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Colorado Summit’s Ultimate Frisbee matches to air live on TV

The Colorado Summit of the Ultimate Frisbee Association (UFA) announced live broadcast partnership with MTN TV and MTN Sports to broadcast matches for the 2024 season. Starting Saturday, May 4, viewers across Colorado will have the opportunity to watch all Colorado Summit matches from the comfort of their homes for free.
The Colorado Summit, founded with a mission to promote the sport of ultimate frisbee and foster a community of passionate players and fans, has quickly risen to prominence on the ultimate frisbee scene. In the team’s first two seasons in the UFA, the Summit has made the playoffs both seasons and led the league in attendance while amassing a 77% winning record over that time.

The team plays its home games at Marv Kay Stadium at Colorado School of Mines in Golden. The collaboration between the Colorado Summit and MTN TV stands to bring the sport of ultimate frisbee to a wider audience, fostering greater engagement and support within the community.

MTN TV, which reaches more than 2 million households in Colorado, is the state’s only outdoor and local sports network and committed to delivering top-tier sports content to viewers as part of its MTN Sports programming.

Fans can catch the Summit in action starting May 4 at 4:30 p.m. MT as it hosts the Seattle Cascades. The match will be accessible on MTN TV with an antenna on the Front Range on channel 28.1, on Xfinity in select mountain towns and throughout Colorado on the free MTN TV Roku, AppleTV and FireTV apps. Fans can also stream the Colorado Summit and all the UFA games live via watchUFA.tv.

For more information about the Colorado Summit and to stay up to date on news and events, visit watchufa.com/summit.

Learn more about how to watch MTN TV at mtn-tv.com.The live broadcast schedule can be found at mtn-tv.com/sports.

Three Things Colorado Student Athletes Should Know Before Signing a Name, Image, Likeness Agreement.

On January 1, 2023, Senate Bill 20-123 became law in Colorado, which codified the statutory rights of student athletes to receive compensation for their name, image, and likeness (“NIL”). This new law comes at the heels of a transition in college sports where the National Collegiate Athletic Association (“NCAA”) is now allowing student athletes to receive compensation from NIL agreements — so long as those agreements are unrelated to an athlete’s decision to play at any given collegiate institution. 

While Colorado has enacted laws regulating student athlete NIL agreements, such laws do not always shield student athletes from predatory actors. Additionally, the NCAA has not yet established comprehensive NIL guidelines for student athletes. In the midst of such uncertainty, student athletes in Colorado should keep the following three things in mind when entering into a NIL agreement.

READ: How the Name, Image, Likeness (NIL) Revolution is Changing the World of College Sports

1. Find a licensed attorney to review any NIL agreement

According to industry professionals, incompetent and predatory representation of student athletes is prevalent in the NIL market. On September 20, 2023, members of the House Committee on Small Business held a hearing (“September 2023 Hearing”) relating to the federal government’s role, if any, in regulating the student athlete NIL agreements.

The witnesses included current Athletic Directors of Texas Christian University and Ohio State, as well as the Vice President of the College Football Players’ Association. Each witness emphasized the need for firmer protections of athlete NIL rights and warned against predatory actors attempting to swindle student athletes.

One example mentioned at the hearing was Chicago Bears rookie Gervon Dexter, who signed over 15% of his pre-tax NFL earnings for the next 25 years in exchange for a one-time payment of $436,485 within an NIL agreement. Notably, Dexter is now set to earn 7 million dollars over the next four years. 

To prevent future unfair agreements, Colorado law requires any person providing legal representation to a student athlete to be a licensed attorney. This common-sense protection benefits athletes because all attorneys are legally bound to act in their client’s best interest, and in the case of grossly incompetent representation, nearly all attorneys carry malpractice insurance to compensate for an attorney’s behavior.

These ethical safeguards ensure student athletes get the best outcomes in their NIL agreements — and can advise on additional legal matters such as copyright and trademark protection, as well as complying with the Federal Trade Commission’s requirements for endorsers. 

Further, the NIL landscape is filled with legal obstacles that student athletes must navigate. The NCAA frequently updates its NIL guidelines, and Congress is considering federal legislation that, if enacted, would establish ground rules for all current and future NIL agreements.

Finding a licensed attorney to review an NIL agreement reduces the risk of non-compliance with NCAA regulations, as well as Colorado and federal law, while also safeguarding a student athlete’s interest in contract negotiations.

READ: Navigating Sports Politics as College Football Evolves — CU Buffs Aim High

2. Pay close attention to an NIL agreement’s duration and fee structure

Student athletes should pay particularly close attention to the duration and fee structure of any NIL agreement. A student athlete’s NIL agreements should never extend beyond the time an athlete is playing intercollegiate sports because, as with Gervon Dexter, professional athletes have substantially higher potential income and NIL value.

Some states, like Texas or Oklahoma, affirmatively protect this future professional value through requiring every NIL agreement to specify the duration of the contract to ensure the agreement does not extend beyond the student athlete’s participation in the intercollegiate program. See Tex. Educ. Code § 51.9246(g)(2)(C); Okla. Stat. tit. 70, § 820.25(C).

However, Colorado law does not contain this same protection — and Colorado student athletes should be careful to avoid entering into one-sided, long-term NIL agreements.

Student athletes should also pay attention to the fee and compensation provisions of an NIL agreement. In his opening statements during the September 2023 Hearing, Congressman and Chairman of the House Committee on Small Business, Roger Williams, referenced examples of student athletes signing NIL agreements with nearly 40% commissions, complex fee structures and one particularly egregious agreement that essentially signed a student athlete to a $100,000 loan.

As mentioned above, the length and terms of an athlete’s NIL agreement may affect an athlete’s future professional earnings, and here again, Colorado lacks any particular protections for standardizing NIL agreements or the fee structure of such agreements. Consequently, it falls on the shoulders of student athletes and their attorneys to closely examine such language to best position a student athlete to avoid predatory fee agreements.  

