Ben_Slingerland

Having been a Division 1 college athlete myself in a non-revenue generating sport (men’s soccer), I have an inherent respect for those collegiate sports that are able to generate revenue and consequently support the rest of the school’s athletic department. The only two collegiate sports that produce any sort of revenue, traditionally, are men’s basketball and football. Moreover, the biggest athletic programs among universities in the US are those that can create significant revenue in both of those sports.

The Southeastern Conference (SEC) dominates the top 5 of highest grossing revenue collegiate athletic programs, with Florida at #5, Georgia at #4, Auburn at #3, and Alabama at #2 (all ranging in the $80 million figures). The highest money making program in collegiate athletics comes out of the Big 12 conference, and that is the University of Texas with a combination of $96 million coming from their football program and another $16 million coming from their man’s basketball program for a total of $112 million in total revenue.

The concept of supply and demand could not be any better illustrated in these two revenue generating college sports. People across the country; whether it’s the students themselves, proud alumni, or simply fans of the teams, love college football and college basketball. “March Madness” and “Bowl Season” have become multi-billion dollar events via sponsorship deals, media right deals, and ticket sales (among various other things). Head Coaches contracts are in the multi-million dollar range, with Urban Meyer being the highest paid college football coach at $5.8 million/year and John Calipari holding the title as the highest paid men’s college basketball coach at $6.4 million a year.

College education in general has become more of a business in the recent decades. Tuition has risen to the point where you are looking at a quarter of a million dollars to go through college at any top college or university. Similarly, the rate at which college athletic departments have been both generating and spending dollars has dramatically increased.

The NCAA has had to play a more intensive role in their role of regulating athletes, conferences, and institutions. The Power 5 college football conferences (ACC, Big Ten, Big Twelve, Pac-12 and the SEC) have all endorsed the proposal to the NCAA to be able to pass legislation without the support of other Division 1 conferences. Those conferences have endorsed changes that would increase benefits to student-athletes:

• Funding athletic scholarships that would cover the full cost of tuition
• Guaranteeing multiyear scholarships for athletes
• Lifetime scholarship guarantees that would allow former athletes to return to school at any time and complete their degrees
• Providing long term health care and insurance to former athletes.

As they say, “the rich get richer” … and in this case it is creating a power imbalance in college athletics. The parity of college athletics has decreased over the years as the business, so to speak, has increased. And yet, in my opinion, the passion and fervor for college athletics has maintained its course, which is ultimately what makes college athletics so special.

Yesterday, Los Angeles Football Club (LAFC) formally announced plans of building a new $250 million, 22,000 seat soccer specific stadium in southern Los Angeles. With the historic Coliseum serving as a picturesque backdrop, the stadium will be just 12 miles north of LA Galaxy’s StubHub Center in Carson, CA.

Don Garber, the Commissioner of Major League Soccer, said in a statement yesterday “In 2003, the original cathedral of soccer was built, now the StubHub Center down in Carson. To think that we would be here in downtown Los Angeles, looking at this environment, thinking about what could be our 17^th or 18^th soccer-specific stadium, is absolutely unthinkable.” LAFC could join the MLS as early as the 2017 season, or as late as the 2018 season, while Minnesota’s new franchise is slated for the same time frame as well, giving the MLS its 21^st and 22^nd teams.

The stadium would certainly be historic, as it would be the first open-air stadium constructed in Los Angeles since Dodger Stadium in 1962 and the most expensive privately financed soccer stadium in the country. Magic Johnson, one of the club’s minority owners, said in a statement on Monday:

We’ve already got all the permits. The public and private sectors got to come together when you’re building a stadium of this size. This is going to cost about $250 million, but everybody came together and made it happen. USC, we’re right on their campus, they got involved, they wanted to see the stadium here. So everybody came together and worked hard to make sure the stadium was going to come to fruition, and that’s what’s going to happen.

