A version of this article first appeared in the CNBC Sport newsletter with Alex Sherman, which brings you the biggest news and exclusive interviews from the worlds of sports business and media. Sign up to receive future editions, straight to your inbox. The man of the week is Shams Charania . Just weeks after ESPN basketball reporter Adrian Wojnarowski shocked the sports world by announcing his retirement from journalism, ESPN scooped up Woj’s main rival and one-time protege, Charania. The timing is fortuitous. As it happened, Charania’s contracts with his previous employers FanDuel TV and The Athletic expired at the end of September. His deal with digital sports media outlet Stadium ended in August. Now he’s all ESPN’s, and you can plan to see him on your TV screens quite often. Charania begins his ESPN TV work today. He was kind enough to give me his first exclusive interview since joining the Worldwide Leader in Sports ( Don’t tell ESPN President Jimmy Pitaro I called it that!). “It’s definitely going to be a lot of TV,” Charania said. “All the shows you think about: ‘NBA Today,’ ‘NBA Countdown,’ ‘Get Up,’ ‘Sportscenter,’ ‘The Pat McAfee Show.’ I feel like the last six years have really helped prepare me for this moment, and I’m excited to continue to use and share in this platform and the behemoth that is ESPN.” The Shams vs. Woj rivalry has come to define NBA reporting and was a major piece of the league’s fan culture. I wrote about the phenomenon in early 2022. Two men, battling for scoops, with the Twitter universe rooting them on or dunking on the reporter that failed to be first. They worked together at Yahoo Sports before becoming rivals, only for Charania to eventually take over for Wojnarowski at ESPN. A Shakespearean plot! Plus, the state of their relationship has been … nebulous, at best. I asked Charania to describe his relationship with Wojnarowski in recent years. “Do I have to answer that?” Charania joked in reference to the water-cooler topic, before settling on an answer. “We worked together for two years. I’m forever honored and cherished to have been a part of that Vertical staff [at Yahoo Sports],” Charania said. “It’s a very competitive business. It’s a very, very competitive space. Over the last several years, I have just tried to just hone in on what aspects I can control on a daily basis, and that’s how I treat people and my work ethic.” Wojnarowski appeared on “The Jim Rome Show” to praise Charania earlier this week. “Shams texted me after I announced my retirement, and what I told him is what I would say today,” Wojnarowski said on Monday. “I hope he has as fulfilling and as rewarding of a career as I’ve had. And I certainly wish that for him.” I asked Charania what he texted. “It was a congratulatory message on just the appreciation that I have and his amazing career,” Charania said. “We spent two years together at Yahoo, and I was brought on to The Vertical, and the help that I had early on in my career as a younger reporter, that will never be lost on me. Just wishing him the best in his retirement and his next chapter. I’m forever indebted, and I think everyone in the industry should be as well.” Charania’s reporting style — which involves a torrent of texts and calls to NBA power players throughout the day — can sometimes irritate readers and even his sources. He’s relentless in his pursuit of scoops, and that can lead people to believe he’s simply a mouthpiece for agents and general managers. Charania says that’s a total misunderstanding of his job as a reporter. “I’m here to dig information up,” he said. “Over the course of my career, I’ve tried not to be that annoying, but you understand it. You know when you feel like you have news or you’re digging on news, you’re digging on a tip. There’s a level of relentlessness to it. And I definitely think there have been times where people might feel like I am maybe overwhelming when I’m reaching out to dig up a trade, or dig up a signing, or dig up a major piece of news. But I’d rather be characterized that way than not being aggressive and trying to hunt and do my job.” Charania, 30, is ESPN’s youngest-ever lead insider for any sport. His main job won’t change at ESPN, he told me. He’ll still try his best to be a scoop machine, even if he doesn’t have his challenger-in-crime breathing down his neck anymore. “This is a new chapter for me,” Charania said. “The expectations are still to break news, writing, working with the staff, and make everyone better. New challenges, new team, new everything. I can’t wait for it. I’m going to be doing way more TV than I’ve ever done, even though I feel like I was already doing a lot of TV. I think it’s going to be a start of a great new era for me at ESPN.” A couple of news & notes: I’m told there are at least four active discussions between NFL teams and private equity firms. Last month, I’d reported the Miami Dolphins, the Buffalo Bills and the Los Angeles Chargers are among the teams that will likely explore selling minority