READ: Live from Colorado — The Future of Sports Betting

3. Student athlete endorsers must comply with Federal Trade Commission (FTC) requirements

Student athletes, like any other advertiser or endorser, are subject to the FTC’s authority to regulate commerce. Failure to comply with these FTC requirements may subject both student athletes and educational institutions to civil penalties for disseminating a deceptive advertisement.

Relevant here, the FTC requires student athletes to

  1. Make honest statements regarding an endorsed product or avoid making statements that could not be made directly by an advertiser.
  2. Become a bona fide user of an endorsed product.
  3. Have no barrier to disclosing its relationship to the brand, marking any content as an advertisement.

The FTC further explains the “most important principle” when complying with FTC guidelines is that a proposed endorsement represents the accurate experience and opinion of the endorsers. Student athletes, for instance, cannot talk about an experience with a product they have never tried, or if an endorser has only tried a product once, then that person cannot state he or she uses it regularly. 

Simply put, student athletes must be honest about their experiences with and opinions of any endorsed products. Practically speaking, student athletes should consider language in their NIL agreement which ensures the athlete will not be compelled to make any public representations or statements that conflict with FTC requirements and other fair advertising laws. 

 

Benjamin Longnecker headshotAndrew GreenBenjamin Longnecker is an associate in the Denver office of Snell & Wilmer. He focuses his practice on commercial litigation. He may be reached at [email protected].

Andrew Green is an associate in the Denver and Los Angeles offices of Snell & Wilmer. He focuses his practice on commercial litigation, and represents clients in matters involving breaches of contract, construction disputes, trade secret misappropriation, trademark infringement, and unfair competition. He may be reached at [email protected].

The Butterfly Effect: How MLB Rule Changes Are Reshaping Baseball and Businesses in Denver

More action, fewer delays and baserunners scampering like fire ants are welcome contributions of 2023’s MLB rule changes. That, and a clampdown on a moment even hard-core loyalists detested: Watching a light-hitting infielder adjusting his batting gloves between pitches with the determination of a Parisian chef finishing off tonight’s amuse bouche. Ball one. Delay for glove adjustment. Strike one. More glove stuff. Ball two. Glove needs tightening. Next: another ball. Hmmm, wonder who’s posting on Instagram right now?  

Almost universally, the pivot to a faster-paced, shorter-duration game governed by a pitch clock has won praise. “These speeded-up games are working,” ESPN veteran baseball analyst Tim Kurkjian declared to radio host Dan Patrick early in the season.  

Through about one-fourth of the regular season, MLB games at Coors Field and elsewhere were clocking in at a bit under two hours and forty minutes —a big reduction from the three-hour-plus marathons of old. Casual fans at Coors Field are hereby put on notice: Line up to order a Helton Burger and you risk missing the rest of the game.  

READ: Navigating Sports Politics as College Football Evolves — CU Buffs Aim High

At least, that’s the reaction tied to the playing of the game. Outside the ballpark, in the baseball-meets-business realm, nobody’s quite sure what to make of the new rules.  

Remember the Butterfly Effect, the Chinese proverb brought to popular attention in author Michael Crichton’s “Jurassic Park”? It argues that even the most innocent-seeming actions ripple across the universe. “The flapping of the wings of a butterfly can be felt across the world,” goes the saying. Or, as I like to think of it: “Dinger dances atop the third-base dugout and a bus driver in Oslo belches.” Hey, everything’s connected.  

There’s a Butterfly Effect of sorts happening beyond the Coors Field turnstiles, where a mini ecosystem surrounds the game, with players ranging from Homemade Burrito Woman on 20th Street to parking lot owners and restaurant operators. For them, shorter games have spillover consequences. 

“The entrance to Coors Field is 500 feet from my front door,” observed Josh Kritner when I asked him about the MLB rule changes, “You better believe this has an influence on my business.”  

Kritner runs the popular LoDo hangout Viewhouse on behalf of its owner Lotus Concepts. He says shorter games, in the right circumstance, can provoke more spending. On busy Friday or Saturday game nights, Viewhouse’s servers will pour beers and deliver platters of nachos to 2,000 or more patrons. Historically, many of these were one-and-done customers, in the door for a pre-game beverage or meal and then out for the night. Now, with 6:40 p.m. games often ending by 9 p.m., Kritner is seeing many fans return post-game.  

READ: How the Name, Image, Likeness (NIL) Revolution is Changing the World of College Sports

But the yang to this yin is competition from the Rockies directly. The decision to counter truncated game durations by extending the beer-selling window through the eighth inning – it used to be the seventh – cuts into Viewhouse’s own beverage sales. “As a restaurant in LoDo, that hurts,” says Kritner. “Guys have already had two more beers. There’s no point in coming back to get a cocktail.” 

The Rockies’ decision to keep the taps running reflects the economic importance of the concession business. Food and beverage sales, along with parking fees and other on-site sales, account for about 16 percent of revenues for a typical MLB team, per the statistics analysis firm fivethirtyeight.com.  

At the ballpark, time really is money. Cutting down the minutes people spend on site by nearly 10 percent leaves less time to fetch a Rockies dog or a late-game pile of Dippin’ Dots (you know: colorful frozen orbs served in a bowl that’s supposed to resemble a batting helmet). Beer yields high margins per transaction, so it’s an easy target for recovering some of the operating profit, even if the decision flies in the face of a longstanding pledge to discourage overserved fans late in the game.  

Beyond MLB rule changes, Rockies ownership is feeling residual impact from fan sentiment. A moribund start to the season, coupled with malaise tied to the team’s many errors in baseball judgment — third baseman Nolan Arenado is the No. 1 poster child here — have left their mark. Average game-day attendance through early May was 27,000, down about 15 percent from last year’s number, and down to the lowest level since 2005, excepting the 2020 Covid aberration.  

Fewer fans translates to lower gate revenue (a big line-item, accounting for nearly 30 percent of a team’s total take) along with reduced concession and merchandising sales. Add to that a worrisome development on the media side. Warner Bros. Discovery, the parent of Rockies TV carrier AT&T Sportsnet, wants to wriggle out of the regional sports business altogether, raising questions about who, if anyone, will jump into a market that’s deteriorating thanks to unrelenting pay TV cord-cutting. Finally, out of left field, there’s the possibility of an MLB team landing in Salt Lake City — please, please call this team the Mortons — which could carve into regional allegiances.