The new club and stadium will certainly stimulate economic activity as it will provide 1,200 construction jobs and another, 1,800 permanent positions. Furthermore, the new project will bring an infusion of private investment to South Los Angeles.

The Club’s ownership group is certainly a star studded one as it is headed by venture capitalist Henry Nguyen, entrepreneur Peter Guber and former NBA executive Tom Penn. Other investors include Magic Johnson, Nomar and Mia Hamm-Garciaparra, Chad Hurley and Tony Robbins.

Los Angeles already has a great reputation among the soccer community in this country, as the Los Angeles Galaxy has been the perennial power of the MLS through its first 20 seasons. On the collegiate side, many of the top programs are in the nearby area: UCLA, Cal Berkley, UC Irvine and UC Santa Barbara. From the youth perspective, the surrounding area hosts 10 of the top 79 Academy teams in the country (Arsenal FC, Chivas USA, FC Golden State, LA Galaxy, Nomads SC, Pateadores, Real Salt Lake AZ, Real So Cal, San Diego Surf and Strikers FC.

This latest announcement furthers Major League Soccer’s strategic growth and development plans by seemingly adding teams in pairs from both big markets and smaller markets. This season, with the addition of New York FC and Orlando City, the league continued growth in perhaps the biggest sports market in the country (NYC) and yet brought the game back to Florida where it had been lacking a presence since 2002. It appears as though Garber and his staff will do something similar in 2017/18 with the addition of Minnesota and LAFC.

Not only is this a huge win for the city of Los Angeles, but Major League Soccer as a whole.

When Tom Cruise played a sleek 35 year-old sports agent19 years ago in the movie Jerry Maguire, society got a glimpse of the cutthroat nature of the sports agent business, and yet the dramatic emotional and psychological elements that go along with the industry. Today, the talent representation business within the sports industry is larger than ever, with such titans like the Creative Artists Agency (CAA) amassing upwards of $5 billion worth of contract dollars under management.

CAA is an example of an agency that started out in the entertainment industry and transitioned into the world of professional sports less than a decade ago. CAA has used its massive football division, specifically going after NFL quarterbacks to make the biggest splash in the sports agency world according to Forbes Magazine.

Behind CAA, Forbes ranks the industry’s newcomer, Relativity Media, as the world’s second largest sports agency, as they negotiate upwards of $2.5 billion in sports contracts. They represent over 300 athletes in the NFL, MLB and the NBA. Like so many sports agencies, Relativity Sports started out primarily as a film studio, where they would take acquire, develop and produce films and then turn them into television shows and distribute them. Relativity Media also engages in content creation across fashion, sports, digital and music, reaching consumers on multiple platforms.

Following behind CAA and Relativity, is the baseball mega agency, the Boras Foundation. Scott Boras, the single most successful sports agent in the industry’s history, founded the Boras Foundation. Some of Boras’ bigger name clients are Stephen Strasburg, Jacoby Ellsbury and Prince Fielder.

Octagon and Wasserman Media Group (WMG) round out the top 5 according to Forbes 2014 rankings. Octagon is the sports business arm of the publicly traded company, Interpublic Group of Companies, on the New York Stock Exchange. Octagon breaks down it’s sports business into two groups, Athletes and Personalities, and Marketing; with Athletes and Personalities are broken down into their respective sports, while Marketing primarily handles corporate sponsorship and events. Wasserman, meanwhile, manages over a $1 billion in NBA contracts alone, led by their super agent, Arn Tellem.

Forbes tallied these valuations in these rankings by the total contract value under management by the maximum agent commission for each sport: NFL (3%), NHL (4%), NBA (4%) and MLB (5%). Forbes chose to exclude sports like tennis and golf from these rankings due to the magnitude of variance of what athletes’ earnings in those sports are from year to year. Professional athletes do make additional money from endorsement and marketing deals. Forbes estimates that the average may make an additional 1-2% of their contract, where their agent(s) would generally just take home 25% of those endorsement and marketing dollars.

