SBJ Unpacks: MLB’s Manfred worries over another strike

Tonight in Unpacks: Commissioner Rob Manfred said Wednesday that while he’s worried about a repeat of 1994-95’s strike, he also knows MLB’s existing measures to help with competitive balance are failing, writes SBJ’s Mike Mazzeo.

Also tonight:

• World Cup: A tale of 16 cities
• NHL revenue between $7.5 billion-$8 billion
• Who makes the rules in college sports?
• Op-ed: Sports are becoming an advertiser’s playpen

Listen to SBJ’s most popular podcast, Morning Buzzcast, where Abe Madkour discusses the strength of the NHL’s bottom line as the Stanley Cup Final gets underway, the status of NBA Europe as bidding enters its final stage, the Big Ten and SEC’s stance on the Protect College Sports Act and more.

NEW YORK — MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred said Wednesday that he worries that the upcoming labor battle could result in a repeat of the 1994-95 strike.

However, the league believes a hard salary cap and floor system is needed to solve the competitive balance issue, with Manfred conceding that the competitive balance tax threshold failed to deter the growing gap between the haves and the have-nots.

“Of course I do [worry about a repeat of 1994-95],” Manfred said Wednesday from the MLB owners meetings at the league’s Manhattan headquarters. “You want to make an agreement. We made a proposal on one set of topics. At the outset of the negotiations, I went and said myself, ‘We’re open to whatever ideas people have, but we need a realistic framework that addresses the fans’ concerns about competitive balance, and you just can’t ignore that financial penalties have not gotten it done for us.’”

The Dodgers won their second straight World Series last season with an MLB-record payroll of $515M, including a league-record $169M in luxury taxes. The 30th-ranked Marlins, meanwhile, were $446M lower, at $69M in total payroll.

“We have tried mightily over several rounds of bargaining to use a CBT to address competitive concerns, and sometimes you’ve got to admit you failed,” Manfred said.

The union’s proposal sought to increase the CBT threshold from $244M to $300M.

MLB’s initial proposal included a $245.3M-$171.2M cap-floor, 50-50 revenue split and centralization of all local media revenue. The union, which has been vehemently against a cap for decades, soundly rejected the league’s proposal, with MLBPA Interim Executive Director Bruce Meyer saying players would have lost $500M if it were in place for the 2026 season with current amateur entry figures.

“All I can tell you about our initial proposal is it was specifically constructed to ensure that in the first year of the contract [2027], players would make more money than they made in 2026,” Manfred said. “To the extent that somebody’s suggesting something other than that, it’s just not accurate.”

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Manfred said there was “unanimous support” among all 30 teams for revenue-sharing of all local media, including the Dodgers, whose TV deal averages $334M annually through 2038.

“The Dodgers understand that there is a need to update the overall economic model in the industry, and that the upside associated with that in terms of growing the industry, growing the popularity of the sport is big for large markets, small markets, owners and players,” Manfred said. “And in every way that upside is bigger than any issue that separates us at the bargaining table.”

Currently, 48% of all local revenue is shared equally. However, under MLB’s proposal, relating to non-local TV revenue, Manfred said, “There would be a supplemental, commissioner-driven system to make sure that clubs have enough revenue.”

The next CBA is being dealt with before the league is going through its next national TV deal, where it hopes to secure a massive streaming rights pact after the 2028 season.

“Certainly, the form of revenue sharing in the proposal was influenced by developments in the media market, and where we need to be in order to extract the maximum revenue from the media environment as it sits today,” Manfred said. “You need more control over rights.”

The MLB proposal did not address reserve clause issues.

“In collective bargaining, you take topics in chunks, get them out there, and hope everybody tries to, over a period of time, complete all the issues that they want to address, and you move from there,” Manfred said.

Also of note from Manfred:

• On the Padres’ sale: “Things are moving along with the sale, not ready for a vote today. It’ll be at some point this summer.”
• On expansion: “We’ve made clear to all the cities that have expressed an interest that this is a post-labor topic.”
• On the next Olympics: “That’s something No. 1 we’re going to have to work out with the MLBPA, probably at the end of labor. We’re certainly thinking about it, and I can’t speak for the MLBPA, but it is my impression that they’re thinking about it on a separate track. I hope that’s the case, because we can’t wait until we have a collective bargaining agreement.”
• On the Rays’ stadium situation in Tampa: “They obviously got through the step last week in terms of positive votes over at the county and city level. They need to get to definitive documents, and my understanding is they’re on a mid-Julyish timeline on that. We’re hopeful. And there remains strong community support. We think that the polling runs about 60-40 in favor of the stadium. And we’re hopeful that they get over the next hurdle.”

