SBJ Unpacks at World Congress: When regulations unlock investments

A theme weaving in and out of the CAA World Congress of Sports was global investment, be it U.S. leagues looking across borders or international endeavors looking to grow their American footprints. It’s fitting that one of the final sessions of the event featured Clearlake Capital’s Behdad Eghbali talking about Chelsea and Premier League soccer in an example of domestic and international interests intertwining onstage.

Also tonight:

• What it takes to build out successful big events
• For women’s sports, better storytelling key to greater growth
• Fox’s Eric Shanks goes deep on World Cup
• Nick Khan on TKO’s drive to elevate properties

Listen to SBJ’s most popular podcast, Morning Buzzcast, where Austin Karp, Rachel Axon, Joe Lemire and Chris Smith share their highlights of Wednesday’s CAA World Congress of Sports and discuss the future of LIV Golf amid reports of the Saudi PIF is pulling its support and Live Nation’s big loss in its antitrust case.

Within sports, one of the biggest and most immediate fallouts of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine was Roman Abramovich being forced to sell Chelsea FC. Clearlake Capital, the L.A.-based private equity firm with some $185 million in assets, joined Todd Boehly in acquiring the team in a $5.2 billion deal.

Clearlake is co-led by Behdad Eghbali, who Thursday at the CAA World Congress of Sports explained that he’s not typically fond of excessive regulation, but that he expects greater regulatory oversight throughout European soccer would unlock new investment, especially for multi-club ownership strategies.

“We do think there needs to be more kind of regulatory reform to enable multi-club [ownership],” Eghbali said. “We do think there’s going to be a lot of capital invested if that reform happens in European football, and that’s going to grow the game.”

UEFA has recently implemented new cost control measures, though teams continue to spend big. Earlier this month, Chelsea revealed it had pre-tax losses of nearly $350 million in the 12 months through last June, the worst red ink in Premier League history.

Eghbali also shared that one of his key learnings as a Premier League owner is the difficulty of making in-season changes. He noted the decision to fire former coach Thomas Tuchel in 2022 “didn’t work out so well.” More recently, Chelsea split with coach Enzo Maresca, a sudden and still-mysterious departure.

“The change wasn’t the club’s decision, for reasons I can’t speak about legally. I think the reasons will become kind of clear in due course. But no, it’s not a change we wanted to make,” Eghbali said. “It’s a change that’s had a bit of a negative impact on the season, when you’re changing systems and personnel. And it’s one we’ve got to fight out our way out of.”

LOS ANGELES — Authentic and organic are two of the most overused words in marketing. Still, speakers for a “Transformative Sponsorships” panel Thursday at the CAA World Congress of Sports averred that for sponsorships to be effective, they must be developed from scratch with the sponsored property.

Fifteen or more years ago, said SAP VP/Global Sponsorships Dan Fleetwood, sponsorship was most concerned with “making sure we had the C-suite at an event.” With an eye toward humanizing the SAP brand and using sponsored properties as “storytelling platforms,” Fleetwood said: “What we’ve learned since then is that the real value comes in building with our customers. We’re a digital-transformation company, so we need to show that those are authentic partnerships.”

As examples, Fleetwood cited the recent NHL Front Office app, an iPad program that offers real-time player-tracking data for roster construction and maintenance. It’s useful for GMs and even coaches in the flow of a game.

“In the past, most of this data was coming to teams after games. Now they can get it on the bench if they want,” Fleetwood said.

T-Mobile VP/Sponsorships and Events Amy Azzi noted that, as the company has grown by acquisition from a challenger brand to one of the two largest cell carriers, sponsorship “has been called upon to showcase our networks.”

“And our [sponsor] partners have been the best way to bring that to life,” she said. “We’re building together to accomplish that.”

Azzi cited T-Mobile’s 2 1/2-year-old PGA of America sponsorship helping to build and improve its then-new HQ location. New 5G capabilities enable “wire-free broadcasting, improved coaching with AI-powered analytics, and improved coaching with AI-powered analytics, and enhanced, data-driven fan experiences at championships,” according to Azzi.

More recently, T-Mobile’s 5G network is powering MLB’s new Automated Ball-Strike (ABS) system, which allows players to appeal home plate umpire calls through a 12-camera tracking system. ABS has been tested since 2023.

