Good morning, all! It’s hump day!
Venezuela has won its first WBC title in its first appearance in the finals, with a thrilling 3-2 win over the U.S. in Miami. In a game dominated by pitching, the U.S. trailed 2-0 in the last of the eighth, before Bryce Harper slugged a dramatic two-run homer. Venezuela came right back in the ninth, as Eugenio Suárez broke the deadlock with an RBI-double.
Major League Baseball is considering more rules changes to improve pace-of-play, and once again the minor leagues are serving as the testing ground for the proposals. I break it down in the video and podcast.
Here are some other thoughts one week before the opening of the MLB season:
I had a Division I men’s college basketball coach tell me, if his team was on the bubble, he would much rather be in the NCAA Tournament’s First Four rather than a number 15 seed, because it gave his program more exposure. It is tough to disagree with that. Think about it. You have eight teams vying to play in the first round on Thursday or Friday as the lowest seed, yet on Tuesday and Wednesday nights (Each night has two games), your school is showcased as the only game in town on national TV. On Thursday or Friday your team is lost in the mix. If your goal, as a coach, is to gain your program notoriety, taking that first step on the Tuesday or Wednesday before the first round of the tournament, is not the worst scenario.
Sportico is reporting Shohei Ohtani is getting $125M this season just from sponsors. What a world.
UConn women’s basketball is a huge revenue generator, according to the Sports Business Journal. SBJ reported the 2025 program produced $8.5M of total revenue, a 7% increase from 2024 and almost double from 2023. Cha-ching!
The WBC semifinal between the U.S. and Dominican Republic may have been opposite the Academy Awards and on second tier cable TV channels (FS1 and Fox Deportes), but the game shattered WBC ratings nonetheless. The numbers show the average audience for the game on Sunday night was 7.37M. That figure marks one of the ten largest baseball audiences of the last year, including MLB’s 2025 post season. It will be interesting to see what last night’s numbers for the WBC finale between the U.S. and Venezuela produced.
That is going to do it for today’s newsletter. Thank you so much for being a subscriber and have a wonderful Wednesday!
DAN
