SBJ Unpacks: WTA loses a key leader

Tonight in Unpacks: Portia Archer is moving on as CEO at the WTA, as the 2018 SBJ Game Changer is vacating the role after signing on in 2024, reports SBJ’s Rob Schaefer.

Also tonight:

• Pittsburgh leaders tap NFL Draft to tell renaissance story
• Fans spent $111.2 billion traveling in the U.S. in 2025
• Royals unveil plans for downtown ballpark, mixed-use development
• Op-ed: The college sports gambling ticking time bomb goes off

Listen to SBJ’s most popular podcast, Morning Buzzcast, where Abe Madkour discusses how Haslam Sports Group is becoming a powerhouse in sports as it pays a record expansion fee for an NWSL team, the reach of Churchill Downs continues to grow with Preakness Stakes acquisition, another major stadium project begins in Nashville and more

WTA CEO Portia Archer is stepping down from her role, WTA Chair Valerie Camillo announced in a note to WTA staff, members and other stakeholders Wednesday afternoon. The resignation is effective April 20 and in line with the end of Archer’s contract.

“Portia has made important contributions to our tournaments, our players, and the advancement of women’s tennis,” Camillo wrote in the memo. “Among her achievements, she expanded into new markets, championed player-first initiatives, enhanced safeguarding standards, drove technological innovation, and worked tirelessly to strengthen the WTA’s role in the broader tennis community.”

Archer, an SBJ Game Changer in 2018, joined the WTA in mid-2024, succeeding the now-retired WTA Chair Steve Simon after he split the organization’s once-dual Chair and CEO roles. Archer had previously made stops as COO of the NBA G League, SVP & GM/Direct to Consumer at NBC Sports Gold and VP/International Distribution, Digital & SVOD at HBO.

Camillo, who was hired to succeed Simon as WTA Chair late last year, said the WTA will provide an update on its leadership “transition plan” by mid-May. It is yet unclear if that plan will involve reorganization or outside hires.

The traveling NFL Draft has become one of the best municipal branding platforms in sports — a three-day, nationally televised opportunity for cities to redefine how millions see them.

This year, Pittsburgh civic boosters hope the draft combats an outdated regional stereotype sometimes reinforced, ironically, by NFL broadcasters, who are fond of showing establishing shots of molten steel and factory workers during Steelers games.

During the April 23-25 event, Pittsburghers hope attendees and TV viewers see less industrial imagery and more of a city built on robotics, autonomous vehicles, artificial intelligence and medical research. Not to mention cultural attractions such as the Andy Warhol Museum and the beauty of its modern skyline nestled between steep hills and broad rivers.

“It’s a really, really unique opportunity for us to showcase what this region is in 2026 to people who might be thinking of what it may have been in 1986 or 1976,” said Jim Britt, vice president of sports events at Visit Pittsburgh. “And boy, it’s a completely different place than it was back then.”

Steelers owner Art Rooney II, whose team was founded by his grandfather in 1933, wants to promote the city’s historical contributions. To that end, the region’s long list of Pro Hall of Fame players and coaches, its iconic high school programs and important NFL moments in Pittsburgh will be celebrated throughout the week.

But also, Rooney says, don’t sleep on the simple aesthetic appeal that might take newcomers by surprise.

“For a city that’s considered a Rust Belt city, the mountains and the hills and the valleys and the rivers, geographically, it’s a really pretty place,” Rooney said. “And this time of year, with things just starting to bloom, if the weather cooperates, it’ll be great to show off that part of the city, and really how the city comes together to host something like this.”

The draft will be held in two locations: the North Shore, home to the Steelers’ Acrisure Stadium and the Pirates’ PNC Park, and Point State Park, the newly renovated park across the Allegheny River in downtown. It’s the first time since Nashville in 2019 that the draft footprint was broken up, said Jon Barker, the NFL’s senior vice president/global head of major events production. Pedestrian access will be via the Roberto Clemente Bridge, and 600 fans at a time can ride the Gateway Clipper river ferry.

