Welcome to The A Block, Awful Announcing’s daily newsletter where you’ll always find the latest sports media news, commentary, and analysis.

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🎤 QUICK START ✍️

🤝 ESPN DTC partnerships abound. Awful Announcing has learned that ESPN is planning distribution deals related to its soon-to-be-launched streamer with companies including telecom giants Verizon and T-Mobile, consumer electronics brand Roku, and video game conglomerate Take-Two. The potential partnerships, revealed in an internal document obtained by Awful Announcing, were in active negotiations as of May 14 and were/are being planned to coincide with the product’s launch this fall.

🏈 ACC escape hatch. A provision in the ACC’s recent legal settlement with Clemson and Florida State will allow top schools to depart the conference for a “super league” should one arise, according to a report by Matt Baker in The Athletic. ACC schools will now have what is formally known as an “option of limited withdrawal” that allows six or more member institutions to disassociate from the conference in a specific sport to join a “single sport league, conference or other association” along with other schools in the group.

⚾ Baseball back up. MLB Network posted its most-watched month in six years, averaging 233,000 viewers across its 40 live out-of-market game broadcasts in June. The league-owned cable network also saw gains in the 18-34 demographic, posting its best figures since 2018.

️‍🚨LEADING OFF 🚨

NFL Sunday Ticket will always be expensive, per the experts

Perhaps one of the more under-covered sports media stories out there right now is the NFL’s ongoing Sunday Ticket lawsuit. The case is currently on appeal after a jury found the league liable for antitrust violations amounting to billions of dollars based on how the NFL arranged its out-of-market package with DirecTV to protect CBS and Fox, the league’s Sunday afternoon broadcast partners.

Here’s the short of it. A jury found the NFL kept its Sunday Ticket package priced artificially high as to not undercut the value of its in-market Sunday afternoon packages with CBS and Fox, both of whom pay the league billions of dollars per year for the right to air games. If Sunday Ticket offered consumers more optionality, at a more affordable price, the value of the CBS and Fox packages would be jeopardized.

Interestingly, two highly qualified individuals recently weighed in on how they see the case resolving. Both came to similar conclusions that the NFL will ultimately get its way and continue to charge a premium for its out-of-market package, but arrived at that judgment through very different means.

Let’s start with Pro Football Talk’s Mike Florio, a former attorney who has been covering this lawsuit closely since its inception. Here’s Florio on PFT PM earlier this week, making the case that the NFL has friends in high places at the U.S. Supreme Court:

Now let’s turn to former Fox Sports executive Patrick Crakes, speaking with The Athletic, who makes an economic argument as to why the NFL is justified in charging a premium rate for its out-of-market games:

Both arguments, taken together, paint a rather grim picture for any fan hopeful to one day purchase a single-game or single-team NFL package. Crakes’ point is precisely why the jury’s ruling one year ago was such a shock. The NFL had a sound argument that it is actually the most accessible pro sports league in America. No other league is giving every game away for free within a team’s local market. Having access to every out-of-market game isn’t a birthright, either.

But there’s certainly something to be said about whether the NFL’s business practices — essentially coercing its Sunday Ticket provider to charge a premium price to protect its other broadcast partners — falls under the antitrust exemption federal lawmakers granted the league back in 1961. That point alone might make this a messy ordeal for the league as it simultaneously finds itself fighting a perception of collusive behavior against its own players.

The merits of that antitrust argument may well be enough to take this case all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court. As Florio suggests, whatever the league would pay in legal fees would be a penance compared to what it stands to lose should it be forced to restructure the entire way it sells broadcast rights.

Surely, the league is hoping the case doesn’t go that far and that a favorable ruling can be obtained in a lower court. The stakes are very high, and the NFL won’t settle for any decision that upends the status quo. And based on both the judicial and economic arguments put forth by Florio and Crakes this week, it seems like the league, one way or the other, is confident the status quo will stay just that. If the league were truly worried, we would’ve already seen changes to the way YouTube delivers Sunday Ticket.

