SBJ Unpacks: MLBPA’s Bruce Meyer is ‘absolutely the right guy’ for labor fight

Tonight in Unpacks: Few court cases are as complex as holding together a union of 1,200 people, as Bruce Meyer will have to do as the lead negotiator for the MLBPA in its upcoming CBA talks with MLB. His background with other player unions should serve him well in what’s expected to be a contentious process, as SBJ’s Mike Mazzeo reports in this week’s magazine cover story.

Also tonight:

• MLB boosts roster with Ford, other sponsors
• Kraken create umbrella brand, eye NBA bid
• MLB bets the feds can rein in prediction markets
• Op-ed: College players deserve the right to organize

Listen to SBJ’s most popular podcast, Morning Buzzcast, where Abe Madkour opens the week with who will be facing the pressure of MLB’s new challenge system when the season begins this week, how Arthur Blank’s latest deal continues his vision to make Atlanta the soccer capital of the world, takeaways from Fanatics’ Flag Football Classic and more.

Bruce Meyer always knew he wanted to be a trial attorney.

“I liked the idea of being an advocate, and thought I might be good at it,” Meyer said.

But no matter the complexities of any court case, convincing a judge and jury figures to be easier than holding together a diverse membership of 1,200-plus Major League Baseball players that features highly paid superstars, those making the league minimum, rookies and everything in between, heading into what is expected to be a contentious labor fight with the league.

With a likely lockout and salary-cap battle ahead, the Major League Baseball Players Association believes Meyer, its new interim executive director, is the best choice to emphasize solidarity and preserve the sport’s free-market system at a time when the owners want to overhaul it. The collective bargaining agreement is set to expire in December.

“Bruce is going to continue to do exactly what he was hired to do, which is to be a zealous advocate for the guys at the bargaining table,” said Matt Nussbaum, the union’s interim deputy executive director.

“He’s absolutely the right guy for that job.”

After serving largely as outside counsel for the NBPA, NFLPA and NHLPA, along with his eight years as chief labor negotiator with the MLBPA, the 64-year-old Meyer now has the final word with arguably the most powerful union in North American professional sports.

That unique experience of having worked with the economic conditions in the three other major sports also puts him in position to better understand baseball’s place as the only one without a salary cap.

A combination of tenaciousness and institutional knowledge of pressing labor issues made him the unanimous choice to succeed Tony Clark, who resigned in February.

“I think our guys like him and feel that he’s going to hold the line,” one agent told Sports Business Journal. “He was the most stabilizing choice, and I think he talks the talk on the salary cap.”

“[Former MLBPA head] Marvin Miller famously said to the players when he was hired, ‘If you hear the other side likes me, you should fire me.’ This is ultimately an adversarial relationship in the labor process. Having said that, we’re always looking to make a deal.”

—  Bruce Meyer, MLBPA interim executive director

Along the way, Meyer has earned a reputation as a relentless and tough-minded litigator. His blunt personality and hardline tactics have rankled not only the opposition, which is to be expected, but also some agents and players, who tried to have him removed in 2024.

“I’m an advocate for players and a fierce believer in their rights, the value that they bring and the fact they should be rewarded for that,” Meyer said. “[Former MLBPA head] Marvin Miller famously said to the players when he was hired, ‘If you hear the other side likes me, you should fire me.’ This is ultimately an adversarial relationship in the labor process. Having said that, we’re always looking to make a deal.”

Learning from the best

Despite growing up as a New York Mets fan on Long Island and being enamored with Tom Seaver and the 1969 Amazin’ Mets, Meyer never aspired to a career working on labor issues or a sports law practice.

After majoring in English at the University of Pennsylvania, he obtained his law degree from the Boston University School of Law and went on to work at Weil, Gotshal & Manges in 1986, handling myriad cases from intellectual property to corporate disputes and bankruptcy.

Almost from the start, Meyer fell into consistently working on antitrust cases on behalf of sports unions for mentor Jim Quinn, and a passion developed.

“It was obvious right away that he was very bright and had a good sense of humor,” Quinn said. “I know sometimes people can look at Bruce now and he can appear somewhat dour from time to time, but he can be one of the funniest people in the room.”

Quinn believes Meyer’s personality will serve him well, given all that rests on his shoulders. Meyer, an avid guitar player, has three daughters with his wife, Jacqueline.

