SBJ Unpacks: Live Nation antitrust case returns to court Monday

Tonight in Unpacks: Live Nation returns to court Monday, as its antitrust trial will continue against a group of 20-plus states and D.C. that are now being represented by Jeffrey Kessler, the lawyer who represented Michael Jordan’s team in its litigation against NASCAR, reports SBJ’s Ethan Joyce.

Also tonight:

• Brian Rolapp’s PGA Tour plan breeds optimism, questions
• Fox isn’t spinning its wheels with NASCAR
• Peacock app testing more vertical video with live NBA games
• Op-ed: College athletics didn’t break — they evolved

Listen to SBJ’s most popular podcast, Morning Buzzcast, where Abe Madkour discusses the Big 12’s shift back to hardwood courts from ASB GlassFloor’s LED-embedded surfaces, Syracuse hiring SBJ Forty Under 40 honoree Bryan Blair as AD, the PWHL getting its first game on national TV and more.

Live Nation’s antitrust trial will continue for a third week with a group of more than two dozen states and the District of Columbia spearheading the case after they opposed the proposed settlement agreed to earlier in the week by the entertainment company and the Department of Justice.

The states’ motion for a mistrial was withdrawn Friday afternoon.

Presiding Judge Arun Subramanian said the case would continue Monday with all states that have not provided a signed settlement and term sheet with Live Nation. The settlement still needs the judge’s approval to the finalized.

The heart of this case, when initially filed, focused on two significant outcomes: To determine if Live Nation-Ticketmaster is a monopoly and break it up if so while also lowering the cost for fans. The proposed settlement does not call for Live Nation to sell Ticketmaster but allows rival ticket promoters access to portions of tickets for events and also put on shows at Live Nation venues, along with a 15% cap on fees.

The states will be co-represented by Jeffrey Kessler of Winston & Strawn and Jonathan Hatch of the Office of the New York State Attorney General. Kessler most recently represented 23XI Racing and Front Row Motorsports in their antitrust lawsuit against NASCAR. That case ended in a settlement and ultimately led to the departure of NASCAR Commissioner Steve Phelps.

Kessler’s work as an attorney has dramatically impacted the sports industry, from the creation of unrestricted free agency in the NFL and NBA to the House settlement with the NCAA that paved the way for revenue sharing for college athletes.

Subramanian told the courtroom that jurors would be interviewed to determine whether any conflicts of interest exist with the plaintiffs’ new representation.

During the course of Friday, three states formally submitted settlement notices -- Arkansas, Nebraska, and South Dakota. The trio was part of a seven-state group (along with Iowa, Mississippi, Oklahoma, and South Carolina) that agreed to the terms of the proposed Live Nation-DOJ settlement filed March 8.

The PGA Tour officially started a new era last summer when it hired NFL Executive Vice President Brian Rolapp as its CEO. But now, after more than six months in the job, it feels like the tour under Rolapp is actually, firmly, in its new era.

The plan Rolapp discussed this week in his State of the Tour address at the Players Championship showed a PGA Tour that is not reacting, but proactively navigating its future. Though scarce on details, Rolapp delivered a vision around a new tour that looks nothing like the one that observers have come to know over the last 50-plus years, sharing themes of a new competitive structure that included a January-to-September schedule of 21 to 26 “first track” tournaments, season-opening events at iconic West Coast venues and tournaments in major markets.

The question now is how Rolapp implements his plan — one that’s far from complete. There are many complex layers. A common theme on the ground at TPC Sawgrass during tournament week was that Rolapp is still learning. He did not come into the job with a deep golf background, and therefore is still figuring out the sometimes very niche ins and outs of the golf industry.

The PGA Tour has faced headwinds on making change as quickly as it would like, and it’s a chief reason why some of Rolapp’s proposed alterations may not be implemented until the 2028 season or even later. Many constituencies exist in golf: the tournament itself, the tournament operator, the tournament sponsor, the tournament host course, the tournament media partner and other governing bodies that may host tournaments at that course. It all makes change vastly difficult for one event, let alone the entire season.

One major question involves sponsors. Rolapp laid out plans for a two-track PGA Tour: one with elevated events and one that would ladder up to the top track. A handful of tournaments that would likely fall under the second track just signed sponsor renewals through 2030. If those tournaments end up falling to the second track, their sponsors would not receive what they signed up for.

