NFL Grapples With Fallout From NYC Shooting

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0:30be really unlocking the streaming platform for sports fans. Sports valuations are rising. We'll see when they peak. You don't have to be the best in your sport to make a whole ton of money. 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 Michael Barr, along with my colleagues Damian Sassauer and Vanessa Berdomo. Coming up on the show, we'll talk WNBA with Atlanta Dream President and Chief Operating Officer Morgan Shaw Parker. We don't bet on women here. We invest in them because when you bet on something, you expect that you might lose your money.

1:09We really invest because we expect a return. All that and more is on the way on the Bloomberg Business of Sports. But first, we have to talk through a story that is still reverberating around our offices here in New York City. On Monday evening, a gunman opened fire in a Manhattan office building, killing four people, wounding another. The investigation into the gunman found that he was targeting the NFL's New York offices, putting the league at the center of a national tragedy. Bloomberg U.S. sports business reporter Randall Williams has done reporting on this and joins us now to discuss the fallout for the NFL.

1:46We all know what has happened in the news. He's a former football player. He played in high school. He walked into a midtown Manhattan office, fatally shot four people, and he has claimed to have a poorly understood brain disease, CTE. Now, the headquarters, 345 Park Avenue, that's the same home as the NFL headquarters, which is why he went there in the first place. which gets down to the topic of your article why is it so hard to get answers about cte well number one is that it can only be diagnosed after someone is dead and i mean just a really tragic incident i think about our office i think about offices in general dozens of sports offices that i've been to they all have a security officer there and i'm sure that there's someone in that vicinity is armed, but you just don't anticipate someone's going to walk in with an assault rifle and do what this person did.

2:52Randall, what is the NFL's role now? Obviously, people have talked to them about this in the past. It's come up a lot, especially in the last 10 years or so. But now when it gets brought up again like this, do they have to do more research again? Is it on them now to address this situation? I don't necessarily think so. I think that it shines an unfortunate light on the NFL and CTE. And I think that's well documented about, you know, the settlement and things like that. And, of course, in recent years, you remember Tua Tagovailoa's history with concussions. Concussions are always going to be a part of the NFL's history, and they will be going forward.

3:33The NFL's done a bunch to try to improve its policies, to create technology, different helmets at different positions to help with this. But of course, when someone is angry and they do what this person did and drive across the country to enact violence, it does make the NFL look a certain way about, oh, like, what is the NFL's history with concussions? And I think it's complicated. But, you know, they have tried to improve from where they were. And I think that effort is valid. Randall, the shooter Shane Tamora, I mean, he didn't play for the NFL, but I wonder if you could, for our audience, just give us a quick history about that settlement that was reached back in 2015.

4:14I think it was$765 million. And, you know, I remember some of the plaintiffs like Tony Dorsett and Jim McMahon. And, you know, looking back, was that a sufficient settlement in your opinion? I think they're still paying out a lot of that money. So I do think that even the amount of money that these families and people are receiving is life changing for a lot of them. It starts at five hundred thousand. It can go all the way up to millions of dollars. And so I do think that it is changing. But of course, there's no amount of money that can change a condition in somebody. Right. And so in that aspect, I do think that, yes, it's a good thing that these people are receiving families.

4:54But, of course, the other side of that is how many lives have been lost along the way because of the fact that they weren't able to get help, that in this case the NFL allegedly denied a lot of people. They ignored the symptoms of concussions. And, of course, I say allegedly. But with the settlement in mind, it's good that they're getting help. I just think about all of the families of the past who lost someone. And I hope that the money helps change things for their future. ESPN used to have a segment called He Got Jacked Up. And, in fact, they talked about it in the movie Concussion, which was about CTE.

5:32And I recommend people go back and look at that movie again. And I want to just bring some notes to you. One of the players who had CTE and he's failing, he goes to Dave Dewarson. And he's like, help me, man, help me. What people forgot, and I remember doing this story, is that Dave Duerson as well committed suicide. And he asked, please look at my brain for CTE. And sure enough, he had CTE. Right. Yeah, I think this person, Shane Tamora, him shooting himself in the chest, in my opinion, is not a coincidence. One of the texts that I receive in the hours after, because the crazy thing, I'll paint a picture of my day, of course.

