Three Thoughts: Is the Maui Invitational in Danger?

1. How Safe Is the Maui Invitational?

A week ago, we shared the latest on the NIL-awarding Thanksgiving college basketball tournament, one that’s evidently named the “Players Era Festival.” Since then, we’ve received some updates:

• Matt Norlander reported that the Players Era Festival will actually be a pair of four-team tournaments, not one eight-team tournament.
• The Maui Invitational announced its 2025 field: Texas from the SEC, Oregon and USC from the Big Ten, Baylor from the Big 12, NC State from the ACC, Seton Hall from the Big East, UNLV from the Mountain West, and Chaminade.
• Norlander further reported that many in the industry expect these Thanksgiving tournaments (formally known as MTEs) to pivot to more four-team fields playing two games apiece rather than the traditional Maui format of eight teams playing three games apiece in three days. He specifically reports that some who run the Maui Invitational are worried Maui itself will need to split into two four-team tournaments.
• Norlander’s reported reasoning behind this expectation was as follows: “The (eight-team) concept is great for TV and for NCAAT résumé-building—but it’s not a money-making endeavor for teams.”

Let’s go point by point here.

First, the Players Era Festival failing to build eight-team tournaments casts even more doubt on an already dubious business model. They’re cutting their TV inventory by a third while adding one million dollars in prize payouts. Maybe my NCAA Tournament-based estimates of high-rating college basketball’s value per viewer don’t apply well to Thanksgiving-season tournaments, but if anything, I’d think they’d be wrong in a direction charitable to the Players Era Festival*. The PEF’s design seems heavily reliant on sponsors and sponsored events, which means it’s probably fairly reliant on in-person attendance. Existing Las Vegas MTEs do not perform particularly well in that realm. Few MTEs do. Based on my very limited knowledge: If I could short the Players Era Festival, I would short it.

Second, that’s not a bad field for Maui. It’s received some criticism, but Texas is arguably the biggest brand in college sports, Baylor is one of the best basketball programs in the country, and NC State’s a basketball school with a big following. 2021’s Maui Invitational was strong and it featured Ohio State, Arizona, Arkansas, Creighton, Cincinnati, San Diego State, Texas Tech, and Louisville. This field isn’t much different from that one. Texas parallels Ohio State. Baylor parallels Arizona. NC State parallels Louisville. There isn’t a match for Arkansas in terms of fan support, but Oregon and USC aren’t miniscule brands. Negative reactions to the 2025 Maui field have probably been shaped by a mixture of confirmation bias (the college basketball industry continues to expect big things out of Las Vegas-centered events despite consistent underwhelm) and recency bias (the 2023 Maui field was historically loaded).

Third, it’s telling that so much of this conversation is happening in Norlander’s work. He’s not necessarily wrong—the guy knows college basketball very well—and it’s not like other insiders are refuting what he says, but there isn’t a whole lot of conversation elsewhere about MTE disruption. It might be that this is too small a deal for most college basketball reporters to care. It might be that I’m missing the broader conversation. It might be that others aren’t viewing this as all that likely.

Fourth, Norlander’s rationale is interesting. I believe that he’s hearing that, but if I was asked for the reasons a team might want to play in a four-team MTE rather than an eight-team MTE, my explanation would go like this:

The NCAA Tournament selection committee harshly punishes teams with overall records within three or fewer games of .500. With power conferences and power conference schedules growing in recent years, teams worried about the bubble are smart to devote six or seven nonconference games to near-automatic wins. Their conference schedule is too big a portion of their overall schedule to get those wins elsewhere, and so long as teams’ nonconference strengths of schedule aren’t completely horrible, they usually don’t get punished for it. An overall record close to .500, though, is a non-starter. Also: With the Pac-12 dissolving and MTEs generally required to limit themselves to one team from any given conference, there will be more mid-majors in eight-team tournaments than there used to be. Power conference schools are terrified of losing to mid-majors.

College basketball media does have a large blind spot around the .500 issue, intentional or otherwise. It hasn’t clicked yet how much better 17–15 is against one schedule than 20–11 is against another. Taking Norlander’s reporting at face value, though, the money angle implies that MTEs aren’t paying schools a very large cut of what they make from TV, something which implies some combination of 1) MTEs not making much profit themselves [which casts even more doubt on the Players Era Festival’s viability] and 2) schools possessing the capability to make more money via cupcake games than they make playing in MTEs.

In total? Maybe four-team MTEs are going to become the norm. Maybe even Maui will have to change. If it does, though, it seems likelier to happen due to a combination of bubbles than real Players Era Festival disruption. The first bubble is the NCAA Tournament bubble, one where it pays off to get 18 wins where you can find them. The second is what might be an MTE bubble overall. It sounds like schools may be recognizing that MTEs are taking a cut of money schools could keep for themselves. Playing the same quality of games via home-and-homes is probably more lucrative. Schools might be cutting out the middleman.

Either way, Maui will be fine as long as it doesn’t become legitimately unprofitable due to the reduced number of games. If it does? Don’t be surprised to see teams resurrect something like it on their own—a series of neutral-site games at the Lahaina Civic Center over Thanksgiving Week. With all the money going to them.

*The logic here: I estimated the Players Era Festival’s revenue by taking CBS/Turner Sports’ payment per viewer for the NCAA Tournament and (charitably) assuming the Players Era Festival could match the Maui Invitational in viewership. The NCAA is reportedly rather soft in its negotiations with CBS and Turner, which could make my estimate too low, but the Maui Invitational has a big name-power benefit the Players Era Festival lacks, and it doesn’t compete head-to-head with college football and the NFL, whereas the Players Era Festival will. That would make my estimate too high. Most importantly, March Madness competes with almost nothing for viewers. March is a dead zone in the rest of the sporting calendar. I struggle to believe that the cost per viewer of sports TV inventory is higher in November than it is in March.

2. Are the Astros Coming Back?

The Astros have won five of six. They only trail the Mariners by five games in the loss column. The Rangers are .500 overall. Alex Bregman might be breaking out of his slump, homering thrice and doubling twice over the last two games. Cristian Javier’s off the IL, and while his return went poorly, Hunter Brown got excellent results in relief of him in a piggyback outing. It’s possible that the AL West’s opportunity to bury the Astros has passed.

The counterpoint here is that Houston played the Tigers over the weekend and are currently playing the A’s. Another? Ronel Blanco’s probably facing a 10-game suspension after getting caught last night with sticky stuff on his glove. Still, the Mariners and Rangers’ combined 45–42 record isn’t doing a whole lot to help the AL West bury its recent king.

3. Atlanta Remains a Cubs House of Horrors

The good thing about Jameson Taillon’s outing last night was that his back didn’t seem to actively become a problem again. Through two nights in Atlanta, though, where last year’s season met its disappointing end, the Cubs are being outscored 9–0.

I think a lot about something Joe Maddon said in 2015 during that May series the Cubs lost to the Cardinals at Busch Stadium. I don’t have the exact quote, but the idea was that the young team wasn’t ready yet to beat the teams ahead of them in the pecking order. By October, of course, they famously were ready. Unfortunately, these Braves are better on paper than those Cardinals, and these Cubs are worse on paper than those Cubs. Using FanGraphs’s Playoff Odds, the expected rest of season records from the relevant dates:

The Cardinals weren’t the best on-paper team in the NL in 2015, but catching up to them was a lesser task than catching up to this iteration of Atlanta. The gap is still really big.