SBJ Unpacks: Bullish on global growth

Tonight in Unpacks: A consistent theme onstage and off at the CAA World Congress of Sports is how international events and global markets are playing larger role in the sports industry, especially with U.S. leagues looking to expand outside domestic borders and the FIFA Men’s World Cup and the 2028 Summer Games bringing the world to America, reports SBJ’s Chris Smith.

Also tonight:

• How the Wizards’ front office tuned up the franchise
• What the industry told us about Padres’ sale price
• Bet365 launches in Michigan, signs with Tigers and Red Wings
• FIFA begins takeover of NFL stadiums

Listen to SBJ’s most popular podcast, Morning Buzzcast, where Joe Lemire, Austin Karp and Chris Smith share their final takeaways from the CAA World Congress of Sports and discuss the situations around LIV Golf, the Padres sale and more.

Two months ahead of hosting the United States’ first match in the FIFA Men’s World Cup and two years before the city welcomes the arrival of the Olympic Games, Los Angeles played home to the CAA World Congress of Sports. Those massive international events and the broader globalization of sports were squarely in focus across two days of onstage programming, with some 1,200 attendees converging to hear from league commissioners, network heads and other key decision-makers.

Fanatics founder and CEO Michael Rubin said his firm generated $61 million in merchandise sales from the recent World Baseball Classic, which was “many times” the company’s performance at the prior event in 2023. He’s now eyeing a massive opportunity in soccer, which he said still lags behind MLB and the NFL; those have neared or surpassed $3 billion in annual revenue for Fanatics, respectively. The merchandising giant generates only $1.3 billion from soccer.

“In reality, the biggest sport in the world should be a multiple of what we do in baseball or the NFL,” Rubin said. “Today we have big businesses with the federations, big businesses with teams like PSG or Juventus or Chelsea or Inter Milan. The World Cup coming here is massive. … Today our global business is between 10% and 15%. I’m not sure why it couldn’t be half of the business long term. We think there’s nothing but massive growth ahead of us.”

He’s hardly alone in seeing that opportunity.

Reaching global audiences

MLS Commissioner Don Garber explained that the league’s decision to consolidate its media rights ahead of landing a 10-year, $2.5 billion deal with Apple three years ago was partly driven by the streaming platform’s global aspirations.

“We knew we were going to sign [Lionel] Messi. We knew we were going to have the kind of players that have come into the league like Thomas Müller,” Garber said. “And we wanted to be able to be as important in Spain and Argentina, Africa and South America as we were going to be here in the United States. We went to Apple, and Apple’s the only one who had the vision to do that.”

More recently, MLS announced it will adjust to a summer-to-spring schedule, an effort to align with the international soccer calendar that Garber suggested will give MLS more authenticity throughout the sport.

Others pointed to global sports audiences as a potential solve for domestic media challenges. AEG’s Dan Beckerman noted that two-thirds of the audience for the recently concluded Coachella music and arts festival tuned in from afar.

“I start to wonder, maybe we’ve been too focused on reaching the 10 million people in Los Angeles or maybe the 350 million people in the United States, not realizing there’s 8 billion people in the world and these streaming platforms have the ability to reach that audience,” Beckerman said. “As we’re all wringing our hands over what’s happening with the RSNs, I think the solution is there for us and I think that audience is there.”

Kevin Demoff, president of team and media operations for Kroenke Sports & Entertainment, suggested challenges remain ahead in finding streaming audiences abroad. Still, he noted that the Los Angeles Rams will open their next season in Melbourne, and the team has spent years investing in marketing efforts not just in Australia but also across China, Japan, Mexico, New Zealand and South Korea.

“The challenge, truly, still is live games in the middle of the night or the morning elsewhere. But if you can start to figure out a way to solve that, I do think you’re going to see exponential growth,” Demoff said. “We view international as the R&D of the NFL. There aren’t a lot of places in the NFL you can spend R&D money. International right now is certainly one of them.”

Taking events abroad

WWE President and Las Vegas native Nick Khan reflected on how he worked as an usher at WrestleMania 9 in his hometown more than three decades ago. Next year, he’ll oversee the tentpole event as it moves to Saudi Arabia, marking its first edition outside North America. WWE has a 10-year event hosting agreement with the Arab nation that runs through 2027.

“For international properties, we realized years ago we can’t simply pipe out American content,” Khan said. “Internationally, you’ve got to be boots on the ground. And if you look at our revenue from international now, it’s substantially greater than it was five and a half years ago.”

