These 11 questions will shape sports in 2024

Can MLB find a way to keep its best pitchers on the field?

At this time last year, the biggest question facing MLB was whether the sport could adapt to a fast-moving future and recover fans lost to years of slow-moving games. It did that by implementing the pitch clock in 2023, and while the sample remains small, even the stauncher traditionalists in the sport admit the rule rejuvenated the game and broadened its appeal.

Now, with the game moving like it should, with a baseball player receiving the biggest contract in professional sports history this offseason, baseball is back on a promising trajectory. The only problem: That player (Shohei Ohtani), like so many other elite pitchers, was unable to pitch when his team needed him most last season.

During the 2023 calendar year alone, 30 pitchers who did or probably would have pitched in the majors underwent Tommy John surgery. Dozens more lost months or even the entire season to shoulder issues.

According to the database compiled by baseball writer Jon Roegele, just less than 35 percent of those who pitched in MLB last year had undergone Tommy John surgery — the highest percentage since he began compiling data in 2016. Almost every playoff team was without a key pitcher because of elbow surgery: The Orioles were without closer Félix Bautista, the Marlins without ace Sandy Alcántara, the Dodgers without Walker Buehler, Tony Gonsolin and Dustin May. The eventual World Series champion Texas Rangers were without projected ace Jacob deGrom and survived that loss only because they had the money to spend on reinforcements.

As velocity increases and pitchers use max-effort deliveries to keep up, injuries follow. Some pitchers posited that the pitch clock, which forced them to work more quickly and rest less between pitches, contributed to a more acute spike in 2023.

Teams that build around starting pitching cannot be assured they will have it all season and must almost expect that any long-term deal will include a year-plus absence because of Tommy John or something like it. The data says pitcher injuries are firmly on the rise, but the sport is better with its best pitchers on the field. — Chelsea Janes

Will the Dream Team win its fifth straight Olympic gold?

The state of men’s basketball in the United States is cause for growing consternation: The past five NBA MVP winners were born outside the United States, the U.S. B-team failed to medal at the FIBA World Cup in September, and European stars Luka Doncic and Victor Wembanyama appear poised to carry the sport into the 2030s. Meanwhile, NCAA basketball finds itself in a radical transition period thanks to NIL (name, image and likeness), and only one of the top five NBA draft picks in June bothered to go to college.

Amid all this doom, gloom and uncertainty, the country will turn to what has been a dependable source of pride: the Dream Team. Since Kobe Bryant and LeBron James teamed up in 2008, the United States has won four straight Olympic gold medals — a significant and soothing feat that has helped cover up the other signs of American slippage. However, managing director Grant Hill, Coach Steve Kerr and the rest of the national team find themselves needing to pull out all the stops to extend the streak in Paris.

After an inexperienced American squad led by Anthony Edwards got beat by the Germans, Lithuanians and the Canadians at the World Cup, veteran A-listers such as James, Kevin Durant and Stephen Curry quickly swooped in and pledged to save the day next summer.

Yet questions abound. Will the headliners be healthy and enthusiastic participants once the NBA’s marathon season is complete? Will Kerr, like Mike Krzyzewski and Gregg Popovich before him, be able to mesh his team’s big personalities on a short timetable? Or will international superstars such as Nikola Jokic or Shai Gilgeous-Alexander slay Goliath?

The Americans will arrive in France as heavy favorites, but it took an otherworldly run from Durant to escape with gold in Tokyo. The United States is no longer the unbeatable force that it was in 1992 with Michael Jordan, Magic Johnson and Larry Bird, yet expectations remain as high as ever. If the Americans are toppled on the biggest international stage for the first time in two decades, a swift and severe backlash will inevitably follow. — Ben Golliver

Can the WNBA capitalize on this moment?

When the business of the WNBA is discussed, the same hot-button issues inevitably are raised. Expansion from 12 teams. Expansion of roster sizes. Improvement of travel accommodations and more chartered flights. An increase in salaries.

All of those things ultimately revolve around a new upcoming media rights deal, which is expected to bring an influx of cash into the league. The current deal with ESPN is set to expire after the 2025 season, and the new contract could impact each of the above issues. This past summer, Commissioner Cathy Engelbert told The Washington Post the next three to five years will set the course for the next 30 to 40 seasons. A more lucrative deal could be game-changing.