“We’re not going to surprise our sponsors, we’re certainly not going to surprise our members,” Rolapp said. “They’re not going to wake up one day and find out what they’re paying for this year is going to be dramatically different for 2027. They need to plan their lives, and the same goes for our partners. Where we have contractual commitments, we plan on honoring those. But at the same time, what we’re trying to do is make it more valuable for our sponsors. That’s the whole point of the exercise.”

Multiple tournament directors contacted by Sports Business Journal said there likely will be discontent among some events and partners about the potential changes.

“The sports business is not that hard. Just think like a fan, and nine and a half times out of 10, that’s probably the right answer.”

—  Brian Rolapp, PGA Tour CEO

One concern is that the top players, while having already committed to most of the first-track tournaments, will not feel like they can compete in the second-level tournaments every year. The counterpoint is that some star players may not be qualified for the signature or elevated events, and thus would need to play the second-track events. The tour has already experienced some of that since creating its Signature model in recent years, with big names like Justin Thomas and Jordan Spieth competing in some non-Signature events to gain access to those tournaments. The two-track plan did bring optimism from some event directors, as there had been questions about some tournaments being cut out of the tour’s plans.

And then there are the PGA Tour’s media deals. The current agreements run through 2030, and the tour’s plan has been to go to market by 2028 to renew those contracts. However, an overhauled tour by 2027 or 2028 would result in a far different product than what the media partners signed up for under the current pact. Further complicating matters is the NFL, which is widely expected to opt out of its media deals and renegotiate them, possibly as soon as this year.

Rolapp pointed out that the sports rights market in 2025 was right around $30 billion, with his former place of employment accounting for nearly half ($12 billion). And the NFL has made clear that it plans to substantially increase that number.

The question among sources is whether the PGA Tour in new agreements would fetch less than its current $7 billion deal with CBS, NBC, Golf Channel and ESPN+. Also, how would the tour package its deals? And when it would go to market, with the NFL looming?

“If you start doing that math and you’re anyone other than the National Football League, you start to ask yourself the questions: Next time I go to the media market, how do I make sure I have the most compelling product for fans and for our media partners, so that we can compete in what is a very complicated media ecosystem that’s changing all the time?” Rolapp said. “You see fans are changing their habits, television versus streaming. You see the companies and the economics of the media industry changing. … So it’s a very dynamic time in media.”

One resounding theme from industry insiders is that Rolapp marks a clear departure from the way the tour operated in prior years under its former leadership. Although he didn’t reveal many specifics about what the future entails, Rolapp was transparent and clear about the PGA Tour’s goals across myriad properties, a welcome sight for fans, media, sponsors, networks and players.

“The sports business is not that hard,” Rolapp said. “Just think like a fan, and nine and a half times out of 10, that’s probably the right answer.”

Fox Sports has been a partner with NASCAR for 25 years, broadcasting the last 23 Daytona 500s, and its deal is scheduled to run through 2031. The partnership is the rare, long-term match between network and sport.

But despite this history, there have been conversations within NASCAR circles over the last year about the state of the relationship since Fox Sports has invested heavily in open-wheel racing and seemingly reduced its shoulder programing and coverage of NASCAR.

The angst began when Fox Sports dropped its long-running daily NASCAR studio show “Race Hub,” picked up the licensing rights to live IndyCar races and promoted the open-wheel series heavily during the 2025 Super Bowl and throughout last year. To wit, IndyCar-related ads nearly doubled the number of NASCAR-related spots that Fox Sports has run since the start of 2025, according to iSpot TV data.

The relationship was enough of a concern that NASCAR was asked about the apparent disparity in promotion by some of its teams in industry meetings in recent months, according to a person familiar with the matter. Could NASCAR be sliding down the network’s motorsports totem pole?

The notion has been shot down by both NASCAR and Fox executives recently to SBJ. The sanctioning body had positive meetings with the broadcaster at the Daytona 500, according to a separate source. Jordan Bazant, executive vice president of Fox Sports, said that the two sides remain in lockstep.

“We’re in a great place with NASCAR,” Bazant wrote in an email to SBJ. “We’ve had a lot of success together for more than 25 years, and the measure of any great relationship is the ongoing ability to have the conversations necessary to make things better, to keep things moving forward.”

