Thanks for the great feedback on last week’s edition! Please keep it coming by responding to this email or on social media (LinkedIn, Twitter).

Forwarded this newsletter by someone in your network and want to receive it yourself? Subscribe here 

Good Thursday 〽️orning. I don’t say this lightly. As a long suffering Michigan fan of nearly three decades, this is the greatest week of my (sports) life. I am working on a bonus piece that I’ll publish soon about Michigan’s victory and why it was so special. Stay tuned.

📰 This Week’s Topic: To get you primed and ready for 2024, here are key updates on three of the biggest sports stories from 2023 that will carry over into 2024:

1. The PGA Tour—LIV Golf Merger

2. The Exponential Growth of Women’s Sports

3. The CFP Decision and Conference Realignment

Hey team,

We’re all shaking off the holiday rust and getting back into the swing of things personally and professionally, but the sports world has not slowed down.

To help get you back up to speed, here are key updates on three of the biggest sports stories from 2023.

1. LIV Golf — PGA Tour Merger

For a refresher on the original bombshell announcement back in June, click here.

What’s Happened Since Then

Not a lot on the merger front, but, man, there are some fireworks in other areas of this relationship.

When the original deal “framework” was struck in June, the two parties dropped their respective lawsuits against each other and set a deadline for December 31, 2023 to finalize an agreement.

Since then, there have been no announcements on major progress being made towards this merger, and both groups mostly resumed business as usual on the course.

As the months went by and the end of year deadline loomed large, this started to feel like a student working on their senior thesis.

While doing media events/conferences in Q4, both the PGA and LIV acknowledged the deadline was still in tact and that “they were working on it.”

And lo and behold, they came in at the 11th hour and said they needed more time — Commissioner Jay Monahan sent a memo to PGA players on New Year’s Eve stating that they had agreed with LIV to extend the deadline into 2024.

While there has not been a lot of action around the merger, it has been interesting to watch the two sides make serious moves to:

1. Hedge against the merger not coming to fruition

2. Try to create leverage over the other in merger negotiations

The PGA had flirted with additional outside investment throughout the Fall, and it formalized things in December when it announced that it was in a final round of due diligence to secure an investment from Strategic Sports Group.

This newly formed conglomerate of institutional capital and sports owners — Atlanta Falcons and Atlanta FC owner Arthur Blank, Chicago Cubs owner Tom Ricketts, and Fenway Sports Group, to name a few — is set to make a multi-billion investment in the tour and provide a critical infusion of cash to help the Tour grow its commercial presence (and potentially maintain its independence should the merger fall apart).

Around the same time, LIV scored a major coup on the talent front, bringing reigning Masters champion and perennial top 5 player Jon Rahm over from the PGA for a reported $566 million.

Rahm’s talent and charismatic persona are sure to attract additional interest in the fledgling tour in 2024 while a merger is supposedly being worked on. But, it’s also a symbolic win for LIV because they have been able to pry away yet another young star — Rahm is only 29 — who had once been fully entrenched on the PGA’s side of the PGA vs. LIV battle that began in 2022.

This last point serves as a key bargaining chip for LIV in merger negotiations.

Golf is an individual sport and the PGA Tour is only as good as the stars that are playing on their tour. Losing what was once a loyalist like Rahm shows how vulnerable the PGA Tour is, and it may lead to some concessions from their side in merger talks to end the poaching.

Looking Forward

The PGA and LIV believe they can complete a deal by the Masters in April, according to The Telegraph. That’s really not a lot of time, and given the track record of ineffectiveness over the last six months, it doesn’t feel like a hard deadline.

Even if a deal gets done, though, there are a number of unanswered questions about the merger, least of which is if this will actually clear the regulatory hurdles both in the US and globally.

If that actually happens, the next challenge begins: combining two rival golf leagues with a massive amount of bad blood on both sides.

• What happens to the LIV Golf brand and its combative CEO Greg Norman?

• How do the players who left get re-integrated?

• What will the players be able to say (and not say due to non-disparagement clauses) about the Saudis?

The bigger question I’m thinking about here: has the PIF been playing the long con with this merger?

When news of the LIV Tour first broke almost two years ago, people were up in arms and raced to take the moral ground on the PGA’s side. LIV got some early wins with bringing over a few marquee players, but the product was objectively inferior and they were unable to drive really any commercial interest because of the Saudis’ involvement.

But, the merger and its attached PR debacle around the announcement in June was much more beneficial for LIV because:

1. It destroyed any trust and goodwill the PGA built with the players and the public in the past 12 months’ fight against LIV. There was no more “good vs. evil.”

2. Along these same lines, it normalized the idea of LIV. People were initially shocked by the merger decision, particularly after Monahan’s grandstanding the year prior, but most came to begrudgingly accept that this was one of the only viable ways for the PGA as they knew it to continue. This forced apathy towards LIV has made it much less taboo for players (and potentially businesses) to be associated with the Saudi-backed tour, which is a major win for them.

So, if you as a player don’t trust the Tour’s leadership, you can make half a billion dollars guaranteed without as much public blowback, and you can still play in the Majors, what is the incentive to stay with the PGA?

That was most likely Jon Rahm’s calculus, and if LIV can keep stringing the PGA along in these merger talks, they may be able to convince a few other key players to come aboard in the process and further weaken the PGA.

These body blows could force an increasingly hurting PGA to make an advantageous deal for the PIF and/or help LIV grow into a viable business venture on its own.

I don’t necessarily know if the PGA has any other choice at this point. The outside investment helps, but they are still facing a state-backed frenemy with an unlimited war chest and a 50-year outlook on achieving something much bigger than golf — a seat the table with the world’s global leaders.

Because of this, a merger is most likely the only way the PGA can retain their position atop the golf world in the long run.

Buckle up, friends.

