SBJ Unpacks: The million-dollar moment for women’s basketball

Tonight in Unpacks: In 2006, Tennessee made Pat Summitt the first women’s college basketball coach to earn $1 million. Twenty years later, money continues to pour not just into basketball but other women’s sports, writes SBJ’s Ben Portnoy in this week’s magazine.

Also tonight:

• Predicting fan consumption a key to all-inclusive venue model
• MLB proposes hard salary cap and floor system
• On Location: 500,000 hospitality packages ‘allocated’ for World Cup
• Op-ed: Pro leagues missing the biggest audience in pursuit of grassroots

Listen to SBJ’s most popular podcast, Morning Buzzcast, where Abe Madkour discusses the new bipartisan bill to regulate college sports, the MLBPA making its first overture to MLB owners on a new CBA, layoffs hitting the Lakers as Mark Walter integrates the team into his sports structure and more.

The headline didn’t exactly read like a doozy. The finer print? That caused its share of jaws to hit the floor.

“University of Tennessee extends Summitt’s contract through 2012,” the 2006 press release from the school was headlined.

Buried in the fine print, though, was that Summitt would become the first million-dollar women’s basketball coach — a moment that came together 20 years ago last week.

“In women’s basketball, just the fact that we’re starting to generate more interest and revenue and television, you get the exposure for the university,” Summitt said at the time. “All of those things are a plus in terms of potential compensation. That’s where I see our game improving and growing.”

Summitt’s prowess along the sidelines was already clear. She’d won six national titles and coached dozens of All-SEC and All-American players. The Lady Vols were, alongside UConn, the program in women’s college basketball. But promising a million-dollar contract to a coach in a sport that had been largely cast to the wayside in favor of funding football and men’s basketball was a statement few, if any, thought possible at the time.

Still, there’s something prophetic in Summitt’s words from that time.

“You look at 20 years ago, the tournament was only 64 teams,” said longtime AP women’s basketball reporter Doug Feinberg. “There were really only probably a handful of teams that could win titles. … Without Pat Summitt earning that million dollars 20 years ago, you probably wouldn’t see this now with coaches getting what they deserve in salaries.”

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Two decades after the landmark deal, the money in women’s basketball continues to pour in. South Carolina’s Dawn Staley, LSU’s Kim Mulkey and UConn’s Geno Auriemma are each making more than $3 million annually, per USA Today’s coaches contract database. USA Today’s review found that as of 2024, 18 women’s college basketball coaches earned at least $1 million a year.

This past season also marked the second in which women’s basketball teams could earn units for their victories in the NCAA Tournament. The system, years in the making, was finally made official in 2025. Schools can earn one unit per win, with each worth $252,000 that is paid out over the course of three years.

That, of course, isn’t the only cash flowing into the sport. ESPN, which has enjoyed record viewership for the women’s tournament in recent years, and the NCAA agreed to a landmark eight-year television deal in 2024 worth $115 million annually ($920 million total) — about 56% of which was attributed to women’s basketball, NCAA President Charlie Baker said at the time.

“We continue to see the growth of the postseason and it’s rewarding to see,” said Knight Commission CEO Amy Privette Perko. “It speaks to the importance of administrators continuing to operate their athletic programs in a gender-equitable manner and providing opportunity and marketing and promotion for women’s basketball, just as it does for men’s basketball.”

It’s been 10 years since Summitt died following a bout with early-onset Alzheimer’s disease. Her legacy remains imprinted throughout women’s college basketball. Two decades on, the major contract she landed also feels closer to the norm within the Power Four.

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One of the factors increasing the likelihood of a stadium or arena successfully shifting to an all-inclusive food and beverage model for every ticketholder is the industry’s capability to predict consumption.

Levy Chief Commercial Officer Sandeep Satish worked closely with the 49ers on their rollout of the Member Inclusive Menu, an all-inclusive benefit for the team’s roughly 44,000 season ticketholders.

