SBJ Unpacks: Silver pledges ‘substantial changes’ to fix NBA tanking

Tonight in Unpacks: NBA Commissioner Adam Silver addressed tanking Friday at MIT’s Sloan Sports Analytics Conference, saying “we have to address it” and planning to reveal solutions before next season, reports SBJ’s Joe Lemire.

Also tonight:

• PBR creating cowboy cool in the Windy City
• Unrivaled plans more tour stops in 2027
• Aon continues leaning in to LPGA partnership
• Molly Jolly named Angels president

Listen to SBJ’s most popular podcast, Morning Buzzcast, where Austin Karp wraps up the week with conflicting comments from key NFL partners on media rights, the NBA in talks for a national streaming package for games, Hurricanes owner Tom Dundon selling a slice of his team at an eyebrow-raising price and more.

BOSTON — NBA Commissioner Adam Silver pledged that there will be “substantial changes for next year” to remedy the perceived problem of tanking this season.

Silver stopped short of divulging the likely path forward but added there are a bunch of options.

“We have to address it,” Silver said Friday at the MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference. He added, “Not to exactly forecast where we’re going, but I think I’m an incrementalist.”

Decrying “a perfect storm” of conditions whereby the coming year’s draft is considered deeper than most and the next few are projected to be weaker, Silver said the incentive structure of the NBA is in need of an update.

A dramatic scenario would be to divorce the draft order from teams’ prior year record. “That would completely disincentivize tanking,” he said, before acknowledging it would be a major shock to the system. “We’ve got to be a little bit careful about how huge a change that would make. I’m not ruling anything out, but I’m paying attention to that.”

Another consideration, the commissioner noted, is the presence of “cliffs” in which teams have protected draft picks through a certain spot in the order, which he described as “arbitrary lines” that might influence a team’s intentional competitiveness.

Silver made clear that there are “legitimate rebuilds where you have young teams genuinely trying to win games.” That’s not what he’s trying to target, but he added, “I don’t view that as the kind of tanking we’re experiencing right now.”

Silver finished by invoking the name of his EVP overseeing the strategy department and crowdsourcing suggestions, saying, “All ideas, please send to Evan Wasch.”

Chicago is about to get a new bull.

The Professional Bull Riders and real estate developer The Cordish Companies this summer will be opening a PBR Cowboy Bar in Chicago less than a Pete Crow-Armstrong throw away from Wrigley Field, marking the Western-themed entertainment concept’s entry into its biggest city to date.

The 8,000-square-foot Wrigleyville site will be the concept’s seventh opening in the past three years (there are 16 overall), many of which are in markets that might surprise people.

In 2007 — there’s been a lot of dirt kicked up since then, so the exact date is a bit of a mystery — PBR’s Sean Gleason was introduced to The Cordish Companies’ principal, Reed Cordish, to discuss the possibility of opening a PBR-branded bar.

Gleason knew cattle, marketing and entertainment: He grew up as a ranch hand in his native Eastern Washington; had run business development for the sports games at the old Sierra Sports; had overseen six Grammy-nominated video and record projects and six multiplatinum video projects during his time at Miramar Productions; and had been PBR’s CMO since 2001.

Cordish, a Baltimore native who played tennis at Princeton and then on the ATP Tour for a short time after college, was running the eight-year-old Live-branded entertainment district portfolio for the real estate company founded nearly a century earlier by his great-grandfather.

“Sean was the one who came up with the idea, not us,” Cordish said. “He started pitching me right away on the strength of PBR as a brand and about how loyal and how sticky their fans are.”

After communicating over long distance, Gleason flew to Kansas City from PBR’s then-headquarters in Pueblo, Colo., to review in-person an agreement that was in place. The two sides met at Cordish offices at the under-construction Kansas City Power & Light District.

“It was just me from the PBR side, and on the other side of the table, Reed had a number of their key executives and a bunch of lawyers,” Gleason said. “So I took a couple hours to read through the agreement and when we reconvened, their team sat down and said, ‘Well, do you see any deal breakers in there?’ I said ‘You bet there’s a deal breaker in there!’ You know, they were kind of shocked!”