Brian Herbst, NASCAR’s executive vice president and chief media and revenue officer, said the series continues to be pleased with Fox, and NASCAR executives are confident that the sum of five different media partners advertising the sport is greater than the previous deal with two rights partners. NBC Sports was the other incumbent, while the newcomers are Prime Video, TNT Sports and The CW.

“We’re extraordinarily proud of our relationship with Fox -- they are our most long-standing broadcast partner and they’re the only broadcast partner that has been a part of every single one of NASCAR’s media rights cycles,” Herbst said. “If you look at [the Daytona] weekend, as much as any other, it shows how creative and thoughtful that Fox can be on a property that they care so much about and know so well.”

Prioritized property?

When NASCAR signed its most recent media rights deals, its strategy was to maximize revenue and bring in fresh approaches to the sport. It was during that time that NASCAR signed a seven-year deal with Nexstar Media Group to broadcast the entire season of NASCAR’s second-tier O’Reilly Auto Parts Series for $115M annually.

To do that, NASCAR took away all of the O’Reilly races that previously aired on Fox and NBC Sports, and it also carved out four of Fox’s Cup Series races. At the time, people close to Fox Sports said that these developments appeared to upset the network, which now has 14 Cup races annually, down from the prior 18, and no O’Reilly races. Fox, which still airs the full season of the third-tier Craftsman Truck Series, paid $380M annually in the prior deal.

Some in the NASCAR industry also have been perplexed by the heavy rotation of IndyCar advertising over NASCAR commercials, given that NASCAR attracts bigger ratings.

Last year, NASCAR races averaged 2.5 million viewers, while IndyCar races averaged 1.4 million. But according to data from iSpotTV, Fox has aired IndyCar-related ads around 725 times since the start of 2025, nearly double the 385 airings of NASCAR-related ads over that time.

Fox carries the entire IndyCar season versus only part of the NASCAR season, but its role is still regarded as uniquely important for NASCAR because it airs the sport’s biggest race and season opener of its premier series. Herbst pointed to several developments in recent weeks that showed Fox’s commitment to NASCAR.

Fox advertised the Daytona 500 during the NFL’s NFC championship game and shot the race in 4K for the first time with a new graphics package that is easier to read across all devices. In addition, it sent Fox News anchors and talent from the FS1 show “First Things First” to broadcast on-site, had a costumed version of Bart Simpson wave the green flag to promote the 800th episode of “The Simpsons,” and brought back its classic “Speed” brand as part of a new vlogcast with NASCAR broadcaster Kevin Harvick and IndyCar broadcaster Will Buxton, a move that excited core fans.

Fox is cross-promoting with other networks with NASCAR media rights, too, like The CW, and it now advertises national commercials during races with a double-box format, something fans have been requesting for years. In all, Fox channels will air over 300 cumulative hours of NASCAR programming this year.

The Great American Race drew 7.5 million viewers last month, up from 6.7 million last year when the event was rain delayed.

Media consultant Patrick Crakes said Fox paying NASCAR such a considerable, nine-figure annual sum means the network is likely to remain well-incentivized to prioritize, promote and grow the circuit even as it also looks to IndyCar as a growth stock in its portfolio of auto racing.

“It’s safe to say that NASCAR is the fourth strategic pillar in Fox Sports’ annual content portfolio, along with the NFL, MLB and Big Ten,” Crakes wrote in an email to SBJ. “I do get the perception that maybe Fox is spending more time with IndyCar promotionally, but it’s hard to reconcile neglecting NASCAR strategically given the level of Fox’s massive multiyear investment. There just isn’t any logic in acquiring NASCAR at these rates and then not marketing it properly only to upset the fans, distributors and sponsor partners who pay all the bills.”

IndyCar investment

By the middle of 2024, Fox decided to drop its daily studio show around NASCAR, “Race Hub,” in what turned out to be an early sign that it was reassessing its coverage of the sport ahead of the new media rights cycle. Coincidentally, IndyCar’s media rights were also up for bid that year, and Fox added them amid the broader hype around IndyCar’s more global competitor, Formula 1.

