Senator John Heinz History Center’s Post

New Post: Rickwood Field’s legendary history: How Willie Mays and the Negro Leagues made the iconic stadium home - https://lnkd.in/ekSy8A25 It is older than both Wrigley Field and Fenway Park – indeed it is the oldest venue for professional baseball in the United States. It is one of two remaining Negro League parks. It has – in a testament to its historical breadth – hosted within its walls 181 of the 351 total Hall of Famers, whether players, managers or operators of teams. On the playing side, the list includes true pantheon dwellers of the sport: Willie Mays, Satchel Paige, Hank Aaron, Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, Honus Wagner, Cool Papa Bell, Ted Williams, Joe DiMaggio, Rogers Hornsby, Reggie Jackson, Stan Musial, Ernie Banks, Dizzy Dean, Rollie Fingers. Of these, Mays, perhaps the greatest baseball player in the annals of baseball players, is the Hall of Famer most linked with Rickwood Field. Mays, who died Tuesday, was a native of the Birmingham, Ala., area, and so he was on his hometown field when he suited up for the Birmingham Black Barons in 1948. It was Mays' first season as a professional and the start of a career that would tower over that of almost any other player. It's fitting, then, that when Mays' former team, the Giants, takes the field against the Cardinals on Thursday in Birmingham, it'll be a celebration not only of Mays but also of the setting – the living museum that is Rickwood Field. Major League Baseball's foray into Rickwood also marks the latest initiative to embrace – or co-opt, if you find that term more accurate – the history of the bygone Negro Leagues. For MLB, it's a complicated needle to thread, which, frankly, it should be. Only because of organized baseball's racist and segregationist policies did the Negro Leagues ever exist, just as only because of those policies was Jackie Robinson tasked with shattering them. However, ignoring the Negro Leagues, even if done so out of a sense of institutional modesty or chagrin over MLB's foundational moral failings, probably wasn't tenable. The first major step of recent years came in December 2020, when MLB, officially and from on high, recognized the Negro Leagues during the 1920-48 period as being of "major league" status. The leading practical effect of this elevation is that the more than 3,000 players who appeared in the Negro Leagues during that time became Major Leaguers in the official record. The decision reversed and belatedly corrected that of a 1969 league committee that bestowed major-league status upon multiple circuits from the early days of organized baseball but not the Negro Leagues. The next and most recent sea change came earlier this year, when the league incorporated Negro League statistics into MLB's official stats. This of course carried with it many implications, many of which are sweeping in nature. For prominent instance, the luminous Josh Gi

The National Football League (NFL) is a juggernaut in North America, not to mention its growing footprint globally. In a recent post by Sportico, reporter Kurt Badenhausen noted the historical ownership averages as well as the sources of revenue for each major league in the US. Here: https://lnkd.in/gF7pqV5h When looking at the numbers, it's interesting to note the following of these established leagues: 1️⃣ Major League Baseball (MLB), Major League Soccer, and National Hockey League (NHL) are still "event-driven" leagues--meaning they require more than 30% of their revenue to come from ticketing, suites, events, etc. 2️⃣ The NFL has the largest "national revenue" percentage due to its centralized rights and by closely guarding access to its product. What lessons could other leagues and/or emerging sports competitions consider inside of this? 3️⃣ The highest turnovers among ownership groups within these leagues have been in leagues where the local and event-driven revenues are the main sources of revenue--i.e., NHL, MLS, MLB. In other words, teams in the NFL and NBA can afford to sit and hold while their investment grows because of a strong centrally-managed front office. While Major League Rugby wasn't considered in this analysis, these numbers highlight the challenges of emerging sports leagues' efforts to establish, sustain, and grow the revenue and products of that league. For example, the Utah Warriors Rugby numbers, which might be anecdotal for the MLR and our partner clubs overall, presently operate under the following percentages of revenue: ☑ Local Media: 0% ☑ National Revenue: 10% (by way of cost deferment at the MLR level) ☑ Seating/Suites: 38% ☑ Team Sponsorships: 37% ☑ Concessions/Parking/Other: 15% The MLR is in its 7th season. MLB is the granddaddy entering its 121st season in 2024. Surprisingly, the NHL is next as it wraps up its 107th season. The NFL is entering its 105th. The NBA is wrapping up its 78th season. And the new kid on the block, the MLS is starting its 29th season. As such, the closest and most relevant comparison for the MLR is to consider where the MLS was at 5-10 years into its existence. In that frame, when considering the MLS is still largely event-driven with its overall revenue streams, I would assess that the MLR and the Warriors are on a good path. Building takes time and hard work. The Warriors and the MLR are committed to that. See you all this Friday night, April 5th at 7pm MT as the Warriors host MLR-newcomers Anthem Rugby at The Fortress of Zions Bank Stadium. Tickets: https://lnkd.in/gNNVCbiW #Rugby #Business #Sports #Utah #NBA #NFL #MLB #MLS #NHL