“At the 49ers, we’re almost down to the item level at this point,” Satish told SBJ’s Bret McCormick in his magazine story examining the all-inclusive-for-all concept. “We know exactly what we’ll sell, what people will consume, when they’ll do it, and we can project it to a T.”

Predicting consumption at one-off events can still be tricky for food and beverage providers — see the MLB Speedway Classic last summer — but the stadium and arena settings are considerably more predictable.

“Food waste isn’t something that I lie awake at night, worrying that we’re overproducing and under consuming,” Aramark Sports + Entertainment president and CEO Alison Birdwell said.

Aramark is using real-time AI to push messages to a venue manager’s phone saying, “you should probably stop cooking in this stand at 8:10pm, because we know X, Y, Z is going to happen,” Birdwell noted.

The industry knows that weekend per-caps are lower because fans eat at home before games, or that per-caps for a certain concert tour will be similar in different markets. The fans are the same even if the markets differ. When F&B consultant Jonathan Harris was working with the Marlins to launch a dollar hot dog night, the consumption information he gathered from multiple sources proved spot-on.

“The more I’m in this business, the more I’m fascinated by guest behavior and how consistent it is,” he said.

MLB introduced Thursday a seven-year CBA proposal to the union that would include a hard salary cap and floor system and a 50-50 revenue split.

Starting in 2027, a mandatory salary floor for all 30 teams would be set at $171.2M. The salary cap, which no team can exceed, would be set at $245.3M. Additionally, there would be a centralization and equal share of all local media revenue to address blackouts and revenue sharing reform, with MLB seeking to do a national streaming rights deal, like the NBA, after the 2028 season.

The union has been vehemently opposed to a cap for decades. In its initial proposal on Wednesday, the union proposed revenue-sharing reform in lieu of a cap.

The last time the league proposed a cap was 1994, which led to a players’ strike and the World Series being cancelled.

“Our payroll gap from top to bottom is $446M. That’s not a fair fight,” MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred said Wednesday night on “The Pat McAfee Show.” “And the numbers really bear out that it’s not a fair fight. If you have a high payroll, you’re much more likely to make the playoffs. And if you have a high payroll, your chances of going to each of the successive rounds are massively higher than a low payroll club. And fans want competition. That’s what it’s about at the end of the day, and we need to get that one fixed.”

The $446M gap represents the total payroll (including both salaries and luxury taxes) between the 2025 Dodgers (MLB-record $515M) and the Marlins ($69M). L.A. paid $169M in luxury taxes last year en route to winning its second straight World Series, or $2M less than the proposed floor.

To reach the salary floor, 12 teams, based on 2026 Opening Day competitive-balance threshold (CBT) payrolls, the Marlins, Guardians, Rays, White Sox, Cardinals, Nationals, Pirates, Twins, Brewers, Athletics, Rockies and Reds, would have to increase payroll a combined $617M.

To reach the hard cap, eight teams, the Dodgers, Mets, Yankees, Blue Jays, Phillies, Red Sox, Padres and Braves, would have to reduce their payrolls by a combined $578M.

The current CBT threshold of $244M would be less than the proposed hard cap.

The league would discuss timelines for phase-in and procedures for implementation. The CBA expires Dec. 1.

Manfred has said players received 47% of revenue in 2024, as opposed to 63% when he started as chief labor negotiator in 2002. Interim MLBPA Exec Dir Bruce Meyer told The Athletic the split over the life of the current CBA is comfortably over 50%. The caps in other sports lead to roughly 50-50 splits.

The Dodgers this season are seeking to become the first team since the Yankees (1998-2000) to capture three consecutive World Series titles. Meanwhile, the last small market team to win the Fall Classic was the Royals in 2015. Small market teams, including the Rays, Brewers and Guardians, however, have been consistent winners with lower payrolls in recent years, albeit failing to win it all.

The union does not believe owners desire a salary cap for the purposes of competitive balance. Rather, it believes a cap would provide owners with fixed-cost certainty, with the goal of raising franchise values.

