A group led by Josh Harris and another led by Steve Apostolopoulos submitted formal bids to purchase the NFL’s Washington Commanders from Daniel Snyder, according to people with direct knowledge of the sale process. Harris’s bidding group includes Potomac billionaire businessman and philanthropist Mitchell Rales and Basketball Hall of Famer Magic Johnson as investors. The group was known to have been involved in the bidding, and the process has reached the point at which the Harris group has made its bid formal. It was not immediately clear Tuesday whether other prospective buyers have submitted formal bids.
STN Video, an online video platform for publishers that care about user experience, content and monetization, and the National Football League have signed a multi-year partnership agreement extension that will help […]
A week after Charter and Disney made peace on the distribution front, DirecTV and Nexstar have set a multi-year carriage renewal, ending a dispute that started in early July.
The agreement was announced this morning in a brief joint press release, with the companies saying they “greatly appreciate the patience of their subscribers and viewers during this negotiation.” Signals from 176 Nexstar stations as well as cable network NewsNation had been restored on Sunday as the final deal was being completed.
YouTube is now home to NFL games every Sunday. Will it bring more young people into the NFL? Or will it hasten the demise of linear TV networks?
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Fall’s upfront would have been a lot worse were it not for leveraging NFL packages with advertisers, and the league continues to pull them in in all sizes.
When the Kansas City Chiefs face the Detroit Lions on Thursday, football fans will have the option of watching the game on NFL+. But in future seasons, subscribing to the league’s streaming service might be a requirement to watch select matchups.
LOS ANGELES (AP) — Julian Edelman is joining “Fox NFL Kickoff” for the upcoming season. Edelman, who won three Super Bowl titles in 12 seasons with the New England Patriots, […]
Alphabet’s Google has been hit with a lawsuit in U.S. federal court seeking information about its multibillion-dollar deal with the National Football League to exclusively hold the broadcast rights for the Sunday Ticket package of televised professional games. Lawyers representing classes of residential and commercial business subscribers of Sunday Ticket filed the lawsuit on Monday in San Jose, Calif., federal court.
Google’s YouTube is tweaking features of NFL Sunday Ticket — less than a month before the football season kicks off — in the hopes of luring more paying customers to the pricey sports package.
MLB remains solid, while Generation Gap and The Prank Panel take hits.
Max is getting into the NFL Sunday Ticket huddle. Google’s YouTube TV will offer a special bundle combining Warner Bros. Discovery’s Max with the NFL Sunday Ticket out-of-market football package.
The Disney-controlled channel is trying to find a way forward in the streaming age and has had discussions with the NFL, the NBA and Major League Baseball.
All 32 team owners voted for the sale, which is the highest price paid for a North American professional sports team. After the finance committee approved the agreement with the new ownership group, Harris Blitzer Sports and Entertainment, a special league meeting was called to consider and vote on it before the 2023 season begins.
The Chicago Bears and Fox-owned WFLD announced today that WFLD will remain the broadcast home of the Bears in a multi-year deal. Under this deal, WFLD will continue to broadcast […]
DirecTV is adding NFL RedZone to its lineup for the first time. The renewal, which was announced on Tuesday, keeps NFL Network on DirecTV and adds distribution on DirecTV Stream and U-verse. The NFL RedZone channel also will be carried on those platforms.
WNBC New York’s New York Giants 2023 programming lineup includes live preseason broadcast coverage and a special, all-access training camp program airing Saturdays in August. Big Blue fans in the […]
The league and NBCUniversal announced Monday that the Saturday night game on wild card weekend will be on Peacock. The Peacock exclusive game on Jan. 13 would start at 8:15 or 8:30 p.m. ET. The game will be broadcast on NBC stations in the markets of the two teams. It will also be available on mobile devices through the NFL+ package. It will be preceded by a late afternoon playoff game on NBC and Peacock that will kick off at 4:30 p.m. ET.
The sides announced the deal in a joint statement Friday, roughly a month after they reached an agreement in principle on the sale for a record $6.05 billion.
For the second straight year, ESPN’s Monday Night Football gets a marquee QB making his debut with another team when the Jets host the Buffalo Bills on Sept. 11. Three of the Jets’ first four games are in a national widow. The Sept. 17 game at Dallas is the featured CBS game in the late window, and Rodgers’ first meeting with Patrick Mahomes is on NBC’s Sunday Night Football on Oct. 1 when the Jets host Kansas City. Even though this was the first year of the NFL’s new television package, where any game could go to any network, most of the past structure remains in place. Over 90% of Fox’s schedule features at least one NFC team, while CBS remains the top network for the AFC’s top teams. CBS has at least eight Jets games, with Fox, ESPN, NBC, and Amazon Prime Video getting two apiece. The league does not set networks for all Week 18 games until after Week 17. Pictured: New York Jets’ quarterback Aaron Rodgers talks to reporters after an NFL football press on April 26, 2023. (Seth Wenig/AP)
Dan Snyder is nearing a $6 billion sale to a group that includes private equity founder Josh Harris, billionaire titan Mitchell Rales plus NBA legend Magic Johnson, according to multiple reports. The finalization of a sale would mark the end of a beleaguered tenure for Snyder, who purchased the team in 1999, and has presided over a franchise that in aggregate performed poorly on the field and had one scandal after another within the organization.