The top American leagues have, of course, also learned that lesson, with MLB, the NBA, NHL and NFL all playing exhibition or regular-season games abroad every year. The NBA’s plan to launch a new league in Europe grew out of hard data, according to Leah MacNab, the league’s senior vice president and head of international strategy and operations.

“There are hundreds of millions of fans that follow the game, but when you take out the NBA, the commercialization is less than 1% of the total $45 billion sports and entertainment landscape,” MacNab said. “For us, that was really the marker for why should we look to do something different in the market.”

AEG has played host to some of the NBA’s prior global events, and Chief Revenue Officer Todd Goldstein shared that NBA fandom in those buildings is 10 times as rabid today as in years past.

“It’s a much more intelligent fan who wants to see the best product and the best players in the best environments. That’s good for all of us and our whole industry as we grow and expand,” Goldstein said. “And there’s a reason we’re willing to spend a half-billion to a billion dollars to build these new arenas in locations like Bangkok and Nagoya and Osaka and London and Berlin.”

MacNab added that three-quarters of the NBA’s 2.5 billion social followers are abroad. Other leading sports executives had similar findings, even for properties in foreign nations now looking beyond their own borders. Premier League Chief Commercial Officer Will Brass said most of the league’s fans and revenue are now beyond the U.K., and Demoff noted that Kroenke-owned Arsenal has three times as many avid fans in the United States as it does in its home nation.

Renie Anderson, the NFL’s chief revenue officer, said a growing focus on global opportunities is even informing the league’s go-to-market strategy with sponsors, as reflected by the NFL’s deal with American Express, recently announced as the NFL’s official payments sponsor.

“That was partly because of their database and the strength with their consumer and really leaning on our partners to help us grow in these countries,” Anderson said. “There are partners that are very domestic focused, but we have a real mandate of thinking about those global brands that can help us bring the sport of football to consumers around the globe.”

So is the world big enough for the sports industry’s attempted takeover?

“We want people thinking about the NFL 365 days a year, which we do,” Anderson said. “But if there’s a day or two where they can think about soccer, that’s OK.”

Bam Adebayo of the Miami Heat scored 83 points in a game against the Wizards. Unfortunately, it was the night the Wizards started five Make-A-Wish kids.

—  'Saturday Night Live'

The jokes rattle off the walls of the Washington Wizards’ upgraded practice facility, sarcastic darts that ricochet past the chefs and the masseuses and the psychologists before falling on deaf ears. A rebuild — not to be confused with the crude four-letter-word “tank” — is a living, breathing, evolving monster, measured in micro victories, lottery odds and accusations that an owner and his executives are losing on purpose. The secret to maintaining sanity is the plan. Or, in this case, the plan before the plan.

Through it all — a 16-game losing streak, the Adebayo embarrassment, the minuscule local TV ratings, the bottom-rung attendance and the social media potshots — young, effervescent Wizards equipment man Jamil Ludd, or other team attendants just like him, carve out time every day to synchronize the ball racks. It is no arbitrary thing. They meticulously line up the “Wilson” labels on every basketball side by side, facing forward, an attention to detail that sends a subliminal message of: We take this shit seriously.

The same goes for the Wizard-branded towels in the locker room that are compulsively folded, hung and pulled to a certain length. Or the new brass silverware in the cafeteria. Or the gourmet chefs lightly braising the salmon. Or the tinted filters that were stripped off the windows to lighten the front office. Or the brighter wall paint that is a metaphor for sunnier days ahead amid the chronic losing and Beltway ambivalence.

Weaker or less competent executives might not have attempted such a blatant remake, a tear-down followed by a build-up that they warned Wizards owner Ted Leonsis might take five years. But now Year 3 has come to a close, and the reconstruction phase is likely in the rear-view mirror, no matter what their final league-worst 17-65 record says. But it’s not about the players, even though recently acquired all-stars Trae Young and Anthony Davis are waiting in the wings next season to uplift a partly teenage core. It’s about the RC Buford and Sam Presti trees from San Antonio and Oklahoma City, respectively. It’s about the idea that infrastructure comes first, talent acquisition second, 50 wins third.

But, mostly, it’s about a front office led by President Michael Winger and General Manager Will Dawkins, who’ve been entrusted with a reboot full of conspiracy theories, Tank Standings, Adam Silver lectures, an 83-point fiasco and now ”Saturday Night Live.”

“We can be up 30 points or down 30 points, we could be executing on a plan and getting a great player on the cheap or we made a terrible trade. It doesn’t matter — this is Michael,” says a grinning Leonsis, imitating Winger with his head in his hands. “I said to him, ‘The Chief Worrying Officer.’ And that’s kind of what you want. He’s introverted and he’s secretive and he’s methodical. And that flows down to Will. And they value secrecy. They value the power of their data. And they’ve been building that trust amongst themselves.