We're covering BetMGM sports partnership performance this week, and in my last post I showed relative spending amongst comparable groups of each of the 4 major North American professional sports leagues, the National Football League (NFL), National Basketball Association (NBA), National Hockey League (NHL), and Major League Baseball (MLB). We showed that NBA fans are spending by far the most with the brand, followed by the NFL, NHL, and MLB in that order. I also presented a few hypotheses as to the cause of this spending differential, one of which was that maybe NBA and NFL teams are more concentrated in states where BetMGM is legal and operational. Let's dive into that hypothesis here. The map below shows the states where BetMGM operates retail and mobile betting. We can exclude Florida even though it is pictured because they actually only support horse racing there. Based on this, we get the following breakdown of which teams are located in states where BetMGM is operating: NBA: 15/29 US teams (51.7%) NFL: 20/32 US teams (62.5%) MLB: 15/29 US teams (51.7%) NHL: 17/25 US teams (68%) If we adjust the spending figures from my last post based on this breakdown, we would get something like this: NBA: $72.7M NFL: $38.29M NHL: $27.2M MLB: $24.99M These are just hypothetical numbers used for comparison's sake, and they show us that this is unlikely to be a main factor explaining the relative performance here. If anything, it extends the NBA's lead substantially. It does bring up MLB spending closer to the level of the NHL, but they are both still outpaced by the NFL. So, this doesn't seem to be the best explanation. We'll cover my next hypothesis in my next post. Previous post: https://lnkd.in/gtqznSu5

🧢 Which MLB team has nearly half its roster from Latin America? Find out here how LatAm players are dominating the field. ↓ In 2022, a Puerto Rican signed the 11th most valuable sports deal ever. It was a contract worth $341M over 10 years between Francisco Lindor and the New York Mets. Right below him is Fernando Tatis Jr. from the Dominican Republic, who signed for $340M in exchange for 14 years with the San Diego Padres. Tatis Jr. is not even the highest-paid Dominican in the league. That title goes to Juan Soto, who plays for the New York Yankees for $31M a year. You won't find another sports organization where so many Latin Americans can earn as much as they do in the MLB. Players from our region make up 25% of the league, with the Dominican Republic bringing in the most talent after the US. Baseball is curiously prominent in Venezuela and the Hispanic Caribbean. The first league outside of North America started in Cuba in 1878, predating the country's independence. Some players regarded their participation as a revolutionary symbol against the Spaniards. At the time, the US had a central role in the Caribbean and Central America, which lead to deep and lasting ties. The annexation of Puerto Rico, the United Fruit Company's troubling imperial presence, and the building of the Panama Canal come to mind. Over a century later, baseball is the national sport of many countries in the region. All 30 MLB teams have academies in the Dominican Republic, where they scout and coach talent at a young age to go pro. Venezuela had a similar situation until relations with the US soured. Still, all teams have at least five Latin American players on their rosters. The Houston Astros, who won the 2022 World Series, count 17, almost half of the team's total. The world-renowned New York Yankees are the league's 3rd most Latin American team. The Chicago White Sox stands out as the most Cuban team in the league. Yoan Moncada is their top star, who went from $0.5M to $25M per year with the White Sox. And the Latin American fans? Despite having a relatively low Major League Baseball (MLB) presence, Mexico has a local league with the world's 3rd-largest fan base. We couldn't find many numbers on MLB audience sizes in the Caribbean. We turned to Google Trends, which suggests that, proportionally speaking, Venezuelans and Dominicans are 6x and 12x more interested in the MLB than people in the US.

