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🎤 QUICK START ✍️

⚾ Contenders emerge for Sunday Night Baseball. NBC and Apple have separated themselves as the “top contenders” to win Sunday Night Baseball for the next three years, according to Andrew Marchand of The Athletic. ESPN, which opted out of its current MLB deal earlier this year, is interested in picking up weekday games. And Netflix finds itself as a front-runner for the Home Run Derby.

🤷 ESPN without a plan. Mike Foss, head of studio programming at ESPN, tells Boardroom that the network isn’t close on a replacement for Around the Horn in the 5 p.m. ET window. “We want to make sure that whatever we choose is there for the long haul, for as long as Around The Horn was,” he said.

📺 Versant looks for streamer. NBC’s cable spinoff, Versant, is weighing its streaming options. “All other things being equal, we’d like to continue to work with and partner with NBCU and Peacock going forward,” Matt Hong, the company’s head of sports, told CNBC while adding, “we’ll also be able to partner with other third-party streamers in situations where a set of rights may or may not work for Peacock but we want them at Versant.”

️‍🚨LEADING OFF 🚨

ESPN faces lawsuit from SportsBubble

On Thursday, ESPN found itself at the center of a lawsuit brought by Lydia Murphy-Stephans, the CEO and founder of a company called SportsBubble, a live sports event programming guide that developed a product called WatchSports designed to help combat increasing fragmentation in the industry. Murphy-Stephans is a longtime sports executive who was formerly the president of Pac-12 Network.

Murphy-Stephans alleges that SportsBubble was approached by ESPN in 2021 under the pretenses of forming a partnership. Instead, the lawsuit claims that ESPN never intended to form a partnership. Rather, after signing non-disclosure agreements, Murphy-Stephans claims ESPN “misappropriated SportsBubble’s confidential information to develop a copycat product” for themselves in the form of its “Where to Watch” product launched in 2023. This after the two sides had agreed in principal to the terms of a deal in 2022. After the launch of its own product, ESPN stopped negotiations for a partnership with SportsBubble.

Murphy-Stephans is seeking more than $600 million in damages.

“When I introduced SportsBubble to Bob Iger and ESPN executives years ago, they claimed to be excited about working with us and partnering on our flagship product, WatchSports. But, while under NDA to evaluate WatchSports for a business partnership, they publicly announced a copycat product as if we magically didn’t exist,” Murphy-Stephans said in a statement sent to Awful Announcing.

“We firmly believe the Where To Watch programming guide on the ESPN platforms is the same product SportsBubble presented to ESPN, and that they copied it, and put their own name on it.”

The lawsuit is timed quite strategically as ESPN prepares to launch its direct-to-consumer streaming service next week. The network hasn’t been shy about expressing its desire to become a “hub” for all live sports, and a programming guide like the one SportsBubble provides would be a key feature in that sort of product.

Disney CEO Bob Iger recently said on an investor call, “As a devoted sports fan, I often have to work to try to find what platform sports are on. If we can help consumers in that regard, we’re certainly going to try.”

Sports fans have long been clamoring for a solution to the fragmentation brought along by the move to streaming, and while a programming guide isn’t necessarily a novel idea, if the allegations that ESPN took SportsBubble’s proprietary technology for its own product are true, the network could be in for a costly settlement.

💬 AROUND AA 💬

Netflix can’t afford to be picky about live sports for much longer

While other streamers have fully jumped into live sports, Netflix remains, for the most part, on the sidelines. Awful Announcing’s Brendon Kleen argues it can’t stay that way for too much longer.

Depending on their size, streamers make two kinds of deals. One is best seen in Paramount, blowing away the UFC this month. Flush with new cash after a merger with Skydance, the company wanted to grow its streaming service quickly. So it acquired rights to a popular, growing league and made the service a must-have for millions. The other, newer type of deal is more focused on advertising.

Netflix said in its latest earnings call that it expects to double advertising revenue this year. Simply by migrating subscribers from the more expensive ad-free tier to the cheaper ad tier, Netflix is seeing huge gains. When that growth slows, sports provide a more valuable video product against which to sell more expensive ads.

This is how you explain Netflix’s patience. Unlike Paramount or the new ESPN service, the streaming power doesn’t need to spend billions to drive subscribers. As a more mature business, Netflix can be more selective.

But where Netflix should be concerned with growth is in total usage and time spent. According to the Nielsen Gauge, 8.3 percent of monthly TV viewing came on Netflix this past June. That number makes it by far the most-watched streaming entertainment company, but it is losing ground to YouTube and failing to create distance against legacy companies like NBCUniversal, Paramount, and Disney. Netflix makes money regardless of how much its subscribers watch, but as competitors stockpile sports inventory and likely increase watch time, Netflix risks becoming more susceptible to cancellations and “churn,” or fluctuations in subscribers based on content offerings.

Read Brendon’s full column here.

📈DATA DUMP📊

• NFL Network saw its most-watched NFL preseason Week 1 on record last week, partly on the back of Shedeur Sanders and the Cleveland Browns. Sanders’ debut ranked as the second most-watched preseason game of the week, though it was played in the lesser-watched Friday night slot, averaging 2.24 million viewers. The Miami Dolphins-Chicago Bears game led the way with 2.34 million viewers on Sunday. Preseason NFL contests accounted for four of the top six live sports audiences of the week.

• The fourth matchup between the Indiana Fever and Chicago Sky was the least-watched of the season with both Caitlin Clark and Angel Reese sitting out due to injury. CBS averaged 1.31 million viewers, down from 1.5 million viewers for the third game (in which the duo of stars were also sitting out), 1.92 million viewers for the second game (with Clark out and Reese in), and 2.7 million for the opener (with both stars playing).

• Despite three prime windows on the Fox broadcast network last weekend, LIV Golf failed to put up an impressive viewership number once again. Sunday’s final round from Chicago averaged 344,000 viewers, the third most-watched LIV telecast of the year. Saturday’s second round broadcast scared up just 269,000 viewers, while Friday afternoon’s opening round drew 332,000 viewers. For perspective, NBC’s coverage of the PGA Tour averaged 3.6 million viewers on Sunday and 2.2 million viewers on Saturday.

🔥THE CLOSER🔥

Thunder finally get their due

After a steady trickle of schedule teases throughout the week, the NBA finally revealed its full slate on Thursday, and quite a few things stood out. For one, people are finally getting a grasp of what the league’s national schedule is going to look like under its new set of media rights deals. Take a peak below for what to expect on a nightly basis this upcoming season.

For much of the season, every night of the week will have nationally televised games. Where to tune into might take some getting used to, especially once football season ends and the schedule shifts around a bit. But at the end of the day, it’s only three broadcast partners to keep track of, which is about half of what the NFL is working with, and people don’t tend to have any issues finding those games.

Also of note, the reigning champion Oklahoma City Thunder are finally getting their due. The Thunder, along with national staples like the Los Angeles Lakers, Golden State Warriors, and New York Knicks, will play in 34 nationally televised games this season. So while it’s fair to expect to see plenty of the usual suspects on national broadcasts this season, you can now include the Thunder in that bunch. Here’s a more detailed breakdown:

Perhaps the other notable decision by the league and its network partners is the relative lack of Boston Celtics games, likely on account of the injury to Jayson Tatum late last postseason.

Other than that, the league is playing the hits. LeBron James. Steph Curry. The Knicks. And in its first year of a brand new media arrangement, why would it do anything differently?