Fabulous festival

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1. Expect bigger, better Players Era Festival in ‘25

When an inaugural event plans to dish out $1 million to eight teams — none of which were named Kansas, Kentucky, North Carolina, Duke or UConn — it creates some skeptics. Including me. It seemed absolutely ridiculous. Some coaches worried it would fall apart.

But I was courtside Saturday night at MGM’s Grand Garden Arena, watching Dana Altman and Oregon pull off an upset over a loaded Alabama team. Altman flashed a rare smile after the victory, largely due to the three wins his team pulled off in the Players Era Festival, but also because of the $500,000 in additional NIL opportunities his program earned.

The event, organized by former And1 founder Seth Berger and ex-Time president and EverWonder’s Ian Orefice, was a superb event, and earned praise from the coaches.

“I’ve been doing this for 36 years and I’d never have expected this is the first year of an event,” Creighton coach Greg McDermott said. “It was really well done.”

“I thought it was pretty damn good,” Alabama’s Nate Oats added. “I think it’s the best event out there right now. Everything was great.”

Altman’s only issue was the two-day layoff, but praised the accommodations at the MGM, the food, and the quality of the referees. Normally, the teams have to pay for travel and food. But everything was taken care of by the Players Era.

“You’re crazy for not playing in this,” Houston’s Kelvin Sampson said.

Overall, it was a major success — as long as the money is deposited Thursday into the team accounts. Orefice told The Field of 68 that they’ve had $9 million sitting in escrow as of a month ago, with EverWonder committing the bulk of the financial backing to this year’s event.

Orefice said that the intent was to create an improved early season event for both the fans and also a “more equitable product for the players.”

“We’re going to basically break even this year,” Orefice told The Field of 68. “And then when all the money is deposited on Dec. 5, the conversations between us and the teams will be fundamentally different.”

Sponsorship, distribution and advertising will pay the bills.

It felt like just about any other multi-team event except for the day prior to the start of the event when the players had a full day lined up with MGM Resorts, Starbucks and Dick’s Sporting Goods — the three primary sponsors.

The games aired on TBS, TNT, TrueTV and Max. It was well-organized on the ground by Intersport, the crowds were better than I anticipated, and the games were terrific. The only missteps involved the schedule (Alabama-Houston overlapped with Duke-Kansas on Tuesday).

Next year Berger said the tentative plan is to have games on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday, with somewhere between 16 and 20 teams in the field. They’ll stick with the MGM Grand Garden Arena, add Michelob Ultra Arena and a third (possibly T-Mobile). The winning team will get an additional million dollars.

Berger and Orefice said they plan to retain all eight teams from this year’s field, and are close to landing a blue blood for next season. They already have added the likes of Gonzaga, Baylor, Michigan, Iowa State, St. John’s, Syracuse and St. Joseph’s (Berger basically grew up with coach Billy Lange) for 2025.

Orefice said that the misnomer with the Players Era Festival is that it’s centered around one event.

“This isn’t just about one event,” Berger said. “We’re trying to make the Players Era the biggest brand so we can play the players even more. We’re looking at down the road having a huge impact in the sport.”
-Jeff Goodman

2. Dissecting the first NET rankings

The first rendition of the NET rankings — aka the “primary sorting tool” for the NCAA Tournament seeding committee to evaluate teams — dropped on Monday. And with its release, there’s a lot to take away. We’ll get to that, but first, a look at the top teams.

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