While the “Race Hub” move raised eyebrows in NASCAR circles, the volume of discussions about the Fox relationship picked up after IndyCar was given several national Super Bowl ad slots last year. By the middle of last year, Fox convinced IndyCar and Indianapolis Motor Speedway parent company Penske Entertainment Co. to sell a one-third equity stake to the network for a reported $125M to $135M, giving Fox more incentive to promote IndyCar. With its average annual value believed to be around $30M, revenue from IndyCar’s media rights pales in comparison to NASCAR’s.

Then, this past offseason, Fox brought four IndyCar drivers out to Los Angeles to shoot cinema-grade commercials to promote the 2026 season. Fox also promoted NASCAR in the lead-up to the Daytona 500, but it was with a spot that was largely filled with classic highlights. The network worked to help IndyCar set up a street race around the national mall in Washington D.C. as part of the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, but it also arranged a rare doubleheader with NASCAR and IndyCar at Phoenix Raceway.

Daniel Cohen, executive vice president of global media rights consulting for Octagon, said that, while Fox has been in the process of reorienting its motorsports coverage, it’s still giving plenty of attention and promotion to NASCAR.

“Fox continues to evaluate their motorsports portfolio, and they have done a terrific job -- just look at the Daytona 500 numbers -- of continuing to generate revenue and eyeballs for NASCAR,” Cohen said. “But I think that especially given their equity interest of IndyCar, there are folks within Fox’s hall that see the ceiling could be much higher with a ceiling like IndyCar versus a property like NASCAR.

“That’s not to say that IndyCar in my opinion will ever surpass the prominence or revenue generation of a NASCAR, but when you look at, ‘How can we grow something from its starting place to where it can be?’ I think they see a lot of opportunity in IndyCar.”

NBCUniversal today is showing off new features for the Peacock mobile app, including extending its capabilities with vertical video after first introducing vertical clips early last year. The Peacock app will now allow for AI-enabled, real-time cropping of live events on mobile, and it will launch in beta for NBA games this spring, marking the first time an entertainment app will offer full live broadcasts in a 9:16 format. The vertical video is a different way to watch the main live feed from NBC Sports. Peacock users will be able to find the live vertical video option within Courtside Live, the new mobile feature that launched during the recent NBA All-Star Game and allows fans to navigate among multiple camera angles alongside the main broadcast.

Vertical videos have helped drive more viewership on the Peacock app. That included a jump around Rinkside Live during the Milan Cortina Olympics, where 20% of viewers tapped directly from an Olympics highlight clip into the live event. Peacock also rolled out mobile Multiview during the Winter Games and found mobile users were 2x more likely to use Multiview than fans watching on a TV.

As another offseason of eye-popping player contracts and franchise valuations continues, the chief executive of one of the NFL’s flagship franchises fears being left behind. In an interview, Green Bay Packers President and CEO Ed Policy says the new surge of wealth coming into the league threatens the league’s vaunted economic parity, and with that in mind, Policy says the Packers will take a more aggressive posture on revenue growth.

That will take three primary forms, Policy said: More offseason events at Lambeau Field, more sponsorship sales and ticket price hikes.

As the league’s only nonprofit, the Packers cannot engage in true equity financing (its “public shares” it occasionally sells are little more than souvenirs) and has no billionaire owner who can reach into his or her own pockets to fund the team. The Packers have built a corporate reserve fund exceeding $600 million, Policy said, but that’s less than it appears in the modern NFL financial context.

“If you think about, any other team, they’ve got deep-pocketed owners, most of them are worth significantly more than that, and they could sell less than 10% of their team, give up no controlling interest, and raise a heck of a lot more than that,” Policy said.

Policy, who took over for retiring Mark Murphy last July, says the only answer available to a nonprofit is more revenue, which in turn can cover higher expenses and continue seeding the reserve fund.

“We’re soon to be the only stadium without naming rights,” he said, referring to the expected wind-down of Chicago’s Soldier Field as an NFL venue. “That’s not a threshold we’re looking to cross any time soon, but we might be a little more aggressive with some of the other entitlement inventory we just hadn’t taken advantage of in the past, including things like training facility entitlements and the Titletown campus [the real estate development next to Lambeau Field].”