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Editor’s note: This story is updated from the print edition with a written statement from FIFA.

As one of the 16 host markets for the FIFA World Cup 2026, the San Francisco Bay Area will host more than 30 watch parties and fan zones during the six-week tournament. Farther up the coast, Seattle will stage four celebrations within its metro area, with 10 more local events spread across Washington state.

Fans visiting FIFA’s website, however, won’t find information about any of them.

That’s because neither region is staging an official FIFA Fan Festival, the designation given to the large public viewing events sanctioned by the tournament organizer and used by official sponsors as a space for on-the-ground activations.

The lack of official Fan Festivals in those markets is a departure from FIFA’s initial vision.

Host city agreements signed before the tournament was awarded to North America in June 2018 called for FIFA Fan Festivals in every market, running each day of the competition, free to attendees and serving as the only public viewing event endorsed by the host city. The contracts also required each host city authority do so “at its own costs.”

Public viewing events are the most visible example of how the World Cup will differ across the 16 host markets in the U.S., Mexico and Canada, but not the only one. The cost of transit, the role of local companies and the level of available funding also vary widely.

A newly expanded World Cup being held across three countries for the first time was naturally going to feel different — and more unwieldy — than prior editions, particularly compared with the single-city World Cup 2022 in Doha, Qatar.

But the level of variation from market to market in 2026 is also a downstream effect of a new operating model spearheaded by FIFA President Gianni Infantino a decade ago that has centralized the World Cup’s most valuable revenue streams with FIFA. Meanwhile, host markets — each with its own geographic, governance and funding considerations — have been responsible for developing the local fan experience and covering roughly $100 million to $200 million in associated costs.

The model has helped position FIFA to generate $13 billion during its 2023-26 financial cycle, a four-year period anchored by this summer’s tournament, and to minimize its own costs.

“The documents that stadiums and cities had to sign were pretty onerous with a lot of responsibilities,” said former U.S. Soccer President Sunil Gulati.

As financial pressure on cities built, FIFA loosened some requirements, local organizers pushed the boundaries of the model and, in some cases, local politicians threw their weight around. The result is a mega event that will look different in every market.

Infantino’s vision

After being elected president of FIFA in 2016 following the organization’s corruption scandal, Infantino released a road map for the organization called “FIFA 2.0: The Vision for the Future.” The document laid out a new strategic direction, including how to improve the profitability and efficiency of its crown jewel event, the FIFA World Cup.

Infantino took aim at the long-standing Local Organizing Committee (LOC) model, under which FIFA partnered with an entity based in the host country that carried substantial responsibility for planning and delivering the tournament.

The last time the U.S. hosted the World Cup in 1994, a Los Angeles-based group led by then-U.S. Soccer President Alan Rothenberg successfully oversaw virtually all elements of the competition, from ticketing and domestic sponsorship sales to coordination with the nine host cities. That edition remains the most-attended World Cup to date.

But Infantino envisioned FIFA taking greater control of its most important event, previous editions of which have generated more than 80% of the organization’s total revenue for a four-year cycle. The document raised the possibility of adopting a more centralized model, including the creation of a FIFA-controlled subsidiary, or “NewCo,” to take greater control of event delivery, a concept embedded the following year in the bidding guidelines for 2026.

‘Not much of a negotiation’

Heading into 2018, the national governing bodies for soccer in the U.S., Canada and Mexico joined forces to bid against Morocco to host the 2026 World Cup. Leaders of the tri-national United Bid were aware of — if not enthusiastic about — FIFA’s plan to centralize the operation of the competition. But because it was a new model, many of the details were unknown.

One thing that was clear based on the bid and hosting documents, however, was that public support would be critical to staging the event.

The agreements saddled host cities and stadium authorities with major obligations, including safety and security, Fan Festival operations, transport and mobility planning, and FIFA-required stadium modifications.

