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Welcome to Yahoo Finance Sports Report, a unique look at the business of sports brought to you by Yahoo Finance and Yahoo Sports. I’m your host, Joe Pompeano, and I’m here to coach you through the financial game. We’ll look beyond the headlines, analyze all the latest sports news, the teams, trades, and billion dollar deals, so you and your portfolio will win big. Let’s huddle up and get right into it.We are kicking off this week with Pop’s Playbook where I take a look at some of the biggest headlines in sports that you and your portfolio need to know. Let’s start things off with Wrexham AFC’s 3rd straight promotion in English football. Now, I closed our show a few weeks ago, breaking down the financial success of Wrexham AFC, a Welsh soccer club owned by actors Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElaney. Well, the club’s finances are about to get a massive boost after Wrexham secured auto.promotion to the EFL championship last week in a 3-0 win over Charlton. This is the 3rd straight year that Wrexham has secured promotion, and for the first time since 1982, the club will play in the 2nd highest division of the English football pyramid behind the Premier League. Now this promotion will result in new financial implications for the club, especially when it comes to player contracts. In Wrexham’s current League One, players are paid an average salary of round.$265,000 per year. However, in the EFL championship, player salaries average $825,000 which means Reynolds and McElaney will need to open up their Hollywood checkbooks to stay competitive with established championship teams that have deep pockets. But as I noted on our April 10th show, Wrexham is up for the challenge. The club generated $35 million in revenue last season, which is already in line with the median level of revenue.Generated by EFL championship teams this year, and Reynolds made it clear after securing championship promotion that Wrexham’s ultimate goal is to make it to the Premier League. So now it’s time to sit back and see if the club can do the impossible. Next up, I’m looking at a new format for the PGA Tour’s end of season tour championship. Multiple reports over the last week said that the PGA Tour is on the verge of massive changes to the Tour Championship, which concludes the FedEx Cup playoffs each season.The Tour Championship’s current format uses a staggered start for the PGA Tour’s top 30 players. The FedEx Cup leader begins the tournament with a 10 under par score, while the rest of the players in the FedEx Cup standings begin with various under par scores based on their rankings. However, this format has been unpopular with fans and players because of how much the starting strokes influence final standings, especially with $100 million of bonus money on the line. Now, there are very little known details on the format change and it will likely be a two-year process.However, it is very likely that the stroke format will be eliminated to enhance the tournament’s competition. PGA Tour player Advisory Council member Adam Scott also told Golf Week that the Tour Championship will be a more traditional tournament with more consequence to create more drama and prestige for the event’s winner. We should get more information on the new format soon though. The PGJA Tour Advisory Council reached a consensus on the format at their most recent meeting at the RBC Heritage, and the PGA Tour is now in talks with the Tour Championship broadcast and.Snor partners to ensure that the new format is supported before a board vote. To finish out, I’m talking about a new sports betting partnership from the NCAA. Last week, Genius Sports, a global sports technology provider, announced that it has expanded its long-term partnership with the NCAA to become the exclusive distributor of NCAA data to license sports books for its postseason tournaments, including March Madness through the year 2032. However, the deal will not include data for regular season games and postseason football games, such as the College football.Now this expansion means licensed sports books will be able to buy exclusive access to Genius Sports’ NCAA data feeds and brand logos through a new authorized gaming licensee program, and the announcement is a major pivot for the NCAA when it comes to sports betting. The governing body has kept its distance from sports betting since US legalization in 2018 and recently advocated for legislation to limit sports betting on college sports. But Genius Sports noted that sports books will need to agree to limit risky bet types to.Purchased the NCAA data and safeguard student athletes, and the NCAA’s move to sell gambling data to sports books should open up a massive new revenue opportunity. Most major sports leagues in the US have data distribution deals for sports betting purposes, including the NFL, which signed a $450 million agreement in 2023 with Genius Sports. Plus, the NCAA could stand to diversify its revenue streams. Most of the organization’s $1.4 billion in 2024 revenue came from its broadcasting deals for the men’s March Madness tournaments.This week for the deeper dive, where I give you a play by play analysis of news in the sports world and its significance to your bottom line. We’re talking about the Kentucky Derby.The 151st running of the Kentucky Derby takes place this Saturday. The race only lasts 2 minutes, but more than 150,000 people will pack Churchill Downs in Louisville, Kentucky to see 20 of the world’s fastest horses. Three year old thoroughbreds will compete for $5 million in prize money, and another 16 million people will be watching at home. Now, the Kentucky Derby is a spectacle, plain and