“Look, there’s a lot of pressure on Bruce, let’s face it,” Quinn said. “Because the last time, really, that the baseball owners tried to shove a cap down the baseball players was back in 1994-95, and that didn’t work. And I don’t think it’ll work again.”

For 30 years, Meyer worked at Weil, aiding Quinn and fellow mentor Jeffrey Kessler with landmark cases that changed the structure of free agency in the NFL (McNeil v. NFL in 1992) and NBA (Bridgeman v. NBA in 1987) before rising to partner and earning his place at the bargaining table through strikes, lockouts and lawsuits.

“Those two guys [Quinn and Kessler] really taught me everything I know and nurtured me,” said Meyer, who also noted that former NBPA head Larry Fleisher, late NFLPA head Gene Upshaw and fellow MLBPA head Donald Fehr all had a significant impact on his career.

Meyer left Weil to work for the NHLPA under Fehr for two years before shifting to baseball’s union in 2018, his nearly eight-year tenure highlighted in 2022 by minor leaguers unionizing for the first time.

“This is a very smart, very well-experienced guy,” said Fehr, who worked with Meyer in 2017-18 but declined to go into any specifics about their work together. “And my guess is that in the end those qualities, plus the fact that they know him, caused players to move in this direction.”

Overcoming challenges

After the 2016 negotiations, players were left unsatisfied and in need of more pushback, prompting the hiring of Meyer to the newly created position of senior director of collective bargaining and legal. He was named deputy executive director in 2022.

During the 2020 COVID-19 negotiations, former San Diego Padres executive chairman Ron Fowler said of his frustration with a negotiating standstill with Meyer: “We often thought we were negotiating with ourselves, and that’s not a good thing to do.” It was the kind of comment that a fierce adversary like Meyer could wear as a badge of honor.

Nevertheless, two years after the 2022 negotiations, a group of frustrated players, led by Jack Flaherty, Lucas Giolito and Ian Happ, attempted to replace Meyer with former MLBPA lawyer Harry Marino amid grumblings that agent Scott Boras exerted too much influence on union matters. Meyer has denied claims that he was a mouthpiece for Boras. Flaherty, Giolito and Happ were ultimately voted off the executive subcommittee after the failed coup.

While Boras represented five players on the eight-member executive subcommittee during those talks, he represents two now in Detroit Tigers pitcher Tarik Skubal and New York Mets second baseman Marcus Semien. While influential, the group is only part of the process, as the union’s executive board is made up of the executive committee, 30 team player reps and 34 minor leaguers.

“While Tony was an important member, dealing with operations and communicating with players, the bargaining work was being done by labor lawyers that are in place through the union. That process has been prepared for and will continue as they go through this,” Boras said. “I think the players knew clearly that the best step forward for them was to continue with the most experienced bargaining counsel, and they elected Bruce.”

Yet even after securing gains in the last round of bargaining in 2022, including a pre-arbitration bonus pool, increases in minimum salaries and luxury tax thresholds, provisions to address service time manipulation and a draft lottery to help reduce tanking, Meyer wasn’t satisfied with how things ended. The executive subcommittee voted 8-0 against MLB’s final take-it-or-leave-it offer, but was outvoted 26-4 by the rank and file to end a 99-day lockout and avoid missing games for the first time since 1995.

“Some players emerged from bargaining disappointed that we did not accomplish more and in particular that we did not miss games to see if more [gains] could be made,” Meyer wrote in a letter to players defending his record. “To be clear, I sympathized and still do with these players and this position.”

It’s why some around the league privately wonder whether Meyer will desire to make a deal this time around. For all his flaws, Clark had the respect of the players and could command a room of big personalities as a former MLB first baseman.

It remains to be seen whether Meyer can follow suit, though he will have plenty of help in the form of ex-big leaguers Andrew Miller (special assistant) and Kevin Slowey (managing director of player services).

“I can’t stand in front of guys and say I know what it’s like to be in your shoes or wear your cleats, but we have people on staff who do have that experience,” Meyer said. “And I think ultimately my primary job is to focus on collective bargaining, and I’m well-suited to do that.”

Since his election, Meyer has led the MLBPA’s annual spring tour, meeting with players at their team facilities in Arizona and Florida, answering questions and offering reassurance. He’s also served as the union’s public face, giving more on-the-record interviews than he previously has. “I’m happy to do it if our communications professionals think it’s in the best interest of players,” he said.

Meyer’s top deputies also represent consistency from the previous regime. Nussbaum will move up into the No. 2 role on an interim basis and handle more of the day-to-day operations, with Jeff Perconte being promoted to replace Nussbaum as general counsel.