💬 AROUND AA 💬

Zombie Deadspin was a success (pause for laughter)

G/O Media owned and operated several notable websites over the course of its six-year history. None, however, better epitomized the company’s struggles — and eventual demise — better than Deadspin.

On Tuesday, G/O Media announced that it is selling its video game website, Kotaku, leaving it with just one remaining property, The Root, which it also plans to offload. In an epilogue published to the front page of the company’s website, CEO Jim Spanfeller acknowledged that G/O Media is “working towards a full wind down,” before reflecting on its brief but eventful run, including the company’s stint owning Deadspin.

Spanfeller attempted to spin G/O Media’s ownership of Deadspin as a success, claiming the site rebounded fully from its staff exiting en masse after a 2019 editorial edict to “stick to sports.” The remarks were tone deaf at best and outright fabrications at worst. Ben Axelrod dives deeper into the CEO’s statement for Awful Announcing here.

📣 SOCIAL EXPERIMENT 🌟

📣NOTABLE QUOTABLES🗣️

• “Twitter or X or whatever is an awful, awful place. It took me a while to catch on to how impactful that can be and how much of a waste of energy. I miss the connection with the fans, but nothing comes without so much hate and anger. There’s a lot of love in there, too, but, unfortunately, it gets overwhelmed with one really bad one.” — PGA Tour golfer Max Homa on why he left social media behind.

• “If I’m Ben Shelton, I’m really furious right now that I’m not able to serve it out.” — ESPN tennis analyst CoCo Vandeweghe on the chair umpire suspending play at Wimbledon right before Ben Shelton would serve for the match.

• “It’s also why when I hear Yankees fans complain, I’m like, ‘Shut the f*ck up.’” — ESPN MLB insider Jeff Passan on unappreciative Yankees fans.

🔥THE CLOSER🔥

Nine in 10 sports viewers are streaming

The transition from traditional television to streaming is well underway, but the past few weeks have provided some data to back up that notion.

Last month, Nielsen released its monthly “The Gauge” data and, for the first time, streaming viewership surpassed that of linear TV — which includes both broadcast and cable viewing — by total minutes watched. The Rubicon, as they say, has been crossed.

Now, a new study by Performance Research and Full Circle Research shows that sports fans are adapting to the new environment. The study, reported on by Sports Business Journal, shows that nine in 10 sports fans are using streaming services to watch sports.

Unsurprisingly, Amazon leads the way as the home of Thursday Night Football, with 65% of respondents saying they used Prime Video. ESPN+ followed with 39%, Peacock at 37%, and Paramount+ at 32%.

As one would expect, younger viewers are adopting streaming platforms more quickly than their elders. 63% of Gen Z and 56% of Millenials reported upping their sports streaming usage in the past year compared to 35% of Gen X and 21% of Boomers.

These studies provide exactly the type of data sports leagues are looking at when they consider what mix of linear TV and streaming to settle on during media rights negotiations.

This fall, the NBA will begin its new set of media rights agreements that place exclusive weekly national games on both Prime Video and Peacock. The 2026-27 NBA season will see an entire Conference Final stream exclusively on the Amazon-owned platform. No doubt, as leagues continue to put premium inventory on streamers, sports fans will continue to follow.

No doubt, as leagues continue to put premium inventory on streamers, sports fans will continue to follow. It’s simply a matter of knowing how much and how fast. If 90% of sports fans are already using streaming services to watch games, it won’t be long before leagues fully embrace the digital age.

Traditional media companies are also getting on board. By this fall, the last two legacy media holdouts, ESPN and Fox, will have launched their respective direct-to-consumer streaming services. At that point, nearly every sporting event will be available to consumers without a pay-TV subscription. The moves will only accelerate a transition to streaming. By examining the data, it appears that fans are ready.