Gleason then set the fundamental ground rule for the entire concept.

“The agreement required that we serve a ratio of 60% food to 40% alcohol,” he said. “I told them, ‘I don’t care if they serve so much as a pretzel. What we want is a cowboy bar that harkens back to the old honky-tonks. We had no interest in trying to be, you know, a serve-all-customers, family-oriented restaurant.”

Laughter filled the room, and both sides quickly agreed: Cowboys don’t need food.

That’s when Gleason, now CEO of the PBR, set the second mantra.

“You know why most of those [branded bar] formats don’t exist anymore? Because they just weren’t that much fun,” he said. (See map.)

The partnership, including branding and signage for what became PBR Big Sky Cowboy Bar at KC Live, was out of the chute in less than a month.

“We’re the PBR,” Gleason said. “We live eight seconds at a time!”

The partnership, which includes revenue-sharing elements, calls for the TKO Holdings-owned bull-riding series to license its brand logo to Cordish, which in turn operates the Cowboy Bars.

The concept blends a country-western atmosphere with high-energy music, live acts (Luke Bryan, Old Dominion and Justin Moore have all performed at a bar), VIP tables, and, of course, a mechanical bull.

Additionally, servers and bartenders called the Buckle Bunnies are required to learn 10 dance routines (they can learn upward of 40 throughout their careers) that are performed with guests throughout the night.

The result is what the stakeholders market as “cowboy cool.”

Six of the soon-to-be 17 bars are within walking distance of 10 pro sports venues, and 11 bars are in a city that is home to a PBR team and/or event.

But the company looks for sites where it believes it can increase and capitalize on what it calls “synergistic traffic,” said Cordish, and that doesn’t necessarily require a sports presence.

“We seek locations that are within major entertainment destinations or mixed-use districts with lots of visitors, are a good fit for the PBR brand and appeal to local entertainment demographics,” he said.

Since 2009, the K.C. location’s first full year of operation, the bar’s annual sales for the Cowboy Bar division have grown from $6 million to more than $55 million last year, which Cordish said “was the best year, revenue-wise.”

The on-site operations of the bars are run like a Broadway show that is staging a performance every night in 16 cities.

All Cowboy Bar staff are employees of Cordish and, much like a Disney park, are considered “cast members,” with each one knowing the night’s “run of show.”

General managers are viewed as a producer of a show and of the PBR experience, not just hospitality operators, and hiring is done with the mindset of not necessarily the fastest beer-pourer (Columbus is the only location that serves food), but building a well-rounded cast, said Gabe Robinson, Cordish’s senior vice president of operations at Live Hospitality and Entertainment Districts.

There is a rehearsed script and cast for every occasion, from birthday and bachelor parties, to divorce parties to serving businesspeople who duck in to escape a boring nearby convention-sponsored happy hour.

The bars view the other local entertainment options mostly as a complement to their venues rather than competition, and formally partner with convention centers and facilities on promotions to lure guests once they are done with their evening’s first round. That not only drives revenue, but boosts each bar’s guest data collection efforts.

“We learn not to close early here,” Robinson said. “We’re all about taking the after-party to the next level.”

As the PBR and the bars expand their national footprints, the opportunities for cross promotion also have increased.

“The bar stands as an extension of PBR, whether it’s across town or across the state,” Cordish said.

Kansas City’s PBR Big Sky Cowboy Bar, for example, is the official bar of the PBR Outlaws, who debuted when the PBR Team Series launched in 2022. Outlaws merchandise is sold at the bar and the team frequently hosts events there.

Last summer, the concept was promoted with the Buckle Bunnies dancing on-stage, with arena public address announcing the “Official After Party at the PBR Bar,” and an activation for the bars on the concourse during the Nashville Stampede’s homestand at Bridgestone Arena, and in Sunrise, Fla., during the Florida Freedom’s homestand at Amerant Bank Arena.

From the bull riders’ side, John Deere, Ford and Jack Daniel’s are league sponsors that have activated at the bars in the past.

Additionally, the Texas Rangers, who have equity in the Texas Live development, hosted events at the bar in 2023 when the team was in the World Series, and in 2024 when the MLB All-Star Game was in town.

