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🎤 QUICK START ✍️

🦚 Bob’s back. NBC announced yesterday that Bob Costas will return to host the network’s Sunday Night Baseball pregame show when its new MLB package begins in March. Costas, who has worked for TBS and MLB Network since his acrimonious departure from NBC in 2019, called NBC his “true broadcasting home” for 40 years.

🏀 Elle’s addition. The new face of Netflix’s sports division has already added a supplementary role to her portfolio. Former ESPN star Elle Duncan will lead the WNBA broadcast team on USA Sports, a division of the NBC spinoff Versant, beginning this season. USA will televise portions of the WNBA Finals in years that NBC holds the rights, including in 2026.

📣 Stugotz speaks out. Jon “Stugotz” Weiner hinted at a falling out between him and longtime colleague Dan Le Batard during the second episode of his new Fox Sports Radio show this week. Weiner said, “Whatever went down with me and Dan was deeply hurtful. And it took me to some really strange and dark places. And I’m still trying to claw my way out.”

️‍🚨 LEADING OFF 🚨

Football’s historic ratings weekend

The Sports Media Industrial Complex is often quick to declare an exceptionally good weekend of football as the Best Weekend Ever. And last weekend surely got its fair share of hyperbole after all was said and done, though maybe not the over-the-top praise it might’ve deserved.

Saturday brought one phenomenal and memorable game between the Bills and Broncos (before a nighttime dud featuring the ailing 49ers and Seahawks). Sunday delivered a solid game between the Texans and Patriots in the afternoon, before the Rams and Bears stole the show in primetime. And on Monday, Indiana completed its historic run to 16-0 and won the school’s first national title in a back-and-forth contest with Miami.

Out of five marquee football games on the sport’s biggest weekend of the year, at least three, arguably four, games delivered from an entertainment perspective. You can’t really ask for a hit rate much better than that, especially considering two of those games went to overtime, and another came down to the final drive in the fourth quarter.

Yesterday, we got viewership data for last weekend’s football slate, and the numbers were strong.

Starting with Saturday afternoon’s overtime win against the Bills, the Broncos' game was the most-watched Saturday telecast on any network since the 1994 Winter Olympics. The game averaged 39.6 million viewers on CBS, a 17% increase versus last year’s Texans-Chiefs game in the comparable window (33.8 million viewers on ESPN/ABC). It goes without saying, but the game was also the most-watched Saturday NFL playoff game in history.

This game set the tone for the rest of the weekend.

Following Bills-Broncos was 49ers-Seahawks in primetime. It’s the only game out of the five this weekend to see a year-over-year decline, though that can be expected when one team wins by 35 points. And even though fewer people watched the Saturday night game than last year, it performed well given the circumstances. Fox averaged 32 million viewers for the blowout, down slightly from last year’s Commanders-Lions game in the comparable window (33.6 million viewers).

Moving on to Sunday afternoon, viewers were treated to a snowy Foxborough for the Texans-Patriots game. 38 million people tuned in between ESPN and ABC, which ESPN is touting as the most-watched event in its history. That claim comes with its fair share of caveats. For one, viewership was split across two networks, with the majority likely tuning in to ABC rather than ESPN. Various other sporting events, like the CFP National Championship, almost certainly earned higher ESPN-only viewership. Then, of course, there’s the ABC Sports element to all of this. Disney purchased ABC and ESPN in 1996, and the broadcast network’s storied sports division aired multiple Super Bowls under the Disney umbrella. Those, of course, attracted more viewers than Sunday’s game, but I digress.

38 million viewers is still a very strong number, especially for a game involving the Texans, who are perpetually placed in the least desirable playoff windows year after year. The game was essentially even with the Rams-Eagles matchup last season (37.8 million viewers).

NBC secured the most-watched game of the weekend, earning 45.4 million viewers on Sunday evening for the Rams-Bears overtime thriller. That figure is good for NBC’s most-watched NFL Divisional Round game in the Nielsen Portable People Meter era, which began in 1988. The Rams’ win also secured an 8% year-over-year increase over the Ravens-Bills game last season. The game fell short of the record-setting Chiefs-Bills game in 2024, which drew 50.4 million viewers on CBS.

It wasn’t just the pros who had all the fun, however. The Indiana Hoosiers, from the top rope, put up a huge number of their own against the Miami Hurricanes. Monday’s national title game averaged 30.1 million viewers across the ESPN family of networks. (Pat McAfee’s altcast chipped in 1.2 million viewers if you were curious.) The game jumped 36% versus last year’s Ohio State-Notre Dame matchup (22.1 million viewers), proving that the new-bloods can outdraw the blue-bloods in big games.