“These are one-sided agreements when there’s multiple bidders, and if you don’t sign, you don’t host the World Cup,” said Gulati, who served as president of U.S. Soccer during most of the bid process. “I’m sure there were things, if I look back, that we would’ve signed or negotiated differently, but it’s not much of a negotiation.”

John Kristick, who served as executive director of the United Bid Committee, said that while the agreements were one-sided and there were unknowns about the operating model, the bid team believed the model could be adapted for North America in the eight years following FIFA’s vote.

“There was, if not contractual, a tacit understanding [with FIFA] that if the U.S., Canada and Mexico won, that there would be a very open discussion about how the model could be sized for this market,” Kristick said.

At least two cities, Chicago and Vancouver, balked at FIFA’s terms, though Vancouver eventually re-entered the process after the tournament was awarded. But 23 other cities signed the standard host city agreements to be included in the bid. In 2022, FIFA whittled that down to 16 host cities — 11 American, three Mexican and two Canadian.

Monica Paul, executive director for the Dallas Sports Commission, said that, while she is happy with how things have worked out for her city, having more clarity on obligations from the start would have been beneficial.

The scope of the event also changed after the bid was awarded. In 2023, the FIFA Council voted to adjust the group-stage format of the first 48-team World Cup, moving from 16 groups of three teams to 12 groups of four. The switch increased the total number of matches from 64 to 104, with all the added games in the opening phase of competition. As a result, cities would host more matches than initially anticipated and need to adjust their budgets accordingly.

No central advocacy

While bid and city leaders expected U.S. Soccer to serve as an active liaison between the American host cities and FIFA, the federation has played a marginal role in the delivery of the event.

“That removed the central advocacy that the cities could have benefited from,” said Kristick, who has served as an adviser to several host cities in his role as co-head of Playfly Sports Consulting. “I’m sure FIFA and U.S. Soccer will say there were perfectly legitimate reasons why they chose that, but I think from the city side, that left them a little bit more isolated.”

U.S. Soccer CEO JT Batson, who joined the federation in 2022, said FIFA taking control of event delivery has allowed the federation to focus on building a competitive national team, putting on its own local community events and growing the popularity of the sport. While U.S. Soccer worked with the 11 American host cities to lobby the federal government for $625 million in funding for safety and security, it didn’t play such a role in pushing FIFA to provide cities with greater financial support.

FIFA established an office in Miami to house its main World Cup operations, along with smaller outposts in Toronto and Mexico City. Led by former U.S. Soccer executive Amy Hopfinger, the Miami office has been the primary link between the 11 U.S.-based host cities and FIFA’s top brass in Zurich.

“If we’re not the ones being the cheerleader and the liaison on behalf of the host cities to the rest of this country, then their voice is never going to be heard,” said Aubrey Walton, executive director of host cities, commercial and strategic management for the 2026 World Cup.

FIFA said in a written statement that it is “investing a significant amount of money” in hosting the World Cup, citing the $3.8 billion it forecasts to spend on the event. The governing body also pointed out that the 2026 World Cup requires far less infrastructure investment than prior editions due to the lack of purpose-built stadiums.

The Host City Supporter Program

When cities joined the United Bid in 2017, there was a broad understanding that they would have opportunities to generate revenue to offset their costs. Addendums signed in 2022 before FIFA made its final host city selections provided greater detail.

FIFA outlined a local rights package that would allow each city to grant 10 companies, dubbed Host City Supporters, the right to use city-specific marks within their local market. It also gave host cities the right to purchase tickets (up to 1.5% of stadium capacity per match) and access to limited VIP hospitality and Fan Festival activation opportunities.

But the package was also heavily conditioned. Each Host City Supporter had to be approved by FIFA and could not come from the same commercial category as any of the governing body’s own global or regional sponsors for the tournament. The most valuable assets, including tickets and hospitality, were framed as purchase access rather than free inventory.

Cities have used the program to raise tens of millions of dollars. For those with significant public support, like Houston, Dallas and Kansas City, that has been a valuable supplemental revenue stream, even if it hasn’t fully lived up to expectations.

For organizers in other cities, however, it has failed to deliver the level of revenue needed to cover initial plans due to category restrictions, a lack of valuable assets and the fact that any tickets or suites included in supporter packages had to first be purchased at face value.

