The NFL kicks off its 2023-24 season tonight in K.C., as the defending Super Bowl-champion Chiefs will host the Lions at 8:20pm ET at GEHA Field at Arrowhead Stadium. The game will be broadcast on NBC, and live coverage begins at 7pm on NBC and Peacock with "Football Night in America" (SBJ). However, millions of Americans -- including those in the Grand Rapids area -- "might not be able to turn on their TV and easily find the game," as an ongoing dispute between DirecTV and Nexstar, which owns affiliates like WOOD-TV in Grand Rapids, will "prevent millions of DirecTV users from watching the game on cable" (DETROIT FREE PRESS, 9/7).

The Lions are stepping out "from the shadows into the brightest light possible." It’s the "most celebrated Lions opener in years, and not just because of the opponent and the venue." The Lions "have a chance to prove they deserved the invite, and they sound like they can’t wait" (DETROIT NEWS, 9/6). The DETROIT FREE PRESS's Mitch Albom writes tonight, "hype meets hit" and "giddiness meets gridiron." And "rarely in any of our lifetimes has the expectation for our local team reached such a fever pitch" (DETROIT FREE PRESS, 9/7).

The public’s "insatiable demand for the NFL, combined with the league’s strong execution," has "put it in a unique position: dominant within sports and the surest bet in a troubled media industry." With its "conservative debt policies, strong cash flow and disciplined management," the league has tapped "just a fraction of the growth capital that could be available to fund big bets" (SPORTS BUSINESS JOURNAL, 9/4 issue). 

Disney yesterday slashed the price of streaming service Disney+ to under $2, a promotion that runs through Sept. 20. The advertising-based tier has been lowered to $1.99 from its current price of $7.99 a month, which comes as the network has gone "dark in nearly 15 million homes" over the carriage-fee dispute with Charter Communications. The impasse "comes during a busy time on the sports calendar," which includes the start of the college football season, the U.S. Open and the "imminent start" to the NFL season (N.Y. POST, 9/6).

Meanwhile, Comcast and Disney have "agreed to move up the date on which they begin negotiating" the fate of their jointly-owned streaming service, Hulu. The companies "plan to begin work negotiating a potential sale of Comcast’s minority stake" in Hulu on Sept. 30, "months earlier than their initial January start date." Hulu is likely worth more than $30B, Comcast CEO Brian Roberts said (WALL STREET JOURNAL, 9/6).

For more than three decades, sports programmers had all the leverage when negotiating fees with cable operators. ESPN, in a dispute with Charter that has seen Disney networks blacked out by the cable company, is “using a playbook that was developed back in the 1990s,” said SBJ’s John Ourand on The Marchand and Ourand Sports Media Podcast. Faced with the prospect of losing subscribers, the cable operators “always buckled.” This time is different, Ourand said, “because of the way Charter has been acting.  When people call up to complain or to cancel their subscription, they’re sending those subscribers to Fubo TV and saying, ‘We just want to make sure you stick with us for broadband.”

Mets owner Steve Cohen has gained the franchise rights to the latest team in the TGL golf league, becoming the fourth owner in the six-team league that begins play in January. Cohen's family office, Cohen Private Ventures, will manage the team that will represent the N.Y. area. A team name and branding will be rolled out at a later date. Cohen has not determined the leadership structure for the team, but a source said Andrew B. Cohen, the chief investment officer and co-founder of Cohen Private Ventures, is expected to play a key role. He also reportedly is joining as a minority investor. The two Cohens are not related. 

Cohen's move, his first major investment in the golf space, means the TGL now has teams in four major markets, as franchises in L.A., Boston and Atlanta have already been established. Cohen also joins a list of stick-and-ball owners in the league that includes Tom Werner and John Henry (Boston) and Arthur Blank (Atlanta). Cohen's investment falls outside the trend of the first three owners, who were all initial investors in TMRW Sports last year.  Evolution Media Capital, the financial investment banking arm of CAA, has been handling the team sale process. Financials around the purchase were unclear.

Next for the TGL is finalizing its ownership roster as well as solidifying its group of 18 players, 12 of which have already been announced. That is expected to come sometime following the Ryder Cup at the end of this month. TGL will begin broadcast testing at its facility at Palm Beach State College in November.  

The Senate investigations subcommittee will "hold a hearing next Wednesday" on concerns over the pending deal between the Saudi Arabian Public Investment Fund and the PGA Tour. It will be the committee’s second hearing regarding the partnership and "appears set to focus more broadly on the PIF’s investments in the U.S." But PIF Gov. Yasir Al-Rumayyan "once again denied a request to testify" before the subcommittee. Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), the subcommittee chair, has "repeatedly asked Al-Rumayyan to testify" since June. In a letter dated Aug. 16, Blumenthal once again asked the PIF governor to testify before the committee "on Sept. 13 or propose an alternate date" (THE HILL, 9/6).