In the spirit of setting records, Monday’s game was the most-watched National Championship telecast since the inaugural CFP in 2015. Ohio State and Oregon earned 34.2 million viewers in that first year. It’s the fourth most-watched title game since the BCS began in 1998. And did we mention it was Indiana who drove this decade-best audience?

Not that we needed any additional data points to support America’s love of football, but it’s worth pointing out that last weekend was particularly strong. Yes, all of these figures come with the standard Nielsen caveats. Nielsen did not start measuring out-of-home viewing until 2020 and didn’t expand it nationwide until February 2025. The company’s Big Data + Panel methodology didn’t come into play until last fall, muddying the waters even more.

Some of these records might look different, all things being equal. But that doesn’t change the fact that last weekend was a helluva football weekend, and Americans were tuned in at remarkable rates.

📺 INDUSTRY INSIGHTS 🎬

• Fox Sports and TNT Sports announced TV schedules for the upcoming MLB season on Thursday. Fox will air 24 exclusive primetime games throughout the season in addition to 39 non-exclusive games on FS1. There’s a noticeable gap in the network’s schedule in June and July to make room for the World Cup, with the exception of a showcase game on July 4th. TBS will continue to air its Tuesday game package and announced the first half of its schedule.

• Dan Patrick revealed he personally lobbied ESPN chairman Jimmy Pitaro to not let legendary anchor Chris Berman disappear from the network’s airwaves. His push seemed to work, as Berman continues to host NFL Primetime on ESPN+ and do his “Fastest 3 Minutes” at halftime of Monday Night Football. Boomer, 70, is signed to the Worldwide Leader through 2029, which would make him the first ESPNer to celebrate a 50-year anniversary with the network.

• Bob Costas appeared on Christopher “Mad Dog” Russo’s SiriusXM show to advocate for shortening the MLB season. “They should be able to cut back to at least 156,” Costas said. “Which is one three-game home series for each team.” To make up for the lost revenue, Costas proposes that the league switch the Division Series to best-of-seven rather than best-of-five.

• ESPN has slotted the UFL into the window previously filled by the Sunday Night Baseball season opener. In doing so, the network has foregone the opportunity to move the Women’s Elite Eight from earlier that afternoon into primetime, where it currently competes with the men’s Elite Eight.

🎙️ THE PLAY-BY-PLAY 🎙️

The Play-By-Play crew digs into the brain drain at Meadowlark Media, and Jon “Stugotz” Weiner’s comments about his old colleague Dan Le Batard.

🔥 THE CLOSER 🔥

UFC’s rightward embrace

As the UFC prepares to host a star-studded card on the White House lawn later this year, CEO Dana White is reiterating his position that the move isn’t inherently political.

During a recent panel with Bloomberg, White fielded a question about whether the UFC would face any challenges attracting fighters for the White House event, given that it could be seen as overly political. The UFC CEO laughed off that premise, saying, “I don’t know how it would be too political other than it’s at the White House. If you look back throughout history, I think George Bush was a big baseball fan, Obama was an NBA fan, and Trump is a UFC fan. I don’t think that any of those guys being fans made any sport too political.”

Reasonable minds might think that’s an overly simplistic view to take. After all, White is an outward supporter of President Trump, which partly led to a UFC card taking place on the White House lawn in the first place. And it’s not like the Trump administration has been free from controversy over the past year. So, like it or not, holding a UFC event at the White House is going to draw some negative reaction from a certain crowd.

Prominent MMA commentator Ariel Helwani addressed this perception on a recent episode of his podcast. You can read his full remarks here, but the general sentiment is, please stop bullshitting us, Dana. The UFC didn’t have to give then-candidate Trump a walkout during his most recent presidential campaign, then show him incessantly throughout the broadcast in the lead-up to the 2024 election. When George Bush or Barack Obama showed up at a baseball or basketball game while in office, they were acknowledged, they waved, and that was that. Repeatedly promoting a candidate is much different.

No matter how you view the current president, hosting an event at the White House is a polarizing thing to do in today’s political environment. Dana White can laugh off the idea that someone would be bothered by it all he wants. But the reality is, most professional sports leagues, if given the opportunity to host a game at the White House, would likely decline simply because it’s not worth upsetting a portion of their fanbase.

That might not necessarily be true for the UFC. This summer, when the White House card comes around, viewers will vote with their remotes and wallets. Then we’ll see where the chips fall.

But right now, White and his company are making the conscious move to embrace Trump. He’s not the only one. Pat McAfee, who interviewed the president during his Veterans Day show, apparently agreed to host his program from the White House lawn before the UFC card later this year.

It’s always the usual suspects.

Regardless, this year will be an interesting case study into how aligning your sport with one side of the political aisle impacts your bottom line. Will moderate or left-wing UFC fans begin to tune out? Or will they simply hold their nose and watch because they love the sport too much? We’ll soon find out.