Three of the league’s television partners have shown increases after the first nine week of the season while one remains flat. That is welcome news after ratings decreased 9.7 percent last season and 8 percent in 2016.

The front-runner to buy 22 regional sports TV networks from Disney is the same company that sold them in the first place. “New Fox,” the company that will remain after Rupert Murdoch sells $71.3 billion worth of 21st Century Fox assets to Disney, is the leading contender to buy back the RSNs it “sold” to Disney as part of the larger transaction, according to people familiar with the matter.

Fox and YouTube TV, the presenting sponsor of the World Series, are putting a number of innovative commercial executions into their advertising batting order. Many of the executions will play off of the situation on the field and will use YouTube TV’s new slogan “Watch Like a Fan.”

Legal sports betting stands to generate an extra $4.2 billion a year for America’s four main professional sports leagues, according to a new study. The study by Nielsen Sports allocates $2.3 billion of the windfall to the NFL, followed by $1.1 billion to MLB, $585 million to the NBA and $216 million to the NHL.