Get up to speed with latest news impacting the sports business landscape in Chicago and beyond. 🗞️ 

Chicago

Good riddance to 2024: Chicago sports at its worst In business as it is in sports, losing is bad for business. The Sox are lowering ticket prices by 10% for 2025 after their historically bad 2024 season. The Hawks went from the third-most valuable team in the NHL in 2023 to the sixth-most after another frustrating calendar year (it appears the misery will continue in 2025). The Bulls, despite the highest attendance in the NBA last season and residing in the third biggest market in the country, won’t spend big to reward our loyalty with more wins and less mediocrity. Jon Greenberg, diehard Chicago sports fan and columnist from The Athletic, perfectly sums up our undying loyalty: “We complain about the teams we watch and we complain when we can’t watch them”. Good riddance to 2024, Chicago’s worst collective sports year in history. Greenberg details just how bad it got and offers a bit of hope for 2025.

Good Guy Award winner Cole Kmet is a friend to the local media There hasn’t been much of anything positive to report on the Bears in a long time. Their overly optimistic portrayal on “Hard Knocks” is the only positive media for the team other than the 4-2 start to the season. Cole Kmet, the Lake Barrington native, takes sympathy on the media reporting on the Bears for a living and he’s been recognized for doing so. Kmet won his second Jeff Dickerson Good Guy Award this last week. The Chicago chapter of the Pro Football Writers of America presents the award each year. It’s given to a Bears player who helps the media do their job best. This press release explains how the award got its name, summarizes Kmet’s speech, and tells what he earns for the prize.

Negotiations between CHSN and Comcast only lead to more fan frustration As if being a Chicago sports fan right now isn’t brutal enough, the prolonged drama around CHSN has been a kick in the head while on the ground. Especially for Comcast customers. As these matters typically do, it comes down to the money. CHSN, to their credit, wants lower prices for its customers and to keep them on Comcast’s middle-tier price package. Comcast wants everyone on a higher-tier price package. Now that CHSN rolled out its direct-to-consumer app in November, the chances of a deal with Comcast seem slimmer. But like the glimmer of hope we tell ourselves at the beginning of the season when preparing to watch the Hawks, Sox, and Bulls, there’s still a chance for this to work out. The Athletic covers the dilemma from the onset of the stalemate between CHSN and Comcast. 

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Chicago Sky's Angel Reese set to make debut in new 3-on-3 Women's Basketball League Angel Reese will look to build on her successful rookie season in the WNBA by making some noise in the new upstart league, Unrivaled. As the Sky’s only player featured, Reese joins 35 other WNBA players in an offseason league that offers an alternative to playing overseas (many WNBA players play overseas in the offseason to supplement their notoriously low income from the WNBA). On top of featuring some of the biggest new and established stars like Reese, the league offers groundbreaking benefits to its players like ownership in the teams and record-breaking compensation compared to other women’s pro sports in the U.S. All games will take place in Miami, gifting Reese a chance to bypass her first real winter as a Chicagoan. Find out more about the rules, whether Caitlin Clark will rekindle her rivalry with Angel Reese, and how much players will earn.

National

Netflix fully in bed with sports after FIFA Women's World Cup deal, no longer a one-night stand stand In a complete 180° move from previous statements, Netflix is going all in on live sports. First, it was only interested in one-off events like the one-on-one tennis match it hosted last March between Rafael Nadal and Carlos Alcaraz. Now, Netflix announced it owns the media rights to the next two FIFA Women’s World Cups. The pivot from a little over a year ago to shelling out billions on sports is worse than waking up on your 50th birthday and deciding to buy a Ferrari. This move transforms their image from a general entertainment streaming app to a major player in sports streaming. See how Netflix is pivoting and what other sports they plan to add.  

MLB takes on $182 million loans on behalf of unnamed clubs Outside of big-money contracts for players, this offseason for the MLB has featured plenty of news already. Right after Christmas, the MLB announced it was taking on new loans of $182.15 million. The loans will be on behalf of unnamed clubs. I’d bet Luis Robert Jr.’s salary that the Sox are one of the unnamed clubs in trouble. As a less publicized side of its financial operations, the MLB can borrow from long-term national broadcast contracts and other pledged revenues to help its clubs. The loans happen through an MLB trust or fund and eliminate team-related risks to investors. Despite dealing with cord-cutting and the ongoing bankruptcy of Diamond Sports, the league maintains an A rating, according to Fitch Ratings. Sportico breaks down the structure of the debt and how MLB’s debt leverage compares to other major sports leagues.

How Pop-Tarts is taking on the NIL era and the new CFP Pop-Tarts has evolved from a lovable sugary breakfast snack to a potential CFP disrupter. Amid college football’s playoff expansion minimizing other bowl games, the Pop-Tarts Bowl has emerged as a refreshing departure from the norm. The 2023 Pop-Tarts Bowl was one of the most-viewed bowl games outside of the CFP (4.3 million viewers) and generated $12.1 million in earned media value. Using a blend of creative marketing and a rejection of the status quo, the Pop-Tarts Bowl captured the attention of millions who would normally ignore an inconsequential bowl game like this. Front Office Sports recounts the stunts Pop-Tarts pulled out in the 2024 edition and how it could change how other bowl games market themselves.

Done before they got started: Dartmouth Men's basketball players end unionization attempt Dartmouth’s men’s basketball team is waving the white flag in its attempt to unionize. If only the White Sox could’ve waived a white flag halfway through their 121 losses. The team was trying to become the first group of college athletes to bargain for a contract in the latest wrinkle of the NIL era. Recognizing the uphill battle they face with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) after Trump’s re-election, the group decided to regroup. The school itself refused to negotiate with the athletes to force their case onto the federal stage. As the NCAA dukes it out in court to preserve its old amateur model in college, the Dartmouth case would set a new precedence in categorizing student-athletes as employees of their school. See how the case could revolutionize relations between schools and athletes.

FBI warns sports leagues about organized crime groups, string of burglaries to pro athletes Home is becoming less of where the heart is for professional athletes. After a string of burglaries among high-profile NFL and NBA players, the FBI is stepping in to issue a warning. Luka Doncic, Jow Burrow, and Patrick Mahomes are a few of the athletes hit by organized theft groups from South America. Jerry Reinsdorf appears to be safe for now, despite stockpiling cash at home instead of spending it on improving the Chicago teams he owns. In most cases, the break-ins have happened while players are on road games with their teams. The Tribune reports on how the theft groups are orchestrating the attacks and how the FBI wants players to keep a low profile. 

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