New York City FC CEO Brad Sims on the World Cup

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1:18Go to Sinesta.com to book your stay and unlock the best rates with Sinesta Travel Pass. Here today, roam tomorrow. Join now at Sinesta.com. Terms and conditions apply. Bloomberg Audio Studios. Podcasts. Radio. News. This is the business of sports. Our aim is always to leverage the global appeal of football. Having representation in college sports is even more important than pro. 10 % of Americans now claim soccer to be their favorite sport. Reestimate the youth sports audience has$3 trillion in spending power. The nature of baseball is it is worldwide and it is global. I'm very happy for the WNBA and how the NBA has embraced them.

2:05Sportsbooks are not going anywhere and sports betting is only growing. We have a super team running this league and this league is here and it's here to stay. Bloomberg Business of Sports from Bloomberg Radio. This is the Bloomberg Business of Sports, where we explore the big money issues in the world of sports. I'm Vanessa Perdomo. Michael Barr is out this week. Coming up for today, we'll be speaking about two of my favorite things, the World Cup and women's hoops. I'll be joined in studio by New York City FC CEO Brad Sims to talk about the World Cup coming to New York and how the club is planning on capitalizing on that.

2:37And we'll be checking in on women's basketball ahead of the WNBA draft. That's straight ahead on the Bloomberg Business of Sports, but we start with everyone's favorite time of year for golf, the Masters. I am joined now by award-winning sports broadcaster and host of Talking Golf, Anne Liguori. Anne is down in Augusta giving us a take of the action on the ground and who she thinks is going to win the tournament this year. Anne, welcome to the Bloomberg Business of Sports. Anne, you're down in Augusta. Tell us what the chatter is. Tell us the vibe heading into the tournament. Everybody's so excited to be here.

3:09The forecast looks amazing. The course is as manicured and beautiful as ever. It's like, you know, heaven on earth. We can only imagine. So everybody's very excited to be here. scotty scheffler arrived on sunday to participate handing out a trophy in the drive tip and putt national finals his wife just had a baby boy march 27th so scotty hasn't you know played the last couple weeks he was with his his wife obviously um so now he has two sons and everybody's kind of wondering, okay, who's going to win this Masters? I mean, for the first time in a long time, the Masters feels as wide open as we've seen in recent memory.

4:01No one player has an edge, but of course, Scotty is a favorite. And last year, he had an incredible year. He won six tournaments, including the PGA Championship and the Open Championship. The year before, he won seven, including his second Masters title. And this year he comes in, he's won the American Express earlier in the year and has three top tens. But his last couple of starts, he's had some slow starts where he scored unscotti-like. And he has said that that's more of a sample size. He's not concerned about it. But he's certainly not the dominant force coming into this Masters as he has been the last couple of years.

4:46So it's pretty wide open. And, of course, Rory McIlroy, the defending champion, captured the career grand slam, becoming only the sixth player to do that with Gene Sears and Ben Hogan, Gary Player, Jack Nicklaus and Tiger Woods. So, Rory, he's been on the premises for the Augusta National Women's Am and for the Drive, Chip and Putt National Finals, wearing his green jacket and pride. He played a practice round on Monday with his father, Jerry, and with, I guess, a National Golf Club member, Jimmy Dunn. So obviously, Rory is a huge story. Is he freed up after capturing that career Grand Slam and finally winning the Masters last year after trying for 10 years to get that career Grand Slam?

5:34So all eyes on Rory McIlroy, of course, as well. Yeah, it's really interesting, obviously, the back and forth there between the can Rory go back to back or can Scottie as the world number one come in and and win his third? Do you think it's one of their two, one of the two of them, their tournament to lose? I mean, you did say it was wide open, but what do you think about that? There are so many different players who can come out here and make a lot of noise. I mean, Bryson DeChambeau, he has played really well on live. He's won back to back live titles, obviously two time US Open champion. If he can kind of hone in his power, control his power game.

6:14Bryson DeChambeau is certainly somebody to watch. This is his 10th Masters. So he has a lot of experience navigating Augusta National. Tommy Fleetwood he's played so well he won the tour championship last year and he had such a strong Ryder Cup at Bethpage Black and this year he has a couple top tens already so Tommy Fleetwood is somebody to watch Chris Gutterup this is his Masters debut but what a story for Chris Gutterup because he's already won two PGA Tour titles this season. And last year he won the Scottish Open and then finished third at the Open Championship at Royal Portrush. So Chris Gutterup is somebody that I'm looking to do really well here.