A group linked with the Nevada State Education Association has "filed a referendum petition to repeal the public funding" for the A's planned stadium in Las Vegas. The group "plans to target specific parts of Senate Bill 1," the legislation that provides the A’s with $380M in public funding toward their planned $1.5B ballpark, with "the hope of stripping the public funding from the team." To qualify for the ballot, the group "must obtain the verified signatures of at least 10 percent of the number of registered voters who voted in the 2022 General Election" -- which comes to 102,362 signatures, or 25,591 signatures collected in each of the state’s four congressional districts. The required amount of signatures needed to feature the stadium funding initiative on the 2024 ballot "must be collected by July 8, 2024" (LAS VEGAS REVIEW-JOURNAL, 9/6).

The group, Schools Over Stadiums, "derives from their desire for Nevadan tax dollars to be used to improve the state’s public schools rather than building billion-dollar stadiums." Schools Over Stadiums noted that the legislature "failed to hear any bills addressing Nevada’s overcrowded classrooms" and "made no progress in creating additional funding for public schools during a recent session, yet the Nevada legislature spent eight days mulling over the financing of a potential stadium" (S.F. CHRONICLE, 9/6).

Team Norman, a coalition of local leaders, yesterday announced its "proposal of a billion-dollar development," which includes the "construction of a multi-purpose venue that would host" Oklahoma Univ. basketball teams and women’s gymnastics. The venue would "hold 8,000 spectators." But the entire project "must first be approved by various stakeholders and governmental bodies." Norman Mayor Larry Heikkila said that the "hope is that the proposal will be approved by city council by the spring." It would then "likely take 3-4 years for the arena to be built." OU has called Lloyd Noble Center home since 1975 (OKLAHOMAN, 9/6).

Aramark

Aramark Sports + Entertainment will have 70 new Walk Thru Brus locations scattered among its 10 NFL venue clients this fall, as the Philly-based concessionaire expands one of its most successful tech deployments. In previous seasons, Walk Thru Brus locations -- beer-focused stands consisting of a line of refrigerator cases with various checkout technology -- saw an average 46% increase in transactions compared to belly-up stands. The biggest takeaway from Aramark's several years of tweaking the Walk Thru Bru concept is that the service style has created the most efficiency, not the tech involved, regardless of whether it’s Zippin checkout-free, Mashgin self-checkout, or other types of self-serve kiosks. 

“In order to get to scale, we’ve gotten more flexible with the types of technology we use,” Aramark Sports + Entertainment Vice President of Design and Development Alicia Woznicki told SBJ. “Some of our fastest ones just have two people checking out at the end as opposed to some type of AI self-checkout.”

That realization by Aramark has proven especially pertinent for its NFL venue accounts, where fewer events make return on tech investment tougher to reach. Still, that hasn’t prevented Aramark from continuing to imbue its NFL venues’ F&B service with tech enhancements, like using facial authentication to purchase F&B at Empower Field at Mile High, where the Broncos and Aramark are working with IDMission and Zippin for biometrics-enabled drink markets. Aramark will have three locations using the setup during the Broncos’ game this weekend. It was debuted during a preseason game, during which 30 fans signed up at one location, despite almost zero marketing of the option. 

“That was a good dry run. The goal of that was just make sure it works,” Woznicki said. “That one last friction point was ID’ing people so this is the place where we can see if people sign up, how fast they can go.”

The big news coming out of Toledo athletics last week was that AD Bryan Blair launched a new five-year strategic plan for the Rockets. Blair and Toledo Exec Associate AD and COO Nicole Alderson talk with SBJ’s Michael Smith about the strategic plan and what it means for the Rockets. They’re calling it “Rise Together” and it will establish new standards from recruiting and retaining talent, to the Toledo brand, growing resources and investing in facilities.

LSU women’s basketball coach Kim Mulkey has agreed to a 10-year, $32M contract extension “that will make her the highest-paid women's basketball coach in the nation.” The deal is “pending final approval from the LSU Board of Supervisors, which meets Friday” (New Orleans ADVOCATE, 9/6). 

MLB placed Dodgers P Julio Urías on administrative leave yesterday, “three days after he was arrested on suspicion of felony domestic violence." Urías will remain on administrative leave “until further notice,” per a statement from the league, under the domestic violence policy it jointly negotiated with the MLBPA (L.A. TIMES, 9/6).

The Blues and Hubbard Radio have signed a five-year broadcast partnership extension that ensures Blues games will continue to be broadcast on 101 ESPN through the 2027-28 season (Blues). 

The National Lacrosse League has unveiled a refreshed brand identity system ahead of the 2024 season. The NLL's updated branding includes a refined primary logo, stylized wordmark, and for the first time, a French language “Ligue Nationale de Lacrosse” family of marks (NLL).

“There can be no Russian flag during the Paris Games, I think there is a consensus on that matter. Because Russia, as a country, is not welcome at a time where it has committed war crimes and deported children" -- French President Emmanuel Macron, as told to French-language L'Equipe, on his stance about next summer’s Olympics (REUTERS, 9/7).

