“I think X is in a very difficult business because of the content moderation that they have to deal with,” Brian Rolapp, the NFL’s media and business chief, told CNBC’s Julia Boorstin. “We continue to work with them because our fans are clearly there.”
Since Musk took over last fall, the platform has been caught up in several controversies, including those surrounding X’s policy for moderating harmful content.
Last week, Musk agreed with a post on the platform accusing “Jewish communities” of pushing “hatred against whites,” CNBC reported earlier this month. Musk has denied that he’s antisemitic.
Earlier this month, left-leaning media watchdog site MediaMatters.org posted instances of Apple, Bravo and Oracle ads appearing next to antisemitic content on Musk’s platform. X on Monday sued Media Matters over the report, coinciding with an investigation launched by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton into the watchdog site for possible fraudulent activity.
Meanwhile, more than two dozen House Democrats on Tuesday alleged that X was profiting off of violent Hamas-related content and called on CEO Linda Yaccarino to explain how the company’s plans to curtail the harmful content on the platform. Hamas, a Palestinian militant group, launched a terrorist attack on Israel on Oct. 7, killing more than 1,000 people and seizing more than 200 hostages.
Disclosure: NBCUniversal is the parent company of Bravo and CNBC.
Last year, the devout supporter went to five home games, about an hour-and-a-half drive from his house. This year, however, Hornberger’s only on track to attend two matches as costs soar.
“I’m a huge fan,” Hornberger, 40, said. “Ultimately, what it comes down to is just outright refusal on my part to pay those kinds of prices.”
Sports prices have surged this fall, according to federal data. That’s made game tickets the latest victim of “funflation,” a term used by economists to explain the increasing price tags of live events as consumers hanker for the experiences they lost during the pandemic.
Admission prices for sporting events jumped 25.1% in October 2023 from the same month a year prior, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ consumer price index data. The category saw the highest annualized inflation rate out of the few hundred that make up the inflation gauge.
CPI as a whole rose a relatively modest 3.2% on an annualized basis. The index tracks the prices of a broad basket of items including milk, jewelry and airline fares.
“We’ve seen this through the entire leisure and hospitality sector,” said Victor Matheson, a professor and sports economist at the College of the Holy Cross. “People are getting back to things that they enjoy doing and are willing to pay a bunch.”
Part of the reason consumers may be seeing higher prices for their favorite sports teams is because of the increasing use of dynamic pricing models, Matheson said. These structures allow ticket-selling platforms to fetch more or less per ticket, depending on demand for the event at any given moment.
But a large reason for the eye-popping 25.1% jump is because of how low prices were a year ago, Matheson said. Teams slashed ticket values in 2022 in a bid to win back fans who had grown accustomed to watching at home.
Sports ticket prices were 14.2% higher in October than in November 2019, a smaller gain than the entire index’s 19.6% increase, a CNBC analysis of CPI data shows. Much of the upward pressure on admission costs has come this year, underscoring the role of funflation as consumers shift their attention from Taylor Swift and Beyoncé concerts to NFL and Major League Baseball games.
The NFL’s decision to start a new Thanksgiving tradition with a streaming platform instead of a broadcast or cable channel is yet another indicator of trouble for linear, or traditional, TV, which has suffered from slumping ad revenue and customers cutting the cable cord.
“I don’t make predictions on ratings,” Brian Rolapp, the NFL’s chief media and business officer, told CNBC’s Julia Boorstin this week. “But I think they’ll be good.” The Black Friday game kicks off at 3 p.m. ET.
Thanksgiving Day is already a football tradition, with the Detroit Lions and Dallas Cowboys headlining matchups through the years. Fox, CBS and NBC all will broadcast games on the holiday.
NFL’s Brian Rolapp talks league’s big push into digital & streaming
The NFL and Amazon hope the Black Friday game will become an annual tradition, executives said Tuesday at a media conference. In a push to drive Amazon e-commerce sales, the streaming broadcast will feature QR codes at the bottom of the screen that will link to some of Amazon’s Black Friday deals. Country music icon Garth Brooks will take the stage in an exclusive postgame concert.
ESPN has long ruled sports programming on traditional TV. But that could all change when the cable stalwart brings all its programming to streaming, in a planned direct-to-consumer release.
Yet even as the streaming trend picks up, sports programming is helping keep cable and traditional TV alive, for the moment.
