The Baltimore Orioles have finally completed a formal lease extension with Maryland officials, ending years of uncertainty surrounding the club. But even now, there’s still a big catch.

Facing a Dec. 31 expiration of the team’s existing lease to the publicly owned Oriole Park at Camden Yards, the team completed a 30-year pact with the Maryland Stadium Authority and Maryland Board of Public Works on Monday, confirming what had been first announced in September. The deal follows several years of back-and-forth talks, keeps the team at the downtown ballpark and, for now, eliminates what had been several years of steady but unconfirmed rumors of a potential franchise relocation and recent weeks of renewed negotiating chaos.

“Under this deal, we will keep the Orioles in Baltimore for the long-term with a no-relocation clause under any scenario,” said Maryland Gov. Wes Moore. 

Team Option

That boast, however, is definitively true only for a limited time. The Orioles have an option to reduce the deal to a 15-year term if they are not successful in securing necessary government approvals for a separate ground lease and development plan for the adjacent B&O Warehouse and surrounding Camden Yards area by the end of 2027. 

Several state legislators previously sought to separate the redevelopment pact from the core stadium lease, and they achieved a partial win there. The team option, however, could soon reignite many of the same concerns as in recent years if the redevelopment fails to materialize. 

But that was not front and center in the team’s immediate comments. The pact also allows the Orioles and MSA to tap into $600 million in state bonds for upgrades to Camden Yards, a provision also being utilized by the neighboring Baltimore Ravens, at M&T Bank Stadium. 

“There is nowhere the Orioles would rather play championship baseball than here at Camden Yards,” Greg Bader, the team’s chief operating officer, told the state Board of Public Works. 

All the agreed-upon lease terms will carry over to a new owner if Peter Angelos and his family sell the Orioles. The lease agreement closely follows a local media rights agreement between the Orioles, Mid-Atlantic Sports Network, and Washington Nationals for the 2017-21 seasons.

NHL player participation in the Olympics has been one of commissioner Gary Bettman’s thorniest issues for more than a generation of talent. A meeting this week between the league, NHL Players Association, IIHF, and IOC could help finally resolve the matter not only for the upcoming 2026 Winter Olympics but also on a longer-term basis.

According to Canada’s SportsNet, the session is aimed in part toward establishing a broader rotation between the Olympics and the NHL’s own World Cup of Hockey.

“The ultimate goal is to have an Olympics, two years later World Cup, two years later Olympics, two years later World Cup,” Bettman said at a recent NHL Board of Governors meetings. “That’s the cycle we’re trying to get on.”

Since NHL players first competed in the 1998 Olympics, participation has wavered based on several factors, including the logistics of suspending the league schedule, coming to agreements on key costs such as insurance, harmonizing the Olympic tournament with the World Cup, the pandemic, and geopolitical concerns.

Many of those issues ultimately led to NHL players not competing in the 2018 and ’22 Olympics, and as recently as November, Bettman called the Olympics issue “a logistical nightmare” and “very expensive.” Despite those hurdles, the commissioner also acknowledges the bigger role the Olympics can play in growing hockey globally.

“We’re focused on wanting to do something, [and] hopefully we will,” Bettman said.

In the meantime, the NHL is finalizing plans for a scaled-down 2025 international tournament that it will operate, involving teams representing the U.S., Canada, Sweden, and Finland. 

The WNBA will look to continue its momentum in 2024 with another record-high number of games and changes to its own in-season tournament after the league saw its best viewership in 21 years this past season. 

The 2024 WNBA schedule, unveiled on Monday, will begin on May 14 and see each of the league’s 12 teams play 40 regular-season games, the same number as in 2023.

A broadcast schedule will be released at a future date, but in 2023, combined viewership for the WNBA across Disney networks (ABC, ESPN, ESPN2) and CBS was up 21% compared to the prior season. Games were also shown on Amazon Prime Video and Ion. Altogether the WNBA is believed to be bringing in more than $40 million per year through its current deals.

The regular season will include a break for the Paris Olympics, from July 21 through Aug. 14, before picking back up and then concluding on Sept. 19. The playoffs will follow, but those dates have not been set.

And after the success of the NBA’s inaugural In-Season Tournament, the WNBA will modify its own in-season competition, condensing its Commissioner’s Cup games to a two-week period in June that will bring five matchups for each team.

Since its debut in 2021, the Commissioner’s Cup simply designated a portion of regular-season conference games in the first half of the season. The team from each conference with the top record in Commissioner’s Cup games will compete for a $500,000 prize pool in the Cup championship on June 25.

NBC Sports will bring a new approach to the world of golf broadcasting as it tries to pick a new No. 1 analyst before its two major championships next summer.

Kevin Kisner, a four-time winner on the PGA Tour, will enter the NBC Sports booth for two tournaments in early 2024, including the season-opening event in Maui during the first week of January. Kisner, 39, is still a full-time member of the PGA Tour, but he isn’t eligible for The Sentry and The WM Phoenix Open, the two $20 million signature events he will be calling on Golf Channel and on the main NBC broadcast network.

Golf analyst jobs have typically gone to former players who no longer compete full-time. Top CBS Sports golf analyst Trevor Immelman is 44, but the 2008 Masters champion began exploring broadcasting in the late 2010s as injuries plagued the latter half of his playing career. It’s unclear whether Kisner would be interested in joining NBC full-time.

Why There’s an Opening

Last month, NBC Sports parted ways with Paul Azinger, who held the network’s top golf job for five years. Several internal candidates are believed to be under consideration to replace Azinger, too. Sports Business Journal reported that Geoff Ogilvy, a former U.S. Open champion, is also being targeted, but that he could end up calling only a handful of events.

NBC will broadcast the Players Championship in March and, more importantly, the U.S. Open in June and the Open Championship in July. Finding a full-time top golf analyst before the latter two events is expected to be a priority for NBC, which is believed to pay close to $100 million annually for the two majors’ media rights, in addition to its part of the $680 million annual deal for PGA Tour rights, along with CBS Sports and ESPN.