SBJ Unpacks: PGA Tour’s future on radar at Masters

Tonight in Unpacks: The PGA Tour’s planned schedule changes were a hot topic Tuesday at Augusta National, as SBJ’s Josh Carpenter reports on the chatter from golfers and other stakeholders as they await more details from tour CEO Brian Rolapp.

Also tonight:

• World Cup security hinges on coordination amid polarization
• Big Ten holds cards to college sports’ future
• Diamond’s next minor-league phase
• Op-ed: Inter Miami’s startup mindset

Listen to SBJ’s most popular podcast, Morning Buzzcast, where Abe Madkour discusses the Big Ten’s championship run, NCAA President Charlie Baker backing the regional plan that’s upset women’s basketball coaches, Twins owner Tom Pohlad taking the business reins for this season and more.

AUGUSTA, Ga. -- Tuesday at the 90th Masters brought more discussions around the PGA Tour’s planned schedule changes, as well as the pressure facing the tour to deliver more details when CEO Brian Rolapp meets with the media in late June at the Travelers Championship. Rolapp announced his bold intentions in August at the Tour Championship and gave what was mostly viewed as a positive update at last month’s Players Championship.

While Rolapp announced his plan for a two-track tour in March, many felt it was still light on specific details. And golf sources continue to suggest that the planned changes are taking shape slower than originally expected due to the tour’s complicated makeup across sponsorships, television and event logistics.

“It’s not a 17-game schedule,” one source quipped Tuesday.

Some of those potential changes may have been bandied about on Tuesday, as sources said the Five Families of golf -- Augusta National, the USGA, the PGA Tour, PGA of America and R&A -- held a closed-door meeting in Augusta. The agenda of the meeting wasn’t known.

Battle of the billboards

Golf’s two most noteworthy luxury timepiece companies have a bit of a standoff going on just outside the gates of Augusta National this week. Defending Masters champion Rory McIlroy is an Omega ambassador and has a dedicated billboard, but it’s on the other side of Washington Road from the golf course. That’s because a handful of Rolex ambassadors and former Masters winners, including Jon Rahm and Adam Scott, have their own billboards on club property.

Oak tree happenings

Augusta National every fall confirms new members -- by invitation only. One of those was revealed on Tuesday as a group of excited executives greeted Peter Millar CEO Scott Mahoney in his trim-fitting new Green Jacket.

Among the executives and personalities who were spotted just outside Augusta National’s clubhouse on Tuesday.

Agencies: The Team’s Andy Bilodeau, Taylor Ives, Terry Reilly, Ian Keenan and Chris Mullhaupt; GSE Worldwide’s Brett Falkoff, Mike Creasy and Kevin Canning; WME’s Jay Danzi and Alistair Johnston; Excel Sports Management’s Andrew Kipper, Kevin Hopkins, Jon Heaton and Alex Burge; Sportfive’s Steve Loy, Jimmy Johnston, Mike Harmon, Jeremy Elliott, Tommy Riehle and Ben Harrison; CAA’s Billy McGriff and Ben Gannett; Hambric Sports’ Rocky Hambric and Blake Smith; P3 Sports Reps’ Peter Webb; Pro Sport Management’s Jens Beck; Octagon’s Scott Seymour; Rory McIlroy Inc.’s Sean O’Flaherty.

Tours/governing bodies: PGA of America’s Terry Clark, Kerry Haigh and Casey Morton; R&A’s Mark Darbon; USGA’s Jon Podany; LPGA’s Chad Coleman, Liz Moore and J.D. Sterba; PGA Tour’s Andy Weitz and Tyler Dennis; WNBA commissioner Cathy Engelbert.

Other: Versant’s Mark Lazarus and Matt Hong; Golf Channel’s Tom Knapp and John Donnelly; Rolex’s Arnaud Laborde and Alex Gasser; Kai Trump; Pro Shop’s Chad Mumm; Nancy Lopez; LIV Golf team managers Jeff Koski, Carlos Rodriguez and Peter Davis; TaylorMade’s David Abeles; CapTech’s Roberto Castro; ESPN’s Matt Barrie and Scott Van Pelt; Travelers Championship’s Andy Bessette.

With two months until the largest and most logistically complex sporting event ever held on American soil, the Department of Homeland Security remains mired in a record-long funding shutdown as the U.S. confronts a military conflict with an adversary that has historically supported global terrorism.