“There were many years of conversation with MLB,” Azzi said. “Transactional relationships don’t lead to transformative partnerships. You’ve got to push each other.”

LOS ANGELES -- Whether it’s the World Cup, Olympics, Super Bowls, Coachella, NBA Europe games or otherwise, big events continue to drive big business for operators in sports.

How to drive audience size, global reach, cultural impact and revenue performance for those types of events was the focus of the opening panel on Day 2 of the CAA World Congress of Sports.

“Marketers have more pressure than ever to make sure that these big investments are paying off,” said Mark Marshall, Chair of Global Advertising & Partnerships at NBCU. “So how do you make sure you bring all of these elements together and bring them together in a cohesive package instead of coming at them from 84 different directions as an industry we often like to do on that.”

Marshall, whose company just finished its run with the Super Bowl, Winter Olympics and NBA All-Star Game, also joked with the audience that even he was sick of using the “Legendary February” moniker.

Todd Goldstein, AEG’s CRO, talked about making sure everyone -- from artists to fans to sponsors to marketers -- all have a terrific experience when at one of his venues or events, including Coachella, which was coming off a big first weekend (his favorite act was Foster The People). “We want you to have a great time when you’re there, when you’re live,” he said.

The NBA is spending a lot of time, money and effort to get its European plans off the ground, but the league also knows it will need a grassroots effort to make such an ambitious effort work.

“It really starts with having people on the ground that understand the local culture and can translate our game and our brand into the local fabric and culture of what that means,” said Leah MacNab, the NBA’s SVP and Head of International Strategy & Operations. “We’re also bringing live events. We’ve done 230 global games across the world outside of North America now. We do other types of live events, but little things, like even making sure the merchandise that’s available is appropriate for the climate and the culture of what people wear, is really important and matters.”

Keeping up with the latest venue technology also remains crucial for creating a positive experience at big events. Larry Freedman, co-President for LAFC and a board member for the local World Cup organizing committee, noted that his MLS team’s venue, BMO Stadium, was the first North American venue to go to Wi-Fi 7, because the social media experience in a stadium is that important. “You need the infrastructure, the technology within the venue to help people expand that experience beyond just viewing in the venue,” he said.

LOS ANGELES -- Angel City co-founder Julie Uhrman believes it’s time to stop talking about the “the moment” of women’s sports.

“We’ve hit escape velocity and now we need to keep moving,” Uhrman said during Wednesday’s panel discussion on the business of women’s sports at the CAA World Congress of Sports.

The path forward for women’s sports, according to Uhrman, is the “storytelling.”

“What are the narratives? What are the storylines? Who are the rivals? Who are the best players? Why should I care about them?” she said. “And conflict. I find that one of the challenges about women’s sports, because we’re so interested in seeing it succeed and grow, is we just say how great it is all the time, how great this person is, how great this team was. ... But that’s not as interesting as the conflict. ... And so we have to start creating the rivalry narrative, the Cinderella narrative, the legacy dynasty narrative.”

Uhrman placed that responsibility on the teams and the leagues, but also the broadcast partners.

“It is great that ESPN has a show on Sundays and we’re all talking about it. We shouldn’t be talking about it because there should be a show every week, right? Or we shouldn’t be excited when a women’s soccer goal gets on ‘SportsCenter’ because we have plays every weekend that are amazing,” Uhrman said. “So how do we start to get more equity in media? How do we get more promotion from that perspective? Because that’s what gets people talking at the water coolers.

“Nobody remembers who won the game, but they remember what happened at the game. And that’s the kind of stuff we need to start talking about.”

USA Sports President Matt Hong agreed that broadcasters must do their part in crafting talking points. He also said leagues are “star driven,” and that task of building stars doesn’t just fall on media partners.

“It’s [also] the responsibility of the team and the [players] and the sponsors,” Hong said. “There’s a lot of hours where there are not live games that command people’s attention.”