“We have an event site that just happens to have a river running through it,” Barker said, “but they’re all interconnected, and the density of downtown Pittsburgh is that it’s one contiguous site.”

The draft stage will abut the stadium’s east side, with activation zones surrounding the stadium. In a major change from prior drafts, the field at Acrisure Stadium will also feature fan activations. (Prior drafts have opened the stadium seating bowl to fans, but made limited use of the field.)

Organizers will light bridges in team colors during picks, while the Andy Warhol Museum is contributing pop-art installations, said Peter O’Reilly, the NFL’s executive vice president of club business, league events and international.

But the big message will be football history. Along with the Steelers’ six Super Bowl titles, the region has generated 23 hall of famers, including Joe Montana, Johnny Unitas and Darrelle Revis. The NFL was founded two hours away in neighboring Ohio, and the league is always well-represented by alums of the local high school football powers.

Many of the men who embody that tradition will be on-site to announce picks. The NFL Films documentary about Pittsburgh, “The Football Town,” will run frequently on movie screens at Kamin Science Center near the stadium.

“The aerial visual of Terrible Towels as far as the eye can see, across both the North Shore and Point State Park … We’re going to celebrate hundreds of western Pennsylvania high school football players on the stage,” O’Reilly said. “Those moments are going to be significant.”

New NFL sponsor American Express will have a major sponsorship presence with presenting rights to the NFL Draft Experience, and Fanatics-owned Topps, which just became the NFL’s official trading card sponsor, will do a major fan event in the stadium on Day 3.

Pittsburgh is one of the smaller NFL markets, but is centrally located, with 11 NFL cities — including the first, third and fifth-largest ones — within a seven-hour drive. The league no longer officially projects crowds to the draft, Barker said, and duplications and inexact counting methodology make headline numbers unreliable. But Barker says: “I expect to see a very big crowd.” So does everyone else. Pittsburgh city schools will do remote-only learning during the draft.

Local organizers and the state raised $21 million to cover costs not handled by the NFL, including security and infrastructure. Of that, $5 million came from PNC Bank, among the Steelers’ longest-tenured sponsors and business partners.

PNC Executive Vice President Louis Cestello, who is also the local regional president, said the bank believes the draft can help its customers and workers thrive.

“We need Pittsburgh to be an A-plus city so we can attract and retain fantastic talent, which we feel we have here,” Cestello said. “This is probably the most significant event that can really showcase what Pittsburgh has to offer. It’s a fantastic place to live, work and raise a family, and we’re looking forward to showing it off to the world.”

A record 339 million people traveled to participate in or attend a sporting event in the United States in 2025, generated 191.8 million hotel room nights, and spent $111.2B while in the host destinations, according to the 2026 State of the Industry Report that the Sports Events and Tourism Association is sharing with its more than 1,200 attendees today in Las Vegas at the organization’s annual conference.

The totals included 3.6 million visitors and $4.7B in direct spending by travelers who came to the U.S. from another country, up from 1.8 million visitors and $3.9B noted in the 2025 report.

For the annual report, Tourism Economics developed an economic model drawing on multiple primary and secondary data sources to calculate the direct spending generated by sports travelers. An IMPLAN (Impact Analysis for Planning) input-output model of the national U.S. economy was used to calculate the total economic impact of sports tourism, including employment, household income and various tax revenues.

The report defines a sports traveler as someone who stayed overnight or traveled more than 50 miles to participate in some way in a competition, or attend a major league, minor league or collegiate regular-season game.

This definition ensures that the analysis captures true visitor-driven economic impact, excluding local attendees whose spending would likely occur within the community regardless of the event, according to the report.

Non-local attendees in 2024 generated $20.5B in state and local tax revenues — including $1.6B in lodging taxes — and supported approximately 1.6 million full-time and part-time jobs.