The U.S. and its fellow host countries have prepared for years to secure the FIFA World Cup 2026. Those efforts, however, are dependent on lockstep cooperation among federal, state and local authorities, particularly amid an elevated threat environment.

The question is whether political polarization could undermine that coordination at a critical moment.

“Right now, we’re in a place where the politics is leading the way rather than the 30,000-foot view, which is we should all be pushing in the same direction to make sure this is a safe and successful World Cup,” said Andrew Giuliani, executive director of the White House’s World Cup task force.

The U.S. is no stranger to securing large sporting events, but the scale of the 2026 World Cup is unprecedented. The first 48-team edition of the competition will feature 104 matches in 16 host cities across the U.S., Canada and Mexico over 40 days, including 78 matches in 11 U.S. markets.

G.B. Jones, chief safety and security officer for FIFA, said during a panel at the Atlantic Council that more than 600 sites — including hotels, airports, transportation systems, stadiums, training facilities and fan fests — will fall within the organization’s security footprint. That, of course, doesn’t include the thousands of other places fans will gather.

DHS has categorized the tournament as a Level 1 event on its Special Event Assessment Rating scale, a classification reserved for “significant events with national and/or international importance that require extensive federal interagency support.” Juliette Kayyem, a Harvard professor who served at DHS under the Obama administration, said that designation is unprecedented for an event of this length and geographic scale.

While FIFA plays a role in ensuring the safety and security of the World Cup, much of the responsibility will fall to a combination of local, state and federal authorities.

Local and state law enforcement agencies are responsible for on-the-ground operations, including crowd control and venue security, while federal agencies provide intelligence, coordination and specialized capabilities, such as cybersecurity, counter-drone measures and border security.

Giuliani said DHS serves as the “umbilical cord” connecting federal agencies to host cities, ensuring information flows across markets as teams and fans move throughout the tournament.

Funding for the department remains tied up in Congress, however, amid an impasse over the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement efforts.

Giuliani said the partial shutdown has already led to critical preparation being put on hold and could create staffing shortages, particularly at agencies such as the Coast Guard, which plans to deploy more than 1,000 personnel across eight World Cup sites and is responsible for counter-drone security at several of them.

“There are plans that are getting pushed rightward that we should be executing now, different training exercises that the Department of Homeland Security wants and needs to be a part of,” Giuliani said. “At this point right now, we should be in full operational mode.”

In addition to being at the center of the DHS funding issue, political tension over immigration enforcement also could threaten cooperation between federal and local authorities in the wake of the killings of two protestors by federal agents in Minneapolis earlier this year.

“The shooting of two Americans for immigration enforcement has left [DHS] with a very hostile relationship with locals and states,” Kayyem said. “That’s not a great place to be.”

Any deployment of Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents around the World Cup could become a political flashpoint, potentially driving a wedge between the federal government and local authorities. Democrats in Congress have already filed a series of bills aimed at limiting ICE’s presence around the tournament.

Giuliani declined to provide specifics on the administration’s plans to conduct immigration enforcement activity or deploy ICE agents for security, saying he would have more clarity following an upcoming meeting with newly appointed Secretary of Homeland Security Markwayne Mullin.

These concerns about domestic coordination come as the U.S. war in Iran continues, a conflict security experts say has elevated the risk of attacks directed or inspired by the Iranian regime. Colin Clarke, executive director of security-focused think tank The Soufan Center, called the current conflict “existential” for the regime.

“If there were ever a tripwire that would operationalize assets overseas, it’s now,” Clarke said.

He added that the high profile and complexity of the trinational World Cup make it particularly vulnerable.

“You’ve got vertical coordination between local, state, federal, and then you’ve got across countries, which is extremely hard to do, and bad guys don’t face these same kinds of challenges,” Clarke said. “So yeah, I’m very concerned for what could happen.”

The system designed to secure the World Cup is robust, but it depends on cooperation across jurisdictions, agencies and political parties. While there is always risk associated with major events, fans should expect those responsible for their safety to be operating at full strength.

Securing an event of this scale is hard enough without political infighting getting in the way.

Alex Silverman can be reached at asilverman@sportsbusinessjournal.com.

INDIANAPOLIS -- There’s something cliché about March Madness.

The allusions to magic. The trips to Disney World. The “One Shining Moment” of it all. And yet we consume every morsel each spring, enamored with the way it makes us feel.