“The players really placed a premium on continuity in making sure that our bargaining team and all the work that they’ve done remains in place and ready to go at the start of bargaining on schedule, and that’s what we’re going to do,” Nussbaum said.

During the offseason, Meyer also helped Skubal secure a $32 million arbitration award. While Meyer didn’t want to overemphasize his involvement, and Boras noted that former union COO Gene Orza had appeared at hearings in the past, Meyer’s minor role in certifying Boras’ arguments from the union’s perspective made a particularly strong impression.

“For him to come in and speak personally, that experience, he’s earned my respect for life with what he said and how he conveyed it,” Skubal told reporters at spring training. “I know he’s going to be great for us in the union.”

While the implications of Skubal defeating the Tigers, which had countered at $19 million, are far-reaching given the tenuous stakes to come, Meyer showing up to present the rebuttal engendered loyalty and is another vote for the importance of continuity.

Take it or leave it?

A handful of industry sources polled by SBJ believe little will change on the bargaining front in Clark’s absence. As former Miami Marlins president David Samson pointed out, Meyer has been at the bargaining table with Clark in the background, just as MLB chief labor negotiator Dan Halem has MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred in the background. However, it was Clark and Manfred in the end.

“Now it’s Bruce at the table and Bruce at the end. So that’s a subtle difference from before,” said Samson, who was with the Marlins from 2002-17. “But in terms of how the negotiation plays out, I really don’t think it changes with Bruce as the interim versus him as the deputy.”

The next round of bargaining will determine not only how much players earn, but also how the sport’s economic system, from revenue sharing to payroll limits, evolves. As revenue disparities grow amid the decline of regional sports networks, owners are expected to seek a hard salary cap and floor system, which they contend would bring a combination of cost certainty and competitive balance, while increasing franchise values.

Meyer’s union insists economic reform can be achieved without a cap, though he declined to get into specifics.

“We’ve been willing to work with the league in at least one respect recently, when we agreed to allow them some flexibility over the luxury tax proceeds,” Meyer said. “And I think in bargaining, we’re going to make some proposals that involve revenue sharing; some of those proposals are going to help some of the teams that are being challenged. They already get tremendous financial support from traditional revenue sharing and luxury tax proceeds and other sources, but we’re going to have proposals that sort of address all those areas.”

The next round of bargaining will determine not only how much players earn, but also how the sport’s economic system, from revenue sharing to payroll limits, evolves.

Manfred takes pride in the fact that MLB has never missed a game during his tenure, and he says he doesn’t intend for that to change this time around. However, at least one agent wondered whether breaking the union and achieving the cap would be better for his legacy.

Time will tell if the league delivers yet another take-it-or-leave-it offer, this time including a cap, and whether the players would be willing to miss paychecks and hold out.

“We’re not trying to bring about a solution where we miss games,” Meyer said. “But the reality is everything that players have now comes because some prior generation of players was willing to miss games if necessary, if that’s what it takes.”

MLB heads into a new season with its first new auto sponsor in decades in Ford, and four additional new corporate patrons: Polymarket, Gallo, Zillow and John Deere.

With domestic truck and auto rights, Ford is displacing Chevrolet, MLB’s automotive sponsor since 2005, with a full portfolio of rights including MLB, MiLB and Little League Baseball sponsorships, the latter of which should help tie in regional dealer groups. Mike Zavodsky at WME supported Ford for the negotiations.

Ford has not had another big-league sponsorship since exiting its NFL deal for trucks in 2022, but its MLB team rights include sponsorships with the A’s, Braves, Cardinals, Guardians, Mets, Pirates, Reds, Red Sox, Royals, Twins and Yankees. With MLB, Ford will also be backing much of baseball’s America 250 celebration, including a presenting sponsorship around MLB’s Fourth of July fete.

TV ad buys with MLB rights holders are being negotiated. Ford will not take over the All-Star Game and World Series trophy presentations, which Chevrolet had. It will donate money and equipment to Little League Baseball.

Digital real-estate marketplace Zillow is also new to MLB’s sponsor roster, taking the “home search and home rental” categories in what appears to be its first league tie-up. Support will be largely digital and includes presenting sponsorship of a “Home Field Advantage” marketing platform, and one for the game’s “best closers.”