7:03And sometimes if you've not played here competitively, sometimes that can be to your advantage because you don't have that, again, a negative muscle memory. So I think he would be a great story. He's going to be coming into the interview room so we can kind of get a sense of where he's at coming to Augusta National for the first time. And, you know, you have Brooks Koepka, who defected from Liv and was welcomed back to the PGA Tour, five-time major champion. He has two runners up here at the Masters. He was runner-up to Tiger in 2019, runner-up to Jon Rahm in 2023. So Brooks can always make noise.

7:44I mean, so many players. Ludwig Ober, somebody to watch. He was runner-up here a couple years ago. And so it's really exciting because it's wide open. Xander Schoffle in his ninth Masters. He's finished in the top 10 here in five of the past seven years. And he's had great results this year. So it's really going to be fun to watch who prevails. It really sounds like it really could go any way, which is one of the things, obviously, about golf and about the Masters that people love, but it's something that bettors love and hate, right? Because it means the odds are really, really tough, but also it can pay out really, really well.

8:23So in your opinion, do you see it more as someone's going to come in and win their first title? Or would you put a bet on that someone's going to get a repeat title? Good question. At this point, I would say it's going to be somebody coming in to win their first title. I just love those stories. Actually, I picked Chris Gutter up, which is a daring pick because it's his master's debut. And the last time a master's rookie won was Fuzzy Zeller, ironically, the late Fuzzy Zeller, who we just lost this past year. So it will be interesting. Obviously, Scotty Shuffler can win any given week, right? And so can Rory McIlroy.

9:03But something just tells me that it's going to be somebody a little different this year and the masters always has compelling storylines but can you imagine if a rookie were to win it so somebody like chris gotter up or somebody like ludwig ober who i mentioned earlier has done so well here he's been a runner up here and he he took a big lead into the players championship didn't get it done there but he has the game to win here he has the confidence because He's done here. He's done well here in the past. Somebody I haven't mentioned yet, Cameron Young from Westchester, who grew up playing Sleepy Hollow.

9:41He won the Players' Championship, beating Matt Fitzpatrick by one shot. And he won his first PGA Tour event last August. Cameron Young could very well come out here and kind of make some noise. So, again, I think it's going to be somebody different than Scotty Scheffler and Roy McIlroy. We're speaking with Anne Liguori, host of Talking Golf. And what you're saying there, obviously, if it's someone who comes in and wins their first, what can a performance like that do? Or if Chris comes in and he does really well, even if he doesn't win, what can a performance like that do for someone's career when it comes to endorsement deals, things like that?

10:21But also in terms of performance moving forward, do you think it puts a lot of pressure on them? Or does it actually really propel people to go further in their career after performing well in them? Oh, absolutely. They will, if you win a master's title, it's a game changer, right? It's a career changer, a life changer. It's the most prestigious title you can win. Obviously, if you win other majors and can somehow win all four and be one of the elite to accomplish the career grand slam, that's probably the most prestigious accomplishment any of these golfers can have. But sure, if if somebody, anybody wins this title, you gain so much confidence.

11:08It frees you up. That's why when you look at somebody like Rory McIlroy, you have to wonder, will the fact that he finally won the Masters title free him up? Will he be able to go out here this week and play just completely lights out, completely Rory-like with so much talent and so much power. Can he go out here and just have fun and really do well enough to repeat? Or will he be 10 shots behind and not make the cut? I mean, it could go either way, which, again, makes it very exciting. You had mentioned a couple golfers earlier, Bryson DeChambeau being one of them, that are live golfers and they can come in and perform really well and win the tournament.

11:56Do you think that it's still somewhat of a storyline if a live golfer comes in and wins? Definitely. I mean, if Bryson DeChambeau were to win a Masters title, that would be huge. And it would give live a lot of publicity. And they really haven't had too much publicity of late. The war between live and the P.J. Tour has died down a lot. PGA Tour players are making so much money now with these signature events and the paychecks are just phenomenal. The players' pension fund is huge. And so there's really no more talk about how PGA Tour players dislike the Live golfers and vice versa. Brooks Koepka was allowed back into the PGA Tour after he left Live.

12:46Patrick Reed, already a Masters champion. He will be playing this week and is a threat here for sure. So, yeah, I mean, Liv is not as much of a publicity factor as it has been. And you don't hear a lot about the animosity between the two associations like you have in the past. So it's kind of a whole different feel. PGA Tour players have learned to accept Liv players and vice versa. Do you think that it's something that Liv then needs? They need a golfer to come in and win the Masters to kind of bring their name back into the conversation a little bit. Yeah, they need it because it's, you know, these guys who play on Live, a lot of people don't see them play.