So the league’s task is to do everything in its power to maximize the worth of that deal. A major step was October’s announcement of an expansion team in the Bay Area, awarded to the owners of the Golden State Warriors. The plan has been to expand by two teams, and the Bay Area team is scheduled to begin play in the 2025 season. The league will want to announce another team ready to play that season as a bargaining chip to potential broadcast partners, expanding its footprint into a pair of new television markets.

Interest in the league and women’s basketball in general has continued to climb. The WNBA announced record-breaking viewership in 2023, along with increased attendance and digital engagement. Viewership for the NCAA women’s Final Four, Elite Eight and Sweet 16 also set records, according to ESPN, with 9.9 million watching the final. By comparison, the World Series averaged 9.1 million viewers, according to Nielsen ratings. The 2023 draft could include players who are already household names with huge followings in Caitlin Clark, Paige Bueckers and Angel Reese.

The time is now for the WNBA to capitalize with a media deal that could have an enormous future financial impact. What will the league do to facilitate that in 2024? — Kareem Copeland

Who will play in next year’s Famous Idaho Potato Bowl?

Just kidding. But the problem with projecting the future of college sports — or even attempting to in a superficial way — is that it’s perhaps harder to do than picking the two teams that will win roughly seven or eight football games next season and then clash in Boise.

Nevertheless, some other things to look out for in this rapidly changing landscape: Will (any) college athletes be classified as employees of their schools or conferences in 2024? What will come of the NCAA’s proposal to sift the highest-spending schools into their own subdivision and allow all schools to pay athletes directly through NIL deals and uncapped “education-related” money? Will the NCAA finally convince Congress to grant it an antitrust exemption, shielding it from current and future litigation? For that matter, will the NCAA ever stop losing in court?

And, sure, will there be a Final Four in April before the sky falls because how could the sky hold up with all this money flowing to athletes? Stay tuned. — Jesse Dougherty

How does the mighty NFL balance future growth against overdoing it?

The NFL is the nation’s most popular and prosperous sports league, and it really isn’t close. Through Week 14, the average NFL game drew 17.8 million viewers, and 72 of the 75 most-watched shows on television since the start of the season were NFL games. Josh Harris’s group bought the Washington Commanders from Daniel Snyder this year for $6.05 billion. The league has broadcasting deals worth more than $110 billion over 11 years.

The issue is: Where does the NFL go from here, after it already is at the country’s sports mountaintop?

The league’s leaders and the owners of its 32 franchise must avoid complacency. That’s why the NFL is expanding its scope of international games in the search for new overseas markets, planning a game in Brazil next season and doubling the number of international games to as many as eight beginning in 2025 (plus the possibility for a ninth involving the Jacksonville Jaguars in London). It’s why the league has made a commitment to broadcasting its games increasingly through streaming, putting the Thursday night package on Prime Video and placing “NFL Sunday Ticket” on YouTube, in search of a younger audience. It’s why the NFL and its teams have embraced legalized sports betting, in a bid to intensify viewer engagement and create lucrative new revenue streams through partnerships.

The NFL must be careful not to overdo it. The attempt to squeeze ever more out of an already thriving business is tricky. The spread of legal sports gambling in particular is potentially problematic, given it intensifies the scrutiny on a variety of integrity-of-the-game issues ranging from the quality of the officiating to the accuracy of teams’ injury reporting.

But the NFL knows it can’t stand still. How it strikes that balance in the coming months and years between what has worked so well to this point and what could work better in the future will determine the extent to which the NFL continues to thrive. — Mark Maske

Is professional golf irrevocably broken?

The pro golf world starts the new year in a similar place that it began the last one — mired in chaos and uncertainty — but the stakes feel much higher. Last year, the sport was facing an existential crisis, at a crossroads for survival, at least in the case of the PGA Tour. With their dueling litigation now dismissed, the tour and LIV Golf, its Saudi Arabia-backed competitor, are not quite friends but also not mortal enemies — at least for the time being. But the entire sport is still on shaky ground, and it’s not clear whether the economics underpinning pro golf are in any way sustainable.

The PGA Tour and LIV Golf’s benefactors sought to unite the golf world when they announced their intent to join forces in early June, but the ensuing seven months only brought more confusion. Players have been divided into factions, the PGA Tour’s talent roster and weekly fields have been watered down, tour players distrust tour leadership, sponsors and broadcasters are left with weekly events with less intrigue, and LIV is still enthusiastically pushing a product that is slow to catch on.