Another new sponsor is Gallo, complementing its four-year-old NFL rights with MLB ties. Gallo’s rights are for MLB and MiLB assets, and include rights to leverage Vibe Twisted Sips, wine-based drinks competing in the exploding ready-to-drink cocktail segment. Ads are expected across MLB’s broadcast, digital and social platforms. MLB’s last wine sponsor was Mondavi’s Woodbridge brand, which signed on in 2020.

Seeking a link to MLB’s ever-verdant fields, John Deere has signed on as MLB’s “official tractor and lawnmower.” A baseball-themed TV ad is expected shortly, and a huge marketing effort is planned around the Aug. 13 Field of Dreams Game in Dyersville, Iowa. John Deere also has sports sponsorships with the PGA Tour and the Breeders’ Cup.

Read more about MLB’s sponsor roster in Terry Lefton’s column in this week’s Sports Business Journal.

Kraken owner Samantha Holloway on Monday created the umbrella brand One Roof Sports & Entertainment, a transaction that gives her a majority stake in Seattle’s Climate Pledge Arena and is a likely precursor to a bid for an NBA expansion franchise.

The arena was owned in equal 50-50 shares by Holloway and Oak View Group. But in what was called a planned ownership transition, OVG will now have a significant minority stake while continuing to operate and book the venue’s events. Kraken CEO Tod Leiweke will also lead One Roof Sports & Entertainment, along with his executive team.

“Increasing our ownership in Climate Pledge Arena allows us to consolidate operations and sets us up for future opportunities,” Holloway said. “OVG is an amazing partner, and I am pleased that they will continue to operate the facility for many years to come.”

One Roof Sports & Entertainment will become the parent brand for the arena, the Kraken, One Roof Foundation, Kraken Community Iceplex and the partnership with the City of Seattle and Seattle Public schools to redevelop the New Memorial Stadium at Seattle Center. It will also be the representative in the enterprise’s interest for the AHL’s Coachella Valley Firebirds and Acrisure Arena.

But above all else, One Roof likely fortifies Holloway’s potential bid for an NBA expansion franchise. The NBA’s Board of Governors is meeting this week, where it is expected to greenlight taking expansion bids from prospective buyers exclusively in Seattle and Las Vegas. ESPN has reported that the league is looking for bids in the $7B-$10B range.

Fielding questions about how the federal agency he leads might adapt to more effectively regulate the wave of prediction market offerings that have flooded its exchanges in the last six months, Michael Selig, the chair of the Commodities Futures Trading Commission, alternated between malleable and intractable.

In Miami on Wednesday to announce an agreement to work with MLB on a framework to address integrity concerns connected to the increasingly popular products offered by Kalshi, Polymarket, FanDuel, DraftKings and others, Selig conceded that it will require subject matter expertise that the agency has only begun to develop.

Agencies monitoring for securities fraud are adept at watching for what makes a traditional commodities trade suspicious, but less so when it comes to what raises red flags on a prediction trade — which, to be clear, presents exactly like a bet.

“That is the reason for this agreement,” Selig said Wednesday, seated next to MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred before both signed a memorandum of understanding that includes the sharing information and consultation on policy. “We need to understand and work together with the leagues to know what can potentially be easily manipulated on the field. We don’t necessarily have all that information from our background as a derivatives regulator. But we’re going to get it by working together with the league and getting this right.”

Selig pointed out that the CFTC sent signals it was moving in this direction last week, when it issued guidance suggesting that exchange operators such as Kalshi and Polymarket, confer with the leagues on which markets were “readily susceptible to manipulation” and that they stay clear of those.

Though the CFTC regulates contracts, it does not approve them before an exchange lists them. Instead, exchanges list the events — for example, who will win by how many points or, of more concern to the leagues, whether a coach or manager will be fired by a certain date — with the understanding that the CFTC can pull them down, and perhaps discipline those who posted them, if they stray far from guidance.

Last week’s CFTC guidance mentioned injuries and officiating, which Selig said were starting points. An upcoming 45-day rulemaking process during which the leagues and others can file public comments, likely will include more. In an exclusive sponsorship deal it announced with Polymarket on Thursday, MLB also secured restrictions on pitch-by-pitch betting, which last year led to the indictment of two Guardians pitchers accused of getting paid to purposely miss the strike zone.

“We’ve articulated in guidance that one of the standards [for avoiding manipulation] is working with the leagues,” Selig said. “If the league is saying these contracts are problematic and likely to be manipulated, that’s something that has to be rebutted significantly in order to be able to list something with us.”

