CNBC Sport: Sports world waits for historic NCAA settlement ushering in new era of athlete pay

Published Thu, May 22 202510:10 AM EDT

Alex Sherman @in/alex-sherman @sherman4949

Key Points

The House v. NCAA settlement will have major ramifications for paying college athletes.
Among the top podcasts on YouTube, there are few sports shows to be found.
CNBC Sport spoke to St. Bonaventure University men's basketball general manager and former ESPN reporter Adrian Wojnarowski about the college sports landscape and his decision to leave journalism.

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 sports world is waiting on a finalized settlement for House v. NCAA , the landmark resolution that will define new rules allowing universities to directly pay their athletes. The final OK from Judge Claudia Ann Wilken could happen as soon as this week. Assuming the settlement is approved, several important things will change – perhaps the two biggest being: 1) It will create a revenue-sharing model that will allow schools to directly pay certain student-athletes – initially about $20 million per year. 2) About $2.8 billion will be allocated to former Division I college athletes who played from 2016 to 2024. (For athletes that graduated in 2015, I feel your pain.) There are a number of outstanding issues that will need to be taken care of in the coming months. One is oversight of the new system. As ESPN reported this week , the NCAA will no longer be responsible for ensuring payment rules are followed. Instead, a new enforcement committee – the College Sports Commission – will be in charge of doling out punishments for rule-breakers. You can almost be certain that plenty of schools will look for loopholes or push the limits of what's allowed as they try to compete. This new House settlement won't stop name, image and likeness collectives, though some will be shut down. This is already happening . But mid-market Division I schools will need every dollar they can get. It's a topic I discussed with former ESPN senior NBA insider and current St. Bonaventure University men's basketball General Manager Adrian Wojnarowski – this week's On The Record guest. "We've got to be able to get high-major players for mid-major money in the Atlantic 10," Woj told me. "You need high major players to win in our league. I feel like we've got several of them in this recruiting class, but it is a constant challenge for schools." There are so many interesting threads to pull on as college athletes move from amateurism to professionalism. How the money is allotted to the biggest sports at the biggest sports schools – versus smaller sports and schools – will certainly be a theme for years. I'm very worried about how March Madness may lose its magic, as I wrote about last month . To me, that event – enormously important to both men's and women's college basketball and their media partners – stands out among all other big-money tournaments because it's the only one where you can have true David vs. Goliath stories, with small schools beating the mighty on the biggest stage. Woj told me he agrees that the days of major March Madness upsets may be going away. All four No. 1 seeds made the NCAA Final Four this year. "It does take away the magic," Woj said. "What you're seeing right now is the Power Four conferences (the Big Ten, the Big 12, the ACC, and the SEC) are really dictating the rules, the landscape. You're seeing with this House settlement. It's the Power Four leagues deciding the rules and how this is going to go, and all of that, literally, all of it is to benefit them." If there are any surprises from Judge Wilken, I'll write more about it next week. One other subject I wanted to touch on briefly – YouTube released its weekly top podcast list for the first time. Perusing the top shows, I was struck by something — not a lot of sports! It's the polar opposite of traditional TV, where sports ( particularly the NFL ) dominate the ratings. NBC's "Sunday Night Football" finished the 2024-25 TV season, which concluded yesterday, as primetime's No. 1 show for its 14th consecutive year. This was quite evident at last week's advertising upfronts, where sports programming frequently led media companies' presentations. A few interesting takeaways: 1) People still want to watch non-sports content, but they've moved away from the traditional TV ecosystem. 2) Sports may be too immediate for the on-demand podcast world. It's basically the inverse of why sports dominate in a live TV setting. Sports are immediate, but they're also fleeting. There's not a lot of value in listening to a three-day old sports podcast, but there's plenty of value for a time-delayed comedy, true-crime or idea-based political podcast. 3) Of the sports content that did make the Top 50 ("The Pat McAfee Show," "Club Shay Shay"), the shows tend to be broader in focus than just sports. McAfee is willing to go in many different directions. "Club Shay Shay," a weekly podcast hosted by former Denver Broncos star Shannon Sharpe, is a standard interview show, even if many of the guests are athletes. This third point is particularly salient to ESPN, which will need to start programming for a streaming world outside of traditional TV with the launch of its $29.99 all-access service this fall. It will be interesting to see if ESPN invests in broader content that is sports-adjacent to keep people subscribing to the service. That would be a change for a network that's recently moved away from polarizing political topics to emphasize its focus on sports. On the record With St. Bonaventure University men's basketball general manager and former ESPN reporter Adrian Wojnarowski ... As I mentioned, this week's guest is Adrian Wojnarowski, most famous for his social media scoops on NBA transactions that came to be known as "Woj bombs." Woj and I discussed if the pressures of delivering constant breaking news to his 6.4 million X/Twitter followers hastened his self-imposed departure from journalism, and why his new job as the general manager of St. Bonaventure's men's basketball program is