“The biggest thing FIFA should have done that probably would’ve solved everything, was give everyone 10 to 15 free suites,” one host committee leader said. “I just needed some assets so that my margin on the sponsorship sale was bigger. That was it.”

Newfound flexibility

As it became clear many host cities were struggling to make their budgets pencil out, FIFA opted to scale back select obligations rather than provide direct financial support to fulfill its initial vision.

The original host city agreements called on host cities to provide ticket holders with free public transportation on match days and to operate official FIFA Fan Festivals each day of the competition. Both would have created a more uniform fan experience across the 16 host cities but were among the most expensive obligations.

As planning advanced, FIFA backed away from the free transit requirement, telling host cities in 2023 that they could provide matchday transportation “at cost.” In 2024, FIFA loosened its strict Fan Festival guidelines, telling local organizers they could determine the size and scope of their events, determine on which and how many days to operate them — or even eschew an official FIFA Fan Festival altogether.

“We looked at our budget and tried to understand what are the requirements that we really have to do to ensure a safe tournament, and then where do we have a little bit of flex,” said Zaileen Janmohamed, president and CEO of the Bay Area Host Committee. “We ended up having a little bit of flex from FIFA on fan fest, and it just alleviated a lot of financial pressure for us.”

A range of experiences across the U.S.

Across the U.S., host markets effectively fall into four camps based on how closely they have stuck to FIFA’s original template.

Template cities: In Dallas, Houston and Philadelphia, plans largely align with FIFA’s original vision. All three local host committees benefited from strong funding structures consisting of public support, private donations and the Host City Supporter program revenue. As a result, all three will hold large, centralized FIFA Fan Festivals operating on most or all of the tournament’s 39 days, and offer subsidized, free or low-cost transit options.

For the two Texas cities, being able to count on support from the state’s Major Events Reimbursement Program from the outset reduced funding pressure and allowed them to focus on private fundraising and operations.

“From a funding standpoint, knowing that there is a program already established in Texas for being able to offset some of the costs to be able to host an event, I think is very critical for us,” Paul said of Dallas. “It allows us to also be able to optimize, innovate [and] focus on the operational pieces and the bells and whistles and the experience piece.”

In Philadelphia, corporate fundraising began while the city was bidding to become one of the 16 host markets. Meg Kane, CEO of Philadelphia Soccer 2026, said her team secured $41 million in funding commitments from locally based companies and philanthropic organizations before being selected in June 2022.

“That allowed people to spread that pledge out over a five-year period, which I think was part of the success,” Kane said. “It gave people a chance to plan, but it also allowed for this ongoing engagement. So today, we continue to privately fundraise, but we didn’t turn our attention to public sector funding in any way until we had secured the bid itself.”

Philadelphia also found a sponsor, Airbnb, to underwrite SEPTA train rides leaving Lincoln Financial Field, meaning fans traveling by rail to matches will only need to spend $2.90 for their entire journey.

“Finding someone that was able to underwrite that freed up more than $600,000 for us to put toward our Fan Festival,” Kane said.

Those advantages allowed the three cities to preserve the kind of centralized, full-scale public celebration FIFA initially contemplated.

Scaled-Central Cities: Kansas City, Atlanta and Miami are also putting on large, centralized FIFA Fan Festivals, but each will operate for roughly half of the competition. All three have garnered some level of public support and raised private funds, including through the Host City Supporter program. Kansas City and Miami have also built out event-specific shuttle bus services, with Miami offering ticket holders free rides to Hard Rock Stadium and Kansas City charging $15 per match.

Dan Corso, president of the Atlanta Sports Council, said the city plans to keep its FIFA Fan Festival at Centennial Olympic Park open for 18 days, though that schedule could be expanded if the city brings on additional Host City Supporters in the final weeks before kickoff.

Budget-Constrained Official Model: In Boston, the city has done its best to stay true to FIFA’s initial concept despite running into budgetary challenges.

Boston host committee CEO Mike Loynd, who has publicly expressed concerns about fundraising over the past year, said the group has raised more than $20 million through the commercial program, including from three Host City Supporters. It has received roughly the same amount from local government, along with a $46 million federal grant, bringing its identified funding to less than $100 million — well short of the $170 million the committee had hoped to raise.

“We’ve been working hard to find the right fiscally responsible delivery,” Loynd said. “We’re not flush with cash.”