READ: Altitude Vs. Comcast — The Changing Economy of Sports Media

So: A combination of new rules, shorter games, sagging attendance, an uncertain media landscape and a possible regional interloper is converging to change … something. What that may be, who knows? Despite the new pressures, few business endeavors offer more predictable long-term ROI than owning an MLB team. Forbes estimates the Rox are now worth close to $1.46 billion – nearly five times the amount calculated 20 years ago.  

Knowing the upward valuation trajectory, an outright change of ownership – the hoped-for outcome of many a fed-up fan – seems unlikely. Even so, sometimes the ball bounces in funny ways. Like a September call-up, it’s possible that at some point, the baseball Butterfly Effect will come into play for the Rockies. Maybe in a big way. 

 

Stewart Schley JpegStewart Schley writes about sports, media and technology from Denver. Read this and Schley’s past columns on the Web at cobizmag.com and email him at [email protected]

How the Name, Image, Likeness (NIL) Revolution is Changing the World of College Sports

Thanks to an assist from the U.S. Supreme Court, more than $1.1 billion is expected to flow to college athletes during the current sophomore year of the “Name, Image, Likeness” (NIL) revolution.

Wait: Make that $1.1 billion plus another $13. 

The extra dollars went to Duante Davis, a Colorado State University football player newly enriched by my personal VISA card. You’re welcome, friend. 

I came across Davis’ name within a sprawling digital landscape maintained by Opendorse, a Nebraska company that’s one of the big players in the NIL arena. Scanning a homepage jammed with names of colleges, I drilled down to a smallish rectangle sporting the familiar CSU logo (I’m a proud alum, so…). There, I found hundreds of student-athletes willing to spread a little NIL love, for a fee. 

READ: Navigating Sports Politics as College Football Evolves — CU Buffs Aim High

Opendorse and a handful of like-minded rivals resemble dating sites like Match.com — except they’re for athletes and fans, not aspiring romantics. In my case, what I selected and received a few days later was a personalized, five-second video suitable for showing off both to friends and unwitting strangers. (“Guys! A CSU defensive back knows my name!”) 

“Shoutouts” like this are among the handful of offerings advertised by Opendorse. With an athlete’s agreement, you can receive a personalized social media post, request an autograph, book an athlete to appear at an event, or negotiate a “pitch anything” deal. The proceeds are split: For my order, $13 went to Davis, and $4.33 went for a “marketplace fee,” a fancy way of describing a commission. 

Thirteen dollars is a trifle, of course, in a billion-dollar marketplace that’s populated with high-profile “influencers” who have hit the jackpot. Examples include the likes of Leah Clapper, a University of Florida gymnast who has appeared in TV commercials for the yogurt brand Yasso; and Bijan Robinson, a highly touted recruit for the University of Texas who has reportedly surpassed $1.7 million in NIL earnings. (Parents: Keep that youth sports flame burning.)

These individuals are the headliners. More common are small-money deals like the one I made with Davis, a Poudre High School graduate who redshirted last year for the Rams. Most start in the sub-$20 range for a brief video message, although players who have risen to the big time charge more. A shoutout from Shaq Barrett, the former CSU lineman who played this past season for the NFL’s Buccaneers, will cost you $1,000. 

Other lower-end NIL endorsement models are out there, too. At University of Denver, a business student named Carlos Fuentes is working with a handful of DU athletes to broker NIL arrangements with merchants like Saucy’s Southern BBQ & Cuisine on South University Boulevard. In exchange for mentioning the restaurant on Instagram and other social media platforms, a trio of guards for the DU men’s basketball team — Ben Bowen, Tommy Bruner and Tevin Smith — get something almost every college student aspires to: the occasional platter of smoked ribs, on the house. 

READ: Live from Colorado — The Future of Sports Betting 

In-kind deals like the Saucy’s alliance and a separate arrangement Fuentes has brokered between a DU athlete and a local clothing company are door-opening preludes to cash deals that Fuentes hopes will follow. “I’m starting small,” Fuentes told me.

Fuentes, a walk-on guard for the Pioneers men’s basketball team, is studying marketing and business analytics. He sees the combination of social media presence and the NIL ecosystem opening up new possibilities for athletes in the metro area and beyond. While it’s not exactly Scott Boras territory just yet, what he’s doing is emblematic of the widening playing field for athletes who used to be blocked from cashing in at any level.

Colorado is among the 32 states (through January) that have passed laws empowering student-athletes to make money via NIL dealmaking. These authorizations happened more or less in synch with the June 2021 U.S. Supreme Court decision that found decades-old NCAA restrictions violated U.S. antitrust law. Since the NCAA adopted interim NIL rules in the wake of the ruling, the floodgates have opened, with spending believed likely to crest the $1 billion mark in the second year (June 2022 to June 2023) of NIL activity. 

Not everybody loves the new reality. To some critics, NIL is little more than a wink-wink sanitizing of backdoor payoffs from title-hungry alums. That almost surely happens — donors gotta donate — but the cynicism may be overstated. Opendorse calculates that only 15% of spending in the first year of NIL activity came from donors, while 74%, came from brand deals. 

Regardless of the source, the more common application is what I test-drove with my new CSU acquaintance Duante Davis: small-dollar deals, not life-changing injections of cash. Opendorse says the average Division I NIL participant earned about $3,000 in the first year of accepting NIL money, with Division II athletes netting $328. 

But it’s the policy, not the price, that matters. In his concurring 2021 opinion, Justice Brett Kavanaugh pointed reverently to the grand traditions of college sports — game days in South Bend, Indiana (Notre Dame football), packed gyms in Durham and North Carolina (Duke University basketball). But tradition alone, Kavanaugh wrote, “cannot justify the NCAA’s decision to build a massive money-raising enterprise on the backs of student-athletes who are not fairly compensated.” It’s the word “massive” that carries the weight here. With more than $1 billion now flowing across the NIL transom, the $17.33 I spent on a personalized video greeting is starting to look like a bargain. 

