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

Did someone share this newsletter with you? Sign up for free to make sure you never miss it.

🥊 A CBS airing of the UFC White House event was apparently never on the cards, despite how much reach it would provide.

🏀 Mikal Bridges had some very uncensored thoughts on how Jalen Brunson was motivated by Becky Hammon’s doubts.

⚽ Former USMNT manager Bob Bradley talked to Awful Announcing about how American soccer media has evolved.

♠️ Omaha Productions will take the lead in producing the return of the World Series of Poker to ESPN.

✍️ ESPN has re-signed veteran investigative reporter Don Van Natta Jr. in a bid to continue strengthening their journalistic output.

⚽ Whatever is going on in the Fox studio between the World Cup panelists and commentators is unlike anything we’ve seen before.

Read more of today’s top stories at Awful Announcing.

“There will be a generation whose version of the beautiful game includes quarters.”

Those were the words on social media of Fox soccer analyst Alexi Lalas, giving his typically contrarian viewpoint to the uproar over World Cup hydration breaks being taken advantage of by his employer to air precious advertising time.

One of the trademarks of soccer as the beautiful game is its flow and lack of true stoppages. That means a lack of one thing sports fans hate above anything else - commercials.

However, that sacred space was interrupted this year with the 2026 World Cup as FIFA installed mandatory hydration breaks midway through each half under the guise of player safety. The fact that players are getting such breaks even in climate-controlled indoor stadiums shows you what the endgame really is here. Money.

Fox hilariously played their cards close to the vest heading into the World Cup. While Spanish-language network Telemundo committed to staying on the field and not taking ads, Fox touted a “hybrid” approach. That has turned out not to be the case as the network has gone to exclusively full-screen ads so far. The only variable to this point is whether or not Fox actually gets back to game action in time. But angering fans by going full steam ahead with ads is a small price to pay compared to the projected $250 million of revenue made through hydration break advertisements.

It’s easy to be upset at Fox in this scenario. They haven’t exactly won trust with soccer fans over the years, although bringing in the likes of Rebecca Lowe, Thierry Henry, and Zlatan Ibrahimovic has been a huge step forward. But if anything, they are only following a path that has already been laid out for them.

Recently, NFL RedZone went back on years of tradition by interrupting their famous “seven hours of commercial-free football” with a series of ads. And although RedZone promised that it would be extremely limited, the commercials grew and grew throughout the season. If selling extra commercials and making more money is good enough for the NFL, then surely it’s good enough for FIFA.

The question is what’s next. If there’s anyone who has commercial interests in mind above all others, it’s FIFA and president Gianni Infantino. And the 2026 World Cup hydration breaks are likely just the beginning. In four years, the tournament will take place in Spain, Morocco, and Portugal. The average high in July in Madrid is 90 degrees. In 2034, the tournament will be held in Saudi Arabia. We may get two hydration breaks per half, and the game will be played in eighths by that point. If these stoppages, and the ads that come with them, aren’t a part of next year’s Women’s World Cup in Brazil, it will be a bigger upset than Cape Verde shutting out Spain.

In truth, it’s a given that FIFA will continue to move forward on the increased commercialization of the world’s game. But what will other sports leagues and organizations do to continue to follow suit? American pro sports leagues would seem to already be as stretched out commercially speaking as should be possible, but maybe there are areas yet to be explored.

If you’ve listened to any major radio broadcast, you know that everything from football redzone visits to baseball stolen bases can cash checks. Maybe that future comes to a television near you soon. Maybe other soccer leagues around the world follow suit with a similar nod to player welfare to extract more advertising time. And maybe the Olympics will call for a hydration break in the middle of the 100 meter dash. The sky is the advertising limit.

Boomer Esiason is already trying to make something political out of the Knicks’ NBA championship.

Nobody is having a better World Cup than Cape Verde goalkeeping hero Vozinha, who has grown his Instagram following by several million.

Did Vincent Goodwill really understand what he was saying when he called the Larry O’Brien trophy a “participation trophy”?

There’s something so very charming about Mike Brown embarrassing Karl-Anthony Towns and Jalen Brunson on The Tonight Show like an uncool dad.

Rashee Rice looks to be in midseason form for the Chiefs with his burst of speed. Unfortunately, it was running away from reporters after being released from jail.

"You're not that funny. You're not that entertaining. And nobody thought that you were funny. It's easy. And all you did was perpetuate a racial stereotype that you've been saying for years.” - Shannon Sharpe torched UFC fighter Josh Hokit, suggesting Michelle Obama should sue for defamation.

“I'm all for not shying away from providing unvarnished perspective on athletes, no matter how big or popular. But this just feels like clickbaiting for clickbaiting's sake." - Ric Bucher is not sold on Skip Bayless and others crushing Victor Wembanyama.

“I don't know that anyone who's been paying attention needed to learn the lesson that the NCAA is ineffective, maybe beyond repair at this point. But if you needed to learn the lesson, there you go." - Josh Pate sees the Brendan Sorsby saga as yet another indication that the NCAA is totally helpless in governing college athletics.

The NBA is winning all the headlines after the monstrous viewership numbers for this year’s Finals between the Knicks and the Spurs. The league drew its highest ratings since the prime of the Jordan Era with an average of 20.6 million viewers over just five games. After so much debate and talk about NBA ratings, success, and popularity, it’s worth a huge, prolonged victory lap.

But don’t leave the NHL out of the celebrations… for now.

The NHL is also setting multi-year highs with the Stanley Cup Final. The NHL saw its best viewership numbers since 2019 with an average of 5.2 million viewers across six games.

Hockey has had a ton of momentum thanks to the interest in the international game and the great numbers from the Olympics giving a boost to the regular season and postseason. But next year will see numbers fall once again for one simple reason, the series will switch back to airing on cable on TNT instead of airing on ABC. The NHL won’t like it, but we’ll very likely see headlines next summer about the league seeing a significant drop in viewership for the Stanley Cup Final.

For now.

Paramount’s acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery builds an impressive sports unit that combines CBS Sports and TNT Sports. With the NHL now under the Paramount purview, could the new behemoth put Stanley Cup playoff games on CBS to reach as big of an audience as possible?

Yes, those NHL playoff games are crucial to TNT and their business model. But if we’ve seen anything hold true in recent days, it’s that broadcast television is more important than ever in our increasingly fragmented media environment. The NBA put more broadcast games on television throughout the season and in the playoffs and benefited greatly. The NFL is literally in a fight with the government over how many games will stay on broadcast television in their next rights deals.

Instead of the streaming era making broadcast TV more irrelevant than ever, we are quickly finding out that the opposite is true. And the NHL and its television partners might be wise to think about how they can adapt and continue to grow.