6:16I leave work. And I mean, I had a crazy day because I had dropped my keys on, I think, 60th and 1st. I go pick them back up. They were there. And then I get back to my apartment. And of course, I see the news that a shooting has occurred. And at that point in time, I'll paint a picture of 345 Park Ave to anyone who's never been there. But you walk in and depending on which entrance you go into the building on, one of the sides looks like an empty basement. And the other side is a much more polished side of the building. And there is a security guard and then they send you up to, I believe it's the fifth or sixth floor that the NFL is on.

6:52And after or as this was going on, I texted someone and they said, you know, he was he went to the 33rd floor and he could not get to the sixth floor. Or maybe, you know, investigation still going on. But he's a button push away and a key card swipe away from ending up on the NFL's floor. And it's crazy to think, and just such a tragic incident for the people who lost lives, the officer, the Blackstone executive, and the two other lives that were lost. He's literally a button push away from many more lives lost. NYPD officer. Of course. Of course. It's crazy to think about. And I think, in large part, football is a violent, violent sport.

7:34The head-to-head contact injuries, I think about Tua's injury all the time. Because, of course, his head hits the ground and then you watch the lead up to that. You know, the games afterwards where his head slams the ground and he gets up and he's stumbling. And so this concussion and CTE dilemma is going to be something for a long time. It doesn't matter how much technology you develop. The nature of the sport is violence. And I think the athletes and the NFL owners accept that and they accept the risks of it. I think that's the interesting part there. I mean, you know, as an athlete, you have to go through even in high school and college, you go through concussion protocols.

8:11And and I've actually had teammates who I feel like in college, they're they're more willing to tell you to stop playing than they are at the professional level, because now there's money on the line in college. They used to tell people, actually, you you've had too many concussions. You are done. You cannot play anymore. And this is soccer, you know, with heading the ball and whatever it is. Right. But in in the NFL, it just feels like and not just the NFL, but at a professional level, they don't really have the same, you know, we're cutting you off. It's really on the athlete themselves. And we saw Andrew Luck kind of take himself out of the game at a young age because he didn't want to get injured anymore.

8:50Right. So is there does there need to be more of that telling players that they are done and that they can't continue? I think that's a collectively bargained thing between, I mean, not just the NFL, but all sports period is that, you know, is there a point in time where your head injuries are so traumatic that you just don't, you can't play anymore? But the bigger issue in Tua's case specifically, and the reason I bring him up is because he had just signed a huge contract. And of course, there are injury guarantees involved. But in Tua is a large, a larger macro picture of this. But imagine you're not him and you're someone who's on a rookie contract, you're a fifth round draft pick and you get two concussions in a year and they're telling you, we don't think you should play, but you've also just changed the course of your family history.

9:35You now are tasked with figuring out, do I continue to play and endanger my life by potentially getting another concussion, developing CTE long term, or do I retire and live maybe a much longer and healthier life? And I can tell you there are a lot of athletes who are grappling with this because of the money involved. Right. Exactly. Let's think about just taking a step back. You know, there's been a lot of investigative reporting on CTE. I'm talking ESPN's outside the lines. You know, 30 for 30 did the sale, the League of Denial. You know, the question I have is, you know, I'm reading your article here.

10:12I'm reading about some of the medical like P-Tow or whatever. And I realized just how little I know about it. And my question for you is this, is awareness really there? And to your point, I get it. It's a financial decision in the case and a very big one in the case of many of these professional athletes. But is the education there for high schoolers, for amateur athletes to really understand the risks and what I guess they should be doing in order to prevent them? It is, but it isn't. I think Vanessa's point is a very good one because at a younger age, people want to protect young people. But when you're an adult, I think, I mean, you're not going to see a concussion advertisement like, hey, you know, you accept the risk of this because that's anti-business.

10:56However, at the same time, I think that as people get older, like you look at an example like Tua where you're on Monday Night Football. And, of course, you see, like, when Tua hit the ground, his fingers are doing all sorts of things when he's, when, you know, his brain hits it and then his fingers look crazy. But it doesn't stop it. Like, the season continues. And until, what's going to happen evidently is that you're going to see something like that again, unfortunately. And it's going to raise awareness again. But people are still going to play the game. Now, at a youth level, I think that parents and administrators are more likely to stop these things because they don't want to end up in a lawsuit.