Despite the tight budget, civic leaders prioritized hosting an official FIFA Fan Festival. The city’s main event at Boston City Hall Plaza will run for 16 days from June 12 to June 27 and accommodate up to 5,000 fans at a time.

“I was very keen on the fact that FIFA will film our fan fest and show beauty shots of Boston across the globe as part of that deal,” said Martha Sheridan, president and CEO of Meet Boston. “And I just think it adds a little bit of cachet to it that it is an official FIFA Fan Festival. People that attend ours will feel like they’re in a place that’s got a lot of the IP, a lot of activity and a comprehensive match broadcast schedule.”

Fans attending matches will have several mass transit options from downtown Boston to Gillette Stadium in Foxboro, but the pricing reflects the budgetary strain of hosting. The MBTA is selling round-trip train tickets that would typically cost $20 for a Patriots game for $80 on World Cup match days. The host committee is also offering round-trip shuttle bus service for $95.

Distributed-Model Cities: Then, there are the markets that leaned into FIFA’s newfound flexibility to build less centralized fan-experience models tailored to their own geography, politics and budgets. That group includes the San Francisco Bay Area, Seattle, Los Angeles and New York-New Jersey, the market hosting the World Cup final.

In Northern California, the Bay Area Host Committee eschewed the Host City Supporter program altogether. With the region also hosting the NBA All-Star Game in 2025 and Super Bowl LX earlier this year, it instead opted to create its own BAHC-specific IP that isn’t directly associated with any of the three events.

“Allowing a brand to buy assets for the NBA All-Star Game, the Super Bowl and the FIFA World Cup under IP that’s not necessarily governed by those three properties has allowed us to raise revenue for this tournament that maybe we wouldn’t have been able to do otherwise,” Janmohamed said.

Not using World Cup-related marks allowed the BAHC to work with companies that FIFA would have otherwise rejected due to competitive conflicts with its own sponsors. PNC Bank, for example, is a sponsor of the BAHC even though Bank of America is a global tournament sponsor. Video game developer EA Sports, a locally based company whose long-standing licensing relationship with FIFA ended in 2023, was allowed to support the event locally and promote its EA Sports FC title without directly associating with its former partner.

Financial pressures and the geographically disparate nature of the Bay Area also led the BAHC to put on a series of unofficial fan celebrations rather than an official FIFA Fan Festival. Janmohamed said this approach allowed the committee to avoid hefty broadcast and infrastructure costs associated with FIFA’s requirements, while also reaching more people across the region and incentivizing more municipalities and partners to chip in.

The most prominent fan celebration will be held for 39 days at San Jose’s San Pedro Square Market in conjunction with the Earthquakes of Major League Soccer.

“The city puts in a little bit of cost relief, the team puts in a little bit of cost relief and we put in a little bit,” Janmohamed said. “So, there’s a sharing in cost and the requirements go down and, all of a sudden, you get much more relief. And that’s the same model in a lot of our venues.”

The Seattle host committee, which added local tech giants Amazon and Microsoft as Host City Supporters last month, is taking a similar approach to public viewings. The city is promoting a wide-ranging slate of unofficial celebrations, including events put on by the Sounders, Reign and Mariners. Los Angeles has taken a hybrid approach, holding a four-day official FIFA Fan Festival at the L.A. Memorial Coliseum with a $10 admission fee, along with a series of free, days-long fan zones across Southern California.

The more dispersed event models on the West Coast, along with the late-developing nature of those plans, has led some of FIFA’s official tournament partners to focus their attention elsewhere in terms of on-the-ground activation.

“If some of the West Coast cities were doing bigger fan fests that were known earlier, we might’ve overweighted that, but we could kind of sense some of the complexity there,” one agency executive said.

Perhaps no U.S. host market’s plans have undergone as much evolution as those in New York-New Jersey, which FIFA selected in February 2024 to stage the July 19 World Cup final. But unlike the Bay Area or Seattle, where cost and commercial flexibility drove much of the departure from FIFA’s original template, New York-New Jersey’s approach has been shaped just as much by local political dynamics and regional complexity.

