One of the many adages of former MLB commissioner Bud Selig was that “as long as we keep the focus out on the field, we’ll do very well.” A tumultuous offseason for the league did much to reinforce both Selig’s words and the pitfalls of the inverse situation. 

As MLB reaches its full Opening Day on Thursday, the league is eager to turn the page on a five-month stretch that in many ways was the opposite of a highly successful 2023 season that included a historic resurgence in attendance, the much-lauded introduction of the pitch clock, and sizable gains in many other measures of fan engagement.

Among the key events since the Rangers won the first World Series in franchise history Nov. 1:

• MLB began spring training with a high-profile uniform debacle that became a national story, even among non-sports news outlets. 
• The A’s attempted to advance its planned relocation to Las Vegas with the release of a new set of stadium renderings. But those drawings only raised more questions, even commissioner Rob Manfred began to show his frustration about the entire situation.
• Diamond Sports Group, the embattled Bally Sports parent, has made progress in its efforts to emerge from bankruptcy. But the bigger uncertainty surrounding regional sports networks resulted in a roughly $1 billion retrenchment in overall player spending, and plenty of concerns remain among teams about the critical local media revenue source.
• A record-level, $700 million contract from the Dodgers for Shohei Ohtani and another $325 million one for Yoshinobu Yamamoto—collectively representing more than one-third of the value of all player deals signed this offseason—renewed a long-running debate about economic balance within the league.
• Ohtani, by far the game’s biggest star, is now caught up in a gambling scandal that he emphatically denies any participation in or knowledge of, and if he’s not telling the truth, it will potentially rock the sport in unprecedented fashion.
• While separate from league operations, the MLB Players Association has been caught up in its own internal power struggle. 

Now, many around baseball are eager to get the sport’s attention back on the field, in line with Selig’s prior adage.

“I’m looking forward to focusing on the season,” Ohtani said at his press conference in perhaps the understatement of the year. 

Key Storylines

To be fair, it certainly wasn’t all bad news across baseball over the winter. The Royals at last selected a site for a new ballpark.  The White Sox are pursuing their own new facility, as are the Rays. The Orioles have both a new owner and new lease at Oriole Park at Camden Yards. The Braves remain a juggernaut on and off the field. Manfred decided he will not stay past 2029, and he can now focus more on key goals without worrying about his next contract. Competitive balance in MLB, at least as measured by World Series titles, remains an industry leader with no repeat champion since ’00. 

But without another big innovation like the pitch clock to introduce a renewed wave of good feelings among the fans, MLB likely faces a higher bar to repeat the strong momentum of last season.

The clues were certainly there that something was even more amiss than before with the proposed $2 billion arena in Alexandria, Va., when Monumental Sports & Entertainment chairman Ted Leonsis went on an unexpected social media spree Wednesday morning repeatedly extolling the virtues of D.C.’s Capital One Arena. 

It turns out there was much more than what appeared as Leonsis made a dramatic reversal, ending his attempt to build a new venue in Virginia for the Wizards and Capitals and instead striking a new deal with D.C. mayor Muriel Bowser to renovate the 27-year-old Capital One Arena. 

In a rapidly reconstructed agreement, D.C. will now spend $515 million over the next three years to upgrade the venue, while Leonsis and MSE will sign a lease keeping the teams where they are until at least 2050. The agreement also contemplates a nearly 200,000-square-foot expansion for MSE of its footprint into the neighboring Gallery Place, allowing Leonsis to get at least a portion of the additional space that was fundamental to the Virginia plan. The new D.C. agreement also contains a series of additional enhancements with regard to neighborhood safety, transportation, and signage permissions.

“I’m really relieved,” Leonsis said. “You never know how things are going to end. The amount of work that has been done since December [on the D.C. plan] has been extraordinary.”

External Forces

To be clear, this is anything but an independent change of heart by Leonsis, as his hand was forced on multiple fronts. He and Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin, also a staunch advocate of the Alexandria project, ran into fierce and immovable resistance from powerful state Sen. L. Louise Lucas. Largely through her extensive influence, public funding for the Virginia project never passed Virginia’s senate and wasn’t part of the next budget. As news broke of the revived D.C. deal, Lucas continued her savage social media criticism of the now-dead Virginia proposal, posting on X “FAFO,” short for “f*** around and find out.”

D.C. attorney general Brian Schwalb also told MSE last week that his reading of the existing bond/lease agreement for Capital One Arena ties the Wizards and Capitals to the arena until at least 2047.

Still, that hasn’t stopped Youngkin and other allies of the proposed arena from criticizing the rapid turn of events, lamenting how the deal “just went up in smoke.”