simple. The event always draws celebrities.Politicians and athletes with notable past attendees including Queen Elizabeth, Ronald Reagan, Jimmy Carter, Muhammad Ali, Tom Brady, Serena Williams, and Drake. But the business behind the Kentucky Derby is even more fascinating. There is a month-long festival leading up to race day, and when you include the Derby itself, the entire 2025 event is projected to generate over $440 million in economic activity for Louisville.That’s because about 1.5 million people typically attend the Kentucky Derby Festival throughout the month, including more than 150,000 for the actual race. Downtown Louisville hotels also usually see at least a 90% occupancy rate during Derby week, and 120,000 mint Julep cocktails are served during race week events. And of course the Kentucky Derby is a massive weekend for gambling in 20.24, a record $320 million was bet on all 14 of the Kentucky Derby Day races, with $210 million wagered on the Kentucky Derby race alone. And this economic activity impacts the prize money on the track. As I mentioned earlier, the prize money for this year’s Kentucky Derby is $5 million in total, but the purse is only split up between the top five finishers, and the winner takes home $3.1 million.The winning purse is then divided amongst each horse’s team, with the owner usually taking 80%, while the jockey and trainer each get 10%. However, with a full field of 20 horses, that means 75% of them won’t win any money. And with all of this money being funneled into the event, the Kentucky Derby is one of the biggest TV events in sports. NBC has been the official broadcast partner of the Kentucky Derby since 2001, signing a new seven-year extension in 2024 with Churchill Downs for the race through 2032.Now, the current broadcast fee is unknown, but it’s believed to be worth more than $9 million annually, which is what NBC paid each year for the Derby in a previous deal that ran through 2014.NBC is also able to make a lot of money off the Derby’s broadcast because even though the race is only 2 minutes long, the network stretches the event into more than 7 hours of content by broadcasting pre and post-race coverage throughout the day, and the money doesn’t stop with TV. The biggest financial win for horse owners comes after the race when the winning horse starts collecting $10,000 to $100,000 stud fees for breeding. So given all the money on the line this weekend, you could argue that the greatest two minutes in sports is also the most valuable 2 minutes in sports.We’ve made it to the one on one, a conversation where I get to break down news and sports with the key player in the industry. This week we’re talking to a friend of the pod, Yahoo Sports senior NFL reporter, Joy Epstein. Joey, thank you so much for joining the show today. I want to talk mostly about last week’s NFL draft, and there’s a lot to cover.There, but I feel like we have to start with Shadore Sanders. He has sort of dominated the headlines over the last week and certainly during the three days of the NFL draft. Just give me some thoughts or perspective on why you think he was such a big storyline and why he ended up sliding so much further than people expected.
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Absolutely. Great to be back on with you, Joe. And Shadoor Sanders was a big storyline initially because he is the son of Deion Sanders, and he’s a quarterback. So you take either of those, much less both, and that becomes a big story. But then when you look at what happened to him during draft weekend, by far and away, one of the most surprising elements, not only of this year’s draft, but of the draft since I’ve been covering it, which is about a decade now. And that is because, by a pure talent standpoint, I talked to evaluators around the league who said, Shadoor SandersOn average, it was a 2nd round talent. Now, some even said late 1st round. I had one evaluator who said, you know, his skills are 4th round, but I would expect him to go more like late 1st, early 2nd because of how, uh, few quarterbacks there are in the supply-demand element. And he goes in the 5th round to the Cleveland Browns, who 50 picks earlier had selected Oregon quarterback Dillon Gabriel. So this is crazy. I mean, this is a team that is already, they have all this draft capital for next year. They’re not waiting to use it on a quarter.And now they have two rookie quarterbacks come in, and, oh, by the way, their 5th round quarterback, by all accounts, is more talented than their 3rd round, but people believe that Shadoor Sanders fell because of his personality. There were people around the league who felt he was arrogant, that he didn’t treat the process with respect. And I don’t even mean that in like an old guard way. I just think that there’s an element of Shadoor Sanders treated the NFL pre-draft process, the way top 5 picks in recent years have the Caleb Williams and Marvin Harrison Jr. top 5 picks last year.Who said, you know what, we don’t really want to do this. We know we’re gonna go all the way at the top, and we don’t have to. Well, Sanders was not destined to go all the way at the top, and the more he treated it like that, the more teams had concerns. So that is an overview. But what I think is fascinating is that I wrote a story for today that said, you know, actually, evaluators aroundLeague and decision makers don’t hate that the Cleveland Browns took two quarterbacks. You could say, well, to take two guys at the same position, neither of whom you feel that strongly in, and you had other needs. On the other hand, it’s such an inexact science to evaluate quarterbacks that people actually liked the idea of taking 2 darts at the start board.