The point of this week’s announcement was to send the message that the CFTC will be working with MLB and, likely coming soon, the NBA, NFL and others, and that if prediction market operators intend to continue offering contracts on sports, they’d be better served operating with league authorization than going it alone with the CFTC.

It’s a lot like the way sports betting unfolded in its early years, when most of the leagues created not only a sponsorship category for sportsbooks but also an authorized operator designation that gave leagues some say on bets and behaviors that raised integrity concerns.

A new revenue stream?

Along with allaying some of its integrity fears, MLB will open the spigot on another stream of revenue. If Kalshi and Polymarket want to advertise during games, as the sportsbooks have, they’ll have to pay fees — not sure how much, but we’re working on it — attached to league authorization, which will include the use of official data provided by league distributors such as Sportradar. Ditto if they want to sponsor teams, including behemoths such as the Dodgers, Lakers, Rams, Giants, 49ers and Warriors in California.

And, of course, the Cowboys, who surely are grinning widely this morning at the prospect of the sports betting sun finally shining on Texas.

You can take the leagues at their word when they say that the sudden pop-up of yet another vehicle for U.S. residents to bet outside the regulation of established state regimes worries them. The NBA, MLB and NFL cashed the sponsor and advertising checks that helped FanDuel and DraftKings take sports wagering mainstream, knowing widespread adoption would bring increased reputational risk, which they’ve since sustained.

“Catching bad actors means the system is working” may be true, but it doesn’t play well.

Nobody wants more of that.

But, as with sports betting, there is an undeniable commercial upside when the pool of addressable U.S. adults expands. The bloom of prediction markets has provided that, flipping the switch on the roughly 40% of U.S. adults who previously were boxed out.

The courts eventually could put the kibosh on that. The Californians, Texans and Georgians now flocking to Kalshi and all the sportsbook “predicts” apps that have rolled out in the last few months likely will abandon them if their states ever legalize the far more robust product they’ll find on the sportsbook apps.

That’s not where we are now.

A new betting czar?

If the CFTC isn’t already the largest single regulator of U.S. sports bets, it likely will be soon — a role its chairman has enthusiastically, and at times defiantly, embraced.

While malleable on how the CFTC will regulate sports event contracts, Selig remains intractable on whether its exchanges are an appropriate forum for them.

“The states have their own regimes … when it comes to gambling and there’s different rules and requirements in each state,” Selig said. “For federal derivatives, which you can have on virtually any type of asset, whether it’s sports, elections, politics, corn, grains, we police that. We protect investors from fraud, manipulation, abuse, insider trading and the like. And we’re a strong cop on the beat.

“We’re a very serious regulator and these are important markets we want to flourish here in the U.S. So, we will take that role very seriously and continue to partner with leagues and other stakeholders to make sure we get the policy right.”

There already is a larger conversation going on around the potential for manipulation of the markets Kalshi and Polymarket offer outside of sports, such as whether the U.S. will invade Cuba, whether the government will confirm aliens exist, or how many times Elon Musk will post on X this week, all of which were available for wagering on Poly this morning. Founder Shayne Coplan frequently refers to the ferreting out of closely held information as a quality that allows savvy customers to succeed in the prediction markets.

Is knowing that a starting pitcher is about to scratched before it has been announced equally savvy?

Earlier this month, Coplan announced that Poly would work with AI software developers Palantir and TWG AI (the latter led by Dodgers owner Mark Walter) on a sports integrity platform that would improve on the “entrenched, fragmented and antiquated infrastructure” and “rudimentary” technology used to police regulated sportsbooks.

Those at MLB who have spoken with him say he has “matured” and no longer wants his company perceived as an outlier, at least when it comes to taking bets on sports.

The league ultimately decided it is safer, and likely more profitable, to work with him, and the CFTC, than take its chances outside of them.

With another March Madness in full swing, people across the country are packing into stadiums, tuning in to buzzer beater matchups, and as a result, helping to fuel a multibillion-dollar sports enterprise.

The NCAA men’s and women’s basketball tournaments generate enormous amounts of revenue not just for the conference but also for TV networks and advertisers, corporate sponsors and participating colleges and universities. In fiscal year 2024, the NCAA made nearly $1.4 billion in total revenue — about $1 billion of it from March Madness alone — and roughly 60% flowed back to member schools.