These spending metrics are expected to continue to rise, as mega events, such as this summer’s FIFA World Cup; the 2028 Summer Olympics; the 2031 men’s and 2033 women’s Rugby World Cup, which will make its first U.S. appearance; the 2031 FIFA Women’s World Cup; and the 2034 Winter Olympics are all coming to America.

Also driving fan attendance is the continued surge in venue development.

More than $40B in sports construction is scheduled to finish in the U.S. and Canada from 2027 and beyond, extending the largest backlog since SBJ began tracking such data in 1998, according to SBJ research.

The Royals unveiled plans Wednesday to build a $1.9B downtown K.C. ballpark as part of a $3B-plus district featuring mixed-use development in conjunction with Hallmark Cards on 85 acres at Crown Center.

Groundbreaking will occur at some point in 2027.

The project funding breakdown will be two-thirds from the Royals and private partners, and one-third from public partners via Kansas City (up to $600M) and Missouri’s Show-Me Sports Investment Act.

“Today is a day that by any definition is one that is worth the wait. It would be easy for me to say that this is how we drew it up but they’re never how you draw it up,” Royals owner John Sherman said. “Patience has given us an outcome that we could never have imagined. There’s no script, no playbook, no blueprint, no roadmap. The Kansas City Royals are staying in the state of Missouri, and we are bringing a second crown downtown.”

The Royals have been playing at Kauffman Stadium since 1973. The team’s lease there expires at the end of the 2031 season.

The team had conversations with officials about various sites in both Missouri and Kansas.

Sitting alongside Sherman at the press conference included Missouri Gov. Mike Kehoe, Kansas City mayor Quinton Lucas and Hallmark Cards Exec. Chair Don Hall Jr.

This week brought the most significant shift in how the House settlement might be applied moving forward when plaintiffs lawyers filed a motion to have apparel companies and third-party multimedia rights providers not be classified as “associated entities” by the College Sports Commission.

Put in simpler terms, the CSC is tasked with enforcing the $20.5 million revenue-sharing cap. One way it does that is by policing “associated entities” — groups such as collectives or boosters that act on a school’s behalf. Those entities face stricter scrutiny to prevent schools from routing extra money outside the cap to athletes.

That brings us to Monday. Schools are already seeing dollars shifted to MMR providers such as Learfield, Playfly and JMI Sports and apparel providers to help match payrolls that are almost all above the cap within the Power Four. If those are under less scrutiny moving forward, presumably everyone would flood their money through those entities, and the CSC can’t really do anything about it.

This is notable because third-party dealmaking through apparel companies and MMR partners is already rampant. The CSC put out a report for deal data for agreements made in January and February that showed the following:

• Associated Power Four deal volume increased 65%, while the average value of deals with associated entities was up 182%
• Associated Power Four deals represented 79% of the total deal value of those submitted by such schools in January and February (up from 56% in November-December).
• Associated Power Four football deals were responsible for 81% of the total deal value and 48% of the total deal volume of Power Four associated deals during that span.

“It’s fair to say that the NIL market in college athletics is not a normal organic market,” CSC CEO Bryan Seeley said at the time. “It’s a market in which schools are manufacturing NIL for their student athletes. And they’re doing it in such a way that deals are paid by entities affiliated with the school or acting at the direction of the school.”

This filing from Jeffrey Kessler and Steve Berman comes amid an arbitration between the CSC and 18 Nebraska football players. Deals worth reportedly north of $1 million were rejected by the CSC over issues with “warehousing.” The practice is when an entity (Playfly, Nebraska’s MMR partner, in this case) purchases NIL rights of athletes for future commercial opportunities, whereas the CSC requires there be actual activations attached.

“The CSC’s application of the rules on associated entities is straightforward and fact-based,” Seeley said in a statement provided to SBJ on Tuesday. “Those rules, which plaintiffs’ counsel agreed to, clearly state that entities directed by schools to assist in recruiting are associated entities. Under the settlement, arbitration is the proper forum to challenge the CSC’s application of these rules. This motion was filed to evade an imminent arbitration in which the CSC will prove, based on evidence, that a school’s multimedia rights partner is an associated entity.”