As Manfred reiterated, MLB is enjoying a resurgence, with upticks in national TV ratings and attendance. But all the momentum could be thwarted if games are missed. The league is also looking to secure a lucrative national TV deal after the 2028 season, which could potentially be impacted depending how long the battle ensues.

“There’s no one who wants to avoid a work stoppage more than I do. Believe me,” Manfred said.

Due to the collapse of the RSN model, local TV revenues have widened. The Dodgers’ TV deal averages $334M annually through 2038. Meanwhile, their 2025 NL Championship Series opponent, the Brewers, who did about $35M in rights fees last year, was expecting a $20M loss by going under MLB’s TV umbrella.

Dodgers and Red Sox executives have been among those to publicly support centralized MLB media rights.

“It’s good for the entire industry,” Red Sox President & CEO Sam Kennedy told SBJ last October. “Our distribution model has been disrupted by technology, and we’ve got these territories, and we’ve got to make sure that our consumers, wherever they are, whether they’re watching the Red Sox in Boston, Nashville or Singapore can easily find our games or consume our games on a device in a format they want. So we’ve been part of trying to help examine how this could come together.”

MLB has continued to point to its internal fan polling, which shows fans in some markets do not believe their respective teams have a fighting chance for success.

“The one thing that (fans are) the biggest on right now is the lack of competitive balance in the game, and I think that’s going to be the cornerstone issue of the negotiations with the MLBPA,” Manfred said. “From our perspective, we think if we can improve competitive balance, we’re going to grow the game in a way that will be beneficial to everybody -- players, owners, the whole group.”

Meyer responded to MLB’s opening counter proposal:

“Yesterday, the MLBPA presented a comprehensive package of proposals designed to improve compensation for players at all levels, and to incentivize and reward competition on the field.

“The owners responded today with a demand for a salary cap system, something generations of players have fought against. The last time the owners made such an explicit push for a cap -- over 30 years ago -- it led to the longest work stoppage in MLB history. For generations, our members have fought against cap systems because they harm players at all levels, erode or eliminate contractual guarantees, pit player against player, lead to more work stoppages, not less, and get worse for players over time. Caps don’t lower ticket prices for fans, eliminate tanking or ensure teams are run with equal competence. They suffocate competition by offering owners an all-purpose excuse for inaction and mediocrity.

“Baseball is experiencing unprecedented momentum and owners are enjoying record viewership, revenues and franchise values. Billionaire owners are not seeking to cap their profits or asset values, only player salaries. This isn’t out of generosity or a desire to protect the game’s well-being. It’s a play to control costs, increase profits and maximize franchise values -- all at the expense of players past, present and future. We’ll continue our review of the owners’ proposal and stand ready to negotiate system improvements that benefit players and fans alike.”

On Location says it has “allocated” more than 500,000 individual hospitality packages for this summer’s FIFA World Cup, which is being held in 16 venues across the U.S., Canada and Mexico.

The firm said hospitality sales for the first 48-team World Cup have already surpassed all previous editions of the tournament, more than doubling the prior revenue record and exceeding the record number of packages sold.

“It’s the largest World Cup hospitality program in history, and larger than anything else we’ve ever done or anyone’s ever done in the world of hospitality,” On Location CEO Paul Caine said.

That’s not to say there aren’t more packages to sell.

On Location has not disclosed its current total hospitality inventory or what percentage has been allocated. But when the firm was selected in 2024 as FIFA’s official hospitality provider for the 2026 World Cup, then-CCO Scott Jernigan estimated the firm would be responsible for selling “up to 1 million” of the 6.7 million total tickets available across the competition’s 104 matches. Based on that early projection, the more than 500,000 hospitality packages On Location says have been allocated would represent more than half of its maximum expected inventory.

On Location confirmed each package includes one ticket, along with hospitality and experiential elements. The use of the term “allocated” suggests the count includes an unknown number of hospitality packages made available to FIFA sponsors as part of their deals.