“The whole NFL season is important for these companies, but the start of the season and the playoffs is definitely some of the most important time to acquire and retain some of these players” -- Citizens JMP Securities Equity Research Analyst Jordan Bender, on gambling companies attracting players to their platforms (“Worldwide Exchange,” CNBC, 9/7).

“Yeah, I was so much in favor of having those schools come. Not really” -- North Carolina AD Bubba Cunningham, on the ACC adding Cal, Stanford and SMU. UNC was one of three schools to vote against expansion (Raleigh NEWS & OBSERVER, 9/6).

VOX looks at what America can "learn from baseball." With attendance and TV ratings on a "downward spiral and game lengths growing unendurably long, a desperate" MLB made some changes for this season to "save itself from the irrelevance wrought by overoptimization." While there were "some bumps along the way," evidence from the first five months of the season suggests those changes have "paid off." Overall attendance is up 9% through early August, and TV ratings are "up significantly as well." If 147-year-old MLB can rewrite its rules to "address its existential challenges, then maybe there’s hope that this even older and even more rule-bound country can do the same for issues with far bigger stakes." The U.S. "too often finds itself operating under a rule book that is out of date." It "hasn’t always been this way," as America has gone through "flurries of intense Constitutional experimentation." But "too often we’re a 21st-century country operating under 18th-century rules." When baseball -- a sport that has been played since the end of the Civil War -- is "making you look hidebound, it’s time for a change."

Also:

• How the NFL used supercomputers to set its TV (and streaming) schedule.
• A golf company with $90,000 in sales was valued at $400M, but its stock proceeded to crash.
• ACC has given up its geographic comforts by going west in expansion.
• Why SMU thinks the ACC move is the first step to a return to glory.
• USF is building a $340M on-campus football stadium despite concerns academics are being left behind.

Michael Lorenzen was gifted a bronze-coated replica of the Vans he wore for his no-hitter by the son of the founder of Vans

(via @customcleats) pic.twitter.com/FEd3xiiTPe

— Talkin’ Baseball (@TalkinBaseball_) September 6, 2023

Just getting a chance to sit down and look at the breakdown of Bosa’s new (very well-deserved) contract.

I have a little more digging to do, but I’m starting to feel comfortable saying that I would consider un-retiring if offered a similar contract.

Maybe.

— JJ Watt (@JJWatt) September 7, 2023

All rookie players on a 53-man roster to start the 2023 NFL season will wear an exclusive NFL PREM1ERE patch on their jersey during Week 1. Subsequently, any rookies making their NFL debut over the course of the season will wear the same patch during their first game. The… pic.twitter.com/ACfH070tyQ

— Adam Schefter (@AdamSchefter) September 6, 2023

Thank you to everyone who came out to tonight’s Shining a Light presentation!🌟

The presentation will play every night night through the home opener at 8:45pm, 9:45pm, and 10:45pm!#ForTheShoe | @IndyDT pic.twitter.com/4UeiMgeboA

— Colts Life (@ColtsLife) September 7, 2023

Daniil Medvedev was asked if he’d like to see tennis change how it approaches extreme conditions:

“I’m not sure what we can do. We probably can’t stop the tournament for 4 days bc then it basically ruins everything. TV, tickets, everything. Could we go to 3 sets when conditions… pic.twitter.com/i56FlVVohc

— The Tennis Letter (@TheTennisLetter) September 6, 2023

“Prince Philip’s titles included Baron Greenwich & Duke of Edinburgh, but not Prince Consort, last used by this royal.”

Last night’s edition of “Jeopardy!” featured an NFL category that was introduced by NFL Network’s Kyle Brandt, with the answers being read by other members of the network. Brandt: “We’ll look back on Week 1 of the NFL season, in seasons past.”

$200: (read by NFLN's Will Selva) “It’s the play that starts the game and since 2002, the name of the game that starts the NFL season. The first one was at the Meadowlands not quite a year after 9/11.”
$400: (Jason McCourty) “Quarterbacks take note: don’t start the season like Chicago’s Jim Hardy did in 1950 when he threw a still record eight of these. Maybe it was the wind.”
$600: (Brandt) “Wes Welker and Demaryius Thomas each caught two scores as part of this quarterback’s monster seven touchdown day against the Ravens in the 2013 opener.”
$800: (Peter Schrager) “Those cliches about how ‘it’s just one game’ are true. In 1981 this team, led by Joe Montana and Bill Walsh, lost its first game to the Lions but ended up winning it all.”
$1,000: (Jamie Erdahl) “The Panthers opening game in 2011 showed off the arm of this flashy dresser as he passed for 422 yards, an NFL record for a player’s first game.”

“Who is Prince Albert?”

The correct responses to the NFL Week 1 category were:
$200: “What is kickoff?”
$400: “What are interceptions?”
$600: “Who is Peyton Manning?”
$800: “Who are the 49ers?”
$1,000: “Who is Cam Newton?”