Sports agents, in general, do tend to get negatively stigmatized as sleazy salesmen who are more interested in their selfish financial gains rather than always acting in their clients best interests. Like any industry, there are certainly agencies and agents out there that may fit that stereotype, however the industry over the last decade or so has gotten more and more saturated. As industries, such as the sports agency field, tend to get overpopulated, the talent generally rises to the top. In today’s day and age, professional athletes have more opportunities than ever to capitalize on marketing and endorsement dollars through their unique likeness. Besides simply helping their clients negotiate contracts, agents are playing an ever-increasing role of maximizing their clients’ revenue generating capabilities.

Major League Soccer got underway with its 20^th season as a league this spring and the momentum seems to be building. Attendance figures are up, players’ salaries are up, a new television and media rights deal has been launched as has a new collective bargaining agreement, and the team has welcomed two new franchises into the league (New York FC and Orlando City).

With 10 teams in the Eastern Conference and now 10 teams in the Western Conference, the league’s geographical distribution is much more even. Adding New York FC gives the league it’s first true team in New York City (as the NY Red Bull play in Harrison, NJ). The addition of Orlando City gives Florida it’s first team since the 2001 season, after which the Miami Fusion and Tampa Mutiny folded. Orlando City drew an amazing opening attendance figure of 62, 510. The average attendance for the league has steadily climbed over the last 5 years, as the average attendance during the 2010 season was 16,675; while this year so far the average attendance figure for the league has been 20,472.

The league also saw the launch of a new television and media rights deal this season with ESPN, Fox Sports and Univision Desportes. The deal brings the league approximately $90 million/year annually across the three networks, which is about triple what it was getting previously. The MLS is still significantly under the other four major sports league (for example the NHL’s annual deal with NBC brings in about $200 million), but this new deal certainly closes the gap. The deal was announced in May of 2014 and is an 8-year deal, going through the 2022 season.

The deal brings regular weekly game broadcasts on ESPN2 on Sunday afternoons, broadcasts on Fox Sports 1 on Sunday evenings and a regular Friday night match on the Univision Deportes Network. All of the Saturday MLS matches are available via the new out-of-market package on ESPN3 and WatchESPN. The networks will share coverage of the MLS Cup Playoffs, while ESPN and Fox will alternate English language carriage of the MLS All-Star Game and MLS Cup championship match each year. The deal will bring more than 125 MLS matches to air annually across the three networks.

With increased revenue dollars via the media rights and television deal, players salaries have gone up as well. The 2014 season saw the league’s median salary at $92,000 with the league minimum salary being at a modest $36,500. Prior to the start of the season, there was a flurry of activity on the negotiation table between the MLS Players Union and the League, which resulted in a new Collective Bargaining Agreement. The new CBA came right on the heels of the opening of the season, and prevented the first lockout in the league’s history. The new CBA, which will be in effect for the next five years, increases the league’s minimum salary by 64%, bringing the $36,500 figure up to $60,000. Moreover, players who were making over $200,000 are now limited to a 15 percent increase from their previous contract, while those players whose salary fall between $100,000 and $200,000 are eligible for a 20 percent raise, leaving those players making $100,000 or less eligible for the biggest percent raise of 25%.

With the monetary figures increasing, the talent on the field continues to improve as the MLS has been able to continue bringing over talented international players. Orlando City brought in Brazilian star Kaka. New York FC brought in two international superstars; the all-time leading goal scorer from Spain, David Villa as well as Frank Lampard, after he finishes the EPL season with Manchester City. The LA Galaxy, meanwhile, will have Lampard’s fellow English countryman Steven Gerrard join them after he finishes the EPL season with Liverpool. This group replaces the departing David Beckham and Thierry Henry seamlessly and keeps the ever important “star power” to market globally.

Commissioner Don Garber and the league’s front office continue to build a growing brand that is very quickly gaining international respect.