11:34They don't want to get in trouble. But once you're on the professional stage, as we have already noted, the stakes are different because they're monetary. I want to go back to what you had mentioned, Damien, about Junior Seau. The family was part of a lawsuit. In fact, it was a$765 million lawsuit about 10 years ago with over 4 ,500 players. By the way, in case people aren't familiar, Junior Seau committed suicide in 2012. One of the plaintiffs also in this was former Cowboys running back Tony Dorsett. And I saw that game where he got hit so hard in the head it knocked his helmet askew. And back then, it was like, how are you feeling?

12:21And it's like, yeah, I'm going to shake it off. And I think he went back in the game. Today, that would not happen. It wouldn't. I mean, the NFL's concussion protocols are very, very good. I mean, if you suffer a concussion in the game, you're going to miss not only the rest of the game, and you're probably going to miss the game after that, and potentially the game after that as well. But back then, I mean, I think about Ray Lewis. I think about Luke Keekly. I think about players who literally used to fly all over the field. And now, even so, on the penalty side of things, you lead with that helmet, it's a 15-yard penalty.

12:53And much to the fans' criticism of the league is that you're taking away the contact. But the reality is the NFL is trying to protect players. And the players sometimes don't like it either because then you have lower extremity injuries where someone, instead of going towards the chest, they're diving towards the legs. That results in an ACL tear, MCL tear, meniscus, things like that. But at the end of the day, the nature of how they're trying to play football is changing. And I'm sure both of you, all three of us can speak to, all four of us can speak to this, is that football has gotten a little bit safer, but the nature of the sport is still violent.

13:26There are still incredibly hard hits, and the consequences of them don't change. Like, if you get hit hard in the 80s and 90s, the consequence is that they're going to send you back in the game. But the correlation is that you still have the possibility of developing CTE from playing football. There's no way of like, oh, 80s, 90s, there's a difference. You're playing football, your head's going to get hit, and there's a possibility of this condition. Remember the Ronaldo Nehemiah hit? He went up the middle, and I mean, he got clobbered. Today, that would be a penalty. In fact, to go back to what you were saying, hey, listen, back in the day, They taught you put your helmet down and charge with your head.

14:06Put your helmet on his chest. Yeah. The last thing I'll say is that the biggest thing that I'm wondering going forward is how this changes security, not only at sports offices, but at sports events going forward. Like at the Super Bowl, Vanessa, I'm sure you can speak to this as well, but more security than I've ever seen. You have guys standing on vehicles that I have only seen in movies, roadblocks. And, of course, that had to do with the tragedy on January 1st in New Orleans as well. But going forward, what do NFL league meetings look like? What do the NBA Board of Governors meetings look like?

14:35What do the MLS's and the MLB's Winter League meetings look like? Because you want to protect these people and you don't know how many individuals like Shane Tamera are out there. And these are things that are highly broadcasted because of the fact that these meetings change rules. There's contracts, trades that are struck in these things. And so with that in mind, what does it look like going forward? How much are these sports leagues going to emphasize security now that this tragedy has happened? Randall, I wish we could have brought you in for a much more happier topic, but this is something that needed to be discussed.

15:08And you are all over it. Our thanks to Bloomberg U.S. sports business reporter, Randall Williams, for joining us today. Up next, we turn to the WNBA. For Damian Sassauer and Vanessa Perdomo, I'm Michael Barr. You're listening to Bloomberg Business of Sports, Bloomberg Radio around the world. 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 Michael Barr, along with Damian Sassauer and Vanessa Berdomo. On the way, we've got Morgan Shaw Parker. She's president and chief operating officer for the WNBA's Atlanta Dream.