In early 2025, New York-New Jersey host committee Chair Tammy Murphy announced plans for a full-tournament FIFA Fan Festival at Liberty State Park in Jersey City, billed as the largest such event of the World Cup. The plan had the support of her husband, then-New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy, whose term expired in January 2026. His successor, fellow Democrat Mikie Sherrill, pushed the state in a different direction.

Since taking office, Sherrill has moved to replace the Liberty State Park concept with a series of smaller community events across New Jersey supported by $5 million in state funding. She also backed an effort to recover New Jersey Transit’s World Cup-related costs by charging fans $98 for round-trip rail service from Manhattan to MetLife Stadium, down from an initially announced $150.

The host committee, meanwhile, has shifted toward a less centralized regional model featuring large-scale events across New York City and New Jersey, including fan zones in all five boroughs, a fan village at Rockefeller Center and a fan hub at Sports Illustrated Stadium in Harrison, N.J. The committee has also worked with New York Gov. Kathy Hochul to provide $20 shuttle bus rides for fans looking for a cheaper way to travel to and from MetLife Stadium.

“We’ve created more diversity of experience,” said Alex Lasry, CEO of the New York-New Jersey host committee. “So, rather than just one thing where it’s the same thing over and over, we’re creating really a menu of fan experiences, which should keep fans more entertained, more excited, allow our commercial partners to get more creative in their offerings.”

While the operating model has been the subject of internal consternation and plenty of headlines heading into the tournament, host city leaders remain optimistic that 2026 will ultimately be a success for their markets.

“At the end of the day, the story that’s going to be written on July 20th is, ‘That was fun,’” Lasry said. “And that’s what matters.”

RALEIGH, N.C. -- The NHL expects to finish the 2025-26 season with record revenue between $7.5B-$8B, NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman told media prior to Game 1 of the Stanley Cup Final on Tuesday. Bettman cautioned he “may be a little off in either direction,” but even the low end of the range is meaningfully higher than the $6.8B Bettman projected at the league’s Board of Governors meeting in December.

“Every source of revenue is growing, and it’s going to be even better next year because the new media deal in Canada kicks in,” Bettman said. “We’ve got some new sponsors that we’ve signed and some that we’re about to. Gate receipts remain strong -- I think we’re playing to something like 96% of capacity in the regular season and in these playoffs over 100%.”

The NHL’s leaguewide revenue figures are typically presented on a combined U.S.-Canadian dollar basis -- referred to as mixed currency -- meaning they reflect revenue generated in both currencies rather than being converted entirely to U.S. dollars.

As Bettman referenced, revenue is poised to increase significantly next season, when the NHL’s new Canadian media rights deal with Rogers kicks in. That deal worth C$11B (or US$7.9B based on the current exchange rate) over 12 years will more than double the league’s annual fee. The NHL has yet to sign a new French-language media deal in Canada for next season, with Bettman saying Tuesday that it is a “work in progress.”

The league has two more seasons on its national media rights deals in the U.S. with the Walt Disney Co. (ABC/ESPN) and WBD Sports (TNT). Bettman said that exclusive negotiating windows with the incumbents begin in 2027.

College football is increasingly becoming a 365-day-a-year sport — and conference spring meetings are proof of as much.

What used to be informal gatherings by the beach have become almost media day-adjacent events for reporters and administrators alike. So much for getting to enjoy the sunshine, right?

These are a couple headlines I’m keeping tabs on heading into the heat of the summer:

Do the conference offices really want to self-govern?

There’s a real conversation being had in SEC circles — and, in a less structured way, in the Big Ten — about what self-governing outside the NCAA might look like.

Those murmurs stirred in Amelia Island, Fla., early last month when ACC administrators gathered. By the time the SEC’s crew got together on the Florida Panhandle last week, it was a topic in virtually every conversation I had.

Given the lack of enforcement and effectiveness of the $20.5 million cap spelled out in the House settlement, some are ready to blow up the system entirely — Georgia President Jere Morehead and football coach Kirby Smart among them. Others are more tempered.

The question I keep coming back to is for all the groaning about the College Sports Commission, NCAA and lack of rules, why would a conference office want to get into the enforcement business?

The NCAA — and more recently, the CSC — are almost always the first to receive blame when something in college sports goes wrong. They also provide a convenient litigation shield for the schools.

Is the SEC really ready for that?

I asked SEC Commissioner Greg Sankey about it Thursday.