The joy that comes from clipping the nets on the first Monday of April in a cavernous football stadium evolves into bold proclamations and the completion of a journey. South of the Mason-Dixon, they’d tell you this just means more. In the Carolinas they’d suggest it means greatness has been accomplished.

In Big Ten country? There are no quirky slogans dreamed up by corporate marketing wizards to explain what transpired on Monday and, really, over the past nine months.

Michigan’s 69-63 dismissal of Connecticut for the program’s second men’s basketball national title wasn’t about slogans or appeasing talk show callers. It simply served as the latest reminder the Big Ten is roundhouse kicking its way to the top of college sports in the board room and on the court -- and everyone ought to take notice.

“Resources matter, you have to be honest about it,” Big Ten Commissioner Tony Petitti said as confetti fluttered about inside Lucas Oil Stadium. “But you still need great coaching. You still need a commitment to winning and support at high levels, coming together and building and developing players. … We’ve seen that across pretty much everything we play.”

There was a collective relief Monday evening in a city that embodies the ho-hum Midwestern roots of a conference that suddenly lords over college sports.

The Big Ten’s 2025-26 academic year marks the first in history in which a conference has seen three different member schools hoist national titles in football, men’s basketball and women’s basketball.

Michigan became the first Big Ten team to win a men’s basketball championship since Michigan State in 2000. The league has also seen three different schools win football national championships in as many years. That kind of winning brings cachet that the hard-charging Petitti will undoubtedly wield over the enterprise he’s so desperately tried to disrupt.

“The Big Ten, has resources between the Big Ten Network and brand of schools where there’s so many different teams that can win a championship now,” said former Michigan coach John Beilein from the first row behind press row. “You’re going to have to beat good teams, but Michigan is going to be in the mix in every sport.”

Petitti has become college sports’ villain of the moment. He’s the man who insisted the rest of the Power Four expand the College Football Playoff to 24 teams. His $2.4B private equity deal drew enough uproar from Michigan and USC regents to torpedo it.

And, yet, on an evening in which Michigan faithful rejoiced, it’s Petitti and those in the league office that ought to perhaps celebrate as fervently as any.

The Big Ten’s seven-year, $7 billion television deal spread across Fox, CBS and NBC grants it the richest such agreement in college sports. The SEC? Sources suggested this week that the league is looking for ways to rejigger their notably undervalued agreement with ESPN worth $3 billion over 10 years, despite largely outperforming the Big Ten in viewership.

Then, of course, there’s the on-field results.

Indiana football completed one of the all-time great sports stories with its dominant march to a football title.

Just 24 hours prior to Michigan’s victory, UCLA capped its first women’s basketball national title with a 28-point victory over Dawn Staley’s South Carolina squad that wasn’t even that close.

And that brings us to Monday.

Michigan head coach Dusty May is plenty familiar with the conference he now seems poised to run. The baby-faced Indiana grad was once a manager for Bob Knight. Fifty-five miles down the road from his collegiate digs, May guided the Maize and Blue to a result the Fab Five never accomplished.

This will have ramifications in Ann Arbor. May, who had been a rumored candidate for North Carolina opening filled Monday by Mike Malone, is likely to be a rich, rich man by this time next week (Michigan AD Warde Manuel deferred when asked about a new deal).

Michigan’s title, though, is representative of a broader shifting influence over college sports from Birmingham to Chicago.

For an ecosystem so desperate for super leagues, it already has one.

“What’s the old saying? Iron sharpens iron?,” said Manuel, sporting an ear-to-ear grin. “That’s what the Big Ten does for each other. … My AD colleagues are working hard to do the same thing that I’m doing tonight — talking to you guys, being here with the confetti, having our team cut down the net. All that stuff is really good.”

The Big Ten, of course, has its cynics.

Petitti would relish an opportunity to freely conceive ideas to reinvent college sports without the interruptions from reporters and critics he so often bristles at publicly.

Is the criticism always fair? Not necessarily. Is some of it brought on by his own decision-making? Certainly.

Yet amid the perceived turmoil, Petitti maintains an almost fanatical support from the bulk of his athletic directors. And on a night when Michigan celebrated another national title, that support — and the broader vision behind it — looked a little easier to justify.

The Big Ten’s latest title doesn’t just mean more. It’s a reminder of a new era.

It’s a Big Ten world and we’re all living in it.

“It’s all ballgame.”