13:31We haven't heard about Jon Rahm in a long time. We haven't. I haven't seen him play. A lot of people haven't seen him play. He won a tournament on Live this year. Bryson DeChambeau won back to back tournaments. So we hear that they're coming in to this Masters in good form. But we really haven't heard much from them or have seen them. Now, Bryson has his own global social media campaigns going where he has billions of followers. It's incredible how many followers he has. And he's popular all over the world now based on his own social media. But it's based on his own social media, not particularly based on the fact that he's a live golfer.

14:10So yes, if a Liv player were to win, and particularly since Brooks Koepka has left Liv, bolted from Liv, and is welcomed back now and playing on the PGA Tour, that was a big blow to Liv Golf. So yes, they could use a win for sure. That was Anne Liguori, sports broadcaster and host of Talking Golf with Anne Liguori. Up next, I'll be joined by friend of the show, Bloomberg's Randall Williams, to cap off March Madness. That's straight ahead on the Bloomberg Business of Sports. I'm Vanessa Perdomo. You're listening to the Bloomberg Business of Sports from Bloomberg Radio around the world. If your finance team spends more time finding data than using it, if there's one entity here and one here and one here and one here, if scaling your business feels like starting over, you need the Intuit ERP.

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16:56Here today, roam tomorrow. Join now at Sinesta.com. Terms and conditions apply. This is Bloomberg Business of Sports from Bloomberg Radio. This is the Bloomberg Business of Sports, where we explore the big money issues in the world of sports. I'm Vanessa Perdomo. Michael Barr is off this week. I'm now joined by old friend of the show, our buddy, Bloomberg's U.S. sports business reporter, Randall Williams. Randall is going to give us all the details of all the things we should be looking out for ahead of the WNBA draft on Monday. Randall, welcome to the Bloomberg Business of Sports. Thank you for having me.

17:31Okay, Randall. So we're talking women's hoops and I want to start with college. UCLA just won their first national title in program history. They had the lowest odds out of any team that was in the Final Four. Why do you think people were counting them out and how do you think they came through with it? I think women's basketball, more than some of the other sports, is really built on brands. Like you think of UConn, you think of South Carolina, you think of Tennessee. And UCLA has been very good, but sometimes when you don't get over that hump, people are just like, ah, they're good. And they got over the hump in dominant fashion.

18:06I mean, I was watching the game from pretty much start to finish, and I think at one point it was 13-4. Then South Carolina started chipping away, but I mean, after the second half opened up, it was over with. And it was a pretty dominant victory. I think it's good for women's basketball for there to be more parity. But I think a championship game and a blowout is obviously not the result that I would say college basketball wants. And that ESPN would want for, you know, a showing of the best in the pinnacle game of the season. Right. Well, yeah, from a ratings perspective, for sure. And they did graduate seven seniors, right?

18:42They're going to be graduating seven seniors. And I mean, I was really on them. That's why I was I picked them to win. I actually picked them to win because I was like, these girls are hungry. They really want it. Is brackets for a cause? I can't afford brackets for a cause unless we wanted to all pull our money together personally. But I picked UCLA to win because I felt like they were really hungry out there. But we know what it does to a program when you graduate that many people. What do you think they're going to be able to do in the next couple of years? Well, it'll be really interesting to see because, of course, we have President Trump's executive order that's supposed to be limiting NIL and the transfer portal and all those things.

19:17We'll have to see if that's able to get through. I don't know if it's going to. I do think that it is a very, very strong ruling. But so long as the rules are as wild, wild west as they are right now, then what they can do is continue to recruit. They now have a national championship under their belt. They have an A-plus coach. They have great players. They have a good history. And, of course, they have the transfer portal. So every single year we see college athletes enter the transfer portal. And, you know, I think when teams do that, like we've heard and I've talked to Coach Prime in Colorado about this, but sometimes teams use the transfer portal more than they use like the typical high school recruiting database because they want experience.

19:57And like you said, these are they're graduating seven seniors. I would be shocked to know or I would be surprised to know how many are graduate seniors versus like a traditional one in a four year school. So they have a wide variety of ways to retool and be back here next year. Audie Crooks already said she was going into the transfer portal, so we'll see where she ends up. Absolutely. Before we move on from College Hoops, we've got to talk about Gino Ariema and Don Staley's little mix-up that happened. What's your take on that? I think Gino was in his feelings. I think that from start to finish, nothing he was saying was making sense.

20:35It's like the whole ripping the jersey thing. He said, like, I have a kid with the jersey ripped. And then ESPN shows the replay of the jersey being ripped. And then I think, like, when you're getting – your team can't buy a shot. And I do think, like, South Carolina played them very physical. But if that was the game that they were going to play, then I think that UConn should have matched the physicality. And they – he just got frustrated. And I think, like, sometimes when you're in that competitive mindset, that like the smallest little thing can just send you over the edge. And he was probably, I imagine he was probably like sitting over there reflecting over the entire game and in his feelings with the rest and in his feelings with like his players not being able to make any shots.