“That’s how culture gets built. It gets built from who the leaders are. So these guys are highly professional. They’re very thorough. They’re playing chess when sometimes it seems I might have been playing checkers. Or our organization might have been playing checkers before.”

They may be playing chess, but, fact is, they’re also playing the lotto. And with a public journey like this, when you’re all over social media for the wrong reasons, when a loss is considered a win and a win is considered a loss, somebody has to be the CWO.

Then again, maybe Winger isn’t worried at all. Maybe he and his executive team were groomed for this …

Relegate the Wizards

—  @YaronWeitzman on X

Winger used to worry about taking notes in San Antonio. There are worse internships.

A native of the Cleveland area, Winger was a law student at Maryland and an intern for Baltimore-based agent Ron Shapiro when Shapiro was hired as a Spurs consultant. They flew together to San Antonio in 2003, this prominent agent and his lackey, and the person who picked them up in a white Lexus sedan was none other than Danny Ferry, the team’s new director of basketball operations.

Winger gulped. He was expecting a taxi. Or a ride from some faceless team attendant. But this was Ferry — not only an executive, but a former Cavalier player whom Winger had once rooted for. Winger began to wonder: What kind of organization is this? The future of the NBA, that’s what.

The Spurs’ front office consisted of GM Buford; Lance Blanks, director of scouting; Presti, director of player personnel; and Ferry — and all they did was caucus and win. The conversations Winger was privy to, while fetching coffee, were priceless, a ringside seat to culture-building. He sat in while the four executives and Shapiro discussed ways to negotiate an extension for Tony Parker. He learned it’s an art.

Winger remembers them brainstorming for hours on Parker — how often Tony flew back to France in the offseason, what schools his kids attended, whether he’d prefer a deal front-loaded or back-loaded, what peers he needed to out-earn. They were preparing peace talks.

“If culture’s a non-negotiable, which it was for them, then it’s non-negotiable,” Winger says. “Watching the camaraderie among them … that was really my first look behind the curtain of a pro sports team … Everything I’ve done in my career in the NBA stems from getting to know those guys because that was — how do I say it? — … that was a genesis, but also the prototype.”

It was more educational than any law school course. When Ferry was hired as Cavaliers GM in the spring of ’05, Winger wished he could have picked him up at the Cleveland airport. At the time, Winger was preparing for the bar exam, curious who Ferry would surround young Cavs star LeBron James with. But when Ferry called to offer him a job as his front office intern, he saw it all up close.

It was more hands-on training. Winger saw how Ferry was a “protector” of the staff, of the plan, of LeBron, of “internal second guessing.” He saw him have “hard conversations” with owner Dan Gilbert. He filed it all away, until someone else from the Spurs tree called: Presti.

For any Wizards fan freaking out, just remember the Thunder lost by 73 to the Grizzlies during their rebuild, and now they are world champions

—  @BrysonAkinsNBA on X

Presti had left the Spurs in 2007 to run the Seattle SuperSonics, and a year later, he fielded a call from team owner Clay Bennett telling him to brace himself — and clear the office. So Presti sent everyone home except for a couple of interns, one being Will Dawkins.

He told the eager Dawkins — who, like Presti, had played basketball at Emerson College — “Stay here and take notes.” And these weren’t just notes, these were marching orders.

Bennett called back a half hour later to say the team was moving to Oklahoma City — like, tomorrow. “What? Let’s go find Oklahoma City on a map, let alone build a practice facility,” Dawkins jokes now. But what happened next changed his career.

Dawkins was on the ground floor of a rebuild, of a mystery, of a culture change or a culture shock — one or the other. The Thunder set up shop in an OKC roller-skating rink that they gutted and turned into a basketball haven. Dawkins was basically in charge of magnets on a whiteboard. Or washing clothes. Or teaching forward Serge Ibaka how to drive. Or being a faceless employee picking people up at airports. Or taking notes. “Low person in the front office,” he says. Sound familiar?

By 2010, he was still overseeing the whiteboard when in walked Michael Winger. Presti had not only hired Winger away from Ferry, he’d anointed him assistant GM and team counsel. “How do you like your magnets?” Dawkins remembers asking Winger the first day. But it wasn’t long before Dawkins had more of a front office voice, learning strategy and salary cap from Winger — and both of them learning patience, secrecy and infrastructure from Presti.

At one point, for instance, before Winger arrived, the Thunder (with Kevin Durant and Russell Westbrook) started 3-29. Dawkins remembers players swinging at each other in practice one day and another player, Chris Wilcox, saying, “Why are we fighting each other? We’re all 3 and 29.” That was the point: Presti had taught them they were in it together and never deviated from his plan.