2. Hypergrowth in Women’s Sports

Original pieces from last year here, here and here.

What’s Happened Since Then

I’d like to call attention to three key media metrics across three different women’s sports that were announced the latter half of 2023.

$240 million

That is the size of the four-year media deal the NWSL signed with CBS, ESPN, Amazon, and Scripps in November.

This figure is a 40x increase over their prior deal, and it’s symbolic of the exponential growth that the NWSL — and women’s soccer in general — is experiencing right now on the heels of the Women’s World Cup in 2023.

The NWSL turned in its strongest year ever in 2023 — match attendance jumped 32%, TV viewership is up 40%, and the league announced key partnerships with marquee brands like Nationwide, Nike, and Delta.

Plus, demand remains high for club ownership, with the Portland Thorns selling for a record $63 million last week.

21%

That is the percentage increase in year-over-year WNBA viewership.

This stat is emblematic of the W’s best season ever off the court. Here are three other stand out areas:

• Attendance: Up 16% year-over-year, with the highest average attendance — 6,615 — since 2018

• Playoffs Viewership: This was the W’s most watched postseason in 16 years, checking in at nearly 500,000 viewers per game. Further, the WNBA Finals were up 36% over 2022, averaging nearly 720,000 viewers.

• Sports Betting: The number of bets on the WNBA more than doubled from last season on FanDuel. Individual bets on the marketplace increased by more than 163% year-over-year, and the WNBA handle was up more than 100%.

$65 million

That is the value of the Women’s March Madness tournament in the NCAA’s new 8-year, $920 million deal with ESPN for 40 of its NCAA championships.

For context, this figure represents 56% of the annual contract value — $115 million — and it is roughly a 3x increase over the prior deal.

This is not the $81-$112 million that media consultants projected women’s basketball was going to be able to fetch as a standalone championship, but it’s a notable uptick and serves two purposes:

1. Anchors the NCAA’s championships deal, enabling them to add 11 more sports and increase incremental value with this new package

2. Resets the market for the Women’s March Madness rights when they come up again in the early 2030’s

Looking Forward

I’m incredibly bullish on the NWSL in 2024. Expect a similar report from me next year on increased business metrics across the board.

For the media deal, in addition to the significant increase in annual contract value, the four-year term length for the media deal is also notable. It means the media rights will be coming up again following another Women’s World Cup in 2027. This tells us that Commissioner Jessica Berman believes this growth trajectory will continue and the market will be even stronger for the NWSL next time around.

With the WNBA, we’re seeing a groundswell of support for the league from a variety of key areas, and one of the most recognizable and marketable stars — Iowa’s Caitlin Clark — will be in the league next year. Big things ahead.

Lastly, women’s college basketball is in great shape right now. There is a great mix of star power and interesting personalities that is driving the game forward, and I expect the 2024 March Madness to be its biggest one yet because of the aforementioned Caitlin Clark. If Iowa makes a deep run in the tournament, don’t be surprised to see a 15 million viewership number pop up.

3. The CFP’s Decision and Conference Realignment

Original piece on conference realignment here, and the CFP’s decision here.

What’s Happened Since Then

While controversial, the College Football Playoff’s decision in early December to leave out a hobbled Florida State team and include Texas and Alabama over them paid off.

All three CFP matchups featured compelling teams and were competitive, and the CFP and ESPN were rewarded in the viewership numbers.

The three games this year averaged 23.6 million viewers — up 15% from 2023 and the highest average since the 2018 CFP.

More specifically, here’s how the games broke down:

• Michigan-Alabama (semifinal): 27.76 million

• Texas-Washington (semifinal): 18.4 million

• Michigan-Washington (championship): 25.05 million

While the last year of the four-team CFP was a business success, it deepened the rift between the perceived “have’s” and “have nots” in college athletics.

Florida State has continued to raise hell about the decision, and it is now turning its ire towards the ACC as it considers ways to get a seat at the SEC-Big Ten big kid table.

The school has sued the conference to get out of the ACC’s “ironclad” grant of rights, which ties member schools to the ACC through 2036 and comes with severe exit penalties. In FSU’s instance, they’d have to pay $572 million to the conference if they left this year.

The ACC has countersued, stating FSU is prohibited from challenging the grant of rights. And now the Florida Attorney General is involved, requesting documents from the conference and putting the taxpayers’ dollars to great use (heavy sarcasm).

In short, it’s a mess, and it’s going to lead to a very ugly, very public fight whose outcome will have far reaching implications.

One hilarious part of this saga, though: the ACC houses the grant of rights at the league headquarters in Charlotte, and there are intentionally no digital copies. Schools literally must go to the office to read the document. What a throwback move.

Looking Forward

This year’s CFP closes the book on the decade-long run of the four-team playoff format.

Next year’s 12-team system is going to bring us more football (yay!) and a more equitable, NFL-style solution for crowning a champion (also yay!).

It’s impossible not to feel some of the dark clouds swirling around college football right now, though (oh no).

As I’ve talked about before, if Florida State is successful in leaving the ACC, it’s going to set off a chain reaction of other big schools leaving the now Tier 2 conferences for the mega conferences.

The whiplash we experienced last year may even be more severe, and more historic conferences will be forever changed due to media contracts and self preservation.

I don’t believe this blatant money grab is going to detract from the short term business of college football, but it does call into question the long-term viability of the current Frankenstein system and if/when the wheel is going to break.

This, plus the murderer’s row of court cases the NCAA is facing right now, makes me think we’re going to continue to see an acceleration towards a new model for college football sooner than we all expect.

Thanks for reading! Let me know what feedback you have.

Also, if you enjoyed this breakdown, please consider sharing it with your friends and network by clicking the social media icons at the top of the newsletter.

Until next time, sports fans!

-Alex