21:16And then he's like, Oh my God, she didn't shake my hand. And I think that just dawned on him and no pun intended. And he just overreacted. And I think his apology should have been better. Like it's very easy to type a statement. I mean, we have ChatGPT and so many other different devices that can do that. But coming out and saying something publicly, the way that you were publicly, you know, you made that situation what it was, I think is more powerful. So we'll see. Do you think it at all impacts his legacy or were people going to chalk it up to a sore loser? I think that it does in some aspect.

21:52Like, he's still the greatest coach in women's college basketball history. You know, some would say Pat Summitt as well. But I think what people remember from that moment now is that when he was challenged, that he cowered. Like, there's no reason you should ever be in your feelings over a handshake, especially when they did shake hands. Like, I understand he's talking about the ceremonial handshake before where you're supposed to chop it up and yada, yada, yada. But like he said after the game that they're not friends, that they don't have a relationship and that he doesn't know her. And I believe they've coached on the same staff for Team USA before.

22:24And so I found that very, very strange and contradictory because it's like, OK, do you respect her or you don't? And it felt like the moment just got too big for him. Like he's like, oh, you know, we beat them last year. We're supposed to be here. We're UConn. And now we're that they're being challenged in so many different ways. And don't get me wrong, like they did win last year in a dominant fashion. However, like it's a new day in age in women's college basketball. And I think he's finding that out the hard way. It's interesting because like you said, they did win last year, but it was a while from that point.

22:55So it's not like he hasn't lost recently. So it seemed almost out of character, but in character in the way that we all know he's really competitive and all of that. But it felt out of character, too, especially as a champion of women's basketball. I think when you talk to people around women's college basketball that know him well, that have been around the space a long time, a good portion of these people are not surprised by his character. But one of the things that is one of my favorite phrases in all of sports is that winning hides everything. Winning can hide so many different things, whether like somebody's frustrated or feeling and their feelings like you think about the Eagles and A.J.

23:31Brown. I mean, Matt Townsend, our editor, will could tell you time and time over again, like if they win the Super Bowl, nobody cares, which is like a fact. And I think he's won so much that here's probably some people that he has upset along the way. And that may have been the price of winning. But now when you're losing and you behave that way, it looks so much different. And you can win and be the most braggadocious winner in the world. But when you lose, if you don't lose in class as a winner, then that's a problem. Yeah, absolutely. So moving on from college hoops, which right after the national championship, you know, it has a very fun.

24:06The women's side has a very fun opportunity of going right from the national championship right into the WNBA. The draft is on April 13th on Monday. What are you looking out for when it comes to the draft? So the obvious thing is we have the prospects. We have Olivia Miles and AZ Fudd and Lauren Betts and Kiki Rice and so many more. But the biggest thing that I'd like to see is how Commissioner Engelbert will field questions for the first time in many, many months. Obviously, they went through these CBA negotiations, and there were a select few reporters. Shout out to Annie and all the others and Doug and the people who were outside late in the night covering this in those CBA negotiations.

24:43But she hasn't had a formal public address since the WNBA finals, I believe. And so much has happened since then. I mean, it's been, I was like October, I believe. And so when you think about that, like all of these negotiations and the things that were said before then and after then, I think that it puts her in a very peculiar position because we've reported and so many other outlets have reported that she has talked privately about this being the last year for her. And what was told to me was that like she was going to bring expansion. She was going to get revenue up and then she was going to sign a new CBA and a media deal.

25:21And then it was going to be like her swan song. And that was going to be it because she is a well accomplished executive outside of being the commissioner of the W. And I expect her to be noncommittal because Adam Silver at the NBA Board of Governors meetings last week was noncommittal and saying that he hasn't had any conversations with her. But I'd be fascinated to know if she comes to the podium and says, like, I want to be here long term because I still remember what Nafisa was saying. I still remember what the players were saying back then. And I would be shocked in six months if now Commissioner Engelbert understands the culture of the WNBA.

25:55That doesn't just happen in six months. You have to have a CBA agreement in order for basketball to continue. You don't necessarily have to understand culture to get a CBA agreement done. So I would be interested to know if she's going to stay around and how she's going to address things, because it's a time to celebrate women's basketball, of course. Like, it's easy to celebrate now because these salaries are going from 60 and 70 and 80 thousand dollars to 400 to 500 to a million dollars for some players as well. And so, like, I'm sure she'll get up there and be like, you know, we just signed a transformational collective bargaining agreement.