Olympic Sports in Jeopardy?

LSU Gymnastics’ Jay Clark: “Money is Becoming Part of the Equation”

December 12, 2024

Gymnastics Needs As Many Programs As It Can Keep
LSU's Jay Clark, Head Coach of the Reigning National Champions, discusses gymnastics NIL and recruiting in the new era of College Athletics on the Flipping Out with Bridget Sloan podcast: "The difficult part now is that we are entering a stage where money is becoming part of the equation...I'm very much of an advocate for NIL for gymnastics because we don't have an NFL or an NBA or Major League Baseball, and so this is a great opportunity for them to monetize and make a little money from something that they've been committed to since probably 3 or 4 years old in many cases, and it's the only opportunity they'll get." 

Clark goes on to say "I'm nervous that revenue sharing and things like that could have negative repercussions on a lot of our programs and I'm hopeful that through marketing and the exposure that we get that we can weather it and that the programs on each campus can demonstrate their value to being on their campuses." Listen to the full podcast here or watch on YouTube.
^Spotify

Dolphins, Bills Sell Stakes in Team to Private Equity Firms for First Time in NFL History
The Athletic’s Tashan Reed reports: “For the first time in NFL history, private equity firms have bought into league ownership. NFL owners voted to approve private equity firm Ares Management’s bid to purchase a stake in the Miami Dolphins along with private equity firm Arctos Partners and private equity firm Gridiron Capital’s bids to buy into the Buffalo Bills at the special league meeting Wednesday.”
^{The Athletic}

NFL Owners Approve 8 Percent Sale of Eagles to Investment Groups
Philadelphia Eagles owner Jeffrey Lurie received approval from the NFL on Wednesday to sell an eight percent interest in the team to two family investment groups, a league source told The Athletic. The Eagles were valued at $8.3 billion in the deal, which means Lurie will receive hundreds of millions in available cash for giving two seats at the ownership table to investors who believe the league’s success will yield significant returns.

In a separate article from The Athletic, NFL owners also voted to approve the Las Vegas Raiders’ sale of 15 percent of the franchise at the special league meeting Wednesday. Silver Lake co-CEO and Endeavor board chairman Egon Durban and Discovery Land Company founder and chairman Michael Meldman have each acquired an equal 7.5 percent stake in the Raiders.
^{The Athletic}

NFL Looks to Nike for International Help in New 10-Year Uniform Deal
Nike and the NFL have signed a 10-year contract extension to the iconic brand’s rights to design and produce the league’s uniforms. The deal, which begins in 2025, also commits Nike to help the NFL export American football overseas by promoting the sport and athletes in key markets and researching ways to prevent leg and foot injuries. As a 12-year incumbent, Nike was always considered the front-runner to renew, but NFL staff told owners in October that competing bids were in play. 
^{Sports Business Journal}

DBH Acquiring Two Mets Affiliates
New York’s High-A Brooklyn Cyclones and Triple-A Syracuse Mets are both going under the Diamond Baseball Holdings umbrella. As SBJ points out, Maimonides Park in Brooklyn’s Coney Island section is significant to DBH. 

“We’ve already gone ahead and purchased a brand-new video board for the stadium,” DBH CEO Peter Freund told SBJ. “And we’re going to reimagine the entire stadium and really make it a showpiece…:”
^{Sports Business Journal}

ESPN Power Rankings: The 25 Most Influential On-Air Talent, Teams
FOS’ Michael McCarthy writes, “Nothing lasts forever at ESPN. It wasn’t long ago that Mike Golic Sr., Sam Ponder, Max Kellerman, Jeff Van Gundy, Mark Jackson, Suzy Kolber, and Michelle Beadle ranked among ESPN’s biggest stars. Norby Williamson reigned for decades as the network’s most feared corporate in-fighter. Now they’re all history. The power balance inside Bristol’s famous campus is constantly shifting, as new stars emerge and others fade.”
^{Front Office Sports}

Al Michaels, Amazon Expected to Take New Path With Next Deal After His Contract Ends
Al Michaels is expected to return to Amazon after his three-year contract expires at the end of this season, but the broadcaster’s deal with the tech company will look different from before, Andrew Marchand of The Athletic reported Wednesday. Michaels, 80, will return to Amazon Prime Video on a “year-by-year” basis beginning in 2025. He was making $15 million per year under his original three-year deal, but the new financials have not been disclosed.
^{The Athletic via Sports Illustrated}

NFL Announces New City For 2025 International Games — It’s Berlin
“We first held a preseason game at the Olympic Stadium 34 years ago, before it was home to NFL Europe’s Berlin Thunder in the early 2000s,” NFL commissioner Roger Goodell said Wednesday morning in a statement. “Now, with almost 20 million NFL fans in Germany, we’ll make a historic return to the city playing a regular season game for the first time as we open the next chapter in our relationship with Berlin.”
^{Yahoo! Sports}

Sports Illustrated Tickets Inks Stadium Naming Deal With Red Bulls
The N.Y. Red Bulls’ stadium in Harrison, N.J. has an outside naming rights sponsor for the first time in its 13-year history: Sports Illustrated Stadium. Sports Illustrated Tickets has inked a 13-year deal with the Red Bulls to put SI’s brand on what was heretofore known as Red Bull Arena.
^{Sports Business Journal}

FIFA Confirms Saudi Arabia as 2034 World Cup Host, Six Nations as 2030 Hosts – All You Need to Know
The Athletic’s Colin Millar writes, “Saudi Arabia has been officially confirmed as the host nation of the 2034 men’s World Cup. Following an extraordinary FIFA Congress meeting on Wednesday, world football’s governing body has also confirmed that the 2030 World Cup will be held across six nations —Morocco, Spain, Portugal, Argentina, Uruguay and Paraguay — in three continents.

Yahoo Sports’ Henry Bushnell had his own take, writing, “The docket of alleged abuses, from ‘rampant wage theft’ to near-forced labor, read just like a chapter of recent World Cup history. On a Zoom call last week, Michael Page outlined the findings of a Human Rights Watch report that, based on 155 interviews and two years of research, detailed ‘dangerous” conditions for migrant workers.’”
^{The Athletic and Yahoo! Sports}

SMU’s Billionaire Donors Propelled Mustangs From AAC to CFP
Sportico’s Jacob Feldman writes,” In 2021, as realignment threatened to reshape college sports, the Big 12 passed over SMU in favor of fellow AAC team Houston as it expanded to fill slots left by Texas and Oklahoma. Then SMU coach Sonny Dykes left to take a job 40 miles west at TCU, where he led the Horned Frogs to the 2023 national title game. Mustangs backers responded by contributing more than $1 million to an early NIL effort…”
^Sportico

Rich Clark Talks Future of CFP, Adjusting to Role
Though he doesn’t have a vote for who will make the playoffs, retired Lt. Gen. Rich Clark still has criticism thrown his way over which teams are in and out of the playoffs. But it’s nothing new to him, he said at SBJ’s 2024 Intercollegiate Athletic Forum in Las Vegas.

“I think that’s kind of why I got hired,” he said. “I’m able to take fire. I’ve been taking fire for 38 years, and I’m taking more fire now than I ever did in the military. But I love it.”
^{Sports Business Journal}

NCAA President Charlie Baker Would Welcome Government Oversight After House Settlement
“If the settlement gets approved—and I’m certainly hoping it will be given the preliminary approval—starting in July, this stuff has to actually work,” Baker tells Sports Illustrated in an interview in Las Vegas. “Skip the issue of what it means in the long term, it’s got to work. People need to understand the decisions they’re making, kids need to understand the decisions they’re making.”
^{Sports Illustrated}

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