Presti compiled draft picks, hired psychologists, hired masseuses. He brought in chefs whose meals were low-salt, high protein. He made sure the facility kitchen never closed. He sent players home with dinner so they’d avoid fast food. He protected Durant the way Ferry protected LeBron, the way Buford protected Parker. It was Spurs 2.0.

“The education in Oklahoma City is, it’s an Ivy League education with extremely high standards,” Winger says. “[Presti] created like an institution to raise young players, and that’s what Oklahoma City became. They are the barometer by which all player development systems ought to be measured.”

Disorganization wasn’t tolerated. The Thunder’s best player now, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, did an interview a few years back describing how anal the franchise is, how every water bottle has to be turned correctly, every towel tugged a certain way — the most neurotic, yet purposeful team on earth. The result, finally last season, was a championship.

“Sam’s level of intentionality, the level of attention to detail, nothing’s too small, everyone has a voice,” Dawkins says. “And not only do we need to have a plan, we need a plan for the plan — is kind of the mindset we came up with … And that’s something Mike [Winger] and I are definitely doing here in D.C.”

Which takes us back to “Saturday Night Live.”

Wizards fandom is just a one way street to depression

—  @MasriNBA on X

The two of them, the Spurs intern and the Thunder intern, ended up taking over the woebegone Wizards in late spring of 2023. But — in an era in which Commissioner Adam Silver says it’s difficult to decipher between a rebuild and a tank — their lips were sealed.

Winger had left the Thunder in 2017 to be Clippers GM, while Dawkins, by 2020, had risen from intern to scouting coordinator to vice president of identification and intelligence to Thunder vice president of basketball operations. And one thing they each learned (Winger specifically from Ferry) was: Have hard conversations with your owner.

By summer of 2023, those hard talks were with Leonsis. At the time, the Washington owner was ready for his own recalibration, considering his Wizards/Bullets hadn’t won a title since 1978, hadn’t won 50 games since 1979 and had won only seven playoff series in the last 44 seasons. The franchise was almost chronically middle of the road — never quite bottoming out and never ascending much higher than the 8 seed — and so the loyal-to-perhaps-a-fault Leonsis decided to start over with the Spurs/Thunder front office template.

“Well, yes and no,” Leonsis said when asked if Spurs/Thunder lineage influenced his decisions to hire Winger as president and Dawkins as GM. “I mean you can fall into a trap: ‘Oh well, this person worked at Amazon, so they must be as smart as Jeff Bezos.’ And so obviously there’s these trees in the league and OKC is developing a really, really strong tree, and it’s not just Sam Presti — the owner had to be in alignment with the timeline and the budget and the plan.

“And so I know Sam a bit, and he gave a very good reference for Michael. And then we got permission to bring Will here. ... I mean, they had a lot of great executives grown there.”

Winger didn’t promise wins; he promised a plan. And a plan for that plan. They would create a symbiotic front office, make D.C. an NBA destination — and he and Leonsis would stay in sync. The word “tank” never came up.

Leonsis had his own vision. After a proposed move to Alexandria, Va., was denied by the state’s general assembly, he and D.C. jointly funded a $1 billion renovation of Capital One Arena to open in time for the 2027-28 season. It included a training facility — and he and Winger hoped the Wizards’ roster would “crescendo” by the reopening. Five years away.

Winger made a quasi-list. He asked Leonsis to build the “biggest and best” home locker room in the league and the “biggest and best” visiting locker room, too — so all NBA players would know D.C. is first class. He asked him to pour $1 million more into the current practice facility, from locker rooms to office rugs to a biomechanics lab. He wanted to retain the respected front office voice of John Thompson III, senior vice president of Monumental Basketball and the former Georgetown head coach. “He has not said no to me one time,” Winger said of Leonsis.

At that point, the hardest conversation hadn’t happened yet; in fact, Winger almost avoided it altogether. During the May 2023 draft lottery, the Wizards — who owned only a 6.7% chance of landing the top pick — suddenly had a 54.55% chance after the first three combinations of ping pong balls fell their way, the best odds of any team. Victor Wembanyama (and an accelerated reboot) was staring Winger in the face … until the last ping pong ball rolled out in favor of the Spurs. And RC Buford.

What was done was done — the Wizards had the eighth pick — and Winger went about his business of hiring Dawkins. The two of them bonded again over old video room stories, over magnets. The word “tank” never came up.