 

Stewart Schley JpegStewart Schley writes about sports, media and technology from Denver. Read this and Schley’s past columns on the Web at cobizmag.com and email him at [email protected]

The Power of eClub Membership in the Colorado Golfing World: Reviving the Colorado Golf Association

When Colorado Golf Association membership growth landed in a bunker around about 2000, it couldn’t climb out. Ho, hum, 18 years of stagnation. Then came the 2020 pandemic and the golf explosion. By then, the CGA was ready to roll into high gear with its high-tech tool, the eClub membership.

“It used to be, you’d have to go into a golf shop, ask a grumpy pro shop employee, ‘How do I establish a handicap?’” says CGA Executive Director Ed Mate. “You’d get a very surly, not simple answer like, ‘See that box over there? There are forms there, I think.’ And you’d fill out a form and hope it stuck. Now, it’s so simple.”

You could join the CGA in those days, but most members joined the CGA by joining a golf club, either a private club or the men’s or women’s club at their local public course. CGA Chief Marketing Officer Erin Gangloff says it wasn’t until 2019 that the CGA began promoting eClub, which allows players to go online and assign themselves to one of five Regional eClubs for a membership fee of $59.95. 

READ: Inside Colorado’s Post-Pandemic Golf Goldrush

Through 2022, eClub enrollment had reached nearly 10,000. It’s the prime driver in overall CGA growth, from 59,000 in 2018 to 76,000 heading into this year.

“They’re predominantly men over the age of 50 who do not have loyalty to a club or a facility,” says Mate. “And they’re golfers who have no interest in joining a men’s club, a women’s club or any other type of club. They just play golf with their friends. Historically, that type of golfer was on the outside looking in. They really were not welcome, because they didn’t fit. That’s now changed.”

Mate says the USGA, the national governing body of golf, jump-started the CGA’s efforts by abandoning its long-held marketing strategy of imploring golfers to “join a club” and instead promoting a link on its website that said, “GET A HANDICAP.” A Colorado resident is then directed to the CGA website.

So far, the main benefits of eClub are an official handicap, reduced green fees at CommonGround, CGA tournament eligibility and access to CGA member play days, which have consisted of recreational rounds at some otherwise private courses. With research showing the state has 250,000 core and avid golfers, the CGA is continuing to look at adding member benefits to attract the 174,000 outsiders.

Says Mate, “If we’re smart and we continue to build reasons to join and tell our story, I don’t see any reason why we can’t be at at least 120,000 members in the next 10 years.”

 

Susan Fornoff has covered golf for the San Francisco Chronicle, regional golf associations and her own GottaGoGolf.com. She is a member of the Overland Park Golf Course and Links at Highlands Ranch women’s clubs. This is her seventh Executive Golf Guide for ColoradoBiz.

Meet Kelly Huff: Colorado’s Unconventional Golf Instructor with a TrackMan Advantage

Kelly Huff has tattoos and no PGA teaching credentials, which means he’s not your typical golf instructor. Yet, if you want to book time with him, you’d better be on the South Broadway Country Club website the third Monday of every month, when his calendar opens promptly at 9 a.m.

It’s not quite as difficult as buying Taylor Swift tickets. “No lottery yet,” Huff says, laughing at the thought. But, note the “yet.”

READ: Inside Colorado’s Post-Pandemic Golf Goldrush

“Some instructors are big talkers but they don’t really communicate,” says SBCC staff member Sam Dudley, who has a front-row seat for Huff’s sessions in the nearby TrackMan bays. “He speaks softly and communicates a ton without being overbearing. And it’s all very positive.”

It’s also very egalitarian. Huff’s students range from sports celebrities to newbies to top local golfers. “He does a really good job of leveraging the technology his facility has in TrackMan and using that for instruction,” says client Chris Thayer, the Colorado Golf Association’s Mid-Amateur Player of the Year in 2022. “And he does a good job of explaining that to his students. I think he was an early adopter, and it’s paid off for him.”

Huff fell for TrackMan, the simulator used by most PGA Tour pros, when he was director of instruction at an Atlanta private club.

“I had a good gig,” says Huff. “But I wanted to open my own teaching facility and started doing a lot of research on different golf markets around the country. TrackMan was all over the Southeast, and it was out in California. I saw the writing on the wall and I knew it was going to be a household name for golf improvement, but it hadn’t really made its way to Denver yet.”

READ: 6 Indoor Golfing Spaces to Book Your Tee Time in 2023

It had, however, made it to Portland, Oregon’s RedTail Golf Center, which had 10 TrackMen (now 14!) and an outdoor teaching line. Huff spent 18 months there learning the technology, earning certifications from the Titleist Performance Institute and U.S. Kids Golf, before moving to Denver in 2017 and opening on South Broadway. In 2018 he finally had his liquor permits, and SBCC joined the now crazy-popular niche of indoor golf bars.

By then, Huff had already built his teaching business, mostly by word of mouth but also by watching customers practice or play on the TrackMan. He’d watch them hit a few balls, guess their handicap and speculate on their typical miss. Next thing you know, lessons were booked.

For all his unconventional style, Huff hasn’t felt stigmatized by golf traditionalists. He and his wife, Amy, a real estate attorney who has helped him expand the business to Tennyson Street and Fort Collins, joined Lakewood Country Club in 2020 and have a regular Friday game there.

“I really do love the old school, traditional, mind-your-Ps-and-Qs country club side of golf,” Huff says. “But I obviously like the avantgarde modernization of the game as well. Golf is becoming cooler and cooler. It’s not as stuffy as it used to be, but I truly like both sides of that.”

 

Susan Fornoff has covered U.S. Opens and the Masters for the San Francisco Chronicle, written two golf books and founded GottaGoGolf.com, a website and newsletter for women golfers. She recently relocated to Littleton, and hopes to play all of Colorado’s 10 toughest golf courses – from the most forward tees.