stakes to private equity, according to people familiar with the matter. The Dolphins are already close, CNBC reported last week . On CNBC’s “Squawk Box” this morning, NBA Commissioner Adam Silver , New England Patriots owner Bob Kraft and National Women’s Soccer League Commissioner Jessica Berman made a joint announcement. CNBC’s Jessica Golden has the details here. On the record In an homage to both Passover and Craig Kilborn ‘s old bit, ‘Five Questions,’ we’re asking the decision-makers in sports and media Four Questions. When it comes to sports-related dealmaking, there may not be a more connected investment bank than The Raine Group. Colin Neville is a partner at Raine, where he leads the firm’s sports practice. He joined the boutique bank at its inception in 2009 and has played a key role in advising deals, including the sale of Chelsea Football Club for $5.2 billion, the 25% Manchester United stake sale to Jim Ratcliffe , and the sale of the Brooklyn Nets to Joe Tsai . Colin has also led Raine’s investments in DraftKings and Premier Lacrosse League. 1. Is there a niche within the broader business of sports that’s particularly hot right now for dealmaking? Neville: It’s a little bit of an unfair question because the whole sector is hot. I’ll mention three subsectors gaining investor attention. Women’s sports certainly is an area where dealmaking has picked up. I don’t see it slowing down. Youth sports and the consolidation of a fractured landscape to improve the experience for both parents and their kids is a theme we’re tracking. And the third is trying to figure out what can be done in and around college sports. It keeps coming up in our conversations with investors. Can you separate a revenue generating sport or portions of a revenue generating sport from the NCAA framework and capitalize it? I don’t think anyone has the answer yet, but there are a lot of smart people spending a lot of time on that question. 2. The NFL recently announced its private equity rules around ownership, allowing some firms to take up to a 10% stake. Are you already starting to see that level of activity pick up? And I get why an owner would want to sell 10%, for liquidity, but do you think it makes sense for the private equity firms? In terms of activity, yes, without a doubt. The groundwork was laid prior to the announcement by the NFL. Forward-thinking firms were beginning to discuss partnership opportunities with clubs, and we expect those discussions to accelerate. We believe sports is the most powerful content in the world. And when you look at the landscape of sports leagues, the NFL, at least in the U.S., is certainly at the pinnacle. So you’re investing in the most premium of assets in what is already a pretty scarce set of opportunities. 3. There is so much interest in new sports league creation now. Pickleball and flag football, and we talked about new leagues for youth sports … but people only have so much time in a day. Are you concerned at all that we might be in a bit of a bubble here? You really need to evaluate each opportunity on its own. We worked with the UFC for 10 years leading up to the sale in 2016 . At the time it was considered an emerging sports league, but it had very unique characteristics and clearly filled a void in the market where there is substantial consumer demand. Today the UFC is approaching $2 billion in revenue and has staying power. Emerging sports leagues trying to simply replicate UFC’s success will run into challenges that may be specific to their sport or the viability of the business model and its underlying economics without investor support. So I do think there will be multiple of these new emerging properties that won’t make it over the longer term. The beauty of the world of technology that we live in today, though, is that audience can be found for virtually anything. And so the challenge for emerging properties that want to be around in 20 years is how they monetize their audience when traditional revenue streams may not be available in the early years. Not everything will draw the eyeballs needed to generate sustainable revenue from media platforms. But I don’t think people will stop trying, and investors will continue to look for the next winner. 4. Why do you think this sector is so hot right now? Is it lingering effects from Covid? Is it because the media landscape has shifted so that live sports is keeping linear TV alive? I don’t have a great answer for that or certainly can’t point to any one reason. We’ve lived in this world of sports as an asset class for my entire career at Raine. It was one of our first core sectors that we developed our business around. Live sports keeping linear TV alive has been the case for many years now. The loosening of restrictions on capital in the sector certainly led to an increase in activity. And there has been tremendous value creation and realization over the last decade that many have missed out on. But I go back to my earlier comment that in the world of