Next was Dawkins’ own chat with Leonsis, with Presti telling him, “You need to spend some real time with the owner before you take a job like that.” It could have gone either way. But, the way Dawkins remembers it, “We didn’t say we were going to decide to blow it up. But we said if we wanted to go this route, this is kind of what it would look like. And [Leonsis] was like, ‘Whatever route you guys think is best; that’s why I’m hiring you and trusting you.’”

The word “tank” still never came up. But the word that did come up in their hardest meeting with Leonsis — once they traded their most valuable asset Bradley Beal to Phoenix — was the cryptic word: “rebuild.”

Using a deck presentation — with pros and cons up in lights — they told the owner they wanted to start from scratch. Dawkins described an average rebuild and longer rebuild. Winger painted a brutally honest picture of: perhaps five more years of losing, fans bitching and business basically going down the tubes.

“I said, ‘Ted, you’ve got to understand: the fans are not going to be happy about this, we’re going to lose a lot of money, it’s going to have an effect on ratings,’” Winger says. “He’s like, ‘Yeah, I get it, but at the end of the day, I want to build this thing the right way, and I trust you to do it.’

“And so he’s let me tear down the team.”

Do something nice for your Washington Wizards friends today. They need something nice after last night. It’s been a season.

—  @therealknelson on X

Three years and 196 losses later, the word “tank” does come up — everywhere else. The night Adebayo scored 83 against the Wizards, with Davis unavailable and center Alex Sarr on a minutes restriction, was the lowest blow. Particularly for those who witnessed the first day of the basketball racks.

At the Las Vegas summer league of 2023 — in their first bird’s-eye view of the operation — Winger’s and Dawkins’ jaws dropped at the disorganization. It was 100-plus degrees outside, and there was no water, snacks or Vitamin D for the players and staff. “Things you need to survive in Vegas,” Dawkins says.

Some player hotel rooms weren’t ready, either, or their names were misspelled — so they couldn’t check in. Staffers carried gear in Home Depot bags, and before the first meeting, players were served hot dogs and hamburgers.

“Like it was ballpark day,” Dawkins says. “I was, ‘What are we doing? This is not it at all.’ To their credit, they were like, ‘Hey, this is the budget we’ve been allotted.’”

That first day, Winger called a staff meeting, emphasizing, “These things are not acceptable, we can be better at these.” Then he stared over at the ball racks and at the ballboy Ludd — and delivered a speech that basically set the tone for the next three years of their lives.

“I want to shine a light on Jamil,” Winger said, before pouring his heart out. Turns out, Ludd had researched Winger and Dawkins, had seen the Gilgeous-Alexander interview explaining how meticulous the Thunder were. So Ludd had synchronized the “Wilsons” on the ball racks in Vegas — amid the hot dogs and burgers— so the new front office would know he gave a damn.

“Now people know what excellence looks like,” Winger told the staff. The rebuild was off to the races ... at glacier speed, anyway.

The front office meetings began as they had in San Antonio, with the executives Winger, Dawkins, Thompson and Travis Schlenk, senior vice president of player personnel, at a conference table pontificating. “Something that was really key,” Thompson says, “is Michael’s phrase when he started off of: level up every other department.”

In other words, the plan before the plan was to fine-tune ancillary parts of the organization so when the on-court product was humming (in three to five years or whenever the basketball gods decided), the off-court product would match it.

That meant bringing a chef on the road with the team, to prepare an organic breakfast and lunch in every city. That meant players and staff — and their families — getting bloodwork done so they knew which vitamins to take. That meant doubling the staff size. That meant creating 21st century job titles — hiring former D.C. talk show host Craig Hoffman as senior director of basketball identity and integration and former ESPN Executive Editor Cristina Daglas as head of research and identity. That meant borrowing best practices from other teams, leagues and corporate America. That meant reading books and magazines about staff development, about the military’s soldier development.

That meant consulting behavioral psychologists or organizational psychologists. That meant hiring author Ethan Kross, an experimental psychologist and neuroscientist from the University of Michigan who specializes in emotion regulation and wrote the book “Chatter: The Voice in Our Head (and How to Harness It).”

That meant asking Kross to build out what amounts to a mindfulness department. That meant hiring three mental health professionals and bringing one on every road trip. That meant being ready if someone from, say “Saturday Night Live,” told a lousy joke.

That meant “decimal meetings” — ideated by Dawkins — where about every 10 games a player would meet privately in a room with 10 to 12 staffers: at least one each from mental health, physical fitness, culinary, nutrition, health and wellness, coaching, skill development, management, etc. “The first time is always a shock,” Winger says. “They’re ‘Oh shit, am I in trouble?’… But after that, they realize this is not an undressing. This is a buildup meeting.”

