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🎤 QUICK START ✍️

🏈 NFL Sunday Ticket lawsuit gets new life. After a judge ruled in favor of the NFL in a class-action lawsuit claiming its Sunday Ticket product was anticompetitive, the outgoing Biden Department of Justice put its support behind the plaintiffs in their appeal to the 9th U.S. Circuit Court. According to Puck News, those plaintiffs also re-submitted their lawsuit to the court with an “alternative” calculation of the economic damages caused by the NFL’s pricing and bid process with YouTube TV. A jury approved the alleged $5 billion in damages under the first suit, a sum of money big enough to make NFL owners blink. If the ninth circuit hears the case, the NFL may start to squirm.

🎤 FanDuel lands Bussin’ With the Boys. One of the original NFL athlete-hosted podcasts is leaving Barstool Sports and going independent, spurred along by a reported sponsorship deal with FanDuel. If Dave Portnoy’s claim that he couldn’t get within 40% of the offer to keep Bussin’ is any indication, there was a big market for Will Compton and Taylor Lewan’s interview show. Bussin’ surged in 2024 after a sitdown with Donald Trump. It is the latest departure from Barstool, following Caleb Pressley and Grace O’Malley.

⚽ Sarah Spain puts her money where her mouth is. The host of Good Game with Sarah Spain and the voice of women’s sports at iHeartMedia is merging her podcast community with a real sports community, buying a piece of the USL W’s Minnesota Aurora FC and encouraging her audience to do the same.

🚨LEADING OFF 🚨

A closer look at ‘conflicts of interest’

Tom Brady’s move to Fox has opened Pandora’s Box for networks and analysts when it comes to how the industry polices apparent conflicts of interest.

After The Athletic’s NFL insider Dianna Russini reiterated this week that Brady is “running everything” in Las Vegas — hiring Pete Carroll while he preps to call a Super Bowl — a different NFL insider went out on quite a limb. Discussing Brady’s football double life, NBC Sports’ Mike Florio claimed there was “no way in hell” his employer would ever allow Brady to be a broadcaster and part-owner of a team.

“They would say, ‘Tom you’ve gotta pick a lane. You cannot do this,’” Florio said of NBC.

That led The Athletic’s Andrew Marchand (keeping up?) to pen a column bashing Florio and shredding his argument to pieces. Marchand pointed out that NBC hired Dale Earnhardt Jr. to call Xfinity Series races when he owned cars in the circuit. The network, according to Marchand, also has explored hiring Dwyane Wade and Grant Hill for its NBA package, two men with ownership stakes in teams.

As if he hadn’t already made his point, Marchand even went so far as to point out how Florio avoids criticizing Mike Tirico and Tony Dungy over their oft-maligned personal lives because he works with them at NBC.

Florio defended himself by noting the difference between his coverage of Dungy compared with Brady’s platform in shaping views of the NFL as someone with a vested interest in the Raiders. All fair.

The episode highlighted that yes, conflicts are everywhere in sports media. And even those aiming to do authentic journalism are bound to run into personal biases eventually.

So why has Brady rubbed so many the wrong way with his double life? Is it just because, as Al Michaels put it, we’re all just jealous of his nearly-$40 million annual salary?

I would put it slightly differently. It matters because Brady isn’t great at this yet, and skipped the line. Fox clearly hired him precisely because of the name recognition and prestige that comes with hiring a 7-time Super Bowl champion (and now owner/exec in Sin City). They are riding his influence and voice in the league, until it comes down to this conflict of interest. That’s not to say other networks like NBC wouldn’t also sign up for the chance to have him, but the argument that what Brady says in the booth doesn’t impact his dealings as an NFL decision-maker hardly holds up when impact is exactly why he was hired.

Brady wasn’t quite as sharp during the NFC Championship Game as he was in Detroit last week, but he’s improving. Fox will hope that’s enough to keep the focus on the field headed toward Super Bowl LIX.

👏 INDUSTRY INSIGHTS 🗣️

• Netflix announced a docuseries on the 2024 U.S. men’s hoops team that won gold in Paris led by the generation-defining trio of LeBron James, Steph Curry and Kevin Durant. Episodes will drop Feb. 18, and it looks like Netflix also got access to foreign stars like Victor Wembanyama and Nikola Jokic.