Other highlights of “The Business of Women’s Sports: Growing Audience, Investment and Scale” included:

• Parity CEO Leela Srinivasan on the value of the “different” women’s sports audience: “First of all, there’s more visibility for those sponsors. So they’re more likely to know who [the fans] are. ... Secondly, the brands, like the beauty brands, are investing in these super creative campaigns, novel storytelling, things that really stick in the mind of the consumer. ... But there’s also this trust factor in the athletes themselves. Our research will tell you that 49% of U.S. women’s sports fans say they are more likely to purchase a product or service from a brand that backs women’s sports. And as to why, I think we can all agree, [is] just women’s sports is far more visible.”
• PWHL board member Royce Cohen on building stars off the Milan Cortina Olympics women’s hockey tournament: “It’s like the timing has just been kind of perfect and [with] ‘Heated Rivalry,’ Olympics, there are a lot of external factors and just being prepared to kind of leverage it and just ride and build. You never know where it’s coming from, but you know it’s coming.”
• CAA Evolution CEO & Managing Partner Bob Stanley on what will be the biggest driver of growth in women’s sports in the next five years: “I’m going to go with awareness. ... I view sports teams and leagues as media companies. So the awareness will drive the media rights. ... It will create content. It will bring more attendance into the stadiums and arenas, and it will enable the star athletes to create businesses around what they’re doing. So awareness of everything that’s going on, I think, really will contribute to driving all the aspects of the revenue and the overall operational success of these teams and leagues.”

In a conversation with Colin Cowherd at SBJ’s CAA World Congress of Sports in L.A. on Wednesday, Fox Sports CEO & Executive Producer Eric Shanks said this summer’s FIFA Men’s World Cup will be the biggest sports event in his network’s history.

Shanks said Fox has been preparing for this summer “since the lights went out in Qatar” four years ago. He noted that on-field success for the U.S. would be “massive” for Fox, but that the network isn’t reliant on the home team.

“People are rooting just as much for the stars of the sport, for Messi, Ronaldo and Mbappe, as they are anything else. So I think it’s a really highly educated soccer market now in the U.S., especially when it comes to international tournaments,” Shanks said. “So we’re going to tell this country the stories of soccer around the world.”

The tournament will also present the hotly anticipated broadcast debut for Zlatan Ibrahimovic. Shanks said he was introduced to Ibrahimovic by RedBird Capital’s Gerry Cardinale; RedBird owns AC Milan, for which Ibrahimovic serves as an adviser.

Fox’s recruitment effort included Ibrahimovic spending time with the network’s “locker room” of talent, including Tom Brady, Derek Jeter, David Ortiz, Alex Rodriguez and Michael Strahan. Subsequent contract negotiations offered a potential window into what to expect from the outspoken Swedish soccer star.

“I said, ‘Do you have an agent, who do you want me to send the offer to?’ And he said, ‘Zlatan is my agent.’ So we dealt with Zlatan and Zlatan the agent,” Shanks joked. “When we finally got everything done, he called and said, ‘Okay, I am in and you can fire everyone else.’ So I think that’s the guy that we’re going to get on the air, which is going to be absolutely tremendous.”

Throughout a wide-ranging conversation, Shanks also shared insights on:

• His support for a 24-team College Football Playoff: “If you don’t get penalized for playing those big non-conference games early and there’s a bigger pool of teams that can get into a 24-team playoff, the schedule gets better in September. And then in November, you have more meaningful games because a lot more teams are in play to be able to get in.”
• Fox’s investment in IndyCar: “Everybody who’s a producer in here probably has a bucket list of things that they’ve always wanted to do, whether it was a World Cup, a Super Bowl. One of the last things on my list was the Indy 500. I mean, I grew up 45 minutes from the track. I got to know Greg and Roger [Penske] and convinced them over a very long period of time that we would be a great partner because the blueprint is there for IndyCar to be as big as it ever was.”
• The World Baseball Classic: “Look, it definitely blew away expectations. It even blew our sales guys’ expectations away, because they sold it really cheap this year. That won’t happen again.”
• The future of Fox’s NFL media rights: “We were the only network that was literally born to do the NFL. And now we’ve grown into this saying that ‘Fox is football,’ right? Whether it’s college, spring, NFL; the NFL has just become a huge part of our DNA. And I mean, who wouldn’t want to be partners with the NFL as long as humanly possible?”

TKO Group Holdings is hard at work trying to grow its mature properties and establish its new ones, according to board member Nick Khan. But while he tracks key performance indicators, Khan is not on social media fretting about criticism directed toward WWE or Zuffa Boxing, he said at Wednesday’s CAA World Congress of Sports.