Altitude Vs. Comcast — The Changing Economy of Sports Media

Don’t tax you, don’t tax me, tax that fella behind the tree! — The kicky chant coined by former Louisiana senator Russell Long encapsulates the quandary affecting whether the Denver Nuggets and the Colorado Avalanche show up on your television screen.  

The fault here lies with: Other Guy.  

Not the cable company, not the Altitude regional sports network. Other Guy.

In the good ol’ days of a bygone sports-media ecosystem, Other Guy helped to foot the bill for Nuggets games on TV. That was ironic, because Other Guy didn’t follow the Nuggets. Didn’t care how many offensive rebounds the team racked up against the Warriors. Thought the “Joker” was a Batman nemesis.

But he paid for the games anyway. Every month, he kicked in a few dollars from his cable bill to support the team’s owner, Kroenke Sports Entertainment, and its Altitude sports channel. This same formula prevailed nationally for tens of millions of pay TV customers and their regional sports networks (“RSNs” in TV language).  

It was what Charles Ergen, the dry-witted, Tennessee-bred founder and chairman of Colorado-based Dish Network, called an RSN tax: a fee you had to pay, whether you wanted to or not. Pretty much everybody chipped in.  

Until they didn’t. Around 2015, something started happening that was bigger than Altitude, Comcast or Dish Network. People started disconnecting their pay TV service altogether, fleeing to a new assortment of streaming services like Netflix. A few people at first, then a torrent. From 2015 to 2021, Comcast lost more than 4 million video subscribers – a drop of 19%. A bunch of them were in Colorado. 

As cable customers defected, the pool of “taxpayers” shrunk, putting pressure on an ecosystem that once spat out money like an ATM. Every time a subscriber checked out, Altitude lost a payment. Comcast felt the pain, too. Fewer people paying for television meant its video business was withering. 

You can see the standoff taking shape here: Altitude’s revenue from the cable guy was shrinking as people cut the cord, while pay-TV providers like Comcast and Dish TV were watching their video business deteriorate. Great time to be prepping for a new deal.  

Not long after, Ergen made a move that sent the RSN category trembling. In the summer of 2019, the Dish TV boss authorized managers to drop from the lineup 16 RSNs owned by a category newcomer, Sinclair Broadcast Group.  

Industry watchers gasped. Was Ergen losing his marbles? People surely were going to abandon his satellite TV service by the droves.  

Except, wait: They were already abandoning his satellite TV service. Ergen understood the cold reality of the moment. If the pay TV business was deteriorating anyway, why keep paying to carry expensive sports channels lots of people didn’t watch?  

A decades-old business model was officially under siege. But Ergen came out all right. The media industry analyst Rich Greenfield, a frequent CNBC contributor, calculated that a modest acceleration in Dish TV defections, costing Dish around $40 million, was more than offset by the money Dish saved by abandoning the Sinclair channels: close to $400 million. Ergen explained his decision to analysts, describing RSNs as “outliers … in terms of the amount of money they charge and collect versus the amount of people who actually view them.” 

Of course, this is not what Avalanche Fan wants to hear. Avalanche Fan just wants games to return to the television screen. But there’s a fair chance that won’t happen until a new economic model rises.  

One example is popping up out west. The NBA’s Los Angeles Clippers in October inaugurated ClipperVision, a “direct-to-consumer” video service that streams 72 of 84 live Clippers games for $199 per season. The RSN aggregator Bally Sports (a Sinclair corporate cousin) is eyeing a similar gambit across its RSNs, floating a price point of $20 per month.  

Whether Altitude might embrace a “direct” model remains an open question, although it’s a certainty management has run the numbers. For now, Kroenke Sports Chief Operating Officer Matthew Hutchings – a veteran media industry executive who used to run Comcast’s Houston-based RSN – is working with intermediaries like Fubo TV, an online video aggregator. Fans who sign up for Fubo TV can layer on the Altitude Now streaming service for an extra fee. But (at least as of yet) they can’t do what ClipperVision subscribers can do: purchase the streaming service in the internet wild, as a self-standing offering. 

To be sure, emotions run high here. But calling Comcast a bunch of “bullies,” as the late Peter McNab did on Twitter, doesn’t solve anything. Nobody is a bully, any more than the guy who pulls up to the parking lot with a taco truck is a bully. Taco Truck Guy has to eke out a living from paying customers. The same will eventually be true for RSNs. Taxing that fella behind the tree is no longer an option.

 

Stewart Schley JpegStewart Schley writes about sports, media and technology from Denver. Read this and Schley’s past columns on the Web at cobizmag.com and email him at [email protected]

Navigating Sports Politics as College Football Evolves — CU Buffs Aim High

Addressing reporters at the Pac-12 conference media day this summer, University of Colorado head football coach Karl Dorrell looked every bit the man in the maelstrom. For starters, the former UCLA coach used the words “challenging” and “disappointing” to describe the previous season, when the bowl-less Buffaloes ended up 4-8.

But that was then. Now, as Dorrell and a new offensive staff attempt to win games, bigger pressures lurk. The pending exits from the Pac-12 of the mighty USC Trojans, along with Dorrell’s alma mater UCLA, are two of them. The emergence of the college football transfer portal, which enables players to signal their desire to switch teams with a few keystrokes, is another. Then there’s the added flux stirred up by NIL – the acronym for “name, image, likeness” that allows athletes to auction off the rights for commercial use of their personas.

Somewhere in the mix, Dorrell has to actually coach a football team. But right now, devising formations and calculating fourth-down odds seem downright antiquated, given that college football at large is undergoing a pretty big jolt in the shoulder pads.  

CU’s football economic future hangs in the balance. As the university looked this summer for ways to grow football revenue beyond the roughly $43 million taken in last year, one consideration was to return to the Big 12 conference the university left behind in 2011. Alternatively, CU could hold fast to the Pac-12, hoping the conference can embolden its appeal with the addition of Boise State and/or other prominent programs.