“We’ve had that role. Conference policies, conference governance, the ability to say no, the ability to deny waiver requests, the ability sometimes to approve waiver requests, the ability to adapt our own rules that are more restrictive than the NCAA rule — that’s been going on, in my experience, for decades,” Sankey said. “Can there be more of that, and do we accept that responsibility? We can. What are the limits? I’ll answer that then. Not now.

“But there’s kind of this notion, because there’s talk and because we’re at a time of change, that the Southeastern Conference having policies that govern the Southeastern Conference that may be different than policies that govern the Atlantic Coast Conference or the Big 12 Conference is something novel. That is not novel. We probably, in some of the areas, didn’t get enough credit for it trying to manage through things in the proper way. And we’ve shown that we can do that. How far that goes, we’ll see.”

We’ll see, indeed.

What to make of the rules and whether anyone wants them

It’s no secret the Big Ten and SEC are among those leading the roughshod spending and creative accounting that have rendered the House settlement revenue sharing cap effectively dead.

Schools in both conferences are anecdotally among the biggest spenders in the sport. Remember all the crowing over Ohio State’s $20 million football roster that won the national title in 2025? These days, that’d be a hell of a discount for that kind of talent.

Jokes aside, the question here is whether college sports want a cap at all.

As I reported last month, Power Four commissioners have kicked around a one-year amnesty of sorts — basically, a chance for schools to clean up their books after over-promising on deals now being held up by the CSC.

ACC Commissioner Jim Phillips and Big 12 Commissioner Brett Yormark aren’t in favor of such a deal. After all, the SEC and Big Ten effectively spent themselves to this point. Why give them a free pass?

Speaking with folks over the last few weeks, there’s a sentiment from some corners of the ecosystem there ought to just be no cap at all. Let schools spend what they want to spend. Some will keep up. Others won’t.

MLB is in the middle of a similar fight. Is it fun for opposing fans watching the Dodgers spend themselves into oblivion every year and win titles because they can? Not exactly. But as a lifelong Yankees fan (my dad is from Manhattan, blame him), I’ve watched enough seasons to know money doesn’t always win.

Perhaps no rules is what will actually bring stability after all.

More Capitol Hill drama is coming

College sports have struck out in about every conceivable way in getting a bill through Congress so far. And yet, the lobbying checks still keep clearing.

We might finally be in a spot to see if the millions the leagues have spent in trying to push legislation is actually worth it thanks to the introduction of the Protect College Sports Act from Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.) and Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas).

I’ll keep this brief (keep reading and you’ll see why), but there’s at least some optimism that this all-encompassing bill might get through the Senate. The House? Yeah, we’ll see.

The biggest problem is timing. Congress goes on recess in August. The midterms loom upon return. That gives everyone about four months (June-July and September-October) to get this across the line. In congressional time, that’s approximately the speed of light.

Stay tuned for Wednesday’s hearing in the Senate Commerce Committee. Consider it a first test to see whether this bill has real legs.

With one week until the start of the FIFA World Cup 2026 across the U.S., Mexico, and Canada, host cities are being rapidly reconfigured into temporary, high-density media ecosystems. FIFA is projecting more than 5 million attendees across matches and related activations, underscoring the scale at which attention will be physically concentrated across North American markets.

Sporting mega-events concentrate audiences in physical spaces in ways no other media environment can replicate. They generate real-time cultural moments where presence, participation, and visibility converge, creating conditions uniquely suited to out-of-home (OOH) media. In this context, cities themselves function as distributed communication platforms, where brand messaging is embedded directly into the lived experience of the event.

Within these environments, attention doesn’t begin at kickoff or end at the final whistle. It’s grabbed before matches, intensifies during competition, and continues well after results are decided. For marketers, this creates a multi-phase attention cycle that extends across days and urban geographies rather than a single broadcast window.

For major hubs like New York, L.A., and Dallas, fan zones, watch parties, transit corridors and high-traffic pedestrian areas will sustain continuous engagement well beyond game time. Brands that fail to maintain presence across this full arc risk becoming absent from the most emotionally resonant moments of the fan experience — when anticipation builds, communities gather, and shared narratives take shape.

The hidden value window

Most advertisers still cluster investment around opening matches and finals, assuming attention peaks only at headline moments. This creates a structural blind spot: the assumption that audiences disappear outside of marquee games.