National Football League owners were unable to approve a plan to “flex” games to create better matchups for Amazon Prime’s Thursday Night Football and tabled discussions until May. The league and Amazon want to prevent poor matchups in primetime and a proposal would have allowed games to be moved from Sunday to Thursday with 15 days notice.
At league meetings next week, the NFL will discuss ways to improve the matchup quality for Amazon Prime Video’s Thursday Night Football schedule, after last season’s Thursday-night slate became noticeably bereft of competitive games.
WASHINGTON (AP) — Magic Johnson has joined Josh Harris’ bid to buy the NFL’s Washington Commanders, according to a person with knowledge of the situation. The person spoke to The Associated […]
Amazon announced Tuesday that the Black Friday game on Nov. 24 will be available for all fans to stream for free. The 2023 season will mark the first time the league has scheduled a game for the day after Thanksgiving. The teams for the 3 p.m. ET game will be announced later.
CBS Sports’ broadcast of Kansas City’s AFC Championship Game win over Cincinnati on Sunday averaged 53.124 million viewers per Nielsen finals, up 11% from last year’s AFC contest to mark the most-watched NFL Conference Championship in four years and the most-watched television program on any network since the 2022 Super Bowl. (Earlier in the day, over on Fox, the Eagles’ NFC Championship win averaged 47.5 million viewers.)
The opening round of the NFL playoffs drew a slightly smaller — though still huge — TV audience than it did a year ago. The six games of the wild-card round averaged about 28.4 million viewers, a 4% decline from 2022’s opening round (29.65 million). Three of the telecasts topped 30 million viewers, led by the 33.21 million for Fox’s Sunday telecast of the New York Giants’ win over the Minnesota Vikings. That contest, however, was off by about 20% from the same window last year, when 41.5 million people watched the San Francisco 49ers beat the Dallas Cowboys — the biggest audience for a wild-card game since 2015.
The league made the call to cancel the game outright in the aftermath of the hospitalization of Bills player Damar Hamlin. The AFC Championship Game may be played at a neutral site.
The better news? Amazon Prime Video’s median viewer age was seven years younger than any other NFL TV rights package.
The NFL showdown between the Cincinnati Bengals and Buffalo Bills, which was postponed in the first quarter after Bills safety Damar Hamlin suffered a cardiac arrest and collapsed on the field, was the most-watched Monday Night Football telecast in ESPN history, averaging 23.8 million viewers, according to preliminary ratings. Nielsen said Wednesday that the broadcast had an average of 23,788,000 viewers across ABC, ESPN and ESPN2 from approximately 8:30 to 10:09 p.m.
The NFL says that the suspended Buffalo Cincinnati Bengals game will not resume play this week following the hospitalization of Bills player Damar Hamlin during the first quarter Monday night. “After speaking with both teams and NFLPA leadership,NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell informed the clubs today that the Bills-Bengals game will not be resumed this week,” the league said in a statement Tuesday afternoon. “The NFL has made no decision regarding the possible resumption of the game at a later date.”
The NFL announced just over an hour after the injury to Buffalo Bills safety Damar Hamlin that the game would not resume. When or if the teams would return to the field was not immediately clear. Hamlin collapsed on the field, was administered CPR and then taken to a hospital, where the NFL said Monday night that he was in critical condition. Above, the Buffalo Bills players praying for teammate Damar Hamlin. (AP Photo/Jeff Dean)
Sunday Night Football’s Tampa Bay Buccaneers vs. Arizona Cardinals scored a Christmas primetime win for NBC, according to Nielsen’s live plus same-day figures. As football fans tuned in to see Tom Brady go head-to-head with Trace McSorley, NBC’s Sunday Night Football earned a viewership of 17.1 million and a 4.2 rating in the key demographic.
Fox scored the most-watched telecast on Christmas Day with 25.9 million people tuning in to watch the Green Bay Packers vs. the Miami Dolphins. This marks the third year in a row that an NFL game on Fox has delivered the highest viewership on Dec. 25, competing with two other NFL matchups on other networks — Buccaneers vs. Cardinals on NBC (which scored about 17.15M viewers) and Broncos vs. Rams on CBS (which averaged 21.6M total viewers).
The NFL said Sunday that it is implementing flex scheduling for next week’s primetime Sunday Night Football matchup on NBC, jettisoning the planned Los Angeles Rams-Los Angeles Chargers game in favor of a Pittsburgh Steelers-Baltimore Ravens showdown with greater playoff implications.