To be fair, the idea college sports has been operating within the $20.5 million cap is laughable. College football rosters are regularly eclipsing that number. Kentucky men’s basketball was touted for a roster in excess of $20 million this past season. So, no, the cap is not doing what it was designed to do.

What’s next is unclear. If the CSC can’t apply strict scrutiny to the places schools are running their deals through, what really is its purpose?

Like anything in college sports these days, we’ll almost certainly get an answer in the courtroom.

In January, federal authorities indicted 26 individuals in a college basketball point-shaving conspiracy involving more than 39 athletes across 17 different teams. At least two defendants were also implicated in a separate NBA gambling case, suggesting that professional and collegiate betting misconduct has become significantly intertwined.

This latest case follows exactly the trajectory of the warning we delivered in our April 2024 analysis, The Kids Are Not Alright, which noted and addressed a growing pattern of illegal underage gambling and athlete involvement in betting on collegiate contests. Of primary concern two years ago was that contest integrity — the fairness of competition itself — appeared to be on borrowed time without robust safeguards. That prediction has now, unfortunately, come to pass.

Since the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2018 decision opening the door to legalized sports betting, the industry’s growth has been both rapid and unrelenting. With each new jurisdiction that legalizes wagering, opportunities for exploitation and match manipulation multiply — and college sports have proven especially susceptible.

The events of early 2026 make clear that gambling’s impact on the integrity of college sports was not just foreseeable—it was inevitable.

Continued growth and normalization

In 2024, three primary forces were driving sports gambling’s escalation: access, advertising, and normalization. None have slowed since.

• Access: Two more states have legalized online sports betting since early 2024, with over a dozen more actively considering it. Mobile platforms, from traditional sportsbooks to prediction markets to daily fantasy, place betting opportunities in every pocket via smartphones.
• Advertising: Once limited to commercial and banner ads, betting promotions now include direct partnerships with sports networks and even universities.
• Normalization: Gambling-centric media (TV shows, podcasts, streaming segments) has reframed sports consumption as a betting experience on every play in every game, embedding wagering as a standard part of viewing.

New developments in college sports betting practices

In 2024, we highlighted the unique risk of proposition bets — wagers on individual performance metrics rather than game outcomes. That concern remains acute. The NCAA has called on states to eliminate college prop bets, emphasizing their direct connection to “student-athlete well-being and competition integrity.” The danger is obvious: individual statistics are often entirely within an athlete’s control, making them susceptible to manipulation.

Indeed, the professional leagues already have experienced publicly alleged prop‑bet corruption. In MLB, two pitchers were charged with accepting bribes to affect single pitches targeted by bettors — an offense that prompted the league to coordinate with major sportsbooks to cap certain prop bet wagers and eliminate pitch-specific bets from parlays.

Although the major college basketball indictment in January 2026 centered on altering team score totals — not prop bets — the NCAA has doubled down on its concerns regarding prop bets, viewing them as a particularly high-risk betting format.

Beyond prop bets, two newer developments have intensified concerns over integrity in college sports. One is the rise of in‑play, or “live,” betting, which allows wagers to be placed throughout the course of a game in response to real-time developments such as momentum shifts, injuries, or foul trouble. While this feature offers bettors greater flexibility, it also heightens the emotional volatility of wagering and encouraged impulsive decisions driven by constantly changing odds. Every substitution, possession change, or referee call can become a new betting opportunity, multiplying the pressure points on athletes and contests alike.

The other is the expansion of federally regulated prediction markets, overseen by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC). Unlike state-regulated sports betting, these markets operate nationwide, sidestepping state limits and allowing trading on “event contracts” anywhere in the country. As previously reported, prediction market trading is prevalent around college athletics, including the $500 million traded during the 2025 March Madness tournament. More recently, prediction markets have begun offering contracts that resemble prop bets, carrying the same risks of manipulation and corruption that the NCAA is actively seeking to address.