disintermediation and competition for attention at the consumer level, if you want to be investing in entertainment, broadly speaking, sports is a really attractive place to be. CNBC Sport Highlight Reel The best of CNBC Sport from the past week: CNBC’s Contessa Brewer has been breaking news in Las Vegas this week interviewing the biggest leaders in the world of sports betting. The Florida sports betting market may get a lot more interesting. Hard Rock International Chairman and Seminole Gaming CEO Jim Allen said he was open to partnering with either FanDuel or DraftKings , which would give either company a foothold into Florida for the first time. Hard Rock currently has a monopoly on sports betting in the state, winning an exclusive tribal gaming compact that began last year. BetMGM CEO Adam Greenblatt told her he’s counting on newly launched technology to woo customers. A company that makes cooling products for athletes isn’t too thrilled with Tiger Woods . Tigeraire filed a notice of opposition with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office against Sun Day Red , Woods’ apparel company. Tigeraire said Sun Day Red “unlawfully hijacked” Tigeraire’s design into its own branding. In a subsequent court filing , Woods’ legal team struck back at Tigeraire, accusing the company of trying to capitalize off Sun Day Red’s status. You know media companies are desperate for live sports when QVC is adding USA Pickleball its platform. CNBC’s Lillian Rizzo has the details. The Big Number: 70 As Colin Neville said, investors are trying to figure out how to reconfigure big-time college sports in the era of NIL. Yahoo Sports saw one presentation, dubbed Project Rudy, named after the old Notre Dame player Rudy Ruettiger (yeah, from the movie ). A group called Smash Capital , which includes former Disney executives and Candle Media cofounders Kevin Mayer and Tom Staggs , has proposed consolidating media rights of 70 schools under one agreement, rather than selling five different packages for the SEC, Big Ten, ACC, the Big 12 and Notre Dame. Read all of the details in this in-depth story by Yahoo’s Ross Dellenger. Quote of the Week “We’ve got all this talent and we’ve got to deploy talent properly. I think they all got the message. This is it. This is the time to go. We’ve got to produce this year. We have to produce this year.” — Woody Johnson, Jets owner, Feb. 2024 Today’s quote of the week is one from Jets owner Woody Johnson — eight months ago . Apparently going 2-3 through the team’s first five games was not enough production. Johnson fired Jets head coach Robert Saleh this week. Around the League Derek Jeter is launching a production company to develop sports-related programming for TV and streaming services. They include an ESPN docuseries “Yankees Win” and a World Series docuseries set at Apple , according to The Hollywood Reporter. FanDuel is close to putting its brand on some troubled regional sports networks. Front Office Sports reports FanDuel is nearing a deal to become the title sponsor of the Diamond Sports Group –owned RSNs previously known as Bally Sports. A tiny temporary stadium has caused Northwestern to be one of the hottest tickets in college football, despite the fact that the Wildcats are below .500 with no hope of making the College Football Playoffs. The stadium for my graduate school alma matter seats only 12,000. The new stadium is scheduled to open in 2026.
Shams Charania, NBA basketball reporter
Source: Sinclair Broadcast Group’s Stadium
A version of this article first appeared in the CNBC Sport newsletter with Alex Sherman, which brings you the biggest news and exclusive interviews from the worlds of sports business and media. Sign up to receive future editions, straight to your inbox.
The man of the week is Shams Charania. Just weeks after ESPN basketball reporter Adrian Wojnarowski shocked the sports world by announcing his retirement from journalism, ESPN scooped up Woj’s main rival and one-time protege, Charania.
The timing is fortuitous. As it happened, Charania’s contracts with his previous employers FanDuel TV and The Athletic expired at the end of September. His deal with digital sports media outlet Stadium ended in August.
Now he’s all ESPN’s, and you can plan to see him on your TV screens quite often. Charania begins his ESPN TV work today. He was kind enough to give me his first exclusive interview since joining the Worldwide Leader in Sports (Don’t tell ESPN President Jimmy Pitaro I called it that!).
“It’s definitely going to be a lot of TV,” Charania said. “All the shows you think about: ‘NBA Today,’ ‘NBA Countdown,’ ‘Get Up,’ ‘Sportscenter,’ ‘The Pat McAfee Show.’ I feel like the last six years have really helped prepare me for this moment, and I’m excited to continue to use and share in this platform and the behemoth that is ESPN.”
The CNBC Sport newsletter with Alex Sherman brings you the biggest news and exclusive interviews from the worlds of sports business and media, delivered weekly to your inbox.