The opening of PBR Wrigleyville in a city that has four major league teams that are at least a century old might seem risky to an outsider. But Chicago has the PBR’s seventh-biggest fan base, according to the league, with 1.1 million fans in the market. After routinely drawing more than 20,000 over the past several years at the Allstate Arena in nearby Rosemont, Ill., the Unleash the Beast event packed 16,291 into United Center in December, the PBR’s first time downtown since 2011. Nielsen ratings of telecasts of those events are typically well above the series’ full-season average.

Additionally, the Cubs draw 4 million fans annually, including non-baseball events, and the neighborhood has dozens of food and beverage and other entertainment options. That helps provide the “synergistic traffic” on which Cordish says the concept has thrived.

Plus, Gleason said, there is no hard rule against what comes first.

“Originally, we felt that we kind of needed a pretty well-established event presence in a market for one of the bars to realize its full potential,” he said. “Now, we’re looking at places where we’ve got successful bars and we’re saying, ‘Let’s go to that market with an event.’”

He cites Pittsburgh as a recent success story. The market’s bar opened in 2020, in a city that had banned all types of Western sports three decades ago. The league successfully lobbied to overturn the ordinance, and sold out its two-night event at PPG Paints Arena in 2024 and 2025.

“It’s a great example of a situation in which we built a fan base first and brought an event in several years later,” he said. “Now we plan for it to be a regular stop on the tour for years to come.”

As the partnership heads into its 18th year, the two sides are doubling down.

The opening next year in Greenville, S.C., will boast 8,000 square feet and a 2,000-square-foot outdoor patio next to the frequently sold-out Class A Greenville Drive’s ballpark. The league has a solid fan base in the market, packing Bon Secours Wellness Arena in each of its seven recent appearances.

The team also is expected to open its third Florida bar next year at the Live at the Pomp, a high-end, mixed-use joint venture between Lennar Homes and Caesars Entertainment, in Pompano Beach, Fla.

Without mentioning specific locations, Cordish said that there are multiple markets under consideration for expansion.

The concept also is designing its new buildings or looking at ways to renovate existing ones to help spur an exponential increase in its concert revenue, and has built an in-house staff tasked with booking national music acts.

PBR St. Louis, for example, wrapped up an expansion in September that makes its Ballpark Village spot a two-level experience that flows into the Live Block and allows for concerts for up to 800 people, and an expansion at Stateside Live in South Philadelphia that is nearly complete includes the addition of a 10,000-square-foot outdoor area.

Saddle up.

The history of Unrivaled will be written as two distinct eras: BP and AP, for Before Philadelphia and After Philadelphia.

The women’s 3-on-3 basketball league was founded to replicate the high-intensity pickup games that NBA players hold every offseason in popular training destinations, such as Los Angeles and Miami, while commercializing the competition by attracting the best athletes and televising the games.

But when Xfinity stepped in as a major sponsor prior to this year’s second season, plans were set in motion to stage a night of games in Comcast’s corporate home of Philadelphia, the first night away from Sephora Arena, Unrivaled’s 1,000-seat home near Miami.

That booming success — a regular-season women’s pro basketball record 21,490 fans — prompted a course change to hold this week’s semifinals in Brooklyn at Barclays Center, where another sellout (18,261) filled the venue and created a raucous atmosphere.

“One experience,” Unrivaled CEO Alex Bazzell said of his staff and players, “can change the mindset of an entire building.”

Craig Barry, TNT Sports’ executive vice president and chief content officer, called it a “moment of clarity” offering a glimpse of what Unrivaled could be. He added that the walls of its home building might be its biggest limiter. “They’re growing out of their current venue, meaning they’re bursting at the seams,” Barry said.

Bazzell said in the immediate aftermath of the Philadelphia game that the 2027 season could have four to six tour stops. Sephora Arena was already expanded from its original 850 seats in Year 1, and Commissioner Micky Lawler acknowledged this week that there are a hundred scenarios still in the mix.

“We are looking at expanding the in-venue audience for our hub,” Lawler said. “We need to grow and pace ourselves. And, yes, we’re very ambitious and, yes, it’s always, ‘Let’s do this, let’s do this.’ But we do need to protect our core virtues, and the intimacy is one of them.”