Reducing risk

The NCAA has formally requested legislative and regulatory changes from both states and the CFTC to address emerging threats, prioritizing restrictions on prop bets or trades due to their direct impact on individual athletes. In March 2026, the NCAA also engaged IC360’s ProhiBet solution specifically for officials participating in Division I men’s and women’s basketball, baseball, and softball championships. The system is designed to prevent prohibited individuals from placing sports bets, and its adoption represents a significant proactive measure to enhance integrity monitoring and ensure officials adhere strictly to wagering prohibitions during major collegiate events.

Protecting integrity requires coordinated action across all stakeholders. Beyond these requests from the NCAA, appropriate actions stakeholders can take to address integrity concerns include:

• Education: Require ongoing, targeted education for student athletes, school officials, contest referees, and fans, covering legal risks, integrity concerns, addiction realities, and manipulation tactics used by bad actors.
• Uniform age restriction: Set the minimum age at 21 for mobile sports betting, daily fantasy sports contests, and federally regulated prediction markets to align access with maturity and awareness.
• College athlete participation limits: The CFTC and legislators at both state and federal levels should consider explicit prohibitions or restrictions on betting participation by student-athletes, whose insider knowledge and influence pose unique risks.
• Enhanced monitoring: Expand the adoption of ProhiBet and invest in other advanced analytics and monitoring systems covering all sanctioned competitions and athletic events to rapidly detect suspicious activity and illegal betting behavior.

Lessons since 2024

Two years ago, sports betting on college sports was a “quietly ticking time bomb” in need of immediate legislative, administrative, and cultural attention. Has that time bomb gone off? The recent indictments confirm that unchecked expansion of legalized gambling, and the sudden growth of prediction markets, bring not just temptation and addiction risks, but also heightened potential for direct corruption of play itself.

College sports occupy a fragile space — they depend on the belief that contests are fair, athletes are uncompromised, and competition outcomes are genuine. When that belief is undermined, not only does the scoreboard lose meaning, but so too does the institutional and cultural value of collegiate athletics.

If stakeholders continue to fail to act, the next indictment may make this year’s headlines look minor by comparison.

Jon Israel is a partner at Foley & Lardner LLP and co-chair of the firm’s Sports & Entertainment Group. Zack Flagel and J.P. Riley are associates at Foley & Lardner LLP and members of the firm’s Sports and Entertainment Group.

• Fanatics is the NFL’s new official on-site retail sponsor at the league’s roster of marquee global events, including this week’s draft, the Super Bowl and international games, reports SBJ’s Bret McCormick, expanding a relationship that already includes the firm serving as the league’s e-commerce partner.
• McCormick also notes that Delaware North will spend $100 million on a three-year renovation of TD Garden that will include revamping all 83 of its suites.
• The Lynx became the first pro basketball team to take its local game broadcasts to Victory+, the free streaming, ad-supported platform that remains in the hunt for multiple NBA teams next season, writes SBJ’s Tom Friend.
• The F1 Crypto.com Miami Grand Prix has not experienced any notable decrease in ticket buyers from Canada this year despite potential headwinds from up north, as SBJ’s Adam Stern notes how sales are shaping up for the event.
• The Pro Padel League signed Padeltek as the league’s official racket sponsor in a multiyear deal, reports SBJ’s Rob Schaefer.
• The NWSL and its players association joined Project ACL, the landmark study from FIFPRO, Leeds Beckett University and Nike into the causes of women athletes’ higher incidence of ACL tears, writes SBJ’s Joe Lemire.
• JMI Sports is working with America250 to present the 130th running of the Penn Relays, beginning Thursday at Franklin Field on the university’s campus, notes SBJ’s Grace Kut.