ESPN has so far weathered the storm of the TV decline, capturing a “modest increase” in ad revenue in parent company Disney’s most recent quarterly report, even as overall TV revenue for the company fell.
Sports programming is holding the linear television industry together, according to Macquarie analyst Tim Nollen. And ESPN is a huge part of that.
But ESPN’s dominance in sports programming could pose a potentially fatal threat to linear TV. When ESPN unleashes its direct-to-consumer service, which would offer much more than its current ESPN+ app,it could be the push sports fans are waiting for to abandon the bundle altogether.
“When ESPN puts their DTC product online, depending on the pricing, it may create a critical mass of live sports outside of the bundle to accelerate cord cutting,” said UBS media and telecom analyst John Hodulik. “That’s what I think people are waiting for.”
But not everyone is convinced that ESPN’s foray into streaming will do too much damage too quickly.
“When you look at the economics that ESPN gets from the pay TV bundle, they cannot just step away and pirouette to DTC and everything stays the same,” said sports media consultant and former Fox Sports executive Patrick Crakes. “There’s no DTC streaming product that scales like pay TV, even today, with pay TV in decline.”
The future looks more like a reimagined pay TV bundle, Crakes said, with streaming products included in the traditional economics of bundle. It’s reminiscent of the recent Disney-Charter agreement, in which Disney+ and ESPN+ are now included in some Spectrum cable packages.
But challenges could lie ahead for media companies that have not yet made the jump to bring their programming to the streaming world.
NBC drew an all-time record 28.5 million viewers this year during its broadcast of the 97th annual Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, up 6% from last year, Variety reported Friday.
The feat is impressive as swaths of consumers opt to cut the cord and move away from linear TV. Despite the trend, more than two-thirds of the parade audience, about 22.3 million viewers, tuned in via traditional TV, according to Variety.
While CBS did not release ratings numbers for Paramount+, the network said it notched its most-streamed NFL regular season game ever on the streaming platform.
Fox’s Packers-Lions matchup grabbed 33.7 million viewers per Nielson, the most watched Thanksgiving Day game ever for the 12:30 p.m. ET timeslot and up 6% from the comparable game last year, the network said Tuesday. Fox, unlike its competitors, does not have a dedicated streaming platform for its main programming.
NBC Sports said on Friday that its broadcast of the San Francisco 49ers’ victory over the Seattle Seahawks was the second-most watched Thanksgiving primetime game ever, behind 2015′s Thanksgiving Bears-Packers matchup. The broadcast averaged 26.9 million viewers across the network’s platforms based on fast national Nielson data.
The game was also NBC Sports’ most-streamed primetime NFL Thanksgiving game ever, with viewership led by its platform Peacock, NBC Sports said Friday.
As a whole, average viewership across all three games was 34.1 million, the highest for Thanksgiving Day on record, the NFL said Tuesday.
Amazon also joined in on the fun this year. The company paid a reported $100 million to broadcast the New York Jets and Miami Dolphins matchup the day after Thanksgiving, in hopes that the Black Friday NFL game would become a tradition on Amazon’s Prime Video platform. The hefty price tag adds to the $1 billion per year Amazon already pays to broadcast NFL’s Thursday Night Football. The e-commerce giant also attempted to use the NFL broadcast to drive product sales on the busiest shopping day of the year. Ratings numbers for the Friday game have not yet been released.
“It would make sense that it’s not going to do as well as the Thursday games because it’s a different platform on a different day,” said sports media consultant and former Fox Sports executive Patrick Crakes. “That does not mean that it doesn’t have a lot of value.”
As for that whopping $100 million price tag paid to broadcast the Friday game, don’t expect Amazon to make up that money in any straightforward way. The investment serves as a marketing tool to grow value elsewhere, whether it be Prime subscribers or retail sales, Crakes said.
More broadly, the Thanksgiving broadcasts were successful for the advertising market, according to Kevin Krim, the CEO of data analytics firm EDO Inc.
“The ratings were quite good from Nielson and the ad performance was quite strong,” Krim said Monday on CNBC’s “Squawk Box.”
Billionaire investor Mark Cuban is selling a majority stake of the Dallas Mavericks to Miriam Adelson and her family, a source familiar with the deal told CNBC.
Cuban still owns a stake in the team and will run basketball operations.
Adelson is selling $2 billion worth of Las Vegas Sands stock, or roughly 10% of her stake, according to an announcement from the company. The proceeds will be used to buy a professional sports team, the casino company said in a filing Tuesday.