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Yeah, I was gonna ask you about that because you mentioned earlier that Shiro Sanders, by all accounts, according to a lot of the scouts, was more talented and should have gotten higher than Dylan Gabriel. They obviously picked Dylan Gabriel first and then came back for Shado Sanders. Do you think that was a combination of what you just said, which is just throw as many.To the board as possible. We’ve obviously seen this with RG3 and Kirk Cousins. Other teams have done in the past as well. Or do you think it was something where the value was just too good at the point that he had dropped or maybe even sort of a call down from ownership and saying, hey, go get this guy, despite the fact that you already drafted a quarterback?
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I’m not going to eliminate the prospect that it was a call down from ownership, given how many people around the league believe that Brown’s team owner Jimmy Haslam had a very strong hand in the Browns’ 2022 trade for Deshaun Watson. And Jimmy said recently, I was at the league meetings in West Palm Beach where the Palm Beach, and they said, hey, swinging a miss on Deshaun Watson. And so it was pretty clear that Jimmy took that swing, and now he’s, and now heCould be taking another one. That said, Cleveland Browns general manager, Andrew Barry was asked whether he was encouraged by ownership to draft Shadour. He responded, quote, Jimmy lets us do our jobs. And I think initially I felt that, but then when I understood how many people around the league kind of agreed with the probabilities, I was like, Well, maybe not. Andrew Berry used this word that he was quote, mispriced relative to his value. And I think that you haveTo say that the ceiling of Sanders was far above where he was drafted, the floor is pretty low.
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Speaking of Shadoor Sanders, they, there was this, uh, prank call controversy obviously, where, uh, he was prank called, basically saying that the Saints were going to pick him. It didn’t end up happening, of course, the videos got released later on. It ends up coming out that it was, uh, Jeff Ulbricht, the defensive coordinator for the Falcons. Do you expect the NFL or the Falcons to do anything here?
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Yeah, here’s what I’ll say. I give the Falcons credit for coming out. They took responsibility, they made an apology. This was not something that was someone who directly worked for the team who did it. It was the defensive coordinator’s 21 year old son. And I know Jeff Ulbricht from his days when he was the New York Jets’ first offensive coordinator, and then interim head coach. He would never have done something like this or wanted something like this to happen. And so when I look at it, I say, I don’t view this as aCoach being irresponsible. Like, he had his iPad at his house with a phone number on it. Also, it’s not like a 10 year old kid is prank calling people, just like typing in numbers. This 21 year old needs to take responsibility, but the NFL can’t take responsibility against the 21 year old. I mean, maybe could they try and press charges? I don’t think they’re going to do that. To me, what needs to happen is you look at the system and say, this could happen again. Also, thereOr lower profile prank calls. I think the NFL needs to have a more secure system for contact information, especially phone numbers of these draft picks going forward, because you could say, well, I don’t believe Jeff Ulbricht did something wrong. You could say, Well, why did the defensive coordinator have on his tablet days before the draft the number of a quarterback his team was probably not going to take because they drafted a first round quarterback.Last year. Now, maybe he was interviewing him in the process, but to me, this comes down to there might need to be like, OK, set up a Zoom call. You talk to the draft players through a Zoom call at a particular time. You talk to them through some sort of messaging app. There are a lot of ways to communicate that will not lead to their personal phone numbers being as widely available, and that’s the change I would take if I was the NFL.
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We’ve got to take a quick break, but we’ll be back with Joey Epstein right after this.Welcome back to Yahoo Finance Sports Report. I’m your host Joe Pompeiano. I’m here with Yahoo Sports senior NFL reporter Joey Epstein. One of the big storylines heading into the weekend was also just Green Bay as a host. I mean, Green Bay is an incredibly small city. It’s actually the smallest major professional sports city in the country, about 100,000 people that live there, uh, and over 600,000 people visited the draft over 3 days, so obviously a tremendous turnout, but I’m curious just on your perception and your opinion of how Green Pay performed as a host.