“We’re thrilled with how On Location is performing on this, and we know from this point forward, there’s still going to be more commercial happening, but we are in a really good place,” Caine said.

On Location is serving as FIFA’s official hospitality partner for the first time after winning a competitive RFP over de facto incumbent Beyond Hospitality. Financial terms of On Location’s relationship with FIFA have not been disclosed, though Jernigan confirmed there is no minimum guarantee. The firm is partnering with MLS in its World Cup efforts, with clubs serving as hospitality sales agents in exchange for commission.

Caine said sales have been especially strong for the opening match between Mexico and South Africa in Mexico City on June 11, the two U.S. matches in L.A., most matches in N.Y.-N.J., including the Final, and in Canada across the board. He added that demand for knockout stage matches will fluctuate based on which teams advance in the competition.

“You also have to remember that you don’t know who’s playing as you get to the late stages and who’s going to be in it,” Caine said. “It’s hard to predict.”

In 2022, FIFA earned $243M from the sale of hospitality rights to Match Hospitality for the World Cup in Qatar. FIFA said it has moved away from the rights-fee model for 2026, suggesting its relationship with On Location is structured to give FIFA more direct exposure to hospitality revenue.

Across the sports licensing industry, they’re starting to refer to the NBA Eastern Conference champions as the New York Knick$.

That’s what happens when a team from the nation’s largest market progresses to the championship round for the first time in 27 years. Keeping in mind that the Knickerbockers’ last championship was 53 years ago, when google was just a number that seemed infinite. It all harkens back to our favorite licensing aphorism: “There’s no demand like pent-up demand.” That’s always been true. So much so, that we might even believe the often-spurious claims of record sales, should the MSGers win. Industry-types already are.

“With a win, the Knicks would be profound, their fans would go on a feeding frenzy, and it would be the best NBA hot market for us in years, probably ever,” said FOCO CEO/Founder Michael Lewis. “I had six of my employees leave the office this week as soon they heard that the [Eastern Conference] Champion caps [now sold out] were for sale. The Knick fan right now is in an emotional euphoria you don’t see often.

“If Oklahoma City wins, it’s another non-event, but San Antonio brings with it the promise of a lot of Wemby [Victor Wembanyama] product sales and could be a sales tsunami by himself.”

Fanatics is calling this Knicks squad its best-selling NBA conference champion ever, noting that in the two hours after the Eastern Conference title clinching on Monday it sold more Knicks merchandise than the previous-best 2022 Golden State Warriors did over their first five days, post clinch.

Tim Shanahan, New Era’s senior director/licensed products, said the conference championship cap sellout was real and immediate across accounts within a day.

“New blood in any championship is always good,” he said. “We’re going to be a bit tight on championship locker room stuff if they win, but we have a bunch of other options. The Raptors championship [in 2019] was really big, because all of Canada bought in and the early Warriors also. A Knicks championship would challenge those.”

OuterStuff CEO Sol Werdiger said his principal concern now is keeping up with front-end demand for FIFA World Cup apparel. He called the Knicks hot-market prospects “incredibly strong and making us wish we still had a big New York-based retailer, like Modell’s and Herman’s.”

Both Werdiger and Lewis noted that the biggest potential hot market would be if the Canadiens won a Stanley Cup, which they haven’t since 1993. “That would be the largest hot market we’d have for years in any sport,” he said. “Our if-wins [orders] for a Canadiens championship are double what the Knicks are.”

The Canadiens trail the Hurricanes 2-1 in the NHL’s Eastern Conference final, heading into Wednesday night’s fourth game in Montreal.

Taylor Wrice didn’t see a document problem. He saw a communication problem. And that became clear as he guided me through a quick demo of his fledgling platform, DocuLingo.