The Packers increased ticket prices between 3%-11% depending on the section in February, but Policy said the data still shows a significant gap between what the team charges and what the market could bear. “Despite the fact that we are probably a top-three team in terms of demand, we are middle of the pack in terms of price,” Policy said.

He said it’s their goal to stay in the middle, meaning they will not quite go as hard as they could on pricing, but will still keep adjusting as at least seven NFL teams open new or comprehensively renovated stadiums in the next decade, forcing up the average price. “We’ll keep an eye on things, but we may have to be even a little more aggressive in order to remain middle of the pack,” he said.

Many NFL teams look to non-football events like concerts and soccer friendlies to bolster revenue, but Lambeau Field, in a remote, small town with a cold climate and no roof, has not historically hosted many. This year, that is changing with two Luke Combs concerts and the Notre Dame-Wisconsin college football game. The natural limitations on the venue still apply, Policy said, and they’ll still bank on a certain scarcity value for Lambeau events. “If we could do one concert, one football game and one other form of event a year, that would be great,” Policy said.

In the fiscal year including the 2024 season, the most recent in which data is available, the Packers reported $286.4 million in locally generated revenue, up 13% year-over-year. Most public estimates place them about 12th out of 32 NFL teams in revenue.

Is the economic playing field becoming un-leveled?

In some ways, Policy’s diagnosis of the problem is more interesting than his remedy. After all, hasn’t the NFL engaged in painstaking collective bargaining and difficult compromises among owners to ensure mom-and-pop teams in small markets stay competitive? He’s not the first to suggest that parity is at risk in this new age of wealth.

“Thank goodness for the salary cap, because without the salary cap there would be no Green Bay Packers, and I would argue there probably wouldn’t be a number of existing, very successful NFL teams that are around now,” Policy said. “But it only caps one thing, and that’s player salaries.”

Not capped: coaching salaries; buyouts for fired coaches; the overall size of coaching, training, nutrition and other support staff; and investment in practice facilities and playing venues, all of which have risen quickly in recent years. Also, the salary cap reflects total league revenues, meaning it could still end up hurting the Packers’ books if local revenue doesn’t keep up with the Joneses and Kroenkes. Another factor Policy didn’t mention: the now-routine practice of manipulating multiyear contracts to stay within the salary cap (a practice pioneered in the 1990s by his father), which requires owners to have the cash to pay out signing bonuses.

To be clear, Policy says, this is a mostly forward-looking concern. Right now, the league is as “competitive as ever,” he said. “Finance and economics really don’t play into our football decision-making right now, and it’s my job to ensure that it never does.”

Many NFL insiders, including Policy, believe the Packers’ unique nonprofit status and lack of a singular, all-powerful owner has been net positives over the years, because the team is run exclusively by professional managers and is never bogged down by family drama. But he’s not certain that will continue to be true.

“Given the pace that the expenses have accelerated over the past few years, if we find ourselves falling behind, it’s going to be really hard to catch up,” Policy said. “So, we have to keep ourselves in a position where we’re not falling behind.”

• The WNBA and its players’ union inched incrementally closer to a deal following roughly 15 hours of advanced talks that ended in the predawn hours of Friday, sources told SBJ’s Tom Friend.
• The Senators and Blackhawks will play two regular-season games in Düsseldorf (Dec. 18 and Dec. 20 at PSD Bank Dome) next season as part of the NHL’s Global Series initiative, the league and NHLPA announced Friday during Hockey Day in Germany festivities, reports SBJ’s Alex Silverman.
• The Professional Tennis Players Association announced Thursday that Deputy Executive Director Romain Rosenberg is being elevated to Executive Director, replacing Ahmad Nassar (who is assuming an advisory role), writes SBJ’s Rob Schaefer.
• Allie LaForce is signing a multiyear extension with TNT Sports, and she’ll keep reporting on the network’s marquee properties, including March Madness, Big 12 football and Unrivaled, reports SBJ’s Austin Karp.
• Karp also notes in his Audience Analysis that Sunday’s final round of the Arnold Palmer Invitational was the PGA Tour event’s best figure since 2021, with an average of 3.3 million viewers on NBC.
• The PGA Tour is using AI this week at the Players Championship to power what it calls “Agentic Production” on par-3 holes at TPC Sawgrass from Thursday through Sunday, reports SBJ’s Josh Carpenter.