Adelson and her family are the largest shareholders in Las Vegas Sands.
“We have been advised by the Selling Stockholders that they currently intend to use the net proceeds from this offering, along with additional cash on hand, to fund the purchase of a majority interest in a professional sports franchise pursuant to a binding purchase agreement, subject to customary league approvals,” Las Vegas Sands said in the filing.
Adelson’s family, in a statement released Wednesday, said it aims to close the deal by the end of the year, subject to approval by the NBA’s board of governors.
“Through our commitment and additional investment in the team, we look forward to partnering with Mark Cuban to build on the team’s success and legacy in Dallas and beyond,” said the statement. “The goal is to win and to have a team that proudly represents the greater DFW area and serves as a strong and valuable member of the local community.”
Adelson is listed as the fifth-richest woman in the world by Forbes. She and her family inherited 56% of the shares of the world’s largest casino company when her spouse, Las Vegas Sands founder Sheldon Adelson, died in 2021. At the market close Tuesday, shares owned by the Adelson estate were valued at more than $20 billion.
Shares of LVS are roughly flat year to date, an indication investors are discounting the reopening of casinos in Macao, where the company has the biggest real estate footprint in the market, and in Singapore.
Las Vegas Sands disclosed in filings Tuesday that it will buy $250 million worth of Adelson’s shares. The company announced a $2 billion share repurchase authorization during its third-quarter earnings call Oct. 18. The stock fell more than 4% in extended trading after the news of Adelson’s share sale.
“As we consider our future capital return, we expect share repurchase will be more heavily weighted than dividends. We believe repurchases will be more accretive than dividends over time, as they reduce the denominator,” Patrick Dumont, Sands’ president and chief operating officer and Adelson’s son-in-law, said on the earnings call. “We fundamentally believe in the compounding long-term benefit of share repurchases.”
Owning a sports franchise will be a significant departure from the activities that Miriam Adelson and her late husband were known for.
The couple set records for political giving, including more than $218 million to Republican and conservative causes in the 2020 election cycle alone, according to OpenSecrets, previously known as the Center for Responsive Politics, which tracks political spending.
According to published reports, Miriam has recently met with GOP candidate Nikki Haley in Las Vegas, as well as former President Donald Trump.
As a medical doctor, Miriam Adelson is also widely known for her focus on addiction.
Born in Israel, she has made significant philanthropic donations toward causes that improve Jewish relations in the United States. Recently, she has been a vocal critic of people protesting Israel’s military response to Hamas’ terrorist attacks of Oct. 7.
Cuban in July had said his family “would disown me” if he launched a campaign for the White House.
But at the same time, he had also praised efforts by the group No Labels to create a bipartisan ticket for the presidency next year.
The billionaire businessman made headlines Tuesday when he said on a podcast that the next season of the ABC television show “Shark Tank” would be the last time he regularly appears on the program as one of its “sharks.”
Later Tuesday, the big casino company Las Vegas Sands said that Dr. Miriam Adelson and The Miriam Adelson Trust would offer for sale $2 billion in stock in the firm.
In a regulatory filing, LSV said that Adelson, whose family inherited more than half of the company’s shares when her husband Sheldon Adelson died in 2021, would use proceeds of the stock sale to buy a majority interest in a professional sports franchise.
A source familiar with the deal told CNBC on Tuesday that Cuban would sell his stake in the Mavericks to Adelson and her family.
But Cuban will continue to run basketball operations for the team as part of the deal.
Disclosure: CNBC owns the exclusive off-network cable rights to “Shark Tank,” which features Mark Cuban as a panelist.
Major League Pickleball is requesting that players consent to compensation reductions of 40% in return for a reduction of work obligations, according an email sent to players that was obtained by CNBC.
“We have carefully studied the economics of the business and determined that certain changes need to be made to ensure a sustainable and viable business that will not only survive but thrive in 2024 and beyond for the benefit of all stakeholders,” the email reads.
The league’s proposal asks players to reduce their number of annual work days from 200 to 120 and indicates it would cut their salaries proportionally.
“You would be free to monetize the other 245 days on the annual calendar any way you choose – with 100% of any earnings on those days going to you,” the email reads.
The league said it will also cut operational and event-related costs for 2024 and further revealed that it has parted ways with Commissioner Brooks Wiley. It follows another major executive departure, with founder Steve Kuhn resigning in October.