Before turning into a founder, Wrice’s career featured significant rev-ops experience (also two-plus years of government work). Solidifying go-to-market strategies and navigating the various contract conversations exposed him to the issue he’s tackling now: Too many departments operated in silos, he said, and that created many platforms to work out of.

DocuLingo emerged as a customer data platform (CDP) trying to solve those problems, featuring AI tools that can translate and extract insights — functions producing results in seconds that normally could take days and weeks. His former athlete background (he was a Division I football recruit) and the complexities that can come with deals in sports made this industry an easy fit. And there are all kinds of potential customers.

“It’s not just athletes — it’s brands, it’s sports agencies, it’s families that don’t have a representation yet,” Wrice said. “This is an engine that can fit anywhere.”

The startup was founded last year. It’s based in Raleigh, N.C. and is raising funds after investor interest prompted Wrice to increase the company’s funding target. DocuLingo recently added premium stick maker Swift Hockey, joining a client base of double-digit companies, which includes agencies, apparel businesses and athletes. There are also ongoing conversations with more business in the pipeline, Wrice told me.

Bringing deal management under one screen

Typically, to support deals, a company may lean on a communication platform (like Slack or Teams), a document management tool (like DocuSign) and the preferred CDP it deploys. DocuLingo puts all those in one place. There are different experience views for athletes, agents and agencies for the web-based platform. Wrice added that while the company is working on an app, the web version is mobile-friendly.

Wrice explained that the driving design focus was straightforwardness. A portfolio manager can see most of the answers they need from the opening dashboard called the Sports Hub. “I could break this down as an athlete myself,” Wrice said. “... Now they can get access to all their data, all their documents, if they ever decide that they don’t want to get an agent.”

The AI in the platform provides document intelligence capabilities, which parse through contracts and navigate questions from the user.

DocuLingo can scan and evaluate uploaded contracts for risks that it flags for users but also lay out the deliverable schedule associated with agreements. The platform can also translate to 31 different languages — international negotiations often required an interpreter and took months, Wrice said, to navigate with both sides of a deal (think Shohei Ohtani’s global endorsement portfolio or the constant international challenges a Nike or Adidas may face). A chat function provides for quick prompts around deals and produces answers that sidestep legal jargon with responses in everyday language.

There is so much information in deals, Wrice said, and by making those documents work for clients better, the rest of the process can run much more smoothly (and quickly, too).

“They [deal managers] are generating [the contracts] at the end of the deal,” Wrice said. “You start the deal with the contract and document, you can really pull out the information.”

Every major professional sports league in America is now running a grassroots program. The NFL has NFL Flag with 765,000 kids. The NBA has Jr. NBA. MLS launched MLS GO. All of them are operated through RCX Sports, the official youth sports operator for every major U.S. league.

This isn’t charity. This is customer acquisition. And the leagues are aiming it entirely at kids ages 4 to 14.

Meanwhile, 62 million American adults play recreational team sports every week. Approximately 12 million of them play pickup or drop-in sports on a weekly basis. They pay for venues, coordinate schedules, recruit players and show up consistently. By any reasonable definition, they are exactly the kind of engaged, active fan that professional leagues are desperate to cultivate.

No major league has a strategy for reaching them.

The fan engagement crisis

The urgency behind these investments is generational. Only 20% of Gen Z adults identify as avid sports fans, a full third don’t follow sports at all, and the ones who do tune in follow athletes rather than franchises. For leagues built on multidecade franchise loyalties and billion-dollar broadcast deals, grassroots participation is the last reliable path to building fans who stick.

The logic behind MLS GO and Jr. NBA is straightforward: Get a kid to play your sport wearing your team’s jersey and you create an emotional association that passive viewing can’t replicate. But youth programs are a 10-year bet on future fans. The adult recreational segment is monetizable now.

The player data layer leagues are missing

Every week, millions of adults self-organize into soccer games, basketball runs, volleyball matches and flag football sessions. The behavioral data embedded in this activity is extraordinary: which sports people play, how often, where, what skill level, what times they’re available and who they play with.