The business metrics behind Unrivaled are mostly compelling for what remains a startup league. At the season-ending press conference this week, Lawler and Bazzell shared that total revenue had reached $45 million in 2026, a 67% increase over the $27 million in 2025 (which was double the internal projection).

Critical to that number was $5 million in ticket revenue, which wasn’t attainable playing only in Sephora, and a merchandise sales number that more than doubled to nearly $4 million. The stop in Philadelphia alone generated about $400,000 in merch. (The Brooklyn number wasn’t yet available.)

“Will players want to continuously travel? One part of our model is staying in one location, and the resources and the players don’t have to move around,” Bazzell said. “But let’s be frank. When we returned from Philly, there were four teams that were kind of jealous that the other four teams had the experience, and then there were four other teams, once we got back, they’re like, ‘When can we go again?’

As Comcast’s vice president of branded partnerships, Matt Lederer noted that the founding principle of the league was not to have a TV-forward league — yes, that was part of the early strategy — but the real core value was to have a player-first league. That the athletes have equity changes the calculus and the dynamic on how they interact with brands and how they are driven by a broader all-for-one-and-one-for-all philosophy. (Negotiating for revenue sharing with the WNBA has been a key objective of the WNBPA in its collective-bargaining talks with the league.)

“What that’s really translated into as a sponsor is them being an authentic voice,” Lederer told Sports Business Journal. “If I’m sponsoring the league, each of the players understands that I’m also sponsoring, in an indirect way, them, and they’re invested to do things for the brand.”

Unrivaled shared that its players’ social media followings grew by 52% during the season, and Lederer said it’s not the quantity of the audience but its responsiveness to the messaging.

“Anytime we do anything with a female team, player or league,” he said, “the engagement level surpasses all of our KPIs.”

The season is short, so the league has been intentional about using its athletes and brand sponsors in communications throughout the summer and fall to help extend the touchpoints.

“What has made Unrivaled unique from the jump is that we’ve been very player-first in all of our branding, our messaging and our marketing,” said Chief Brand Officer Kirby Porter.

One of Xfinity’s activations — what it calls the Gradient Ticket — brought a fan and athlete together after all games. Upon entry, 12 random fans receive a special ticket with the name of a participating player. Unrivaled’s rules guarantee someone will hit a game-winning shot every night, and if the shooter matches the name on the ticket, they meet at half-court for a chat and photo op.

The in-venue fan experience is differentiated from most team sports because of just how pronounced the allegiance to individuals is. The crowd roared when elite players did elite things on the court. The names Breeze, Mist and Phantom mattered less to the audience than Bueckers, Stewart and Plum. Natasha Cloud, a Philly native and current New York Liberty star, was particularly popular at both tour stops. While Unrivaled couldn’t plan on its playoff participants in Brooklyn, it intentionally sent teams with Philly-connected players on the first road trip.

“As a startup league, it’s really important to lean into something that people can have an emotional connection to,” Barry said. “They’re certainly not going to have a connection to a team with no geographic connection of any kind, unless you like the logo or the name. So don’t be apologetic for making these athletes the stars, because quite frankly, they are, and they’re the motor.”

Well before Unrivaled raised its Series B round in October at a valuation of $340 million, Warner Bros. Discovery became an investor in the league at the time it secured its broadcast rights and has doubled down on that commitment, covering the additional six-figure production costs of the barnstorming games and airing a studio show for last Wednesday’s final. If and how Paramount’s planned acquisition of WBD affects the relationship remains to be seen.

“Anytime we do anything with a female team, player or league, the engagement level surpasses all of our KPIs.”

—  Matt Lederer, vice president of branded partnerships, Comcast

Viewership declined in Unrivaled’s second season, as is often the case when novelty wanes, but also because of a scheduling constraint. FIBA blocked off a window for international competition that necessitated an earlier start by Unrivaled, which led to direct competition with the NFL and college football playoffs. Viewership declined about 40%, but the inventory was larger, too, with eight teams and four nights of games instead of six teams and three nights.