News of the pay reductions was first reported by the Dink Pickleball. Both MLP and PPA declined to comment.
It comes as professional pickleball has seen rapid growth in nearly every category and as Major League Pickleball and Professional Pickleball Association are on the cusp of signing an on-again, off-again, on-again merger agreement.
As part of the pro sport’s whirlwind rise, the leagues offered huge contracts to lure players to their respective leagues.
The MLP email notes the PPA has also been communicating with its players and has made similar requests for player compensation reductions.
“Aren’t there collusion/ anti- trust issues with this?” asked MVP and champion Jillian Braverman in a post on X, the social media site formerly known as Twitter, following the league-wide email. “We need to leverage collective bargaining ASAP.”
Two-time Major League Pickleball champion Thomas Wilson, however, said players are paid “more than fairly even with the cuts.”
“I think most of the players seem to be on board with moving forward together to make it all work for everyone,” Wilson told CNBC.
Laura Vossberg Gainor, founder of a pickleball marketing agency, said the future of the sport is still bright as she’s watched players reap the rewards of pickleball’s growth.
“The surge in the value of their personal brands has intensified the off-court rivalry among brands vying to secure top players for product endorsements,” she said.
After all, Las Vegas is the headquarters of the family’s empire, even if it doesn’t have any casino resorts in the city anymore. Adelson is the widow of Las Vegas Sands founder Sheldon Adelson, who died in January 2021.
And Las Vegas is now a preeminent destination for sports, with the NHL’s Golden Knights, the NFL’s Raiders, the WNBA’s Aces and a Formula 1 Grand Prix. Soon, Major League Baseball’s As are expected to relocate to the desert from Oakland.
Likewise, NBA Commissioner Adam Silver has suggested it’s a matter of when, not if, Vegas gets a team. LeBron James has said he’s interested in bringing basketball to Vegas at some point. Retired NBA legend and former Sacramento Kings minority owner Shaquille O’Neal has also expressed interest in a Vegas team. The city is also set to host the final games of the NBA’s midseason tournament.
An NBA team in Vegas could command a price tag in the $6 billion to $7 billion range, according to Patrick Rishe, director of the sports business program at Washington University in St. Louis.
So why is Adelson and her family throwing billions into a Dallas team?
In a statement to CNBC, they said: “The Adelson and Dumont families are honored to have the opportunity to be stewards of this great franchise. Through our commitment and additional investment in the team, we look forward to partnering with Mark Cuban to build on the team’s success and legacy in Dallas and beyond.”
Patrick Dumont is married to Miriam Adelson’s daughter, Sivan. He is also the president and chief operating officer of Las Vegas Sands.
The Adelsons have already invested millions into political contributions and lobbying in Texas, trying to coax lawmakers into more broadly legalizing gambling in the state. Las Vegas Sands itself has spent years and millions of dollars as well in pursuit of the same goal.
The company sold the Venetian, Palazzo and the Venetian Expo center in early 2022 to affiliates of Apollo Global Management and VICI Properties, raising more than $6 billion. The company has said it intends to use that capital to pursue gaming licenses elsewhere.
A detailed view of the Dallas Mavericks logo on the court during the fourth quarter in Game Four of the 2022 NBA Playoffs Western Conference Finals between the Golden State Warriors and the Dallas Mavericks at American Airlines Center on May 24, 2022 in Dallas, Texas.
Ron Jenkins | Getty Images
It didn’t, and the campaign is still in limbo. State lawmakers failed to push forward legislation that would bring it to Texas voters as an option on the ballot. It’s unlikely they’ll take another stab at it until the legislative session in 2025.
“When you think of all the places you want to save up to vacation, Texas isn’t one of them,” Cuban said earlier this month, according to The Dallas Morning News. “There’s no real destination that you save up for. That’s a problem and I think resort gaming would have a huge impact.”
Owning a team in Dallas will strengthen the Adelsons’ ties to Texas. Possibly, they would gain both a carrot and a stick to get local support for a casino license by wielding power and influence over the future of the Mavericks. A company insider told CNBC that it’s just smart to strengthen community ties.
It’s a similar strategy that Las Vegas Sands has deployed to secure one of three new casino licenses to be awarded in New York.
The company has invested millions of dollars and many years of lobbying efforts to woo government and community leaders in Long Island’s Nassau County. And the company has committed to redeveloping the Nassau Coliseum into a destination mixed-use resort, regardless of whether it wins a license. But the size of its investment presumably would depend on whether it can offer casino gambling.