That’s how TNT’s Craig Barry and his team are treating Monday’s UConn-Michigan NCAA Men’s Basketball Championship game. Barry, TNT Sports’ EVP and chief content officer, noted that during the Final Four there have been a number of TV elements like the Coach K interview, the Fab Five alt-cast and the concert during the bridge show, but now “it’s all about the game tonight.”

With the game being in Indianapolis, there will be a tribute piece to the 1975-76 undefeated Indiana men’s basketball team, but the rest of the broadcast will be focused on what Barry thinks will be a very close game between the Huskies and Wolverines. “In our production meetings, we’re hyper-focused on bringing the absolute best presentation of this game to the fan,” he said.

How the Fab Five alt-cast came to be

While Chris Webber and Jalen Rose both have been working for TNT Sports’ college basketball studio show all season, the idea for the Fab Five alt-cast came from a different source — young TNT producer Torrence Wilson. “It took me about two seconds to say yes, and that’s literally how it came to be,” Barry said.

The reunion also wasn’t without other logistical hurdles, and Nate Smeltz, TNT Sports’ SVP/talent relations, global communications, client events and partnerships, coordinated to get everyone together. That included navigating around the schedule of Nets assistant coach Juwan Howard, who had games on Friday and Sunday in Brooklyn. But once that was all worked out, Webber, Rose, Howard, Jimmy King and Ray Jackson were ready to go.

While many alt-casts are in studios with a number of voices, the Fab Five “watch party” format was meant to be more casual and conversational and reflect watching the game in the venue. TNT positioned the five former Wolverines, plus host Adam Lefkoe, in the middle of the student section on the Michigan side, but right by the court with a direct view of the floor. Everyone also had live broadcast feeds and replays on monitors.

“Traditional alt-casts work in the boxes around the main broadcast window,” Barry said, name-dropping the “ManningCast” as an example. “But then to be able to have them shoulder-to-shoulder and still have them in the box so they’re interacting real time — you’re seeing the chemistry kind of bubble up. But yet, when you’re watching them on the air, you can focus individually on each of them, and so I thought it made for a really compelling format for the alt-cast.”

Barry praised the chemistry between the former college teammates despite only having appeared publicly together a few times over the last 30 years. “It felt very much like I was on the couch with these guys, listening to them watch this game,” he said.

As for any thought on running it back with the Fab Five for an alt-cast during the championship game, Barry quickly put the kibosh on that.

“First take, best take,” he quipped.

Diamond Baseball Holdings’ roll-up of 48 Minor League Baseball teams was driven by the business synergies and purchasing power created by unifying ownership of MLB-affiliated teams.

Stadium scenarios were the company’s No. 2 consideration behind designated market area and market size. Its buying spree came as MLB unveiled the Professional Development League facility standards, which upended MiLB. Unworkable stadium situations caused Diamond Baseball Holdings to pass on a few possible acquisitions, and resulted in teams in Kinston (N.C.), Modesto, and Rancho Cucamonga relocating.

The latter deal involved the acquisition of the Dodgers’ Single-A affiliated Rancho Cucamonga Quakes, who were moved to Ontario and a new stadium built by the city, and renamed the Tower Buzzers. They opened the $151 million city-owned, 6,000-seat ONT Field (designed by Populous and built by Tilden-Coil Constructors) on April 2.

“Yes, there were more cooks in the kitchen than typical,” Diamond Baseball Holdings CEO Peter Freund said of the deal. “It’s not your classic, ‘here you go, here is the venue for 365 days, it’s all yours.’ It’s truly a partnership there.”

Beyond project approval, the Ontario airport provided design inspiration for the new stadium, which Legends Global operates. There are “Arrivals” and “Departures” signs, with an airplane in the outfield (and often overhead).

“It’s really on-brand, and on-theme, but they’ve been great business partners,” said Freund. “We think this is as good a minor league baseball stadium as there is in the country. If I was going to build a minor league baseball stadium right now, that is the one I would say go see.”

As the dust settles on the buying spree, Diamond Baseball Holdings has increasingly turned its attention to the 48 stadiums it’s inherited — it owns only two (Charlotte and Grand Chute, Wisc.) — as well as opportunities to develop the land surrounding several of the ballparks. That includes a nascent mixed-use project around Louisville Slugger Stadium in which DBH is directly involved, or the publicly owned 190-acre Ontario Sports Empire youth sports complex surrounding ONT Field, where DBH’s involvement so far is limited to discussions.