No matter what CU does, the decision will have spillover effects on rivalries, fan interest, merchandise sales, season-ticket demand, TV ratings, and the colors of the uniforms worn by the opposing team.

READ — A Deep Dive Into the Wide World of Sports Podcasting

Fabulous Folsom

On a sun-blessed September afternoon at Folsom Field, there are few venues where a football game attains more grandeur. The stadium’s spectacular setting and the wild romp of 500-pound buffalo to inaugurate the game make for some serious pageantry.

The fans are into it. With loyalists pouring back after the worst of the Covid-19 scare, Folsom was near the top of the Pac-12 in terms of attendance last season: Average game-day crowds of 46,484 fans equated to more than 90 percent of Folsom’s roughly 50,000 available seats. Only Washington, USC, Utah and Oregon drew more fans in 2021.

But the local fervor hasn’t fully translated to the national stage. Through last season, Colorado ranked seventh out of the 12 Pac-12 teams in terms of national television viewers tracing to 2016 (but excluding the truncated 2020 season). Per the sports industry researcher Sports Media Watch, CU attracted bigger TV audiences than conference peers Utah, Cal-Berkeley, the two Arizona schools and Oregon State, but trailed Pac-12 belles USC,  Oregon, Stanford and UCLA, along with Washington and Washington State.

The national attention deficit reminds us that CU, which last won a bowl game in 2004, doesn’t control its own media destiny. Rather, it needs to draft on the airstream of more prominent peers to capture part of a media-rights pie that has been under intensive renegotiation in the wake of the USC and UCLA withdrawals.

There’s a lot happening here. The roiling of the Pac-12 dovetailed with: the SEC and the Big Ten prepping to expand to 16 teams by 2025; the Big 12 ushering in BYU, Central Florida, Cincinnati and Houston for 2023; Notre Dame continuing to tease various conferences (because: Notre Dame); and a general “who’s on first” sort of madness prevailing. It seems like a long time since CU’s pivot to the Pac-12 and away from a lineage of hard-scrabble games across windswept fields in places like Norman, OK and Lincoln, NE.

Now, the move to the Pac-12 seems fraught. The loss of conference powers Oregon or Washington could further dilute the conference’s appeal, forcing CU’s hand as university administrators consider alternatives to maximize exposure and media revenue.

It’s within this environment that Dorrell, a trim, confidence-exuding veteran – he’s 34 years and counting into his football coaching career – must navigate. The job is ridiculously hard, pockmarked not just by competition for marquee high-school graduates but the intrusion of the transfer portal, which requires from coaches a new dexterity for keeping players happy when everybody knows a more promising gig is always just around the corner. (Dorrell, rather diplomatically, called the portal and its impact “a natural process of attrition.”) The NIL market presents still another distraction, with schools like CU lodged into a weird place. They can’t act as dealmakers or brokers for athletes, but they nevertheless play a role in providing the staging ground against which a player might break through to prominence.

Now, all Dorrell needs to do to pull off one of CU’s more improbable comebacks is to find a way to win football games, snare a bowl bid, keep athletes in the fold, make sure CU remains relevant on the national TV scene, create an attractive backdrop for NIL profiteering, and keep CU at the forefront of any future conference maneuvering.

That, convert some third-and-longs, and beat USC on the road. To which we say: You go, coach. 

Perfect Pitch

D’Cota Dixon’s tenure with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers lasted less than two seasons. But Dixon was still fast, smart and, pressing 205 pounds, sturdy enough to take down NFL runners with names like Fournette and Henry. Which is why last summer Dixon was working out daily in Miami, determined to stay in game shape.  

As suspected, the NFL came calling. Inquiries from the New England Patriots and the Detroit Lions confirmed that Dixon deserved a shot. So he took it.  

Except it wasn’t with the NFL. It was with the American Raptors. Dixon is now a standout wing for the professional rugby team that recently inaugurated its 2022 season at Infinity Park, the 4,000-seat stadium built and maintained by the city of Glendale.  

Glendale bet big on rugby 15 years ago as a foundation for revival, with then-mayor Mike Dunafon (briefly signed as a Denver Bronco in the late 1970s) theorizing the game and the stadium could elevate Glendale from a smallish enclave of cheap apartments to a vibrant community with a burgeoning tax base.  

It worked. Glendale now boasts an impressive collection of upscale restaurants, gleaming office buildings and tony hotels – symbols of the renaissance Dunafon envisioned. Now, the city and the team it hosts are writing a similar script for the game itself. Rugby is getting reinvented, and players like Dixon are at the center of the transformation.  

The concept is to recruit “crossover” players – athletes who typically grew up on a football field, not the rugby pitch. Nothing against the legions of rugby players from club and pro teams around the U.S., but Raptors director of recruiting Peter Pasque and Mark Bullock, the city’s GM and director of rugby, are convinced a new breed of athlete is needed. The end goal is audacious: Help infuse the U.S. National Team with enough talent to one day take on mighty international teams like New Zealand’s vaunted All Blacks. 

The plan has its roots in a proof-of-concept from 2018. Inspired by a conversation with a Scottish rugby team, Bullock rounded up a group of ex-football players, and, in the space of a week, taught them the basics. Days later, they were holding their own by winning two of four games at the annual Aspen Ruggerfest tournament.  

Bullock is now setting out to systematize the crossover concept. He and Pasque have been remaking the Raptors roster by tracking down professional and post-college football players who may not be NFL caliber, but aren’t far away either.  

Dixon is one of them. He excelled as a safety at Wisconsin from 2014-2018, playing in 51 games and racking up five interceptions including a dramatic game clincher in a 2016 upset over LSU. The Buccaneers drafted him in 2019, slotting Dixon in at defensive back. Hobbled by a shoulder injury, Dixon lost his job in October 2020, but maintained faith he could still play among the elite.  

It was Dixon’s roommate (and fellow Raptor) Justin Barlow who suggested Dixon think about playing rugby. Barlow had been tracked down by Pasque at one of the NFL’s regional scouting combines, and he was intrigued.  