actually somewhat similar to his old job. I also got him to explain exactly what he's doing as the program's GM. "I'm still talking to a lot of the same folks, but it's a different conversation," said Woj. "I'm talking to NBA teams. I'm talking to agents. I'm talking to folks internationally in basketball, and obviously domestically. But the conversations are different. I'm talking about players and recruiting. Every day, there are two things that I do – recruiting and fundraising for NIL." We also talked about his strategy to keep St. Bonaventure as a destination rather than a feeder school for college basketball's powerhouse schools. That includes Woj taking a Moneyball-like approach to recruitment to keep up with schools that can pay athletes more money. "I think every day about that scene with Brad Pitt in the movie , who's playing [former Oakland Athletics GM] Billy Beane , where he says to his scouts, 'If we try to play like the Yankees in here, they're going to beat us out there,'" Woj said. "There was a time where … you're building four-year teams. I would argue, right now, you're trying to build a two-year team. Our best player this year, who came in and was an All-League player ( Melvin Council Jr. ), went to Kansas for exponentially more NIL, and we understood it. And so, we hope that helps us recruit the next player." Watch the entire interview here . Or listen to it here and follow the CNBC Sport podcast if you prefer the audio version. And if you go the audio route, a new treat for you – I'll be discussing the week's biggest sports and media news with my colleague Lillian Rizzo before each week's interview. CNBC Sport highlight reel The best of CNBC Sport from the past week: NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell spoke with CNBC's Scott Wapner this week about the league's plan to expand internationally. Goodell said he can envision 16 international regular season games within five years. Right now, the NFL has seven. It's probably not coincidental that Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos told me last week he has spoken with Goodell about adding more games to Netflix. International games fit Netflix's strategy of "event" games because they're inherently special. They also fit Netflix's global ambitions. Could the league at some point sell all the international games to a media partner such as Netflix? Stay tuned. The first trailer is out for CNBC Sport's video production, "Curry Inc.: The Business of Stephen Curry." Watch it here . The special will premiere live on CNBC at 9 p.m. ET on Wednesday, June 4. I spoke with Curry in a long sit-down interview for the production. We'll release the entire Curry interview – and one I did with his head coach, Steve Kerr – in the June 5 newsletter. Ever dream of competing head-to-head with Tom Brady , Kevin Durant or Alex Rodriguez ? Now is your chance. Sports business juggernaut Fanatics is introducing a skills-based competition at Fanatics Fest 2025, which takes place June 20 to June 22 in New York City, where fans compete against celebrities. Fanatics hopes it can bring in 100,000 people to the three-day event. CNBC's Jess Golden has all the details – including the prize money – here . The USTA is making its largest ever investment in the U.S. Open – an $800 million renovation to Arthur Ashe Stadium in Flushing, New York. The remodeling, which will also include a new $250 million player performance center, is scheduled to be ready by the 2027 U.S. Open. The big number: 4,910,000 That's how many average viewers watched the second round of the NBA playoffs across ABC, ESPN, ESPNU, TNT and NBA TV, according to new Nielsen data, as reported by Sports Media Watch. That's up 1% from a year ago. The third round may be uglier. Minnesota vs. Oklahoma City in the Western Conference Finals isn't exactly a marquee matchup. Game one ratings are in — and viewership was down 24% from last year's Dallas-Minnesota game. This is the last year TNT will have the NBA playoffs (or any live games). TNT will end its NBA coverage with the Eastern Conference Finals between the New York Knicks and the Indiana Pacers. As previously reported by CNBC Sport, the acclaimed studio show "Inside The NBA," starring Ernie Johnson , Charles Barkley , Kenny Smith and Shaquille O'Neal , will continue beyond this season as a licensed product produced by TNT Sports that airs on ESPN. One nugget to share on "Inside the NBA" – I was told ESPN executives told Barkley there's no requirement to do anything beyond the show. If he wants to appear on other ESPN shows, he'll certainly have the license to do so … but if he doesn't, that's fine with ESPN too, I'm told. Quote of the week "It's been 50 years since we won a title. Thibs is like my former coach Red Holzman —hard but fair, defensive-oriented, and the players really like each other, the camaraderie. I'm living vicariously through them." – CNBC's Contessa Brewer caught up with former New York Knicks point guard and current Knicks broadcaster Walt "Clyde" Frazier this week at BTIG Charity Day . Frazier likened current Knicks head coach Tom Thibodeau to Holzman, whose NBA coaching career ended in 1982, the year I was born. Watch here. Around the league NFL Hall of Famer and Ohio native Charles Woodson is a new minority owner of the Cleveland Browns. CNBC's Michael Ozanian reports Woodson bought a 1% stake at a $5 billion valuation – so he paid $5 million. Congrats Buffalo Bills fans! You get to see your team embarrassed on HBO and NFL Films' "Hard Knocks" this season ! Another season, another ratings win for the WNBA. The league's opening weekend game between Caitlin Clark 's Indiana Fever and Angel Reese 's Chicago Sky drew 2.7 million viewers – the largest regular-season audience in about 25 years. To borrow language from Erik Rydholm 's "Pardon the Interruption," happy trails to "Around the Horn," which ends its 23-year run tomorrow. New York Magazine ran a poignant profile about the show this week. And, in the name of the show's emphasis on disagreement, The Athletic's Andrew Marchand wrote a less poignant one.