On the latest Sporticast episode, hosts Scott Soshnick and Eben Novy-Williams discuss some of the biggest sports business stories of the week, including the online hysteria surrounding the ‘torpedo bats‘ in MLB.
The oddly-shaped bats have become one of the biggest baseball stories of the first week of the season, taking the internet by storm after fans noticed them in use by the New York Yankees on a day when they scored 20 runs. Since then other players have tried them, some with instant success. Players and managers are being asked about them daily. Some bat manufacturers have also begun selling them for young players.
Turns out, however, the bats were in use by some MLB players for more than a year. And not all of them think they are game changers. The hosts talk about the small sample size being used by fans, and whether many are overreacting. They also react to the perfect storm of modern virality, where people online think they’ve uncovered something secretive and deeply impactful. Is it more of an internet story than a baseball story?
Next they talk about the latest with the long, drawn out sale of the Minnesota Timberwolves and Lynx. Buyers Alex Rodriguez and Marc Lore had reached an agreement with disgruntled seller Glen Taylor, who will stop his fight to terminate their deal and retain control of the team. Barring a shocker from the NBA’s approval process, Rodriguez and Lore will pay the remaining $942 million to buy 100% of the clubs. They’d get the franchises at a massive discount. Their deal, inked in 2021, values the clubs at $1.5 billion; Sportico now values them around $3.3 billion.
They close by talking about two recent Sportico exclusives. The NHL has a new 12-year Canadian TV deal worth CA$11 billion, or roughly $7.7 billion at today’s exchange rates. Also, David Blitzer is near a deal to sell control of his two Utah soccer teams, Real Salt Lake and the Utah Royals.
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