Yet, the players — whose blood, sweat and labor make the tournament possible — are denied workplace rights and protections because this huge profit-making industry refuses to recognize them for what they are: hard-working employees. The exploitation of this vulnerable group of young workers, which has persisted for decades and has become increasingly indefensible, has to end.

As I asserted while serving as general counsel at the National Labor Relations Board, the NCAA and its member institutions exert tremendous control over athletes. Daily hours for learning are severely limited by inflexible schedules. Competition and training hours are tracked. Outside compensation opportunities are restricted. Scholarship eligibility, travel, grade point average, gifts and benefits, engagement with sponsors the press, and on social media — it’s all closely monitored for strict compliance. And those who violate these rules may be suspended or lose their spot on the team.

In any other context, that degree of control in exchange for profit-making services would meet the definition of employment under the National Labor Relations Act. The NLRA doesn’t care if you wear a jersey to work or carry a briefcase. The law exists to level the playing field between workers and their employers by giving employees rights to organize, collectively bargain and act together to improve their working conditions. Players at academic institutions shouldn’t be an exception. They deserve to stand on more equal footing with the powerful forces profiting off their labor.

Many have argued that recognizing players as employees would destroy college sports. In reality, it would afford them the same rights, opportunities, and workplace protections afforded to millions of other workers, including the right to advocate for fair compensation, reasonable schedules, educational and professional opportunities, revenue sharing and their overall health, safety and well-being. Exercising these rights builds worker power — the very means by which working people elevate their voices, hold institutions accountable, and more fully participate in a free and democratic society. The right to organize, collectively bargain and act concertedly to improve their circumstances provides workers with leverage against concentrated power and a structured way to influence the decisions that shape their lives, including compensation, flexible schedules, growth opportunities and nondiscriminatory treatment, to name a few.

This matters beyond the free-throw line because when we deny people their rights at work, we diminish their power everywhere else. Telling players they can’t have a seat at the table reinforces a structural inequity where power flows up and accountability flows nowhere. It normalizes a system where powerful institutions extract value and expect silence. Over the past several decades, and increasingly more recently, as we’ve seen union density decline, we’ve seen economic inequality explode. At the same time, faith in our institutions has diminished and corporate wealth has become even more concentrated at the top. These forces aren’t unrelated. They’re also not sustainable for any healthy and vibrant democracy — and college sports sit at the heart of this tension.

March Madness is marketed as a national celebration of grit, determination, and school spirit. But behind the pageantry and fanfare is a highly organized commercial empire built on labor that’s carefully controlled and systematically suppressed. Classifying players as employees would be a significant acknowledgment of the economic reality and lived experience that their labor drives the revenue obtained by these institutions. And importantly, it would also affirm the basic principle that people who work have and deserve rights. That’s why Congress needs to pass legislation like the College Athlete Right to Organize Act to ensure federal law codifies the right of players to seek and obtain the respect they’ve long been denied.

As fans, we revel in the courage and collective action on display during March Madness. We should want the same for players off the court. This tournament is a huge business sustained by their labor. We need to stop pretending otherwise. Players at academic institutions are workers. And to strengthen the core democratic promise that every worker has a voice, the law should recognize them as such.

Jennifer Abruzzo is former general counsel of the National Labor Relations Board.

• The WNBA players unanimously ratified their collective bargaining agreement with the league Monday, and the Board of Governors will vote next to memorialize the deal, reports SBJ’s Tom Friend.
• MLB fans attending games at Citi Field, Citizens Bank Park, Coors Field, Daikin Park, Kauffman Stadium and Oracle Park over the next few weeks will be able to take part in Aramark’s new 9-9-9 Challenge (that’s nine mini-hot dogs and nine four-ounce beers in nine innings), writes SBJ’s David Broughton.
• NFLPA President Jalen Reeves-Maybin on Monday defended the union’s election of JC Tretter as executive director, insisting the process wasn’t unfairly tilted toward Tretter and that multiple investigations cleared him of any wrongdoing while he was the group’s president from 2000-24 during Lloyd Howell Jr.’s scandal-plagued tenure, reports SBJ’s Ben Fischer.
• LA28 organizers released the visual identity for its Olympics and Paralympics, with bright colors inspired by the California Superbloom (when wildflowers bloom en masse about once a decade), writes SBJ’s Rachel Axon.
• MGM Resorts International signed Dana White’s Power Slap to a new residency deal to host all of its events in Las Vegas, growing a relationship with White that also includes UFC and may eventually involve Zuffa Boxing, notes SBJ’s Adam Stern.