Well, football is officially back and in more ways than Thursday night's Hall of Fame game in Canton. But that's where we'll begin today's SBJ Morning Buzzcast for Friday, August 7th. I'm Josh Carpenter, your host. That's right. My Carolina Panthers and the Arizona Cardinals played in last night's Hall of Fame game.
An exciting walk-off win for Haynes King and the Panthers. It was good to see football back on the television, and I was interested to see how Mike Tomlin fared overall in his debut on the Football Night in America team. Overall, I thought he was very solid. He seemed to have very good chemistry with his teammates, and I liked that he was pretty bold in his proclamation that Aaron Donald would eventually return to the Rams. I will say, and I pointed this out on this week's SBJ Sports Media podcast, the Hall of Fame game has always held a bit of a special place for me. I was only six years old at the time, but can still vividly remember that 1995 Hall of Fame contest between the expansion Jaguars and the Panthers, the first game for each franchise. And I vividly remember an old...
family friend of ours, Bob Christian, scoring the first touchdown in Panthers history in that game. So some good memories last night around the Hall of Fame game. But outside of the Hall of Fame game, there was big news around the NFL on Thursday and not on the field. Fox Corporation held its fourth quarter earnings call and talked a lot about the World Cup. We'll get to that later. But CEO Lachlan Murdoch broke some very big news when he confirmed that the network and the NFL would not look to renegotiate their TV contract prior to the 2030 season. Why is that big news? The NFL's current deals run through the 2033 season, but the league and its partners have an opt-out after the 2029 campaign.
And there's been persistent discussion for the past year that the league could go to market even earlier, perhaps as soon as this year. If the NFL renegotiated those deals early, it would create a significant domino effect with other sports properties and their own media deals. But now Fox and Lachlan Murdoch are saying that won't happen before 2030. He didn't give a specific reason why. And that's on the heels of CBS and the NFL reportedly pausing their own renegotiation talks with the impending Paramount and WBD merger. Now, the NFL could still invoke a clause in its contract with CBS and renegotiate that deal following the Paramount Skydance merger last year. So we could still see some movement on the NFL rights front in the next few years.
but not between Fox and the NFL. Let's stay with Fox as they did report Q4 and full-year results on Thursday, as I mentioned before, and boy, did they have a big year thanks to the World Cup. Specifically on the TV ad side, we talked about Fox's hydration breaks and their other commercial inventory ad nauseum around the tournament, and they appeared to pay off. Fox reported advertising revenue alone of $1.9 billion in its Q4, which included the World Cup, a 78% increase over the same period in 2025. Overall, for fiscal year 2026, Fox had more than $17 billion in revenue, a 5% increase over 2025. And how can you tell how strong that was?
The previous year included a Super Bowl for Fox as well as a presidential election cycle. Fox did also say it expected some of that Q4 revenue boost to slip over into its Q1 for 2027. So a major, major win for Fox Corp in Q4 thanks to the World Cup. Speaking of the World Cup, a big story late Thursday from the New York Times, which reported that the day before the World Cup final, key FIFA figures faced an opportunity to sign off on the multi-billion dollar privatization project led by President Gianni Infantino. A group of five top directors from FIFA's Bureau of the Management Board had been summoned to a hastily organized meeting at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel in Manhattan, and they had until midnight to sign off on a plan that has drawn so much attention over the past few weeks. That project purported to sell a 20% stake in FIFA to a group of investors led by Joshua Kushner.
Sources told The Time that the Bureau's role was to review significant financial transactions, but most of those five members had not even heard about this plan. Infantino was not at the meeting, the sources said, who also noted that some of the Bureau's members talked privately about their misgivings and the repercussions of saying no to a boss like Infantino. Eventually, three members signed off on the agreement before the deadline, and two did not. Let's go over a few quick hitters to end today. I've woken up a few times over the past year plus to big stories overnight from Pablo Torre, and that certainly was the case again on Friday morning, as a new report from him details another alleged undisclosed sponsorship surrounding Clippers star Kawhi Leonard.
this one around Daktronics, the video boardmaker for Intuit Dome. Torre interviewed someone identified as an anonymous high-level source under contract for Intuit Dome who alleged that the sponsorship deal was, quote, 1,000% away to circumvent the salary cap. Torre also cited an anonymous former Clippers official who said they knew that Leonard had a sponsorship deal with Daktronics. A spokesperson who represented Daktronics told Hunterbrook Media, which collaborated with Torre on the story last night, that Leonard doesn't have an active contract with the company. You'll remember Torre reported last year that Leonard had another undisclosed sponsorship with another former Clippers sponsor.
aspiration. While there continues to be a lot of news around the WNBA for a lot of reasons, another one on Thursday came from my colleague Rachel Axon, who reported that Cleveland's WNBA team, the Sirens, saw an immediate boost in season ticket deposits and merchandise sales after launching earlier this week. The team, which is owned by Rock Entertainment Group, added around 2,000 initial payments for season tickets in the two days after their branding announcement. The team already had around 9,000 going into the branding being announced. The Sirens also have generated more than six figures in merchandise sales since the launch of the branding on Tuesday. Its one-day total on Wednesday ranks second in the five-year history of Rock Entertainment Group's retail business, trailing only behind the day the Cavaliers acquired Donovan Mitchell.
And finally today, I love talking about sponsorships in sports, and my colleague Bill King reported Thursday that Polymarket will join the rotation of brands prominently displayed behind home plate at Yankee Stadium for the rest of the season as part of a sponsorship deal that also includes premium seats and single-game suite availability. This is the first team deal Polymarket has signed since splurging to lock down an exclusive position as the official prediction platform on MLB in March. And while that deal gave the brand exposure across MLB-controlled channels and on national telecasts, the deal with the Yankees gives it a more consistent presence. Along with the home plate rotation, Polymarket gets LED branding throughout the ballpark. The Mets inked a deal last week, adding Novig as its...
exclusive prediction market partner, becoming the first MLB club to fill this new sponsorship category. This week on the SBJ Sports Media Podcast, Austin Carp and I break down Disney's early sellout of Super Bowl ad inventory as well as the company's Q3 earnings. Also, the latest on Tony Romo's future with CBS as the NFL season looms and the Preakness Stakes solidifies its future. Finally, Mike Golick Sr. and Jr. join the show and detail how their ESPN Homecoming came about and what to expect from the father-son duo on ESPN Radio. All that and more on the SBJ Sports Media Podcast. Make sure you like and subscribe, available now wherever you get your podcasts.
So that'll do it for today's SBJ Morning Buzzcaster, Friday, August 7th. I hope you all have a great weekend. For Sports Business Journal, I'm Josh Carpenter, and we'll see you down the road.