In some ways, it was an offshoot of what the Spurs did with Parker, the Cavaliers with LeBron, the Thunder with Durant. These were peace talks. This was management “celebrating the micro wins” of a player hitting his hip mobility goal or the “invisible gains” of reaching his paint-touch goal. Winger’s philosophy was that he, Dawkins, Thompson and Co. should over-meet, and, when they became exhausted, they’d under-meet. He’d learned that from Buford and Presti.

The front office augmented it with what Thompson called a Player Pathways Enrichment program, where, during road trips, the organization would take players and staff to Google or Meta offices or to see high-end financiers. They would bring in Martin Luther King III as a speaker or attend Tyler Perry’s studios in Atlanta or the National Civil Rights Museum in Memphis. They staged a “moms trip” to San Antonio. They took at least six of their peach-fuzzed players to get driver’s licenses. They built what Winger believes is the most decked-out family room in the league.

Three years later, the front office was suddenly a front, side and back office, ready for a competitive team. Meanwhile, down on the court …

Ted should pay fans to go to their home games. Total embarrassment.

—  @blackbeanslover on X

Leonsis has his own plan: hydrate, regulate his weight, exercise. “It sucks, OK?” he says. “But maybe I’m going to live another 10 years longer than the average bear, right? So no pain, no gain — and that’s how I’m looking at this [rebuild]."

One reason Leonsis approved the teardown was he’d been there, done that with his other team, the Capitals, who drafted Alex Ovechkin No. 1 overall and won a Stanley Cup. “So I wasn’t afraid of it,” he says. “And I appreciated their truthfulness.” But bottom line is the Wizards were last in attendance in 2024-25 and are second-to-last (ahead of only Memphis) in 2025-26. Although there was a 176% uptick in unique direct-to-consumer viewership this season, their linear Nielsen Station Index ratings in the D.C./Baltimore DMAs were lowest in the league, down 27% year over year.

“After three years, like, ‘What are you doing to your fan base?’” said a top executive from another team. “Because three years is a long f------ time.”

Five years is even longer, and, at that point, there was no end in sight and no turning back. Every crevice of the organization — from the sales team on down — was informed and all-in, with Zach Leonsis (the owner’s son), Monumental’s president of media and new enterprises, saying the franchise was “selling hope and selling the future ... not unlike what other teams have had to do in the past.”

But the drip-drip you heard was lost revenue, and there were single-digit layoffs this February within Monumental Sports Network. When news broke that next season’s average ticket price rose 6.31% — largely due to the arena renovation and the vault suites/premium lounges that are coming with it — the negative chatter rose, too. But Leonsis says, “The chatter that bothers me most is the long-term fan base in Washington, D.C. They don’t love the team. I mean, they don’t trust the team because we haven’t broken through.”

Winger warned him about this during their hard talk: Ted, the fans are not going to be happy about this, we’re going to lose a lot of money, it’s going to have an effect on ratings. But here we are, with all these acerbic comments on X, and the obvious question for Leonsis is: How’s business holding up?

“That’s where we’re fortunate,” he says. “We’re fortunate in that we’re one of the bigger organizations in sports. We own the building, we own the [Monumental TV] network, we own multiple teams. So we could have some patience, if you will … Michael, Will — [they] tell us what to do and we’ll do it. And by having the resources of the Monumental platform, it makes it easier to ... Renewals are 82% instead of 90%, but we also have the data to show that when we do become good and make the playoffs, what’ll happen and it’ll be worth the wait. That was our comment when the Caps won the Stanley Cup. It was worth the wait, right? That’s how we have to look at it.”

He grabs a water bottle from his mini fridge …

“I’m a venture capitalist,” Leonsis says. “I’m not afraid of taking risk. And a lot of times it’s: ‘Am I betting the jockey or the horse?’ … The NBA, as the horse, is rock solid. The NBA is a growth stock if you will. We have this great media deal. The players, the popularity globally has never been stronger. It’s why we’re expanding to Europe now. We have a big position in Africa. We’ve always had a position in China. It’s a growth stock. I looked, and I said, ‘If I can find the right jockeys to ride this horse that’s galloping …’”

So it’s on the jockeys, Winger, Dawkins and Co., who’ve brought in three top-10 picks and five overall first-rounders over the last three years. Or as Winger says, “Not unlike investing, you just keep making your inputs, making your deposits. At some point, you’re going to wake up when you’re 65 years old and you’re going to have a very nice outcome … Losing is just an output. None of our inputs are losing inputs.”

The marquee inputs have been trades for Young and Davis, both injured (though Young wowed the crowd in the three home games he did play) and both returning next season while the team hopes this year’s lottery falls their way.