“This should have been our deal and our opportunity,” Youngkin said. “Personal and political agendas drove away a deal with no upfront general fund money and no tax increases.”

While Leonsis pursued the potential arena and mixed-use development in Alexandria, Bowser and other D.C. officials maintained that their roughly half-billion-dollar offer to renovate Capital One Arena was still on the table. And as the mayor waited out the situation, continued to engage with Leonsis, and was rewarded for her patience and persistence, this turn of events still represents one of the quickest about-faces in a large-scale pro sports venue project, with the whole Virginia saga unfolding in less than four months.

The Capital One Arena deal now moves to the D.C. council for formal approval, with a vote slated for April 2.

A new era for the Orioles is officially underway, and it will now include franchise icon and Baseball Hall of Famer Cal Ripken Jr. (above) in a much larger way. 

MLB owners unanimously approved Wednesday the purchase of the team by billionaire private equity executive David Rubenstein, valuing the team and related assets at $1.725 billion. The formal assent arrived four days after the death of former team owner Peter Angelos, who leaves an impactful and complex legacy on both the franchise and Baltimore overall. 

Rubenstein arrives with big expectations, taking over a team in the midst of a large-scale renaissance on and off the field, and he has several large-scale goals for the Orioles, including potentially reaching a fundamental resolution of the long-running Mid-Atlantic Sports Network dispute with the Nationals. 

“John [Angelos, Peter’s son and former team chair] led a dramatic overhaul of the team’s management, roster, recruitment strategy, and farm system in recent years,” said Rubenstein, who continued Wednesday what has already been a more public profile than much of the Angelos era. “Our job is to build on these accomplishments to advance a world-class professional sports agenda—with eyes on returning a World Series trophy to Baltimore.”

Rubenstein and his partners are acquiring 40% of the team and operational control now, with a plan in place to purchase an additional 30% from the Angelos family over time.

Return of the Iron Man

The agreement also includes the formal return of Ripken to the franchise, as he is part of Rubenstein’s ownership group. Since the former star infielder’s retirement in 2001, he has been more tangentially tied to the Orioles, primarily through ownership of a minor league affiliate in Aberdeen, Md. Ripken showed interest at various points in a larger, renewed relationship with the team, but it never happened during the Angelos era, and in recent years he maintained a certain distance from the Orioles. 

Now, Ripken is set to participate in the first pitch ceremony at Thursday’s season opener at Oriole Park at Camden Yards, marking a very public start to his new tenure as team co-owner.

The NBA is just a few weeks away from the playoffs, marching toward the conclusion of a season that began with a record 125 international players on opening-night rosters and included games in Mexico City and Paris. Those cities will host regular-season games again during the 2024–25 campaign, and they’re not the only foreign locales looking for a piece of the league.

“The good news is there’s no shortage of interest from cities and countries wanting to host our NBA games,” deputy commissioner Mark Tatum tells Front Office Sports. But as U.S. leagues evaluate how to expand their global footprint—the NFL, for example, will make its regular-season debut in Brazil this fall and plans to play up to eight international games per season in 2025 and beyond—the NBA is taking a measured approach on adding foreign countries to its slate. “The challenge for us on regular-season games is just one of a calendar and of the window,” Tatum says. (The NBA has also previously hosted regular-season games in Japan and the U.K.) “Our schedule is a pretty condensed schedule to play 82 games. Plus, now we have the Emirates NBA Cup that we have to squeeze into a season.”

That all means cities like Abu Dhabi, which “would love” to host a regular-season game, Tatum says, will have to keep settling for preseason matchups. (The Celtics and Nuggets will play two exhibition games there in October.) “It really does put a lot of pressure on the schedule,” Tatum says of taking the league abroad. “And I think that’s why we have to focus on regular-season games in places that don’t put an unnecessary tax on the travel of a team.”

Around the World

If and when the NBA decides to take more regular-season games abroad, the world’s second-most populous continent will be on the league’s wish list. 

Already, the NBA-backed Basketball Africa League is finding success in its fourth season, with nearly 25,000 fans having attended games in Pretoria, South Africa, earlier this month. The BAL will visit a record four countries this season, but ultimately the NBA would like to move from a ​​caravan model to a home and away system, with teams traveling to each other’s home markets.

“The challenge right now is that we don’t have the facilities [and] the arenas in enough countries in Africa to do that,” Tatum explains. “But our long-term goal, and I think [we] will get there over time, is that all 54 countries in Africa would have a world-class basketball arena that could host a BAL game—and NBA games at some point in the future as well.”