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Yeah, I think they totally exceeded expectations. I believe there’s 600,000 tied Nashville for the second most fans in the last recent years that have gone. And to me, I would say, with all due respect to Nashville, a great city, it’s way harder to get to Green Bay than to get to Nashville. It is way harder to use the infrastructure of the city of Green Bay to support this than it is to use the infrastructure of a city like Nashville or Detroit that’s had it previously in all these different cities. I’ve been to Green Bay twice for a while.For work, once during the season, once during training camp. It’s hard to get there. You can’t really fly right there. Uh, the city is very small. There’s like one road on game day. I mean, it’s kind of like the Bills have a little bit of this at their actual stadium, which is not quite in the middle of Buffalo. Buffalo is a very city where, I mean, if you want to get somewhere that day, you’re probably best off walking. And so to me to think that the city was able to support this, I give them so much credit and also, as they said,At the draft, I mean, Green Bay is the one team in the NFL that does not have a team owner. They’re owned by the community and a group of fans. And like credit to them for saying, hey, we’re a community owned team, and now we’re going to give our community the draft. And, oh, by the way, they took a first round receiver for the first time since, I believe, 2004. So they actually had a splash in the draft that people around the league weren’t anticipating to make sure that the draft lived up to the hype, not only for the league, but also for the team.
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Yeah, if you would have asked me years ago, I mean, obviously they used to hold the draft in uh New York City and it seemed unlikely that they would move it. They ended up moving it and now it goes to all these different cities, but Green Bay always seemed like the city that was least likely to get the draft because of all the infrastructure challenges with hotel rooms and flights and uh transportation and all that kind of stuff, but it obviously works. So now it seems like every city is potentially on the table.I’d love to just get your insight on how the NFL is using this as sort of a bargaining chip, right? Like to me, the thought process has always been similar to what we saw yesterday, earlier this week with the Washington Commanders, like, go build a new stadium and we’re potentially gonna give you a Super Bowl, and that’s a great way for you to get public money from the city and local state governments, uh, but the draft has become another.Bargaining chip where you get the Packers who are interested in this for a decade, you tell them, OK, go build Tidal Town, go open the Expo Center, like make it a better game day experience. The Buffalo Bills, same thing, they’re looking to host the draft, obviously building a new stadium too. Pittsburgh is the follow it is next year. I would love to just get some insight into kind of how the NFL is thinking about the draft as a bargaining chip relative to the Super Bowl and what it used to be.
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Yeah, I mean, there is a huge economic impact for both of these events. I would say from the draft in particular, this has kind of become half festival, half football event. I went to it when it was in Dallas several years back, or the Dallas area, and the Cowboys turned the parking lots around the AT&T Stadium, Jerry World into this massive festival.I mean, it looked like music festival level. And by the way, if you’ve been to Texas, a lot of parking lots down there. So that’s a lot of space that they had to use. And so I think when you look at it, you can really do so many different things. There are corporate sponsors involved. There are music events involved. So much is going on, and particularly for cities like you’re talking about, Green Bay and Buffalo.I don’t anticipate them getting a Super Bowl because it’s just not feasible with the weather. I mean, even Dallas had an ice storm during the weather one year and they hosted it and they probably would have had another Super Bowl host already if they had not had that ice storm. So you’re not going to give these super cold and accessible cities the the Super Bowl, but you can give them the draft. So I completely agree that this is one among several.Bargaining chips. I’ll also say that as the NFL continues to expand its international presence, I do believe that the NFL wants an international franchise and an international Super Bowl in that franchise. Roger Goodell, the NFL commissioner, has been asked at press conferences I’ve been a part of about hosting a Super Bowl abroad and how NFL teams would feel about that. And his response was essentially, well, if we have a team,It’s still in an NFL team city. So I do think that down the road, that would be of interest, maybe not in Roger Goodell’s term, but hey, his term has been going on for a while. So I think all of this is, as the NFL looks to increase their international presence, the more domestically you could try and be a sell for them, you are going to have a better chance in an increasingly crowded competition for hosting.
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Yeah, it it seems like they’ve been constantly going back and forth between like, maybe we just host more international games and keep all the teams in the US or maybe we have teams internationally, and then that gives them the option to go to Super Bowls, but it’s something that’s going to be fascinating to play out over the years, especially because of the media rights deals that could potentially come up at the end of this decade and the regular season expansion. There’s just so many different things.At play, but Jerry, I would love to hear you’ve obviously been talking to a lot of people during the draft, before the draft, after the draft. What are some of the surprises that people that happened on draft night outside of Shadoor Sanders and things like that, uh, that you’ve heard from league sources that, uh, either players that slid or players that went a little higher than expected or players that people are just really excited about?