They have a top 8-protected pick, but the reason for the incessant tank talk — for the “five Make-A-Wish kids” joke — is that if they hadn’t finished bottom four in the standings, they could’ve lost the pick to the Knicks at 9. The insinuation all season was: They’re dying to lose.

So the word “tank” had to come up, had to be asked straight to their faces. Their responses?

Winger --probably because of what he learned in San Antonio, Cleveland, OKC and L.A. -- chose not to dignify it with an answer.

Dawkins rolled his eyes and said, “Ignoring the noise is a skill I developed very early in Oklahoma City. Sam didn’t go full rat poison, but he definitely taught us that we have to kind of stay within our walls … Basically, we know what picks we have, we know how they’re protected, we know the odds that go into the lottery and things of that nature, and we make decisions amongst each other, knowing the value and the likely outcomes of every decision we make. Basically planning for the plan all over again.”

Leonsis, in the days following the Adebayo game, said: “The last couple of weeks have not been fun because I’m not tanking … We’re now trading some of [our] picks for players from Atlanta and from Dallas. And I go: ‘So are they tanking now?’ They’re trading us their highest-paid players for picks, right? Tanking to me is you’re telling the players, ‘Miss the three-point shot or I’m not playing you.’

“It’s a big difference between tanking and rebuilding and player development. That’s been my position. I told our fans what we were doing. I’ve told everybody. Everyone knows what we were doing.”

So, if what they’re doing is playing chess instead of checkers (and if the micro-wins turn into macro-wins next season, that’s definitely chess), the sense leaguewide is the Wizards could be a playoff threat next year, could be Thunder 2.0, could be all over social media for the right reasons.

Don’t be surprised if the new joke is: “Tank you very much.”

I have learned to embrace it. How sick is that

—  @SkellyFreaks on X

LOS ANGELES -- The sports industry converged on L.A. this week for SBJ’s CAA World Congress of Sports, and SBJ used the opportunity to canvass sports bankers, lawyers and investors on some of the industry’s biggest topics.

One of them was the expected sale price for the Padres, which we now reportedly know. The Wall Street Journal reported Friday that the Padres are close to being sold to Clearlake Capital co-founder & Managing Partner José Feliciano and his wife, Kwanza Jones, in a deal that values the team at around $3.9B. That would be nearly 8x revenue.

When the Padres first hit the market late last year after retaining BDT & MSD Partners, the early chatter was the team could sell for more than $2.5B. That floor has since risen. Nearly every source interviewed this week agreed with recent media reports that the Padres would likely sell for at least $3B. That would easily surpass the MLB-record $2.4B Steve Cohen bought the Mets for in 2020.

More bullish sources had floated that the team could sell for $3.5B-$4B, noting that the Padres have little local competition from teams in other leagues. Others had rolled their eyes at the suggestion. Yes, the Padres have a favorable operating agreement for one of MLB’s best ballparks, but they’re also in one of league’s smallest markets and have little room to grow regionally, given the Dodgers’ Southern California dominance. That’s to say nothing of the many questions lingering around MLB’s upcoming CBA negotiations.

“We don’t know what the resolution of labor will be, whether there is a work stoppage or not. So there’s a fair amount of uncertainty there,” said Marc Ganis, a consultant with close ties to many owners. “What you have with the Padres is you have significant certainty in that the stadium is in great shape, the fans love it and many other events have taken place in the building. They’ve done real estate development around the building.”

Feliciano’s partner at Clearlake, Behdad Eghbali, was asked about the sale process while on stage at World Congress, though he didn’t divulge much.

“I read some of the same headlines that José is one of the bidders in the Padres process, but we’ll leave that to the process,” Eghbali said. “But sports is a category where we think there’s a lot of growth to come. It’s a category, live events and sports, that we think will be a mainstay investment category for investors in the decades to come.”

Many see the Padres sale as a critical one for MLB, especially since team owners have recently struggled to reach desired sale price targets; the Angels, Nationals and Twins have all tested the market in recent years before changing tacks. A league-record price for the small-market Padres is a feather in MLB’s cap heading into contentious labor and media rights negotiations.

“It’s a very impressive number. It’s very geographically based, meaning if you had [a team with similar financials] in Kansas City, you wouldn’t have anywhere close to this sale price,” Ganis said.

Staff writer Mike Mazzeo contributed to this report. Look for more responses on pressing industry issues gathered at World Congress on Monday at sportsbusinessjournal.com.