So was Dixon. Here was a chance to play professionally in a game that seemed to be rising on the sports scene. The Raptors weren’t offering NFL money by any stretch, but they were willing to pay: Roughly $40,000 per year plus help with living expenses, with a schedule that allowed for professional development. Dixon was intrigued by the chance to extend his athletic career and was impressed by Glendale’s facilities. There was also the game itself. It was fast-paced, it had fewer interruptions, it wasn’t as violent as the NFL, and it allowed Dixon a chance to do something he rarely got to do on defense: Run the ball.  

“We recruit linemen and their eyes light up,” says Raptors head coach Paul Emerick, who played in three rugby World Cups over his career. “I get to tackle! I get to run the ball!”  

Dixon also marveled at the scene that is rugby internationally. Raised in Miami, Dixon had not traveled outside the U.S. until last November, when the Raptors took off to Uruguay for a set of matches over two weeks. Dixon was stuck by fan fervor for a game that predates organized football (and, for that matter, basketball) in the U.S.  

Making the Glendale dream real means more than winning games. Pasque hopes to forge closer ties with the metro-area business community, theorizing companies may want to sponsor players by offering professional opportunities. A chance to rise in the business world, not just the rugby pitch (that’s “field” to you and me) would represent one more lifestyle allure for athletes like Dixon, who earned an undergraduate degree in Rehabilitation Psychology. 

Beyond the pitch, one positive force here is rising fan interest in rugby, especially among football fans. Pam Dunbar, Glendale’s director of marketing, targets NFL fans with geo-targeted digital advertising messages, aiming to build converts for the Raptor’s games, which are streamed live from the team’s website. And why not? To Emerick, there’s a built-in affinity between rugby and football. The key is to get the word out. “We have it in our sporting culture DNA,” Emerick says. “We just don’t know about it.” 

 

Stewart Schley JpegStewart Schley writes about sports, media and technology from Denver. Read this and Schley’s past columns on the Web at cobizmag.com and email him at [email protected] 

Live from Colorado: The Future of Sports Betting 

On a sunny Saturday afternoon last October, Denverite Richard Terry did something audacious: bet that the Oklahoma Sooners would win a football game.  

It was midway through the annual “Red River Showdown” against the University of Texas. The Sooners were getting drubbed 28-7. Terry, a 37-year-old corporate relocation specialist, was about to leave a friend’s home in Aurora when his buddy tossed out a wild idea: Bet on Oklahoma to win it straight up.  

The suggestion seemed implausible, but Terry listened to his friend’s case: Oklahoma had a history of coming from behind, and the Sooners still had home-field advantage. With a few breaks, Oklahoma conceivably could rise up. Intrigued, Terry fired up the DraftKings app on his smartphone and checked the odds: eight-to-one for Oklahoma to storm back. Why not, he figured. He put $5 down and headed out.  

Sure enough, Oklahoma began making a run. Alerted by a text message, Terry hurried home to watch backup quarterback Caleb Williams orchestrate one of the great comebacks in Oklahoma football history. With three seconds on the clock, Sooner halfback Kennedy Brooks romped into the end zone from 33 yards out. Terry’s $5 bet instantly turned into $40.  

 

In a state where hundreds of thousands of players bet billions of dollars annually on sports, it was a tiny wager. But encapsulated in that moment were the ingredients of what some people believe will be a revolution not only in how fans bet on sports, but watch them, too.  

It’s called “in-game betting,” and it’s just what the name suggests: wagers made live and in the moment during real-time play. It could be whether Rockies’ hitter C.J. Cron will get on base in his next at- bat. It could be whether Real Madrid can sustain a shutout over the final 10 minutes. Or as Richard Terry experienced, it could be whether the Oklahoma Sooners can make a late charge to win a game.  

In-game wagers differ from old-school sports bets, like whether the Broncos can beat the spread against the Chiefs. These sorts of “moneyline” bets have long been the bread-and-butter for the sports-gambling business. But they’re somewhat passive. Once a bet is made, bettors can just as easily go shopping for groceries and check the final score later.  

Now, with smartphones and wireless data networks, betting on sports is a whole new ballgame, with live, in-game betting a rising factor.    

Fantasy successor 

Kyle Christensen is the chief marketing officer for PointsBet, an Australia-based sports-gambling company with its U.S. headquarters in Denver. He makes a convincing argument for in-game betting as a sort of souped-up successor to fantasy sports: It’s a way to enrich the betting experience, keep fans interested in games (even blowouts), appeal to an increasingly discriminating sports-betting market, and create a positive impact on the broader sports-entertainment experience.  

Momentum seems to favor his argument. Live betting now accounts for roughly half of all PointsBet wagers, up from less than a third as of late 2021. As interest grows, PointsBet and others are working feverishly to keep up with the demand by conceiving of a never-ending torrent of live betting propositions. During the 2022 “March Madness” NCAA men’s basketball tournament, for example, PointsBet offered nearly 60 live-game bets, letting players gamble on everything from which team would prevail in a four-minute interval to “lightning bets” on which team would score the next point.  

Christensen grew up in Loveland, cultivating a passion for the Rockies and Broncos before heading west to work for media giants Facebook, Fox Sports and Netflix. He’s now back in Colorado, working at PointsBet’s headquarters office on 17th Street in Denver. 

PointsBet employs close to 200 Colorado software developers, graphic designers, customer agents and other professionals who work at king-sized monitors behind an expansive succession of floor-to-ceiling windowed rooms, including a “dugout” space that overlooks Coors Field. To be sure, this is not the backroom gambling operation of a bygone era: the aesthetic divide between PointsBet’s sleek, high-tech downtown office and the streetwise bookmaker of old could not be starker.  

