A review of 2023.
That was the year that was, it’s over, let it go. But sports owners and sports leagues are not going to let 2023 go quietly. It was a good year for women sports with women sports getting more awareness and money people throwing money into the women’s sports industry. It was a bad year for owners who are losing a revenue source with the demise of Sinclair’s Ballys Sports regional TV networks. It is still too early to assess the financial carnage of Sinclair’s Diamond Sports Group’s networks financial demise but some baseball teams’ front offices, such as the Minnesota Twins financial and player personnel departments may be facing a loss of $55 million on the TV side.
The college sports industry is still fighting to keep student-athletes from receiving more than just a scholarship in exchange for an athlete’s services. The college poohbahs seem scared to death that “student-athletes” could become employees of colleges and universities. The National Football League continues to dominate the United States with interest in the on-field product and the off-field story lines at a high level and TV ratings seem to indicate that. The league is stuffed with money and politicians in Maryland, New York and Tennessee are sending the ownership groups of the Baltimore Ravens, Buffalo Bills and the Nashville-based Tennessee Titans somewhere in the neighborhood of two billion dollars in taxpayers’ support for stadium renovations or building new stadiums. Major League Baseball owners have told John Fisher, you can move your Oakland Athletics business to Las Vegas. The National Basketball Association Commissioner Adam Silver is of the mind that the league will expand sometime in the near future. Major League Soccer got more attention thanks to Lionel Messi. The National Hockey League still has a Phoenix market arena problem. That was the year that was, it’s over, let it go.
Evan Weiner’s books are available at iTunes – https://books.apple.com/us/author/evan-weiner/id595575191
Evan can be reached at evan_weiner@hotmail.com