Bet365 launches its sportsbook app in Michigan Friday behind a Tigers sponsorship that includes in-park and virtual signs, odds integrations as presenting sponsor of Tigers broadcasts on Detroit SportNet and promotion on team radio and digital channels.

Bet365 also signed on as sponsor of the Red Wings and 313 Presents, the live entertainment joint venture by Tigers and Red Wings owner Ilitch Sports and Entertainment and Pistons owner Tom Gores.

The addition of Michigan expands Bet 365’s U.S. footprint to 17 states.

Both the New York Giants and Jets are bringing next week’s NFL Draft fan parties to an unusual place by their New Jersey-centric standards: Manhattan, the center of New York City. Instead of the typical party at MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford, N.J., Jets Draft Night presented by Verizon will be at the South Street Seaport, and the Giants will be at Hudson Yards for a Draft Night Block Party presented by Moody’s.

Both teams are excited to see what the prime real estate can do, but it was something of a forced move. They had to temporarily abandon MetLife because FIFA is now in the stadium preparing the pitch for the World Cup. This appears to be the first tangible effect on any NFL team operations for the global soccer tournament, which requires 13 NFL teams give up control of their venues for about two months.

“This year, with the stadium and FIFA preparing to host the World Cup, we embraced the opportunity to experiment and see how other venues could handle the scale needed to put on a great event for our fans,” said Giants SVP/Marketing and Brand Strategy Nilay Shah. “Hudson Yards presented that opportunity, and we are excited to bring the Giants Draft party to NYC.”

Jets Chief Brand and Communications Officer Eric Gelfand said their location (near ESPN’s studios) in lower Manhattan allows the team to create an “authentic, high-energy experience.”

“We are excited to bring our draft party back to New York City and celebrate one of the most important moments on the NFL calendar with our fans in the heart of the city,” Gelfand said.

World Cup means an unusual offseason for 13 teams

FIFA won’t fully control MetLife or the 10 other NFL venues until 30 days from the start of the tournament, or the middle of May. But when they do, it will mean big changes for parts of NFL workforce and operations teams until nearly training camp in late July. None of this is a surprise, and a generation ago, might have been scarcely noticed during a sleepy offseason.

But in 2026, there’s barely an offseason for the business side, and NFL teams have become revenue-oriented 12 months a year. Take Arrowhead Stadium in Kansas City, where the Chiefs have always been enthusiastic supporters of the World Cup but acknowledge there is a cost to losing the stadium for the summer.

“Last year we had a record year with concerts. We won’t have any this year,” said Chiefs President Mark Donovan. “So, you’re giving that up.”

The 13 teams affected are: the Cowboys, Jets, Giants, Falcons, Chiefs, Texans, 49ers, Chargers, Rams, Eagles, Seahawks, Patriots and Dolphins.

Most employees of these teams work at offsite team HQ/practice facilities. But insofar as team employees do primarily work in the stadium, there will be changes. In Kansas City, Chiefs ticketing sales and operations workers will relocate, while stadium/events staff essentially get folded into FIFA operations. In Atlanta, the AMBSE employees at the stadium will continue to report to work there, but they are subject to FIFA credentialing instead of their usual access procedures and have been instructed to work from home on match days. The Texans negotiated terms that mostly allows business as usual. In Santa Clara, 49ers stadium operations employees will remain at Levi’s Stadium, but other employees may relocate to the team’s other offices, work from home or receive a FIFA credential and keep coming in.

Back at MetLife, the Giants will start coach John Harbaugh’s first training camp with the team spending two weeks at the Greenbrier in West Virginia, thanks to the stadium hosting the World Cup final on July 19 and ongoing renovations at the team’s HQ, Quest Diagnostics Training Center in East Rutherford, N.J.

• The NHL drew a league record 23.16 million fans to their games this season, up 0.6% over the 2024-25 season and up 11% compared to the 2021-22 season, reports SBJ’s David Broughton.
• With the FIFA World Cup taking place in the U.S. this summer, RFK Racing aligned with its sister property, Liverpool FC, to help promote the Premier League team and its joint sponsor Trimble in NASCAR, writes SBJ’s Adam Stern.
• Fox Sports announced the “Eternal City Tip-Off” featuring Notre Dame and Villanova men’s and women’s basketball facing off in Rome on Nov. 1, notes SBJ’s Ben Portnoy.
• In this week’s Talent Pool agency roundup, SBJ’s Irving Mejia-Hilario reports that All-Pro OT Tristan Wirfs of the Buccaneers signed with CAA Football.
• The Pistons are working with collectibles company Cllct and third-party authentication firm PSA to launch Motor City Mint, a program that offers 250 limited-edition paper playoff tickets per home game, notes Mejia-Hilario.