15:51The three, no, rebound Alicia Gray. What a year she is having. Career high in points, and the three is dropped. We'll talk to her about the growth of the league and her team in particular. That is up next, but joining us now to talk a little bit about the state of the WNBA is Bloomberg News Global Business Reporter Ira Budwe. Ira, welcome back to the Bloomberg Business of Sports. Good to be here. You wrote a great article. It's on the WNBA's Caitlin Clark, and the effect is now the ripple effect, as you call it. When she missed five games due to a quad injury early, TV ratings tanked. Can you go more into Clark's impact on the business of the WNBA and her impact?

16:38Yeah, it's been very interesting because obviously last season her rookie year was all about what is the Caitlin Clark effect. And it was noticeable. It was big. It was basically the most reliable and significant kind of single player impact that we've seen since Tiger Woods and golf. and this year it's kind of been because she has been injured so much it's sort of offered this sort of real world experiment in the league with and without her and what we've seen is that yes ratings suffer when she's not there but the baseline is much higher than it used to be I think the best probably example is the all-star game you know they got 2.2 million viewers this year she was injured that's less than last year when she played it was a record 3.4 million last year but the 2.2 million is the second most ever for that game so the bar you know it's the idea i think was all these new fans arrive as caitlin clark fans and then they discover nafisa collier and the links and asia wilson and the aces and sabrina ianescu and the liberty and they stick around and they become WNBA fans, they become fever fans, they become fans in a broader way.

17:54I think that premise is holding. So we're sort of seeing the ripple effect out from it's not just Kaitlin Clark. It's really a broader based rise for the league. What do you think, you know, Paige Beckers has to do with that as well? Is it the other newcomers coming along? Is it them, you know, people paying attention to all those other people, Paige Beckers, Angel Reese, all of that? Or, like you said, is it the Nafisa Colliers and Kelsey Plum and all these other people that they're realizing are there for the first time? You know, it's a good question. They are very fortunate that the pipeline didn't just kind of stop with Clark.

18:35Paige Beckers, in her own right, is a pretty big deal. And Juju Watkins coming up behind. And you have some young players that are the players the league's getting into. Right. Angel Reese, that rivalry, obviously, was a jeopardy question. That's how big she's getting. Yeah. So now, but, you know, and so it's that momentum is building. And then you just have some some super teams to, you know, the Liberty are just a phenomenon on their own. You're basically watching all of the things that make mainstream sports leagues work come into play for the WNBA in a big way now. They are just a part of the conversation in sports.

19:17They are on the ticker. They are in the Sports Center Roundup. They are on social media. For better and for worse, they have all of the noise and the hype and the revenue that comes and the conflict that comes with getting into the big time. Ira, last October, the WNBA Players Union voted to opt out of their current CBA, their collective bargaining agreement, two years early, right? Are we going to have a lockout here if they don't agree to a deal in the next few months? I mean, is there a possibility that we could see a work stoppage? And to that effect, Caitlin Clark being injured, that probably doesn't help the Players Association all that much, given where we are in the negotiations.

19:57Am I wrong? Yeah, it's interesting. I mean, I think what the players would say is, look, you just added three teams at a$250 million fee, which is like five times what the expansion fee used to be. You just signed media deals for$200 million a year, which is about four or five, six times what you used to be pulling in. All the metrics point upwards, you know, with or without Caitlin Clark. So you're going to need to pay us our share. But, yeah, to answer the first question, I think everybody seems to think that the league and the players are not very close right now. That there's not a lot of trust between them.

20:38And that the distance between what the players are demanding and what the league is prepared to offer is very wide. Now, these things tend to have a way of, you know, as you get closer, deadlines kind of spur action. And I think everybody understands how damaging it would be. You take something that has this momentum that we're talking about, but it's new still, I think, that it has broken out in this way. If you just, to the typical fan, I don't know if they're going to dig into the details. They're just going to go, oh, this went away. They can't agree. They're squabbling. Oh, well. Right? And I think it's a real risk there that you take that momentum and you squander it.

21:19So I don't know if maybe cooler heads prevail here, but at the moment, it looks like when this deadline approaches at the end of October, they're not going to be able to come to an agreement. I want to expand more on that about the three teams that are going to join, Detroit, Philly, and Cleveland. And as you mentioned, the expansion fee was$250 million. It used to be$50 million. Doesn't that give some leverage to the players' union? Yeah, I mean, it's the oldest fight in sports in the sense that you look at things like franchise values and you say, this is going up, right? We need more. You look at things like media rights deals and you say, this is going up.