In practice, attention expands and lingers.

Fans arrive early, extend stays and remain engaged after competition ends. They explore cities, participate in fan-driven events and share experiences across social channels. Broader patterns in sports tourism, seen in moments like Super Bowl-related tourism and growth trends among younger audiences, show that economic and attention activity often peaks outside of broadcast windows rather than within them. During these periods, attention consolidates in physical environments where people move “and’” gather: stadium corridors, transit hubs, pedestrian zones, fan festivals and watch-party neighborhoods.

Attention also follows mobility patterns. Fans fly into host cities, move through airports, drive or rideshare to venues and rely on public transit to navigate between events. Each of these stages represents a high-frequency OOH exposure point, extending brand visibility far beyond a single media impression.

The case for OOH across the fan experience

OOH plays a structural role across the fan journey, functioning as both navigational infrastructure and cultural signals. Billboards near fan zones, transit placements along commuter routes and large-format urban displays place brands inside the live experience. Unlike broadcast or social media environments, where ads can be skipped or scrolled past, OOH is encountered in real-world movement. It is embedded in travel, celebration, and return journeys, maintaining continuous presence across arrival, participation and aftermath.

At the same time, many brands continue to optimize for how audiences are found through search, keywords, and click-based systems, rather than how they are remembered across physical environments. This is increasingly misaligned with how attention functions during high-intensity cultural moments.

Research from Kantar shows OOH can drive a 13% increase in ad awareness compared to other media channels, reinforcing its role in memory formation rather than short-term response. It reflects how OOH spans the physical routes fans move through — airports, roadways, pedestrian areas, and gathering spaces — maintaining consistent visibility across arrival, participation and departure.

Brands are already adapting. Coca-Cola is activating early World Cup campaigns with multicultural creative in English and Spanish, signaling a shift toward pre-event engagement rather than waiting for match play to begin.

Sports as a once-in-a-generation opportunity

Mega events such as the World Cup and the Olympics concentrate attention in ways few platforms can match, bringing together globally dispersed audiences who are highly engaged, emotionally invested and primed for participation.

These environments enable brands to move beyond exposure into cultural participation, where messaging becomes part of how fans experience and share the event. The opportunity is not only visibility, but relevance, with creative that shifts from awareness to shared cultural reference.

Sporting events are no longer discrete advertising windows; they operate as evolving cultural systems where attention shifts across cities, timeframes and experiences. Value is distributed across the full cycle of anticipation, participation, and reflection, not just peak match moments.

This is increasingly important heading into this year’s World Cup 2026 and the L.A. 2028 Summer Olympics, where attention will be concentrated in dense, globally visible urban environments.

At the same time, the broader media environment is shifting. As search and keyword-driven discovery fragments and performance metrics lose efficiency, emphasis is moving from how brands are found to how they are remembered. OOH sits at the center of that shift, driving recall by embedding brands in physical context and countering digital saturation, with success increasingly defined by sustained mental availability during high-intensity cultural moments.

Bob McCuin is executive vice president and chief revenue officer of Clear Channel Outdoor Americas.

• On Wednesday, Nick Saban provided a dire warning on the state of college sports before the Senate Commerce Committee to spell out the realities of a system in flux, reports SBJ’s Ben Portnoy.
• Louisville Sports Commission President and CEO Greg Fante was named Executive of the Year by Sports ETA, the trade association for the sports events and tourism industry, writes SBJ’s David Broughton.
• Broughton also notes that by the time the Stanley Cup Final and NBA Finals are completed, arenas whose food operations are run by Levy will have hosted at least 1.2 million fans at a minimum of 64 (and as many as 65) playoff games, accounting for nearly 40% of all 2026 postseason attendance.
• The PGA Tour is joining a trend of sporting events to offer all-inclusive tickets and will do so at its first postseason event of 2026, the FedEx St. Jude Championship in August, reports SBJ’s Josh Carpenter.
• Mastercard views traditional advertising as being less effective these days, so it became the title sponsor of the McLaren F1 Team to unlock new ways to reach consumers, writes SBJ’s Adam Stern.
• TelevisaUnivision and MLB are expanding a relationship around the Spanish-language TUDN Radio network, adding more than 30 live audio games to its schedule from June 14 through July 19, notes SBJ’s Austin Karp.