Even still, Barry said, “Its audience always found it,” noting that viewership was typically around 60% female, which is high even for women’s sports; NCAA Division I women’s basketball and the U.S. women’s national soccer team average closer to 40% female.

“When we look at women’s sports opportunity as a whole, we’re not sponsoring and getting involved in women’s sports because it’s the right thing to do — it is — [but] we get involved because it really moves our brand and business forward, and because the audience it’s building: young, diverse,” Lederer said. “We love the fact that basketball culture has a lot of interest in a lot of different areas.”

That’s how the sponsorship roster spans everything from State Farm and Samsung to Ally and Sephora. Bazzell said there’s been inbound invitations for road stops next year, and while there’s value in going to proven women’s basketball markets, he said a goal is also to visit cities without a WNBA team “that really don’t get to see these stars up close because our mission is, ‘How do we elevate and grow the sport?’”

“Part of this,” Bazzell added, “is working with our television partner on what nights are we playing, what day do we start, what day do we end?”

The trick is to find the right balance of a consistent development period for the players, who have been afforded an abundance of performance support from staff and technology providers. A few trips add to the excitement and will boost revenue and exposure, but there’s a threshold at which the margins begin to diminish — for fans and for the athletes.

It’s worth revisiting the start of the relationship between Unrivaled and WBD, which probably needed some convincing that the idea would work. The biggest selling point was the star talent, from co-founders Napheesa Collier and Breanna Stewart, and all the other established WNBA stars who signed on from the beginning.

“We all got very intrigued, especially because there just hasn’t been that many adjacent leagues in history that have ever been successful,” Barry said, “mostly because none of them have the world-class athletes.”

Keeping the focus on their best interests is Unrivaled’s best path forward.

Aon is in its eighth year of working with the LPGA for its Aon Risk Reward Challenge as the company looks to make the women’s game more equitable with the men’s. Aon signed on with the LPGA in 2019, and the Risk Reward Challenge doles out $1M at the end of each season to the player deemed to have been the best strategic decision maker throughout the season.

Notably, Aon began sponsoring a similar challenge on the PGA Tour the same year, with the men’s winner receiving the same $1M prize. For context, only 43 LPGA players made more than $1M throughout the entire 2025 season. Jennifer Kupcho won the Risk Reward Challenge last year.

“What’s unique about Aon is we’ve been very focused on the impact for the players,” said Lisa Stevens, Aon’s chief administrative officer, ahead of International Women’s Day on Sunday. “At the time [of the deal in 2019], it was the largest purse for women where every single dollar went to them.”

Aon’s entry with the LPGA in 2019 came before the broader surge of women’s sports, and since then, purse sizes on the tour have gone up substantially. Total prize money on the LPGA in 2025 was $131M, a 113% increase over 2021.

“It’s life-changing,” Stevens said. “We had one of the players that was able to buy a home with the prize money. That’s life-changing.”

Aon sponsors two players: Minjee Lee on the LPGA Tour, and Matt Fitzpatrick on the PGA Tour. It also sponsors Phil Mickelson’s longtime former caddie, Jim “Bones” Mackay, who now works for NBC and Golf Channel as an on-course reporter. Aon transitioned its sponsorship of the Risk Reward Challenge on the PGA Tour to sponsor the Aon Next 10 and Aon Swing 5 in 2024.

Its deal with the LPGA runs through 2027. CAA works with Aon on its golf sponsorships.

MOLLY JOLLY has been named the president of the Angels, following the retirement of JOHN CARPINO. Jolly, entering her 26th year with the organization, is being elevated from her previous role, SVP/finance and administration. Her promotion will begin effective April 6, with Carpino remaining with the team to assist with key projects.

Jolly is the first woman to be named to the post in franchise history. She will oversee day-to-day operations of the Angels, including strategic direction, marketing, communications, administration, facility management, revenue and overall business strategy. Jolly joins CAROLINE O’CONNOR (Marlins) and CATIE GRIGGS (Orioles) as active female presidents of MLB teams.