Subscribe here to get access today.
The Shams vs. Woj rivalry has come to define NBA reporting and was a major piece of the league’s fan culture. I wrote about the phenomenon in early 2022. Two men, battling for scoops, with the Twitter universe rooting them on or dunking on the reporter that failed to be first. They worked together at Yahoo Sports before becoming rivals, only for Charania to eventually take over for Wojnarowski at ESPN. A Shakespearean plot!
Plus, the state of their relationship has been … nebulous, at best. I asked Charania to describe his relationship with Wojnarowski in recent years.
“Do I have to answer that?” Charania joked in reference to the water-cooler topic, before settling on an answer.
“We worked together for two years. I’m forever honored and cherished to have been a part of that Vertical staff [at Yahoo Sports],” Charania said. “It’s a very competitive business. It’s a very, very competitive space. Over the last several years, I have just tried to just hone in on what aspects I can control on a daily basis, and that’s how I treat people and my work ethic.”
Wojnarowski appeared on “The Jim Rome Show” to praise Charania earlier this week.
“Shams texted me after I announced my retirement, and what I told him is what I would say today,” Wojnarowski said on Monday. “I hope he has as fulfilling and as rewarding of a career as I’ve had. And I certainly wish that for him.”
I asked Charania what he texted.
“It was a congratulatory message on just the appreciation that I have and his amazing career,” Charania said. “We spent two years together at Yahoo, and I was brought on to The Vertical, and the help that I had early on in my career as a younger reporter, that will never be lost on me. Just wishing him the best in his retirement and his next chapter. I’m forever indebted, and I think everyone in the industry should be as well.”
Charania’s reporting style — which involves a torrent of texts and calls to NBA power players throughout the day — can sometimes irritate readers and even his sources. He’s relentless in his pursuit of scoops, and that can lead people to believe he’s simply a mouthpiece for agents and general managers.
Charania says that’s a total misunderstanding of his job as a reporter.
“I’m here to dig information up,” he said. “Over the course of my career, I’ve tried not to be that annoying, but you understand it. You know when you feel like you have news or you’re digging on news, you’re digging on a tip. There’s a level of relentlessness to it. And I definitely think there have been times where people might feel like I am maybe overwhelming when I’m reaching out to dig up a trade, or dig up a signing, or dig up a major piece of news. But I’d rather be characterized that way than not being aggressive and trying to hunt and do my job.”
Charania, 30, is ESPN’s youngest-ever lead insider for any sport. His main job won’t change at ESPN, he told me. He’ll still try his best to be a scoop machine, even if he doesn’t have his challenger-in-crime breathing down his neck anymore.
“This is a new chapter for me,” Charania said. “The expectations are still to break news, writing, working with the staff, and make everyone better. New challenges, new team, new everything. I can’t wait for it. I’m going to be doing way more TV than I’ve ever done, even though I feel like I was already doing a lot of TV. I think it’s going to be a start of a great new era for me at ESPN.”
A couple of news & notes:
- I’m told there are at least four active discussions between NFL teams and private equity firms. Last month, I’d reported the Miami Dolphins, the Buffalo Bills and the Los Angeles Chargers are among the teams that will likely explore selling minority stakes to private equity, according to people familiar with the matter. The Dolphins are already close, CNBC reported last week.
- On CNBC’s “Squawk Box” this morning, NBA Commissioner Adam Silver, New England Patriots owner Bob Kraft and National Women’s Soccer League Commissioner Jessica Berman made a joint announcement. CNBC’s Jessica Golden has the details here.
On the record
Colin Neville, Raine Group partner.
Courtesy: Raine Group
In an homage to both Passover and Craig Kilborn‘s old bit, ‘Five Questions,’ we’re asking the decision-makers in sports and media Four Questions.
When it comes to sports-related dealmaking, there may not be a more connected investment bank than The Raine Group. Colin Neville is a partner at Raine, where he leads the firm’s sports practice. He joined the boutique bank at its inception in 2009 and has played a key role in advising deals, including the sale of Chelsea Football Club for $5.2 billion, the 25% Manchester United stake sale to Jim Ratcliffe, and the sale of the Brooklyn Nets to Joe Tsai. Colin has also led Raine’s investments in DraftKings and Premier Lacrosse League.
