sports

Pat McAfee built a cult following as a sports personality with a hit radio program, a college football analyst role and a spot on the WWE broadcast team from time to time. Earlier this month, McAfee announced he will walk away from his massive FanDuel deal to join ESPN. McAfee is taking his entire team to ESPN, and the popular show will be featured on ESPN and ESPN+ as well as the network’s YouTube channel. However, the move is apparently not sitting well with everyone associated with Bristol, Conn., sports and entertainment enterprise. Disney is in the midst of massive cost-cutting measures with more layoffs expected to hit ESPN as well as other arms of the company.

ESPN is laying the groundwork to sell its channel directly to cable cord-cutters as a subscription-streaming service in coming years, according to people familiar with the matter, a shift with profound implications for the company and the broader television business. Executives at ESPN and its parent, Disney, for years have said it was inevitable that the sports TV channel would one day be available as a stand-alone streaming service. Now, as consumers increasingly cut the cable-TV cord, the company is actively preparing for that shift under a project with the internal code name “Flagship,” the people said. The company has set no firm timeline for the change.

The GM of two Scripps Montana stations will now be responsible for Scripps’ live sports and sports-related content presentation. He will serve as the primary lead with the company’s internal production team, local affiliates, talent and production partners.

During Wednesday’s MoffettNathanson Inaugural Technology, Media and Telecom Conference, the CEO also said sports will stay on Fox linear: ““Fox has a unique strategy, in that we are keeping our premium sports on our broadcast network. And we think that’s very important because it means that the traditional pay TV ecosystem is still what serves consumers best, serves the leagues best, with the most reach, and serves advertising clients. So we’re going to continue to do that.”

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)

The Texas bankruptcy court overseeing Diamond Sports Group’s restructuring says the NBA franchise must first try to negotiate a new deal with Sinclair’s regional sports network subsidiary.

If Sinclair’s Diamond Sports Group doesn’t pay Cincinnati’s MLB team by Friday, the club is set to broadcast its own games starting Saturday vs. the White Sox on a new channel. The Reds have handshake agreements with Charter Communications, the dominant cable TV supplier in the Cincinnati DMA, as well as DirecTV.

Comcast subscribers aren’t able to view NFL Network after the cable company pulled the channel when its carriage agreement expired.

The move comes two days after the conclusion of the NFL draft.

Trying to forecast when ESPN will go entirely online is one of the great guessing games of the media industry.

The regional sports network model failed for Sinclair Broadcast Group, with a nearly $10 billion investment by the company evaporating in less than four years. But in proof of the adage Wall Street is always looking forward, not backward, the company’s shares are surging, driven in part by enthusiasm over strides the company has made in distribution of its Tennis Channel and sister network T2. With a 30% gain last month, Sinclair stock led all components of the Sportico Sports Stock Index. Overall, the index, which tracks 40 U.S.-traded stocks to gauge the state of the sports business, barely moved in April, closing down one point to finish at 1,165. While that lags the 1.5% gain of the S&P 500 Index last month, sports stocks are still up 11% in 2023, besting the 9% gain of the broader market index.

The “transformative rights deal” will bring every game free, over-the-air with statewide distribution.

After landing a deal to broadcast WNBA games Friday nights nationally on Ion, the E.W. Scripps Co. is looking for more sports leagues and teams to put on its national networks and local stations. “If we found another league that was the right fit and intersected so well with the demographics that we have on Ion, there’s room for more,” Scripps CEO Adam Symson says. And Scripps is also monitoring the regional sports networks situation.

For the last two years, LIV Golf has rivaled the PGA Tour. It started during the inaugural season, where LIV Golf spent over $800 million to lure some of golf’s biggest names like Phil Mickelson, Dustin Johnson, Cameron Smith, and more to the Saudi-backed league. Since then LIV Golf has tried to run its own league with a different setup and format than the PGA Tour. The format has guaranteed fields, no cuts, only 54 holes (three rounds), lucrative purses, team play, and more. While LIV Golf has definitely made some noise, it’s struggled with viewership numbers.

E.W. Scripps has scored the first rights deal for its nascent sports division with the women’s basketball league, where Friday night games will begin airing on its Ion stations on May 26. Pictured: WNBA Commissioner Cathy Engelbert and Scripps CEO Adam Symson.

Ted Leonsis, owner of three Washington-based professional sports franchises, offered more than $2 billion to buy the Washington Nationals from the Lerner family late last year, according to three people with knowledge of the situation. It’s not clear whether the Lerners rejected the offer or simply did not respond to it, though one person with direct knowledge of the process said the parties have remained in touch.

ESPN will begin layoffs early next week as part of parent company Disney’s cost cutting efforts, according to people familiar with the matter. Cuts will include some on-air talent and management, said the people, who asked not to be named because the discussions are private. The number of layoffs at ESPN is unclear and the decision process is still fluid.

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.

The $20 million round was led by venture firm Sapphire Sport. New athlete investors include tennis player Nick Kyrgios, football player Myles Garrett and basketball star Kevin Durant’s Thirty Five Ventures. It brings the company’s total funding to more than $44 million.

Major League Baseball has asked a federal court overseeing the bankruptcy case involving Sinclair Inc.’s Diamond Sports Group to terminate the broadcaster’s rights to games played by the Cleveland Guardians and Minnesota Twins if it does not make an immediate payment connected to licensing rights.

YouTube revealed the highly anticipated details of its new streaming plan for NFL Sunday Ticket on Tuesday, providing a win for fans who were shut out of the programming when it was aired by DirectTV by making the service available to anyone with web access. But it’s a win that comes at a hefty cost: The price for the out-of-market football game service is rising, the Google-owned YouTube said in a blog post. Fast-acting fans can get a $100 discount if they sign up for the service before June 6.

The Cleveland Guardians and Minnesota Twins appear to be the latest Major League Baseball teams forsaken by Bally Sports, as the bankrupt regional sports network owner restructures and seeks to walk away from its most unprofitable TV contracts with pro sports teams.