Could MLB expansion actually hurt college sports?

Good morning, and thanks for spending part of your day with Extra Points.

A few quick notes before we get going:

Earlier this week, ESPN’s Jeff Passan wrote that Major League Baseball is expected to expand in the near future, once the league and players' union negotiate and ratify a new collective bargaining agreement (which could take a long time). MLB hasn’t added a new franchise since 1998, after all, and league expansion means fees for existing owners, new inventory for media rights deals, and potential new growth markets for MLB as a whole.

Passan pointed to six cities as expansion candidates: Montreal, Salt Lake City, Nashville, Raleigh, Portland and Orlando. Of those, Passan calls Salt Lake “by far the most advanced potential bid,” given the strength of the ownership group and pathway to funding a stadium.

I don’t have a strong opinion about what market would be best for Major League Baseball. While there are plenty of similarities, the business of professional sports is still a very different beast from the business of college athletics, and I am not sourced enough in professional baseball circles to feel confident about advocating for, say, Portland over Nashville. I don’t see any reason to think baseball couldn’t be successful in any of those areas. Even Montreal!

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But I am sourced in the college sports world, and I think it’s worth noting that an expansion team in professional sports could pose some meaningful financial risks to college programs.

I’m not really talking about attendance, although I suppose it’s possible it could dip on the margins. Professional baseball’s regular-season schedule runs from April through September, the offseason for most major ticketed college sports. If a few folks decide to go to fewer college baseball or lacrosse games in order to check out the local MLB team, well, colleges will survive.

But corporate sponsorship dollars? That may be a different story.

Let’s look at the five U.S. markets Passan highlighted:

Salt Lake City (22nd largest combined statistical area, 28th largest media market): It would host three major men’s pro teams (the Jazz, Mammoth and a hypothetical MLB team I’m going to call the Dirty Sodas) plus two Power 4 athletic departments (Utah, BYU).

Nashville (32nd largest combined statistical area, 25th largest media market): It would host three major men’s pro teams (the Titans, Predators and a hypothetical MLB team I’m going to call the Bachelorettes), plus one P4 athletic department (Vanderbilt).

Orlando (15th largest combined statistical area, 15th largest media market): It would host two major men’s pro teams (the Magic and a hypothetical MLB team I’m going to call the Tourists), plus one P4 athletic department (UCF).

Portland (20th largest combined statistical area, 23rd largest media market): It would host two major men’s pro teams (the Trail Blazers and a hypothetical baseball team I’m going to call the Weirdos) and no P4 athletic departments.

Raleigh (30th largest combined statistical area, 22nd largest media market): It would host two major men’s pro teams (the Hurricanes and a hypothetical baseball team I’m going to call the Cheerwines), plus three P4 athletic departments (Duke, UNC and NC State).

These cities are all roughly the same size (outside of Orlando), both in terms of number of households and media market ranking. But I would worry about what yet another major professional team could do to the sponsorship market in places like Salt Lake and Nashville, which would instantly become among the smallest three-team markets in the country — and where a pro team would have plenty of competition from college, outdoor recreation and other established entertainment industries.

In fiscal year 2025, according to NCAA MFRS data obtained by the Extra Points Library, the University of Utah reported roughly $15.7 million in revenue from "royalties, licensing, advertising, and corporate sponsorships,” a significant increase from the $11.2 million it reported in FY24.

UNC reported even more: $23.9 million in FY25, good for 10th among public schools across all of Division I. NC State reported just $2.4 million in FY25, but sources at the institution have told me that number represents a significant undercount, with much of their actual sponsorship revenue reported in different revenue streams.

Those are all big checks, even for large P4 athletic departments. At Utah, that sponsorship/licensing piece represents 11 percent of all the revenues the athletic department generated. It was actually more than the school generated in ticket sales — and more than any other revenue line item beyond media rights and donations.

I harp on Utah specifically, because unlike any of the North Carolina public schools, it is spinning its athletic revenues into a new LLC, owned in part by a private equity company. In order to pay back investors, it’s critical that Utah’s athletics department generate even more revenue, fast. But with football stadium capacity already pretty much maxed out, and with Utah unable to really do anything to change its media rights situation until the next Big 12 deal, corporate sponsorships probably represent the largest potential growth area.

So more than BYU, UNC, NC State or nearly anybody else, Utah needs to get more money from corporations and advertisers. And if Salt Lake wins its MLB bit, the Utes would suddenly have to compete with another professional team for sponsorship dollars in what might become the single most crowded sports marketing metropolitan area, relative to its size.

I’ve seen others speculate the MLB could also be bad news for mid-major programs near those markets, like Weber State, Portland State, NC Central, etc. That’s possible, but generally speaking, the kinds of companies those schools are chasing to buy ads on their scoreboards or game programs aren’t the same ones that look to buy major MLB sponsorship packages … or at least, not at the same scale. There could be some worry about splitting the limited family entertainment budget, but I’m less convinced there’s as much risk in the MMR world.

That isn’t to say that baseball in Salt Lake would be a bad idea. But if my job was to sell sponsorships for the University of Utah athletics…I’d be concerned about that development.

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Thanks for reading, everybody. I’ll see you on the internet next week.