Khan, the former longtime CAA agent who now serves as president of WWE, spoke ahead of this weekend’s WrestleMania 42 at Allegiant Stadium, where he expects to approach gate records set last year but may fall just short of eclipsing them. “We think it’s going to get close to that record, but fingers crossed,” he said.

Khan spoke about growing up in the Las Vegas area in the 1970s and ’80s, where he watched the city’s main sports of UNLV basketball and boxing. He served as an usher during WrestleMania 9 at Caesars Palace. Asked what motivated him to get into law school and the sports industry, he replied simply: “I just didn’t want to be broke anymore.”

Khan started working at CAA in 2012 and represented talent there until he moved to WWE in 2020, when the company was still majority owned by the McMahon family. WWE later became part of the publicly traded TKO when it was formed in 2023.

The “hyper focus” for TKO at the moment is growing its existing businesses, Khan said, noting how the company is starting to find benefits from being able to scale across several properties in the combat and overall sports and entertainment space.

“The revenue and profitability of the company, the cost synergies, the revenue synergies between WWE and UFC in particular and now Zuffa Boxing are phenomenal, so if you want to do a sponsorship deal with one, maybe you have to do a sponsorship deal with all,” he said. “And we found that that leverage in the marketplace has worked quite well as it applies to venues, television deals or content deals and everything else.”

Asked by moderator Abe Madkour about whether TKO is interested in acquiring any more properties at this time, Khan said: “We’re going to stick with what we have for now and try to grow it out in the right way.”

While the U.S. remains a core focus for WWE, internationally derived revenue is becoming a growing slice of WWE’s coffers, Khan said, noting that WrestleMania will be held next year outside of North America for the first time when it travels to Saudi Arabia. Asked if he worries about the pushback WWE could get with decisions like that, Khan appeared unfazed.

“I have never read X or Twitter as it relates to our business and I’ve certainly never read it regarding me,” he said. “That is a vocal minority.”

Khan said he is copied on every complaint that comes into WWE’s personalized fan service, but the three guiding indicators for him all start with the letter ‘R”: Ratings, revenue and relevancy, a line he has used before.

“Some of the complaints are, ‘I didn’t like the match -- you guys are pieces of shit.’ And I go, ‘OK, I got it.’ Some are, ‘Hey, we had an obstructed view.’ OK -- we’ll have you come to our next show. People are allowed to complain, but we don’t adjust our business based on complaints. We adjust based on ratings, revenue, relevancy.”

• This week’s SBJ Sports Media Podcast features co-hosts Austin Karp and Josh Carpenter breaking down the strong viewership numbers from the Masters, despite its production issues for the final round. They also discuss the Preakness, the NBA’s season viewership and more.
• SBJ’s Richard Deitsch writes that Fox hired Clarence Seedorf, the Dutch footballing legend, to work as a World Cup studio analyst this summer.
• Women’s basketball continued to show its growth Monday night, as ESPN saw the second-best WNBA Draft audience on record, averaging 1.5 million viewers, Karp reports in this week’s Audience Analysis.
• The MLBPA fired COO Xavier James and Chief Human Resources Officer Michael O’Neill following an international investigation amid a federal probe into the union, writes SBJ’s Mike Mazzeo.
• FIFA is offering paid tours of six NFL stadiums set to host matches during the 2026 World Cup, notes SBJ’s Alex Silverman.
• USA Surfing’s effort to retain governance of its sport succeeded Wednesday, with the USOPC certifying the organization as the NGB, reports SBJ’s Rachel Axon. It also certified USA Lacrosse as the NGB for the sport as its sixes format debuts in the 2028 L.A. Games.
• Player payments for LIV golfers were expected to process Thursday afternoon following reports that Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund was pulling funding for the league, writes Carpenter.
• Rockstar is getting back into NASCAR, sponsoring 23XI Racing driver Tyler Reddick in select Cup Series races, notes SBJ’s Adam Stern.
• USTA Ventures, the U.S. Tennis Association’s strategic investment arm, made an undisclosed investment in Fastbreak AI and will use its machine learning-powered sports scheduling engine for USTA League recreational matches, notes SBJ’s Rob Schaefer.
• Thursday’s op-ed suggests that in today’s charged environment, it’s time for brands to join athletes in taking political positions.