Now imagine a professional club had access to that data.

A recreational sports platform that manages the full coordination workflow (matchmaking, venue booking, payments, waitlists) sits on top of a rich behavioral dataset. It knows that a specific user plays soccer twice a week in San Jose, prefers evening games, plays at an intermediate skill level and has been active for six months.

For an MLS club like the Earthquakes, that user profile is gold. Here’s someone who is actively engaged in soccer, lives in the local market, has disposable income and has demonstrated sustained interest in the sport. The club can target them with ticket offers, merchandise promotions, or watch party invitations, all delivered through a platform the user already trusts and uses weekly.

This is fundamentally different from what leagues do today, which is mostly digital advertising aimed at broad demographics. A recreational sports platform offers verified behavioral data showing that a specific person is actively participating in the sport, not just watching a highlight on Instagram.

What partnerships could look like

What could this look like in practice? An MLS club sponsors a weekly recreational soccer series on a platform, with participants wearing club-branded bibs and receiving match-day ticket bundles. When a user books their third game of the month, they receive a contextual offer: “Your next Earthquakes match is Saturday. 20% off.” AI-generated highlight reels from recreational games get overlaid with club branding, and when a player shares a 15-second clip of their goal on Instagram with an Earthquakes watermark, the club gets organic, localized marketing at zero incremental cost.

Institutional capital and regulatory tailwinds

The economics are already proven. Volo Sports, backed by Bluestone Equity Partners, acquired ZogSports last June in a deal that consolidated over 620,000 annual participants. But Volo and ZogSports are organized league operators. The far larger pickup and drop-in segment, those 12 million weekly players, remains almost entirely unaddressed.

The financial barriers are eroding too. The PHIT Act, reintroduced with bipartisan support, would classify recreational sports fees as deductible medical expenses, unlocking pretax HSA and FSA dollars for adult players. The addressable audience is getting bigger and more accessible, and no league is positioned to capture it.

The World Cup accelerant

All of this becomes more urgent this summer. The 2026 FIFA World Cup will be played across 16 cities in North America. Soccer fandom has grown 28% over the past five years, and the tournament is projected to push it to 154 million Americans. Historically, World Cups generate massive spikes in interest that quickly dissipate. What’s different about 2026 is that the grassroots infrastructure is more developed than it’s ever been. For MLS clubs in host cities, the opportunity is to convert newly inspired fans into recurring recreational participants, and then into season-ticket holders. Without the recreational layer in the middle, that funnel breaks.

The pattern extends beyond soccer. Millions of adults play pickup basketball and flag football every week with no connection to their local NBA or NFL franchise, even as those leagues pour resources into youth grassroots.

The leagues are already spending millions. The players are already there. Somebody just needs to connect them.

Abhimanyu Chopra is the CEO and co-founder of Flickmatch, an AI-powered sports coordination platform.

• The latest episode of the SBJ Sports Media Podcast sees co-hosts Austin Karp and Josh Carpenter dig into the Knicks’ return to the NBA Finals and what it means for ESPN. They also discuss what would be the best Stanley Cup Final matchup for NHL and offer takeaways from the Indy 500 and the Coca-Cola 600. Karp also interviews Landon Donovan and Tim Howard to talk about their podcast and the FIFA World Cup.
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• Despite the closest finish in Indianapolis 500 history, Fox saw a 6% decline for its second year with the Brickyard, as the race on Sunday afternoon averaged 6.64 million viewers, writes Karp.
• Lloyd Howell received nearly $6.8 million in salary and $7.3 million in total compensation/disbursements across three fiscal years for his brief and tumultuous two-year tenure as executive director of the NFLPA, reports Mazzeo.
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• Just Women’s Sports closed an investment round led by David Blitzer’s Bolt Ventures as the women’s sports calendar enters what founder and CEO Haley Rosen calls “the heart” of a pivotal year, writes SBJ’s Irving Mejia-Hilario.
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