Sports-biz

Many of these employees are focused on making live betting a locus of distinction for PointsBet. The company has invested in technology designed to assure fast response and continuous “uptime” application availability – both keys for making live betting work. Christensen is convinced the winners in a crowded Colorado sportsbook sector won’t be the gambling giants that are spending heaps of money on advertising, but instead will be those that can out-perform the competition when it comes to the basics of the betting experience. These elements range from how quickly cash gets transferred to accounts, to how well back-end customer service agents handle customer inquiries. One big goal for PointsBet’s tech developers is reducing latency – the micro-second interval that occurs after someone presses a keypad button and when an instruction is completed. With live, in-game betting, low latency becomes a critical point of distinction, which is one reason PointsBet has insisted on building and managing its software in-house, rather than contracting with an outside provider.   

Sports engagement 

Live betting also has implications for how people fundamentally engage with sports. As Richard Terry points out, having a betting interest can captivate even casual fans. When Terry and his pal put money down on the Oklahoma Sooners last fall, it wasn’t because of Sooner loyalty. “We’re not really even [University of Oklahoma] fans,” Terry said. But when crunch time came in the second half, he was riveted to the screen. Having a few dollars on the Sooners that day “kept me invested,” he said.  

For Christensen and others, this is the point. They see in-game betting contributing to sustained fan interest in games that might otherwise lose their luster: Think eighth inning with the Dodgers up 10-1 at Coors Field and two outs already recorded. It’s a near-certainty that the fan who plops down $3 on whether Charlie Blackmon will reach first base has a keener rooting interest than the ticketholder who’s heading for the exits. The same holds true for those watching on television: PointsBet’s alliance with NBC-owned regional sports networks is designed to use betting possibilities as a foundation for new ways to present and engage fans on the electronic screen. 

To be sure, Colorado isn’t the only state where in-game betting is becoming a thing. But because Colorado was early to the legalized sports-betting game (beginning in May 2020) and because of its prominence nationally – the state ranks sixth in the U.S. for total sports-betting wagers, per publisher Legal Sports Report – it offers a preview of what may be ahead. The sportsbook MaximBet launched its sports betting operations in Colorado before any other state partly because the sports betting population here is more experienced than in other states, according to Doug Terfehr, vice president of brand marketing. After racking up $18 million in total sports wagers during its first six months, MaximBet, like PointsBet, has seen a major swing toward in-game action.

“Colorado bettors love in-game betting,” Terfehr said.  

Sportsbookhr Hires11

Dan Hartman, director of Colorado’s Division of Gaming, thinks one reason Colorado stands out as an archetype for the sports-betting future is because of a symbiotic marriage of interests between bookmakers and the agency that regulates them. The common interest here is money — the more action sportsbooks take in, and the better they are at managing net proceeds, the more money Colorado collects. The formula used in Colorado is that sportsbook operators pay back 10% of net gambling proceeds to the state, expressly to support big-ticket water projects. In the first 12 months after legalized betting began, Colorado had booked some $2.3 billion in wagers, with sportsbooks, after doling out cash to winners, keeping net proceeds of just under $61 million.  

Because more bets mean more tax revenue, Hartman says Colorado is determined to work in partnership with sportsbook operators to assure compliance on one hand and to sustain innovation on the other.  

Still, guardrails rear up. Earlier this year Hartman’s agency turned down a proposed bet submitted by one Colorado sportsbook operator: a wager on what color of Gatorade would be splashed down the neck of the winning coach after the 2022 Super Bowl. The reason? That particular event hinges on a randomized outcome that’s not tied to game performance – a no-no in the state’s rulebook. “It’s not that I don’t like Gatorade,” deadpans Hartman, an Aurora Central High School graduate who used to sweep sidewalks at the Mile Hi Kennel Club, one of three racing facilities his father owned.

Changing market 

PointsBet’s Christensen and others think Colorado’s sports gambling arena looks very different today from what it’s likely to become over the next few years. As of May, 25 sportsbook operators were licensed to take bets on sports in Colorado, with four more in line for later this year. This collective runs a wide gamut: from homegrown operations to big national players like DraftKings, FanDuel and BetMGM. Bets can be made in person, at several Colorado casino sportsbooks, but more than 95% happen over smartphones or other devices. Hartman has counted 850,000 sportsbook app downloads so far in Colorado, indicating a wide swath of players in a state with an adult population of roughly 3 million. Like Terry, who commonly makes bets of less than $10, most players risk fairly small amounts: The publicly held DraftKings reported average monthly spending per sports-betting customer was $77 last year.  

Within this environment, there’s general consensus that a shakeout is inevitable, which is one reason the national giants are spending mightily to capture market share. The advertising industry research firm Kantar estimates that sports betting operators plowed more than $660 million into U.S. advertising in 2021. That flow of money has created a cash-injection for Denver-area television and radio stations, along with media and sports personalities who have been enlisted to help spread the word. In May, the Rockies’ Blackmon became the first Major League Baseball player to endorse a sportsbook, lending his name and influence to MaximBet. 

Besides advertising, some sportsbooks are trying to out-do one another with come-ons that promise easy payouts for first-time bettors. But attempting to out-spend the competition is a game Christensen and PointsBet, along with others, are determined not to play. Instead, they’re looking to make a mark elsewhere, figuring that over time, as the betting market matures, a better customer experience is what will differentiate the leaders.  

The biggest unknown of all is whether in-game betting, an arena where Colorado sportsbooks are taking a lead role, will have the halo effect Christensen and others are relying on. If it does, it could have a powerful ripple effect across the entire sports-entertainment ecosystem, benefiting teams, leagues, owners, television networks and just about any business – even local sports pubs – that stands to profit from stronger fan interest.  

In the background, technology marches on. Early on in the development of legal sports betting in Colorado, Hartman and a few colleagues evaluated the “geo-fencing” chops of the state’s online sportsbooks by driving north on I-25 and traversing back-and-forth across the Colorado-Wyoming border. True to promise, bets they attempted to place over a smartphone within state lines went through like a snap. Those they tried north of the border were intercepted and rejected. The lesson: Whether your bets are live game wagers or classic moneyline bets, in order get in on the sports-betting revolution in Colorado you actually have to be in … Colorado. 

 

 

Stewart Schley JpegStewart Schley writes about sports, media and technology from Denver. Read this and Schley’s past columns on the Web at cobizmag.com and email him at [email protected]