sports

The Lomachenko-Rigondeaux fight showed how ESPN and Top Rank will try to make boxing a thing again.

NBCUniversal has acquired rights from the NFL to stream Sunday Night Football through NBC’s “TV Everywhere” offering to mobile phones for the first time, beginning with the 2018 season.

John Skipper resigned as president of ESPN and co-chairman of the Disney Media Networks on Monday, citing his substance abuse problem. George Bodenheimer, ESPN’s president from 1998 to 2011 and its executive chairman until May 2014, will take over as the acting chairman of the company for the next 90 days to help Disney chairman and chief executive officer Bob Iger find Skipper’s replacement, ESPN said.

Phil Aldridge has been named the new 6 and 10 p.m. anchor at Quincy Media’s ABC affiliate WAOW Wausau, Wis. (DMA 134). He will begin his new duties at WAOW […]

Ten months after merging its talent operations with IF Management, The Montag Group merged with another agency: Vision Sports run by Maury Gostfrand. The combined companies will work under The […]

People with services like Sling TV and DirecTV Now may get access for the 2018 football season.

NFL Network has suspended analysts Marshall Faulk, Heath Evans and Ike Taylor while it investigates accusations of sexual harassment made in a lawsuit filed by a former network stylist.

PwC says North American media rights from TV, radio and internet platforms will climb 5.6% to $20.1 billion in 2018 from $19.08 billion at the end of this year. The company estimates media rights will climb — on a compounded annual growth rate — 4.3% to $22.7 billion through 2021.

The wireless carrier is making a big bet on its pro football deal — but it will no longer have exclusive mobile rights.

Russia has been barred from the 2018 Olympic games following a report regarding “the systematic manipulation of the anti-doping system in Russia,” the International Olympic Committee said Tuesday.

The NFL’s October take was stronger in national TV ad dollars versus a year ago. Confirming other recent reports, the NFL is picking up steam when it comes to higher national TV advertising revenues. October TV dollars grew 3% over the same month the year before.

T-Mobile, which last month used the six-second format to promote its hurricane relief efforts during Fox’s coverage of the World Series, said results suggest that the short-form spots boosted viewer engagement metrics such as brand recall, likability and message recall.

The process of determining which NFL games will be shown in which TV markets can be simple — unless there’s flexing, cross flexing, prime flexing, mandatory pullouts

Verizon Communications is close to a new deal with the National Football League for digital streaming rights that would give the largest U.S. wireless carrier the ability to deliver game broadcasts to internet-connected TVs, tablets and phones, according to people familiar with the matter.

As Roger Goodell, Jerry Jones, and the NFL engage in an ugly internal fight over the future leadership of the NFL, TV partners at CBS, ESPN, Fox and NBC are staring at their own internal conflicts — namely a substantial decline in NFL ratings that is on pace to cost the four networks up to $500 million in lost revenue.

NEW YORK (AP) — A judge tightened bail conditions on a South American soccer official charged in the FIFA bribery scandal after prosecutors surprised the courtroom by accusing the defendant […]

21st Century Fox denied a government witness’s allegation that its sports division paid bribes to win television rights for international soccer tournaments.

John Skipper has agreed to a contract extension with Disney to remain president of ESPN through 2021, according to a person with knowledge of the matter. Skipper has been ESPN’s president since New Year’s Day of 2012, and been with the company since 1997 when he started at ESPN the Magazine as VP-GM. In 2015, Skipper signed a contract extension through 2018.

Alejandro Burzaco, former CEO of a marketing firm based in Argentina, testified that Fox and other broadcasters were involved in a scheme to pay bribes — concealed using offshore side entities and sham contracts — that secured rights for the Copa America and other FIFA events.

ESPN will lay off more than 100 staffers after the Thanksgiving holidays, multiple sources say. The layoffs, which were described by a person briefed on the plans, will hit positions across ESPN including front-facing talent on the television side, producers, executives, and digital and technology staffers.

Through nine weeks of the NFL regular season, TV ratings have narrowed viewing declines versus earlier-season results. All TV advertising revenues on NFL networks have inched up versus a year ago.

Turner Sports has partnered with Intel to broadcast weekly NBA on TNT games in virtual reality beginning with the 2018 NBA All-Star Weekend, which will be held Feb. 16-18, 2018. In the multi-year deal, Intel will become the exclusive provider of VR for the NBA on TNT and deliver live content for weekly matchups via its Intel True VR technology.

At the start of the season in September, the NFL witnessed lower pricing for individual TV commercials in the scatter TV marketplace, according to media cost research and analysis company SQAD. But overall TV revenue is still higher, according to a separate estimate.

The matchup between the Oakland Raiders and the Miami Dolphins on NBC is currently averaging a 4.0 rating in adults 18-49 and 11.7 million viewers, down from the preliminary ratings for last week’s game (4.3, 12.7 million). On CBS, an overrun of NFL football boosted the numbers for the network’s Sunday primetime lineup.

The satellite operator is suing Univision in federal court, alleging that it distributed Mexican soccer games via Facebook in violation of their carriage agreement. Last month, Univision moved to dismiss the suit. Dish responded on Friday, contending that nothing in the agreement permits Univision to repackage programming and “then allowing that content to be given away for free.”

An audience distracted by the 2016 presidential election and turned off, perhaps, by the absence of star NFL players and better match-ups migrated away from NFL broadcasts last season — which saw overall viewership dip by 8%. Nonetheless, advertisers for the most part are willing to pay more to sponsor the sport than they did last season. Meanwhile, the cost of a 30-second ad in NBC’s Thursday Night Football is up 3.7%, to $524,047. And the cost of a 30-second spot in ESPN’s Monday Night Football has hiked 3.6%, to an average of $385,000.