Sports Industry Quick Hitters for Tuesday, November 28, 2023: ● The Chicago Bears didn’t manage to score a touchdown in last night’s Monday Night Football game against the Minnesota Vikings, but no matter as QB Justin Fields led the Monsters of the Midway to a come-from-behind 12-10 victory in Minneapolis. With Week 12 now in the books, the Philadelphia Eagles continue to shine as the league’s best team, boasting a 10-1 record. The Baltimore Ravens (9-3), meanwhile, have the best record in the AFC. Six teams (Dallas, Detroit, Jacksonville, Kansas City, Miami, San Francisco) are right behind them with 8-3 records. Hard to believe, but the NFL regular season is now 2/3rds of the way through to completion. The NFL coaching carousel got off to an early start yesterday with the Carolina Panthers’ firing of head coach Frank Reich. Reich’s brief stint saw the Panthers compile the league’s worst record (1-10). ● Switzerland will make bids to host the Winter Olympics in either 2030 or 2034. The central European nation has twice previously hosted the Winter Games when Saint Moritz staged the event in 1928 and 1948; this time around, the entire nation would host the Games, with a focus on utilizing existing venues in hopes of containing costs. The 2030 Winter Games have several suitors, as Switzerland will compete with France, Sweden, and the United States to host. The International Olympic Committee later this month is expected to decide which bids will move forward to the next phase. ● Group play in the NBA’s in-season tournament wraps up with eight games this evening. The inaugural in-season event has been a ratings success, as viewership is up 24% on Fridays and up 7% on Tuesdays when compared to the same days in the 2022-23 season. ● The latest Associated Press college hoops poll came out yesterday after a crazy week of Thanksgiving tournaments. Here are this week’s top ten: (1) Purdue (60)                6-0        (2) (2) Arizona (1)                 6-0        (3) (3) Marquette                  5-1        (4) (4) Connecticut (2)          6-0        (5) (5) Kansas                        5-1        (1) (6) Houston                     7-0        (6) (7) Duke                           5-1        (9) (8) Miami (FL)                  5-0        (10) (9) Baylor                         6-0        (13) (10) Tennessee                 4-2        (7) Nice to see the Baylor Bears back in the top ten 😊 Have a great day! #sportsbiz #nfl #olympics #nba #collegebasketball

Now that summer is underway, we've been looking at the performance of prominent Major League Baseball (MLB) partnerships over the last few years to gear up for 2024 comparisons when we hit the season's halfway mark. We'll be sharing some interesting insights throughout, and today we want to look at how all of the teams in the league performed with a new partnership that started last season with Booking.com. To set this up, we looked at Booking.com spending amongst comparable groups of fans of each team from the 2023 season across 2022 (the year before the partnership started) and 2023 (the first year of the partnership). After measuring partner spending amongst each fanbase, we can stack rank the teams based on year-over-year spending growth. The chart below shows the results. We put down the bottom two teams in the league for Booking.com fan spending growth, the top 2, and the league average. At the bottom of the charts were the Miami Marlins and loanDepot park and the Oakland Athletics, who both saw spending with Booking.com actually decline amongst their fanbases in 2023 relative to 2022. These were the only two fanbases in the league that showed a contraction in spending YoY, and the league average of 47.64% growth is a compelling indicator suggesting that this partnership has gone incredibly well overall. At the top of the charts are the Kansas City Royals and the Boston Red Sox, each of whom saw their fanbase's spending on Booking.com more than double in 2023 compared to 2022. This is phenomenal performance from these two teams, and makes me wonder if there were other activations in the Boston and Kansas City areas separate from this partnership or some other possible effect happening here to account for this incredible growth. If I were advising Booking.com, I'd suggest that they look into some of these underperforming fanbases to see if a separate local deal with more activations might be able to turn this around. On the other side, it might make sense to double down in the Boston and Kansas City areas to see how much juice there really is left to squeeze there.

Before the Rockies first game I posted that all four major Denver professional teams were tied for, or in first place. The Rockies are struggling now. The Broncos are preparing for the draft, and fans are praying for a long-term answer at the quarterback position. The Avalanche and the Nuggets are headed to the playoffs with this year’s championship hopes still in place. What’s the difference? Colorado sports fans support all their teams and love a winner. The Avs and Nuggets both have recent championships. The Avs and the Nuggets each have a player they drafted who is favored to win this year’s MVP in their respective league. The Avs and the Nuggets each have lots of new players this year, but both teams have held on to a solid core of leaders who have won in the past. Both franchises have long term head coaches who the franchise committed to while the teams built their cores. The Avs and the Nuggets have been owned by Kroenke Sports since 2000. Kroenke Sports has proven their passion for winning championships and understand how it’s done. The Rockies also have stability in ownership with the Monforts and stability at head coach. Unfortunately, they’re missing that core of top players and leaders. I’m not convinced the Rockies have a plan or a sense of urgency to win. The Broncos have relatively new ownership, a second year-in-Denver head coach, and they don’t have any players who have won here in Colorado. Both the Broncos and the Rockies have reshuffled their rosters with many new players. Fans still have high hopes, but they’re both a long way from competing for championships. Consistent leadership committed to winning, a core of teammates with a long-term plan, and clarity about how to accomplish that plan is how teams win. It’s how NFL, NBA, MLB, NHL, college, and high school teams win. It’s how business, family, and community teams win. It’s not easy, but great teams are built with patience, consistency, and clarity. Go Avs, Broncos, Nuggets, and Rockies!