“I would be lying if I said this was our core philosophy when we were putting 48 teams together,” said Freund. “But I feel like these opportunities have come to us, as opposed to us chasing them, from these municipalities that want to see continued growth around these sports venues and want to see these places activated more than just the 70 home games a year.”

From acquisitions to developments

Perhaps emblematic of the shift in focus, Henry Shepherd, who oversaw the company’s M&A strategy during the buying spree, is now its chief strategy officer overseeing a new subsidiary, Diamond Real Estate. Diamond Baseball Holdings is ultimately a platform business and real estate development, though intensely local in nature, seemingly could fit that structure.

MLB’s Professional Development League compliance requirements spurred a major portion of the nine figures Diamond Baseball Holdings has poured into its teams’ stadiums, including more than $10 million each into ballparks in Portland (Maine), Scranton, and Vancouver. Offseason changes featured complete field reconstructions, new bars and premium clubs and a canopy over a group seating space at Polar Park. As of MiLB’s 2026 Opening Day on Friday, all Diamond Baseball Holdings-owned teams’ stadiums are PDL compliant.

The land surrounding many of the venues is where big growth potential sits.

Ontario Sports Empire, managed by Sports Facilities Companies, is the largest youth sports complex west of the Rocky Mountains, with more than 40 fields of different sizes and shapes surrounding ONT Field. Its mixed-use thesis is more “if you build it, they will come” than urban mixed-use renewal, a concept that’s succeeded at Frontwave Arena in Oceanside, Calif.

The more traditional urban mixed-use development project around Louisville Slugger Stadium is moving slowly, but it is progressing, Freund confirmed. It’s a reminder that each project’s timeline depends upon a slew of factors unique to each market.

“There needs to be government incentives, tax incentives, a situation where we have a partner like we do in the city of Louisville, where the city says if you’re going to take this parking away to build an adjacent mixed-use development, we’re going to help build a parking garage,” said Freund. “We need partnerships like that to make the financials work.”

This story has been updated from its initial version.

In the global soccer economy, disruption is usually associated with chaos — billionaire takeovers, relegation battles, financial fair play breaches, and the ever-present threat of existential collapse. Yet quietly, in South Florida, a different kind of disruption has been taking shape — one that looks less like a traditional franchise acquisition and more like a well-funded startup reaching product-market fit.

Few clubs illustrate this transformation better than Inter Miami CF. In just a few years, the club has approached growth less like a traditional soccer institution and more like an emerging company scaling a global brand.

The recent partnerships agreement between Inter Miami and Nubank (Nu) — the Brazilian-born digital financial services giant with more than 130 million customers across Latin America — offers a revealing case study. It shows how a young soccer club can apply a startup mindset to build global relevance, leveraging community, identity, and strategic partnerships rather than decades of sporting history or legacy.

Seen through that lens, the structure of MLS becomes more than background context. It becomes the operating environment that allows this kind of entrepreneurial club strategy to flourish.

Constraints as a feature, not a bug

Many soccer fans look at MLS and see limitation: a salary cap, a single-entity ownership structure and the absence of promotion and relegation. From the outside, it resembles a conventional American sports league. From a startup founder’s perspective, however, it looks more like a carefully designed sandbox.

MLS was constructed deliberately to avoid the failures of its predecessors. Where the North American Soccer League collapsed under the weight of unchecked spending and imbalanced investment, MLS introduced structural guardrails.

The league’s single-entity model means investor-operators are effectively shareholders in the entire system. When the league grows, every franchise benefits. The salary cap creates competitive balance and reduces the existential financial risks that turn smaller clubs in traditional leagues into permanent outsiders.

This is precisely the type of environment many startups attempt to build but rarely find: reduced downside risk, shared infrastructure and the ability to focus on brand, community and differentiation rather than survival. For clubs willing to play the long game, MLS does not constrain ambition — it protects it.

Inter Miami’s startup arc

Viewed through this lens, the trajectory of Inter Miami CF increasingly resembles that of a high-growth startup.

Founded in 2018 by an ownership group that includes David Beckham and businessman Jorge Mas, the club spent its early years doing what most early-stage ventures do: building identity, testing the market, absorbing losses and proving that it belonged.

Then came 2023.

The arrival of Lionel Messi was not merely a high-profile transfer. It was product-market fit. Almost overnight, Inter Miami evolved from a regional MLS club into a global content and commercial platform.

