Week in Review

TV and Streaming

  • A group of key stakeholders and investors including the New York Yankees, Sinclair Broadcast Group Inc., RedBird Capital and Amazon Inc., among others, regained an 80 percent equity stake in the YES Network, a regional sports network that broadcasts in New York and airs Yankees games.
  • The ESPN-owned ACC Network and national television satellite provider Dish Network reached a very late carriage agreement, with the former announcing the deal nearly midway through its college football season opener between Georgia Tech and Clemson.
  • Coors Light signed a deal with ESPN as the first-ever beer sponsor for its Saturday morning show “College GameDay,” replacing a spot previously held by General Motors Co. The deal, which will include in-show branding and didn’t include any regulatory issues for the beer brand or media network, comes as a growing number of universities ink deals for expanded in-venue beer sales and sponsorships, including more than 30 partnerships for Coors Light.
  • The USL, the second-tier U.S. men’s professional soccer league, announced a three-year broadcast extension with ESPN through the 2022 season after drawing interest from Fox Sports, over-the-top streaming service FloSports and Google Inc.’s YouTube. As part of the agreement, 18 regular-season games and the league championship will appear annually on ESPN2, ESPNews, ESPNU or ESPN Deportes, while streaming service ESPN+ will still carry all USL matches.

NFL

  • The NFL and Oakley Inc. announced a four-year deal that’ll see the company become the league’s official helmet visor provider and “preferred” eyewear provider, though players won’t be mandated to sport branded sunglasses and eyeglasses on the sidelines. The deal with Oakley — which has exclusivity in the helmet visor category, but players can wear other brands without displaying logos if they receive a medical exemption — came after the NFL ended a 21-year ban on the use of tinted visors except in cases where players had a medical reason to wear them.
  • With a lackluster preseason slate, there are reportedly increasing conversations between team owners and the NFL Players Association about reducing the number of exhibition games by summer 2021 and adding games elsewhere to negate the financial losses from a shortened preseason calendar. Options said to be under consideration include expanding the playoffs from 12 to 14 teams or adding one or two more regular-season games, though sources said the union’s continued resistance to more regular-season games will likely put the focus on adding more playoff games.
  • An NFL team offered U.S. women’s national team forward Carli Lloyd a chance at suiting up in a preseason game after a video went viral of her kicking a 55-year-old field goal during a visit to a Philadelphia Eagles training session, her trainer said. Though she had to turn down the opportunity due to a scheduling conflict and likely a lack of preparation time, her trainer said Lloyd is “perfectly made out for a job like that.”

MLB

  • Kansas City Royals owner David Glass, the former Walmart CEO who purchased the MLB club in 2000 for $96 million, announced the sale of the franchise to local businessman John Sherman in a deal expected to be worth about $1 billion. Sherman, a minority owner of the Cleveland Indians, will have to sell his stake in the Ohio team in order to finalize the deal, which is expected to be approved at the owners meeting in November.

Youth sports

  • For the first time in 30 years, an annual survey found that participation in U.S. high school sports dropped in 2018-19 from the previous school year, when a record number of students totaling nearly 8 million were taking part. Seventy-two percent of the decline was fueled by negative participation rates for 11-man football, part of a five-year trend that marks the lowest ebb since the 1999-2000 school year.

NBA

  • Mobile police issued an arrest warrant for Los Angeles Lakers center DeMarcus Cousins, who is accused of threatening to shoot the mother of his child if she did not allow the child to attend his wedding to another woman earlier this month, according to a protective order request filed in Alabama. The Lakers and the NBA said they are investigating the allegations.
  • The NBA suspended Brooklyn Nets forward Wilson Chandler 25 games for violating the league’s drug policy for ingesting a substance later revealed to be a growth hormone that was banned at the start of the 2017-18 season. Chandler apologized in a statement, saying that he started taking the substance, Ipamorelin, during his injury rehabilitation process, but he and his doctor didn’t realize the drug was added to the league’s prohibited substance list.

Tennis

  • The ATP Tour fired chair umpire Damian Steiner from the men’s tennis circuit, citing unauthorized interviews he gave to media in Argentina after officiating the Wimbledon Grand Slam singles final match between Roger Federer and Novak Djokovic last month. Though Steiner was not named as an umpire for the U.S. Open, he isn’t expressly barred from working Grand Slams in the future

What’s Ahead

  • The U.S. Open continues through Sept. 8 at the USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center.
  • The 2019 NFL regular season kicks off Thursday with the Chicago Bears hosting the Green Bay Packers. The NBC broadcast begins at 8:20 p.m. ET.
  • The AdvoCare Texas Kickoff college football game between Houston and Washington State is on Sept. 13 at NRG Stadium in Houston. It’ll kick off at 9:15 p.m. ET on ESPN.
  • MLB FoodFest is returning to New York City on Sept. 21-22. The two-day food festival will feature one concession item from all 30 MLB clubs.
  • The U.S. women’s soccer team’s pay-discrimination lawsuit against the U.S. Soccer Federation is set to go to trial on May 5, 2020. The trial comes nearly three months before the beginning of the Tokyo Olympics on July 24 as well as before what both parties requested: the women’s team wanted a Nov. 2020 trial date while the federation requested the following month.

Events Calendar (All Times Local)

09/04/2019
Accelerating Change: Athlete Health, Wealth, and Performance 3:00 pm
09/05/2019
Entertainment and Technology Summit 8:00 am
The Outside Game 10:00 am
View full calendar

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