Adelson stands to benefit mightily if the bets on eventual casino licenses in New York and Texas pay off. She and her family will continue to own more than 50% of Las Vegas Sands stock.
There’s still a great chance the Mavericks investment could pay off for the Adelsons, even without a gambling business in Texas.
“It’s a very smart family, and sports assets have performed great,” said Jason Ader, a former Las Vegas Sands board member who runs SpringOwl Asset Management. “NBA teams are marquis assets that are likely to continue to appreciate.”
Cuban bought his stake in the Mavericks for $285 million in 2000. Forbes recently valued the team at $4.5 billion, the seventh-highest value in the NBA. The team won the NBA title in 2011. It currently features superstars Luka Doncic and Kyrie Irving.
CNBC has reached out to Cuban for comment. The NBA has not commented, and the Mavericks referred questions to the Adelsons.
He also indicated that the tour is still open to another investor coming onboard alongside the PIF.
“We’re having conversations with multiple parties,” Monahan during The New York Times’ DealBook summit. The Dec. 31 deadline outlined in the original framework agreement is still a “firm target,” he said, adding that he will meet with PIF Governor Yasir bin Othman Al-Rumayyan to “advance conversations.” The fund is controlled by Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.
Monahan gave some insight into how the framework agreement to combine the PGA Tour with PIF-owned LIV Golf came together earlier this year.
“As we approached June 5, it was very clear the PGA Tour was facing an existential threat from the $7 billion sovereign wealth fund, and it was determined to control the future of our sport,” Monahan said.
LIV and the PGA Tour were engaged in an antitrust legal battle dating back to last year. The Public Investment Fund had been luring PGA Tour golfers, including star Phil Mickelson, to LIV with deals worth hundreds of millions of dollars.
“We decided to address that by striking a deal that allowed the PGA Tour to remain and retain control” and put an end to the “extensive and divisive litigation,” Monahan said. The deal had the PGA Tour retaining control in the face of an existential threat, he added. “This was a very hard decision, but I am confident this was the right one for our players and our fans.”
Monahan also discussed his own personal struggles as he received backlash, including from lawmakers, pundits and stars such as Tiger Woods and Rory McIlroy, for the agreement with the Saudis.
The commissioner took medical leave days after the deal was announced. He said he went for a long walk the morning of June 11, prayed and came home to tell his wife that he was in a bad place and needed help.
The conflict affected “me, my mental and my physical health,” he said Wednesday. “You’re not eating right. You can’t do anything other than think about work because you care so deeply about the game, the PGA Tour, our players and our history. It took its toll on me.”
The agreement also opened the door to interest from a slew of potential investors, including Boston Red Sox owner Fenway Sports Group and TKO majority owner Endeavor Group Holdings. The PGA Tour turned down the Endeavor offer last month, but the Fenway bid appears to still be up in the air following confirmation of talks between the firm and PGA earlier this month. It’s unclear whether Fenway’s involvement would coincide with or usurp the Saudis’ bid.
When the merger is finalized, “the PGA Tour is going to be in a position where the athletes are owners in their sport,” Monahan said. The PIF and “likely another co-investor with significant experience in business and sports will help the PGA Tour take share from other sports and be even more competitive.”
“What’s most important to our players is that they go from the model of being independent contractors to being owners,” Monahan added.
The Ineos Group founder and CEO has long been linked with a takeover of the storied club, and Sky News reports that the agreement will see Ratcliffe pay £1.25 billion ($1.58 billion) to acquire 25% of the club’s listed A-shares in a $33-a-share deal.
He will also acquire 25% of current majority owners the Glazer family’s B-shares which carry greater voting rights, according to the report. Manchester United shares rose 1.5% on Monday.
Ratcliffe is expected to commit around £245 million of his personal fortune to upgrade the club’s aging infrastructure as part of the deal.
Having controlled the club since 2005, the Glazer family began formally exploring a sale in November 2022 after years of underperformance on the pitch relative to the club’s glittering history, and mass protests from fans.
Manchester United is currently seventh in the English Premier League and is on the verge of exiting the European Champions League in the group stages.
Though the most successful club in English soccer history, the Red Devils have been eclipsed over the last decade by bitter crosstown rivals Manchester City, winners of last season’s Premier League, Champions League and domestic cup competition.
