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Amazon announced Thursday the veteran NFL announcing duo of Hannah Storm and Andrea Kremer will be back next season to call the Thursday night package on Amazon’s Prime video service.

Formula One saw a rise in worldwide audience figures across television and digital platforms in 2018, the Liberty media-owned sport reported on Friday. It said Brazil, China and the United States represented the top three markets in terms of television reach — largely a consequence of new or revised broadcast deals in those countries.

After an abrupt departure, former ESPN president John Skipper is trying to beat his former employer at its own game with DAZN (pronounced “da zone”), a subscription streaming service with an odd name and big plans to disrupt sports broadcasting.

The Murdoch family’s new Fox needs Madison Avenue to buy commercials in an abundance of sports broadcasts. Seth Winter will take on the job of selling them. Winter, the former head of NBC Sports ad sales, is joining Fox in a similar role, taking over a critical position at the company as it focuses more intently on live programming and sports content.

The Department of Justice is prepared to put the ball back in Disney’s court for unloading Fox’s regional sports networks, saving Disney from a fire sale and billions of dollars in losses, two sources with direct knowledge of the situation said. Justice is poised to allow Disney to spin off the control of Fox’s 22 regional sports networks to complete its $71 billion deal for Fox, one of the sources said, as opposed to finding an actual buyer.

The return of divisional playoff football to Los Angeles proved a winner for Fox, and NBC’s final NFL telecast of the season also posted stellar numbers as the NFL’s TV ratings comeback shows no signs of faltering. NBC was up 8% and Fox was up 25%.

The Super Bowl may be the biggest sports wagering event in the United States each year, but announcers will not be talking about betting during the broadcast of the big game next month, CBS said on Thursday.

InBev will run eight ads, totaling 5 minutes, 30 seconds, for five brands: Budweiser, Bud Light, Michelob Ultra, Stella Artois and Bon & Viv Spiked Seltzer.

Clemson’s blowout victory over Alabama in the College Football Playoff drew a 14.6 overnight rating for ESPN across its multiple-channel broadcast, the lowest-rated title game in the 5-year-old postseason system.

Live sports accounted for 89 of the year’s 100 most-watched broadcasts with the NFL contributing 34 of the top 50 most-watched broadcasts, and 61 of the top 100. The only thing that came anywhere near to matching the NFL’s hegemonic reach was the 2018 Winter Olympics; NBC’s coverage of the PyeongChang Games drew six of the year’s 50 largest TV audiences and 15 of the top 100.

The arrangement begins with this weekend’s playoffs and is worth $30 million annually for three years, a person with knowledge of the agreement tells The Associated Press. The person spoke on condition of anonymity because the league has not announced specific terms. This latest development is part of a dizzying turnabout for the league. For years, the league insisted gambling was one of the biggest threats to its existence.

Executives Tony Petitti and Rob McGlarry talk about the highs (and lows) that came with launching the baseball-focused network.

ESPN says the culprit is lopsided games that weren’t played on New Year’s Day. The best television ratings for the College Football Playoff came in the first year, when Florida State and Oregon played in the Rose Bowl and Alabama and Ohio State played in the Sugar Bowl on Jan. 1, 2015, and both games were competitive into the second half.

NBC Sports is launching a daily national radio show focused on sports gambling, the latest media company to push forward on betting coverage as legalized wagering continues to expand. The Daily Line, which debuts Jan. 2, will have a distinctly Washington flavor. It will be broadcast out of NBC Washington’s studio in Bethesda and hosted by longtime local anchor Michael Jenkins, currently the host of D.C. Sports Live on NBC Sports Washington, and Tim Murray, a host for SB Nation Radio and the studio host for Navy football, who previously hosted and produced shows for WTEM-AM. The new show will touch on the biggest daily sports topics but will focus on their gambling angles, from point spreads to line movements.

The Wall Street Journal reports that the New York Yankees are in talks with Amazon and Sinclair Broadcast Group  about partnering to bid for the team’s regional sports network YES, according to people familiar with the matter. Journal subscribers can read the full story here.

Twenty-five years ago this month Fox won the rights to broadcast NFL games for $1.6 billion over four years. Besides its personalities, the network has given us the scorebox, audio that brings viewers closer to the game, the one-hour pregame show, and a big production feel for sporting events.

Fox’s broadcast of the 2018 MLS Cup final between Atlanta United and the Portland Timbers drew 1.56 million total viewers in primetime Saturday night, making it the most-watched MLS title game since 1997, the U.S. pro soccer league’s second year of existence.

ESPN plans to announce it will move up the starting time of the nationally televised game by one hour, with the first pitch planned for shortly after 7 p.m. ET. The network intends to make the announcement on Monday at the winter meetings, a person familiar with the decision told The Associated Press.

By last year, the cable sports network’s signature show was suffering from slumping ratings as the company fought against the business climate of cord-cutting and the divisive politics of the Trump era. Enter Norby Williamson, who was named ESPN’s executive vice president of studio production in September 2017, placing him in charge of SportsCenter. His strategy: Return the show to its roots as a hub of news and highlights.

The league’s has board of governors voted unanimously to award its 32nd franchise to Washington state’s largest city. The yet-to-be-named team will begin play in fall 2021, joining the Los Angeles Kings, Anaheim Ducks and others in the Pacific Division.

CBS announced Sunday the game drew a 10.52 rating, an increase of 25% over last year’s SEC title game between Auburn and Georgia and the best rating for any non-bowl game since LSU and Alabama played a No. 1 vs. No. 2 matchup in November 2011. That Game of the Century got an 11.9 rating on CBS.

Add Major League Baseball to the list of 40-plus suitors for 21st Century Fox’s 22 regional sports TV networks for sale by Disney as a condition of clearing its $71.3 billion purchase of Fox.