• Former Barstool CEO Erika Ayers Badan is back in the sports world as part of Vice Media’s board of directors. She will help the television side of Vice Media expand into sports.

• WFAN parted ways with Justin Shackil, the pre- and postgame host for New York Yankees games and a fill-in play-by-play voice who had helped replace John Sterling in 2024. Shackil announced the move on X, writing that he wants to focus on TV work at YES Network and elsewhere covering baseball and boxing. Dave Sims will replace Sterling this upcoming season as the radio voice of the Yankees, and now WFAN needs a new host as well.

📈 DATA DUMP 📊

• Video game publisher Electronic Arts (EA) saw its stock price fall nearly 17% on Thursday after sales of FC 25 and in-game transactions in the game’s Ultimate Team mode fell short of expectations. The share price dip was EA’s biggest single-day fall in 17 years as the company adjusted down its revenue projections by up to $650 million for the fiscal year ending in March. EA’s deal with FIFA ended in 2023, and this could be the first sign of attrition for the brand without its association with the international soccer body.

• Disney CEO Bob Iger received a 30% increase in compensation from 2023 to 2024. Iger is expected to name his successor early next year, but is raking in tens millions in the meantime. SEC filings show that Iger made $41 million last year, including more than $18 million in stock awards. Disney laid off hundreds last summer, while the likes of Suzy Kolber and Zach Lowe were axed at ESPN.

• WNBA social media accounts conspicuously ghosted the Taylor Swift-Caitlin Clark meetup at Arrowhead Stadium for the NFL divisional round. Despite the explosive popularity of Clark and the proven track record of Swift bringing her fans to sports and other areas she touches, the league’s social media staff completely ignored the two of them watching Chiefs-Texans from a suite last weekend.

️‍🔥The Closer🔥

CBS brings it for yet another Chiefs-Bills bout in the AFC playoffs

Tony Romo and Jim Nantz know the Chiefs-Bills rivalry as well as anyone.

CBS has delivered each chapter of this incredible rivalry, from Patrick Mahomes delivering with 13 seconds on the clock to Nantz declaring Josh Allen’s rumbling touchdown run in Week 11 this season to the Dawson Knox drop on Sunday evening.

This week, they once again delivered. Mileage may vary on Romo’s stylings, the revamped NFL Today studio show or whether you agree with Gene Steratore on each penalty or turnover, but the broadcast met the moment.

Long before kickoff, CBS aired a video essay from Nantz, capped off with Nantz reminding fans, “there will be a time when we look back and say, ‘how lucky were we?’”

While the intro from Nantz and Romo (pictured above) was a little goofy, their comfort and familiarity could be felt all night long.

Once 6:30 hit, CBS was all over each big beat of the game.

CBS delivered a close-up on a facemask call against Hollywood Brown in the second quarter, allowing the viewing audience to see the play that nearly held up a Chiefs touchdown. Romo and Steratore disagreed on the call, but they agreed on the biggest ruling of the game.

After officials held up a failed 4th down by Allen, Romo was able to use the telestrator to show Allen’s forward progress compared with the line marker to make his case. Steratore and Nantz concurred, immediately inciting a news cycle into Monday. When Mahomes converted a final third down to win the game, Nantz and Romo once again reminded the audience they were witnessing history.

Postgame, Tracy Wolfson delivered a typically fantastic interview with Mahomes. You can always feel that she has real relationships with the AFC’s biggest stars and can intuit their emotions like none other. Back on the NFL Today, the panel agreed with the booth’s take on the Bills’ fourth down before Nate Burleson again tapped into the familiarity he and the audience at home have with this matchup, this time suggesting fans not get tired of it.

You could critique CBS for erroneously showing that there was a flag on the Kincaid drop, but it’s hard to tell whether that was on the network or the refs.

Rarely do we get consistent greatness from a team like the Chiefs, let alone a formidable foe like Buffalo. The people who brought us that history did it again at a very high level on Sunday in Kansas City.