The PGA Tour spent the final weeks of 2023 negotiating with both the Saudi Public Investment Fund, which owns LIV Golf, and a consortium of high-powered sports team owners about investing in the tour. If the deals get finalized, billions will be injected into the sport, PGA Tour players stand to get an equity stake in the organization, and the tour will see its most pressing financial concerns alleviated. LIV, meanwhile, could be further legitimized for a mainstream audience, though it’s still not clear whether there’s an appetite for LIV or a team-golf concept, particularly in the United States.

But any return on investment is questionable. Sponsors and broadcast partners are seemingly tapped out — Wells Fargo and AT&T recently decided to stop sponsoring tour events in Charlotte and Dallas — and the sport essentially spent the past couple of years pushing away its fans. The wearied golf fan who has tried to weather this storm will see the world’s top players compete against each other just a few times per year at the majors, where only a handful of LIV players can even tee it up.

If 2023 was about financial stability and appeasing players, the new year will have to be about presenting a product that golf fans want to see. And if the proposed partnership somehow falls apart, both the men’s game and its anxious fan base stand to continue suffering for the foreseeable future. — Rick Maese

Can the NHL get out of its own way?

On the ice, the quality of the NHL has never been higher. Play is faster, and players are more skilled — and feel more freedom to try out the kind of highlight-reel plays that wouldn’t have been tolerated in previous eras. Whether it’s Edmonton’s Connor McDavid using his skating and puck skills to pull off an end-to-end rush or 18-year-old Chicago rookie Connor Bedard showing off a shot that’s already among the best in the league, the game is in great shape.

But off the ice, the NHL has taken a hit. Commissioner Gary Bettman has been in his role for 30 years, and the league hasn’t been an innovator in recent years. As proof: In November, the NHL launched NHL Breakaway, its NFT digital collectible program for hockey highlights. In contrast, NBA Top Shot, the NBA’s version of the same concept, launched in 2020, early in the NFT boom. Culturally, decisions such as banning special warmup jerseys — after a handful of players refused to wear Pride-themed jerseys in warmups ahead of their teams’ annual LGBTQ+ awareness games — have created a perception the NHL has little interest in inclusion.

The salary cap also has been stagnant since the start of the coronavirus pandemic, hamstringing teams that signed players to long-term contracts beforehand, based on projections of the cap going up. Many NHL executives believe the nearly flat cap (it has risen just $2 million since 2019) has limited trade activity at a time when NBA teams are making blockbuster trades left and right — and drawing fan interest and engagement from those moves.

The latest projection has the salary cap set to increase by $4.2 million to $87.7 million next season. That should help solve one of the issues, but how the NHL is perceived on a cultural level — particularly among the younger demographic the league is trying to cultivate — will remain at the forefront in the new year. — Bailey Johnson

How will teams and leagues replace money lost to cord-cutting?

For the past 30 years, the business of sports has followed a similar pattern. Every time a team — any team, really — signs a new TV deal, revenue shoots up. This is predominantly how teams have paid ever-escalating salaries to players (and college coaches). It has been a key driver of the team valuations that have pushed into the billions. But cord-cutting threatens this virtuous cycle. Around 100 million American homes had cable TV a decade ago, but there are now around 70 million, and the number keeps dropping. Cable companies are fleeing the regional sports network business, ESPN faces headwinds like never before, and questions remain about how much tech companies would pay for these rights.

In 2024, the NBA will sign new broadcast deals; a complicated bankruptcy case involving Bally Sports, which owns the local broadcast rights for dozens of MLB, NHL and NBA teams, will continue to unfold; and teams will continue to look for new distribution models. How this plays out — and where teams and leagues find the missing money — is the most important story in U.S. sports. — Ben Strauss

Can Paris make the Olympics special again?

After two covid Olympics competed before empty stands, Paris wants this year’s Summer Games to be spectacular. Plans call for the July 26 Opening Ceremonies to be on the Seine River, with the athletes parading on boats at sunset to the Trocadéro across the river from the Eiffel Tower for a show that will largely take place on the water. Throughout the Games, events will be held in and around some of the city’s most famous landmarks, including the Eiffel Tower, Palace of Versailles and Place de la Concorde.