Yesterday, the NFL came down with a punishment for Tom Brady and the New England Patriots that nearly everyone around the League found to be overly harsh. Tom Brady is expected to appeal the League’s decision of a 4 game suspension before the end of the day on Thursday. The League will then assign an official, likely Herald Henderson, to oversee the appeals process which could take up to a couple months.

In breaking down the punishment and the tone of the letter that the League issued, there are a few things that stand out. First, the NFL stripped the NFL of two draft picks, their 2016 1^st round pick and their 2017 4^th round pick; making the Patriots the first team since 1980 to be stripped of two 1^st round picks. Moreover the 4-game suspension to Brady is the longest suspension for an NFL quarterback since Terrelle Pryor who was suspended 5 games for his lack of integrity in accepting gifts to impinge his amateur status as a collegiate athlete. The $1 million fine was the largest fine in NFL history, although is probably the least detrimental component to the punishment.

In a letter to the Patriots, NFL Executive Vice President of Football Operations Troy Vincent wrote that an investigation had found “the footballs used by the Patriots were inflated at a level that did not satisfy the standard set forth in the NFL’s Official Playing Rules and that the condition of the footballs was the result of deliberate actions by employees of the Patriots.”

Looking at the actions, in an of themselves, of the Patriots, the vast majority would say well the punishment does not fit the crime. Not only are we talking about a mere 0.5 difference in the psi of the footballs, but the investigation was not even able to find hard evidence that Brady was aware of this occurring. In the letter to Brady, Vincent wrote that the investigation “established that there is substantial and credible evidence to conclude you were at least generally aware of the actions of the Patriots’ employees involved in the deflation of the footballs and that it was unlikely that their actions were done without your knowledge.” What the league took exception to with Brady and the Patriots were the fact that they were repeat offenders (2007 Spygate) and that they “did not cooperate with the investigation.”

The last time I checked, our legal system is based on the premise, “innocent until proven guilty.”

Well let’s look what this potentially sets up. Now Tom Brady will open his 2015 campaign in Week 6 against the Indianapolis Colts, the very same team that was part of Deflategate … oh, and it’s on Sunday Night Football. The NFL puts another $1 million in their pockets … that I’m sure they’re in desperate need of getting (sarcasm). And the ongoing villain storyline of the New England Patriots continues to build.

When we have issues of domestic abuse with Ray Rice, the bounty scandal with the New Orleans Saints, and the ever-increasing criminal charges NFL players are amounting … the League choses to focus on a locker room official who mistakenly interfered with the weight of a few footballs.

Time will tell how Rodger Goodell and the League tries to bring justice to Deflategate.

The biggest thing we learned in the first leg of these two semi-finals matchups is that Lionel Messi and Christiano Ronaldo are the two best players in the world. Messi had two goals (one of which was absolute magic) and an assist in Barcelona’s 3-0 win against Bayern while Ronaldo scored Real Madrid’s lone goal in their 1-2 defeat to Juventus. The two cushioned their lead as the top two all-time Champions League scoring leaders, with Messi on top with 77, and Ronaldo on his heels with 76.

The story of the second of the two semi-finals was Messi, Neymar and Luis Suarez going up against the backline of Jerome Boatang, Rafinha and Mehdi Benatia. The backline of Bayern bended but did not break all the way until the ’77 minute wen Messi got his first. Manuel Neuer did an incredible job in goal keeping the away side in the match; however, Messi and Co. proved to ultimately too much.

The first semi-finals featured Juventus hosting Real Madrid in Turin. In the last 7 meetings between the two sides in Turin, Juventushad won 5 and only lost once. Moreover, Juventus was undefeated at home in European competition this season going into the match … and yet they were still considered the underdog by many.

Alvaro Morata gave Juventus a dream start when he scored against his former club in the opening minutes. Ronaldo answered about 20 minutes later with a punctuating header after a nice buildup through midfield for Madrid. 10 minutes into the second half, Carlos Tevez was hauled down by Madrid defender Dani Carvajal with a rash tackle, resulting in an ensuing penalty and the eventual game winner by Tevez.

