doha which, at less than 150 square kilometers, is under a tenth of the size of London and has been developing for around 200 years (compared to the 2,000 years of development London has undergone).

Around 800 flights either depart from or arrive in Doha every day but, to meet the demand from 3.4 million visiting football fans, the Qatar Tribune reported this number was doubled to 1,600 during the tournament. A total of 32 national teams also had to fly in, each with a squad of around 25 players, plus coaches, physios, managers, medics and other support staff — with everyone needing accommodation for the duration of the tournament in one of the 220 places to stay within Doha (as per Booking.com’s listings).

And the flights and accommodation considerations are just the start. Players need access to places to train, recover and meet; food and drink throughout; and the right equipment in the right place at the right time.

Rules and regulations

Much of the paperwork associated with the athletes themselves will be dealt with by their management teams — such as the relevant visas to allow them entry into the country hosting an event. But there are still plenty of customs rules which must be adhered to so that all of the equipment needed reaches its destination safely.

Specific regulations must be followed when it comes to importing all of the necessary items (Forbes estimated 900,000 pieces of sports equipment and 1.3 million items of furniture and fixtures were transported during the 2024 Olympic Games in Paris). Take for instance, the sports hydration and nutrition products that an athlete or team may rely on for high performance — there are often stringent laws around bringing food and drink into a country, and these must be navigated to ensure compliance.

And it’s not just a case of getting everything and everyone from A to B. There is an increasing expectation around the sustainability of sporting events, which extends to the obligations logistics experts are under. Optimising transportation routes and making maximal use of renewable energy and biofuels are all part and parcel of the process — adding an extra layer of research and planning into the mix, especially when considering events happening in areas which may not be as advanced as others when it comes to implementing sustainable travel.

A well-oiled machine

No matter how many events logistics specialists have successfully supported, a new event in a new location will present additional challenges to identify and overcome. There are such specific timescales around each sporting spectacle that each tiny component in the complex machine must be in place at exactly the right time to ensure optimal success. With so many considerations around routes, sustainability, local laws and, of course, supporting athletes to perform at their best on the day, it’s no wonder many of the larger-scale events can take so long to plan. While sports stars put many years of training and hard work into achieving their best, the behind-the-scenes stars are just as busy oiling the logistics machine.

Simon Hainsworth is managing director of CSE, which offers bespoke logistics solutions for major events throughout the UK, Europe and worldwide.

• Phillies 1B Bryce Harper is remaining with Under Armour, with the sides agreeing to a multiyear extension, reports SBJ’s Mike Mazzeo.
• Mazzeo also notes that the Athletes Unlimited Softball League on Tuesday announced permanent cities and venues for its six teams heading into its second season.
• The Reds and Xavier agreed to a 10-year sponsorship deal, which includes mutually beneficially marketing and educational components and makes Xavier the official university of the Reds, writes Mazzeo.
• League One Volleyball named Athletic Brewing Company its official nonalcoholic beer partner for the 2026 LOVB Pro season, expanding a relationship that began during the league’s inaugural year, notes SBJ’s Mary Gaughan.
• Pacers Sports & Entertainment hired ESPN broadcaster and former WNBA player Tamika Catchings as an official ambassador, reports SBJ’s Tom Friend.
• Friend also writes that the NBA named the Cavaliers as the Team of the Year at the league’s annual sales and marketing meeting.
• On the heels of signing a long-term paddle deal with Franklin Sports, pickleball star Anna Leigh Waters signed a multiyear apparel and footwear sponsorship with Nike, making her the first pickleball player to join the Swoosh’s roster of athlete endorsements, reports SBJ’s Rob Schaefer.
• Schaefer also writes that the Pickleball Slam showcase, co-owned by Horizon Sports & Experiences and GSE Worldwide, added Ares Management as its title sponsor in a multiyear deal.