With fans able to attend for the first time since the 2018 PyeongChang Winter Games, these Olympics in the middle of Paris have a chance to make for riveting television.

But the Olympics have been clouded by doping and bid-rigging scandals, the wasteful building of unnecessary stadiums and Games held in countries (Russia and China) with histories of human rights abuses. Russia has been a problem for the Olympics since its state-sponsored doping program at the 2014 Sochi Winter Games and subsequent sanctions at succeeding Olympics. The International Olympic Committee suspended Russia because of the country’s attempt to claim athletes in some of Ukraine’s regions as its own. Still, the IOC, controversially, will allow some Russians to compete in Paris as individual neutral athletes, without their nation’s flag, anthem or colors, as long as they haven’t supported the war or been part of Russia’s military.

Olympic television ratings in the United States have been dropping, showing a potential decline in interest. Some of this dip may be attributed to the fact that four of the past five Games have been in Asia, half a day ahead of most American time zones. Paris, with its plan to show off the city and make its Games a glamorous event, wants to bring some of the old excitement back.

Will it be enough to wipe away some of the sour feelings about recent Olympics? Or will scandals and the lingering debate over Russia hang like a dark cloud over Paris’s ambitious Olympics? — Les Carpenter

Will the U.S. national teams stand up to elite competition?

2024 is not a World Cup year for the U.S. men’s and women’s national teams, but it does loom large for different reasons.

By participating in Copa América — the fabled South American tournament that will take place at 14 U.S. venues this summer — the men’s team will face its stiffest tests before the 2026 World Cup is staged in the United States, Mexico and Canada.

Coach Gregg Berhalter’s contract runs through 2026, but failure to advance to Copa’s knockout stage would sound alarms about the program’s direction and perhaps prompt new sporting director Matt Crocker to consider changes.

Berhalter has been working with a young, exciting roster — one that should begin to show capacity not only to compete with but beat big teams in serious competitions, especially in a dress rehearsal of sorts for the World Cup on home grounds two years later. He has the pieces; can he make them fit into his plans at a big moment?

The women will head to the Paris Olympics seeking to rebound from round-of-16 elimination at the World Cup last summer — the poorest performance at a major tournament in program history. The team also foundered at the previous two Olympics, and with many traditional soccer-playing countries finally investing in the women’s game, the U.S. pathway to trophies and medals has become treacherous.

For that reason, the U.S. Soccer Federation hired Emma Hayes, one of the game’s most respected coaches. Because she will not step into the full-time coaching job until May when Chelsea’s season ends in Europe, she will have little time for Olympic preparation.

In hiring someone who wasn’t immediately available, the USSF is playing the long game, hoping the highly regarded Hayes not only restores U.S. excellence by invigorating the current squad but reshapes the program at large.

Olympic women’s soccer is no longer as important as the World Cup, but it remains a substantial competition the United States has won four times in seven attempts. There is no better way to get back on track — and win over casual fans — than winning gold in Paris. — Steven Goff

Will men’s tennis have a first-time major winner?

The most existentially pertinent question tennis faces in 2024 is about new Saudi Arabian investment in the sport — both if it happens (many decision-makers view it as an inevitability) and what form it might take. There have been reports about both a potential Saudi-run tournament and an additional stop located in Saudi Arabia, as well as extended talk of the WTA’s potential involvement with Saudi money.

None of that is nearly as fun as debating the sport itself. Here’s something worth pondering instead: Will men’s tennis have a first-time major winner in 2024?

It is nearly a given that the women’s game will; 2014 was the most recent year in which all four Grand Slam winners were repeat champions. But for the men, the question is as much about who has the talent and chutzpah to break through at a Grand Slam as it is about the (glacially) slow erosion of Novak Djokovic’s singular hold on the game. Are we in for an era of Djokovic battling Carlos Alcaraz and Alcaraz alone, or is a new generation breaking through?

Italy’s Jannik Sinner, 22, is a top contender among the youngsters, and there are still many reasons to believe Greece’s Stefanos Tsitsipas (25) will win a major one day. As for Djokovic’s continued dominance, would anyone be surprised if he took two or three major trophies in 2024? Little else in sports feels as inevitable as that. — Ava Wallace