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Yeah, it’s me by far the biggest non-sch surprise was what happened with the 5th overall pick and the 2nd overall pick. The Jacksonville Jaguars traded up from 5 to 2. The Cleveland Browns just traded down, and they were able to select, believed to be a generational prospect in Travis Hunter out of Colorado, two-way receiver defensive back in college. Now, on one hand, you could say, well, Jacksonville got a generational prospect, it seems. On the other hand, they gave up a1st round pick next year to do this. They gave up a 2nd round pick. There’s some other, I won’t get into all of the details of all the different trades, but generally, 1 and 2nd round to move up 3 picks, I thought that people would say, oh, well, they got a generational prospect. It’s a new head coach, it’s a new general manager. They’re going to be relevant. They have to make sure that their quarterback, Trevor Lawrence, is going to finally reach that generational talent that he believes to, well, he was believed to be.I had sources around the league who told me that they felt that Jacksonville got quote hosed on the deal. People thought by far it was way too expensive to trade up for Travis Hunter, particularly when the Jaguars even admitted that they thought there were about 2 generational offensive players here, him and Ashton Genty, running back out of Boise State, and Ashton Genty would have still been available at 5 if Travis Hunter wasn’t. So, it’s interesting because I think it makes Jacksonville more relevant.And if it can answer the Trevor Lawrence question, it will be a win, but there were a lot of people saying, why would you do this? Is this just a first year GM making a decision? And, and first year general manager James Godstone said, hey, look, I’ve always regretted when I didn’t make a decision that I wanted to, we’re going to be bold. So he stood by it.
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Yeah, it was certainly the shock of the at least the initial part of the draft, especially considering like you said, he’s a first time GM, but the NFL draft never ceases to amaze me. I mean, they had almost 14 million viewers for night one. It’s amazing that the NFL has been able to turn, uh, essentially the commissioner reading names off a list into this big of an event, but Joey, thank you so much for joining us today.
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So, great to be on with you guys.
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The clock is running down here, but we have just enough time for some final buzz. So let’s talk about the Washington Commander’s new stadium in Washington DC. Massive stadium news broke earlier this week when the NFL’s Washington Commanders announced plans for a new stadium at the old site of the RFK Stadium in Washington DC. The announcement was made jointly by Commander’s owner Josh Harris in Washington, DC.Mayor Muriel Bowser and featured plans for a new entertainment district with a 65,000 seat stadium and 6000 new homes. The entire development is projected to cost $3.7 billion with the commanders paying $2.7 billion for a dome stadium and Mayor Bowser committing $1 billion in public funding through a mix of existing local business fees, reserves.From Events DC and future stadium revenue bonds, the $2.7 billion dollar commitment from the commanders would be the largest private investment in Washington DC history and would see the commander’s return to the city where it played at RFK Stadium from 1961 to 1996 before leaving to move into what is now known as Northwest Stadium in Landover, Maryland.And while Northwest Stadium was a new build in 1996, it is in really bad shape today, and it’s clear that the commander’s owner Josh Harris wants to join the sports-wide trend of a multi-use stadium development to drive more revenue. The Commander Stadium project would include multiple districts with housing, hotels, retail shops, restaurants, parks, trails, green space, and a new $89 million Sports Flex facility for DC youth.The commanders also touted the year-round component of the stadium development with a stated goal of hosting 200 events each year, including the Super Bowl and the Roofstadium, along with 40 major events annually, like the NCAA Final Four, the World Cup, or even a Taylor Swift concert.Now the commanders and the mayor’s office proposed a quick timeline to gain city council approval by summer 2025, beginning stadium construction by fall or winter 2026 and opening the new stadium by fall 2030. However, like all stadium projects that involve massive public funding, the commander’s plan is already facing local opposition and will need lawmaker approval before a shovel can even be put in the ground. But if the commanders can push this plan forward, it would be a massive win for a franchise on the rise and the NFL as a whole.We’re all out of time, so it’s officially game over for this week. Thank you so much to Joey and for all of you for joining us. Please make sure to scan the QR code below to follow Yahoo Finance podcast for more videos and expert insights and catch us every Saturday wherever you get your podcast. I’m your host, Joe Pomliano. See you next time.
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This content was not intended to be financial advice and should not be used as a substitute for professional financial services.