22:02We need our share. And then teams turn around and say, we're not actually making a profit, right? And that's been the fight. The league has basically said, when we're profitable, we can do revenue sharing in the way that you typically see in professional sports in this country. The WNBA isn't there yet. in terms of just contractually at the moment. They don't have the kind of split that – they don't have any sort of promised share of revenue. And so it's more of just a structured scale. And I think that's what they want to get to, and that's what the fight is over. And it's kind of like, who do you believe?

22:41And there were reports that the league as a whole is still losing tens of millions of dollars a year just on a sort of profit and loss basis. But that's hard to square with the fact that media companies and investors seem very bullish on its future and are willing to put real money into it at rates that we've not seen before. It's interesting because I feel like, and correct me if I'm wrong, but the W is having to prove their profitability, like you said, when we're profitable then we'll do revenue sharing and all that. But did all of the other leagues, like did the NBA have to do this? Did the NFL have to do this?

23:20The MLB, did they all have to prove profitability before the players started getting paid like fairly? That's a good question. Whether revenue sharing broadly, you know, you had to have profitability first. I don't think so. You know, I'm sure every league's story is different. But what's weird with the WNBA is that it's a co-property with the NBA still, right? Its equity is owned in part by every NBA owner. Its equity is also owned by a group of investors who invested in the league as a whole. And its equity is owned by each franchise owner. So it's a slightly different basket of stakeholders.

24:01And the commissioner, Engelbert, Catherine Engelbert, she works for Adam Silver. You know, in the end, he is going to have final say, as he did on media deals. And so it's just, I think, a little bit more complicated trying to get everybody on the same page. So, Ira, that's a really, really interesting point that Kathy Engelbert, who, by the way, used to be she was the first female CEO for Deloitte. You know, she'd been there for 33 years. And, you know, but it's not her call. It's Adam Silver's call. And I think that's the interesting point here, because I keep like I was like, wait, why isn't why is it?

24:37so contentious, you know, is, is, why is Kathy Engelbert, you know, driving such a hard bargain? But I guess you're right. It's, it's the owners and they're represented first and foremost by Adam Silver. Yeah. I mean, I think Engelbert is, is leading on this and I think her recommendations and her, you know, she'll be the one doing the day to day negotiation, the face, the face of negotiations for the WNBA, but she does work for Adam Silver. And I, you know, I think the, And ultimately, Adam Silver and Engelbert, they work for the owners. And so this is just a, you know, it's a very interesting version of a very old fight, which is, yeah, these properties are worth a lot.

25:16But we also spend most of our money on our costs. Well, Ira, you say these properties are worth a lot. Let's contextualize that for our audience, right? I mean, when the Golden State Valkyries joined the league, they paid a$50 million initiation fee, right? Cleveland, Detroit, and Philadelphia have been approved to join by 2030, and they are paying an expansion fee of$250 million each. I mean, so if that's just representative of the growth of the league, one would think and assume that however these negotiations go, women basketball players, professional basketball players are going to be paid a lot more money and have a much bigger stake in the success of the league going forward.

25:55Would you not agree with that? Yeah, their pay is going to go up, assuming they can get a deal done. I think the question is going to be whether they can sort of make it where their pay goes up commensurate with the leagues, with the expansion of revenue for the league. And it is interesting, even those prices for those expansion fees for those three new teams, if you look at our friends at Sportico did their annual valuations, they've got the Valkyries, who are the newest team, worth$500 million. Which is pretty wild to think about, you know, an expansion team in a women's sport with a valuation like that after so little time, you know.

26:30So I think the players are definitely in a position to point to a lot of numbers and say, you know, this is built on our work and this is built on our celebrity and our skill and our talent. And we want a bigger share. This is hinging on the fact that a lot of the WNBA teams are connected to NBA teams. Obviously, with Detroit and the Pistons and this expansion and going on, what will it take for a WNBA team to be totally independent of any NBA team? I mean, right now, it's just structurally they aren't, right? Every NBA owner owns a little piece of the WNBA. And so they would have to restructure the whole setup of the league.