The stars came out and shined in the first leg. Madrid still has lots of work left to do at home next week, as a 1-0 win would put them through the finals. While Barcelona feels pretty comfortable with their 3 goal cushion heading into the second leg.

I anticipate the two Spanish powers meeting the Champions League finals when all is said and done, which will give us a dream final of Ronaldo vs. Messi.

This past weekend was perhaps one of the best weekends in recent sports history. Between the Fight of the Century, the 141^st running of the Kentucky Derby, the NFL Draft, Red Sox/Yankees, Spurs/Clippers game 7, and the World Golf Championships in San Francisco, there was definitely plenty to watch. And according to a Harris Poll, many did watch, as 52% of US Adults said they would watch, listen or attend one these events.

Well what did we learn from the weekend?

The Fight of the Century, MayPac, seemed to gain the most hype from the weekend, although it certainly didn’t live up to the billing. In what was a classic defensive masterpiece by perhaps the best defensive boxer of all time, the audience was left largely disappointed. In an event-based sport that has largely become non-existent since the rise of MMA, the sport’s biggest event of the century fell flat on its face. It wasn’t the fight of the century. It was a retirement plan.

In fact, the stories around the fight (Mayweather’s Money Team, Pacquiao’s shoulder, Mayweather’s domestic abuse history, the PPV blackout in the US and the Phillipines) all overshadowed the fight itself. With Mayweather making $15 million a round for a total of $180 million and Pacquiao making $10 million a round, for a total of $120 million, America was left with a bitter taste of paying $100 to watch what might be considered the most overhyped fight in history.

Boxing is dead.

The Kentucky Derby provided more fireworks this past Saturday as Victor Espinoza won his second Derby in a row as American Pharoah narrowly edged out Firing Line with a time of 2:03:02 . A record crowd of 170,513 was on hands at Churchill Downs to witness horseracing’s biggest event of the year.

Bob Baffert, American Pharoah’s trainer, received lots of the media attention following the race as he captured his 4^th Kentucky Derby victory. His other horse in the race, Dortmund, finished a not too shabby 3^rd. And while the verdict is still out on weather American Pharoah as what it takes to capture the first Triple Crown since 1978, the Derby this past weekend certainly provided plenty of anticipation for the Preakness and the Belmont.

The NFL Draft, while being in Chicago for the first time since 1964, was largely uneventful. Jameis Winston and Marcus Mariota went 1-2 which was largely anticipated. Shane Ray, the Defensive End from Missouri, who lost out on millions due a marijuana possession charge earlier in the week, slid all the way to 23 where the Broncos decided to take a gamble on him.

The Florida State Seminoles took the crown for the school with the most draftees (11), and broke the record for the most amount of draftees in a three year span (29). The only other school to break double digits in number of players drafted this year was Louisville.

The Sox and Yankees was unexpected as the Yanks swept the Red Sox at Fenway for the first time since August 18-21, 2006. Arod hit his 660^th home run, tying Willie Mays.

The Spurs and Clippers series came all the way to final second of Game 7 where Chris Paul hitting a running jumper as time expired to eliminate the defending NBA champion San Antonio Spurs. In a game that featured 31 lead changes and 16 ties, the game went back and forth.

And lastly, the world’s undisputed #1 ranked golfer, Rory McIlroy, reclaimed his plateau on top of the golf world after Jordan Spieth stole the spotlight momentarily with his Master’s win. Rory became the 3^rd golfer in the last 75 years to have won 10 PGA Tour titles before turning 26, joining the likes of Jack Nicklaus and Tiger Woods. The victory, was Rory’s 18^th match win at the WGC-Cadillac Match Play, where he improved to 18-6.

While MayPac may have let us down, the rest of the sports world kept us as entertained as ever.