Revenue surged from roughly $56 million in 2022 to more than $200 million within a few years. Valuations crossed the $1 billion mark. The club’s pink jersey became one of the most recognizable — and best-selling — shirts in the world.

What stands out is not simply the growth, but how deliberately it was engineered. The ownership group understood early that Inter Miami’s addressable market was not limited to South Florida. It extended across the Latin American diaspora — millions of soccer fans connected culturally to Miami as a regional hub and increasingly to the players wearing pink.

That insight reflects startup thinking more than traditional sports management. It is the kind of market definition — identifying where your real customers live and how they identify with your brand — that separates organizations that scale globally from those that never grow beyond their local market.

Two disrupters, one bet

Nu did not become one of the world’s largest digital financial services platforms by following conventional wisdom. It entered Brazil’s concentrated banking sector dominated by a handful of incumbents, eliminated many traditional fees, operated through mobile platforms and built loyalty through simplicity and accessibility.

Its expansion beyond Latin America now faces a familiar challenge: How do you enter a competitive market like the United States without decades of brand recognition?

One answer is to align with a community that already understands your story.

Inter Miami provides exactly that bridge. The club sits at the intersection of global soccer culture, Latin American identity, and Miami’s role as a hemispheric hub. Attaching Nu’s brand to the club — placing its name on the facade of a stadium in one of the most culturally influential cities in the Americas and on the jersey of one of the most-sold shirts in world soccer — is less a traditional sponsorship than a long-term customer acquisition strategy.

As Inter Miami owner Jorge Mas noted when announcing the partnership, both organizations share an entrepreneurial mindset and global ambition. The phrasing is revealing. Each understands that what they are building is not merely a team or a financial product, but a platform capable of connecting identity, community, and commerce across borders.

The broader lesson

For years, debates about MLS have focused on whether it should resemble the traditional soccer model found in Europe and South America. But that may be the wrong comparison.

The more relevant question is whether MLS has created the structural conditions for a new type of soccer organization to emerge — one that behaves less like a traditional club and more like a modern startup.

Inter Miami’s rise suggests that possibility is real. The partnership with Nubank reinforces it. In a global football economy increasingly dominated by historic brands and enormous transfer budgets, MLS may have quietly built a system where creativity, community, and brand strategy can become competitive advantages.

In that sense, the Inter Miami-Nu deal is more than a sponsorship announcement. It illustrates how a new generation of sports organizations may scale enterprise value — not only through trophies or transfer budgets, but through brand strategy, global communities, and partnerships that extend far beyond the stadium.

Mauricio Rios is a sports business consultant and writes about the business of global soccer.

• SBJ’s Mike Mazzeo examines the value the Petco Park is bringing to the San Diego area as it boosts its roster of non-baseball activities and endeavors on a fourth season of drawing 3 million or more fans to Padres games.
• Oak View Group triumphed in an agency shootout and will be selling sponsorship and hospitality assets for Pimlico Race Course, longtime site of the Preakness Stakes, reports SBJ’s Terry Lefton.
• As it enters its 30th season, the WNBA is blending its past and future with a season-long creative campaign that ties the league’s origins to its present momentum through a slate of milestone‑driven initiatives, writes SBJ’s Na’Andre Emerson.
• American Dream, a 3 million-square-foot retail and entertainment complex in New Jersey, is positioning itself as an unofficial commercial and hospitality hub for this summer’s FIFA World Cup, notes SBJ’s Alex Silverman.
• Silverman also writes that the Rapids are beginning the process of developing an updated visual identity, working with Dallas-based creative agency ModestWorks and soccer-specific marketing firm Name + Number. It will keep its name and retain burgundy as its primary color.
• The Predators are taking their local telecasts over the air beginning next season under a multiyear agreement with Scripps Sports, writes SBJ’s Austin Karp and Silverman.
• Karp also notes that MLB launched a new youth-focused effort Tuesday on YouTube, dubbed MLB Clubhouse, to introduce baseball and softball through kid-focused content.
• When the new arena in Mobile, Ala., opens in early 2027, it’ll be called Regions Arena, following a naming rights deal between Oak View Group and Regions Bank, reports SBJ’s Bret McCormick.
• The NFL is expanding its data-driven tools to inform fans through a new free-to-use web dashboard, NFL IQ, that includes a conversational AI tool powered by Amazon Quick Agents, notes SBJ’s Joe Lemire.