Carpino had been with the organization for 23 years. His accomplishments include helping to complete deals with OF MIKE TROUT, 1B ALBERT PUJOLS and P/DH SHOHEI OHTANI, and overseeing $70M in capital projects at Angel Stadium. He also played an integral role in bringing the 2010 All-Star Game to Anaheim.

Jolly had a three-year stint with The Walt Disney Co. as director of finance for the Angels and Ducks. She became the highest-ranking woman in the Anaheim organization in just three seasons.

The Angels have been considering going on their own for local broadcasting following the financial collapse of Main Street Sports Group.

In February 2025, the organization exercised its three-year lease extension at Angel Stadium, keeping the team there through 2032.

The team has not made the postseason since 2014.

For all the highly visible steps the NFL has taken to build fandom overseas, one of the most effective international development actions of the past year has been DAZN’s addition of fully localized NFL game coverage in the Spanish and Portuguese languages.

According to the streamer, subscriptions to the comprehensive NFL Game Pass product grew by more than 40 percent in Spain, Brazil and Mexico last year, exceeding the global growth rate of 24 percent. (Game Pass is a premium tier within DAZN that makes all NFL games available outside the U.S. and China)

Sales popped when subscribers could watch every game in their home language, not just a subset, a telling insight into those markets’ interest in the NFL.

“In terms of sort of attracting new fans who maybe aren’t wanting to watch the traditional American broadcast, that’s been a big pillar,” said DAZN SVP/Strategy and Business Development Zander Berlinski. Also driving the numbers in Spain: DAZN won the NFL broadcast rights in 2025, meaning that regular DAZN viewers who don’t have Game Pass could watch five games each week on their regular DAZN package, which leads to some upselling.

All this is just one example of how the NFL’s overseas strategy isn’t just about the generational work of developing brand allegiance and teaching the sport — it’s also about the more immediate task of converting and enhancing existing demand. That’s where DAZN and its 10-year deal to distribute Game Pass come in.

DAZN’s results also tell us something about the 11 million people in Spain the NFL says are fans (or 19 million in Germany, or 36 million in Brazil.) If they’re diehards, they likely already have Game Pass. If they’re casual fans, they probably are out of reach for a premium subscription. But at least some of them are in play for DAZN — if the right product is correctly priced and marketed.

“One of our biggest challenges is how do we educate those fans? How do we get them interested? And then how do we move them along the fandom curve?” Berlinski said.

In the three years since DAZN won the Game Pass rights, it’s learned a lot about how to cross-sell, promote, discount and advertise Game Pass in each market. “We’ve gotten just a lot smarter about understanding the international fan and being able to really drive home the key benefits,” Berlinski said.

DAZN breaks down roughly 200 markets into three tiers, with the top tier — which mostly overlaps with countries where the NFL is most active — getting fully customized promotional campaigns. The second tier gets some customization. The last tier, which is most of the world outside the major economies, is devoted to converting existing demand.

• Kraft Sports & Entertainment (KSE), the owner of Gillette Stadium, will loan the Boston World Cup host committee up to $1.5 million to help cover Foxborough’s public safety costs associated with hosting seven matches during this summer’s tournament, reports SBJ’s Alex Silverman.
• The A’s are putting the first premium spaces in their upcoming $1.75 billion Las Vegas ballpark on sale later this month, with an eye on simplicity and comfort, writes SBJ’s Bret McCormick.
• The Angels purchased Main Street Sports Group’s 50% share of FanDuel Sports Network West, sources told SBJ’s Tom Friend and Mike Mazzeo, and will soon announce their own L.A.-based RSN that will likely house the NHL’s Kings but not the NBA’s Clippers.
• The NBA informed teams that it may launch a streaming hub for local broadcasts as soon as next season — a year earlier than expected — as a result of Main Street Sports Group’s impending demise in April, multiple sources told SBJ’s Friend.
• Sports and entertainment strategy firm Elevate is set to acquire Intersect Partners (which works in college venue naming rights deals), notes SBJ’s Ben Portnoy.
• In this week’s Talent Pool agency roundup, SBJ’s Irving Mejia-Hilario highlights the signing of Steelers WR Calvin Austin III with Drew Rosenhaus and Kyle Lincoln of Rosen Sports on the eve of free agency.