MLB gets it right. Today, for the first time in the history of the game, stats from the Negro Leagues can be seen right next to stats from the entire history of MLB. Since MLB didn't integrate until 1947, there is an entire history of outstanding players who never got the broad-based respect and admiration they deserved. The risk is that their stories and achievements would be lost to time. That would be tragic, a loss to American history. This move makes it possible for children to ask questions like: "who was Satchel Paige and why is he ranked among the all-time lowest ERA pitchers?" Or even "why does Josh Gibson have a higher OPS than Babe Ruth, Ted Williams or Lou Gherig?" These questions have profound implications. They make it possible to have honest conversations about our collective and difficult past. Hat tip to the leadership at MLB, and so many others, who have done the hard work of collecting, culling and verifying the stats from the Negro League era. Hat tip to Ken Burns for including stories from the Negro Leagues in his outstanding Baseball documentary series. Given the popularity of sports documentaries, I think it's only a matter of time before we hear some of the most powerful stories in the history of sports... coming from the era of the Negro Leagues. I can't wait! https://lnkd.in/gESJDRMU?

Before the Rockies first game I posted that all four major Denver professional teams were tied for, or in first place. The Rockies are struggling now. The Broncos are preparing for the draft, and fans are praying for a long-term answer at the quarterback position. The Avalanche and the Nuggets are headed to the playoffs with this year’s championship hopes still in place. What’s the difference? Colorado sports fans support all their teams and love a winner. The Avs and Nuggets both have recent championships. The Avs and the Nuggets each have a player they drafted who is favored to win this year’s MVP in their respective league. The Avs and the Nuggets each have lots of new players this year, but both teams have held on to a solid core of leaders who have won in the past. Both franchises have long term head coaches who the franchise committed to while the teams built their cores. The Avs and the Nuggets have been owned by Kroenke Sports since 2000. Kroenke Sports has proven their passion for winning championships and understand how it’s done. The Rockies also have stability in ownership with the Monforts and stability at head coach. Unfortunately, they’re missing that core of top players and leaders. I’m not convinced the Rockies have a plan or a sense of urgency to win. The Broncos have relatively new ownership, a second year-in-Denver head coach, and they don’t have any players who have won here in Colorado. Both the Broncos and the Rockies have reshuffled their rosters with many new players. Fans still have high hopes, but they’re both a long way from competing for championships. Consistent leadership committed to winning, a core of teammates with a long-term plan, and clarity about how to accomplish that plan is how teams win. It’s how NFL, NBA, MLB, NHL, college, and high school teams win. It’s how business, family, and community teams win. It’s not easy, but great teams are built with patience, consistency, and clarity. Go Avs, Broncos, Nuggets, and Rockies! 2024 let’s do this

💲💲💲The Top 100 Valued Sports Teams in the World💲💲💲 🏈 🏀 ⚾ ⚽ 🎾 🥊 🏒 The Dallas Cowboys are still the most valuable team in sports. The franchise Jerry Jones bought for $140 million in 1989 now regularly ranks atop both Sportico and Forbes' annual valuations. Sportico previously valued the Cowboys at $9.2 billion as recently as August 2023. Forbes estimated that the Dallas Cowboys enjoyed an 80-percent increase in value over the last five years thanks to a media deal that could value $126 billion by 2033 and the fact that Jones owns the club's 80,000-seat cash cow, Jones AT&T Stadium. 📈 The most striking trend on the list has little to do with team success, but a team's ability to profit off a modern stadium or arena. That's likely why the Kansas City Chiefs - and 52-year-old Arrowhead Stadium - were outranked by the rival Las Vegas Raiders (15), who benefit from four-year-old Allegiant Stadium, home of Super Bowl LVIII. (Kansas City currently hopes to renovate Arrowhead Stadium to increase revenue generated by the stadium) A curious trend revealed that winning a title doesn't necessarily enable a team to soar up the list. The defending-champion Chiefs (33), Denver Nuggets - NBA Basketball Team (61), Texas Rangers Baseball Club (92) and Vegas Golden Knights (unranked) are all outside the top 30. Meanwhile, the 4-13 Washington Commanders (11) continued to rank among the world's most valuable teams, as did the 6-11 New York Giants (5) and the 4-13 New England Patriots (8). In fact, 12 of the top 20 teams play in the National Football League (NFL), which is coming off its most-watched Super Bowl ever at 123.7 million viewers. 📺 The graphic below is a good way to play "Who is that team?" Where does your team rank? Does any team on the list surprise you? Source: Sportico, Daily Mail #kickoff #morethanfootball #football #nfl #nba #nhl #epl #f1 #mlb #laliga #bundesliga #top100 #sportsmarketing #sportsentertainment