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🎤 QUICK START ✍️

🏈 QB2 has arrived. After a year off, the hit Netflix series Quarterback is returning for a second season. Wednesday, the streamer announced that Cincinnati Bengals quarterback Joe Burrow, the Detroit Lions’ Jared Goff and the Atlanta Falcons’ Kirk Cousins would be featured in Season 2 of the show. Last year, with no quarterbacks willing to participate, Netflix pivoted to a much more underwhelming docuseries called Receiver. Let’s just say, fans are glad to have the QBs back,

📺 More MLB streaming. Fans of the A’s, Giants, and Phillies just got two new streaming options for the upcoming season. The NBC Sports regional networks, will be available as a Peacock add-on for in-market fans. Prices vary by city. If Peacock doesn’t interest you, MLB.tv will offer team-specific packages (which doesn’t include the entire NBC Sports linear channel a la Peacock’s add-on) for all three teams as well. In all, 26 of 30 MLB teams will have direct-to-consumer streaming options this season.

🏀 NBA Inside Stuff return? What’s old is new again in the world of NBA broadcasting. With NBC picking up rights for the league next season, you can be sure a full-on nostalgia trip will be in effect. And what better way to accomplish that than the return of NBA Inside Stuff? Per CNBC’s Alex Sherman, the league has filed a pair of trademark applications related to the show, and NBC is considering a “refreshed version.”

🚨LEADING OFF 🚨

Jeff Passan goes to bat for Jackie Robinson

It’s not often you can say that a sports reporter made a difference in the so-called real world, but yesterday ESPN MLB insider Jeff Passan did just that.

On Wednesday, the U.S. Department of Defense inexplicably removed an article highlighting the military career of Jackie Robinson, seemingly as part of the anti-DEI efforts that have preoccupied the Trump administration.

Passan, who noticed the article’s removal late on Tuesday night, brought it to the attention of his massive social media following, writing, “the ghouls who did this should be ashamed.”

That post was viewed by nearly three million users at the time of this writing, and caught the attention of numerous prominent figures including politicians and other sports journalists.

To state the obvious, if the article was taken down because of anti-DEI initiatives spearheaded by the current administration, anyone that holds America’s values dear should be embarrassed. That’s unfortunately what seems to have happened, considering the hyperlink of the downed article included a marking that said “deisports” in the URL.

But if erasing the military history of one of baseball’s greatest icons wasn’t already enough to make your blood boil, the Trump admin, true to form, doubled down on its decision on Wednesday afternoon. Here’s a statement from DOD spokesperson John Ullyot, who was reached by ESPN for comment:

It’s truly reprehensible to believe that an article recounting the military history of the player to break MLB’s color barrier is divisive in any sense, could “erode cohesion” within our troops, or interfere at all with America’s military objectives.

And after enough public shaming from Passan and others, the DOD came to its senses, putting the Jackie Robinson article back up on its website. After doing so, they released another statement:

It’s a sad state of affairs that an MLB insider who works for ESPN needs to hold our country’s Defense Department to account, but that’s the world we live in. And thankfully, if just for a day, Passan was willing to carry that torch.

📣 SOCIAL EXPERIMENT 🌟

📈 DATA DUMP 📊

• No surprise here, but Shohei Ohtani’s Los Angeles Dodgers set a Japanese MLB viewership record during Game 1 of the Tokyo Series on Tuesday. The game was watched by a staggering 25 million people in Japan, about one-fifth of the country’s population. The previous high watermark in Japan was set last year, when Ohtani’s Dodgers played in nearby Seoul, South Korea and drew a television audience of 18.7 million. To put things in perspective, that 25 million figure would beat out any American baseball audience since Game 7 of the 2017 World Series, which delivered 28.2 million viewers stateside. For reference, the United States has about three-times the population of Japan. There’s no question, MLB will be looking to capitalize on its surging popularity overseas.

• Rumors of the NBA’s viewership demise have been greatly exaggerated. The league has practically drawn even in terms of year-over-year viewership, with games across ABC, ESPN, and TNT down just 1% versus last season. This is, of course, after widespread ratings panic in the media earlier this season when viewership was down around 20%. Sure, the league was boosted by airing its entire Christmas Day slate on broadcast TV as opposed to just two such games last season. But at the end of the day, people are still tuning into the NBA at about the same rates as they did last season, so maybe it’s time to cool some of the popularity discussions.

• Golf Channel’s Monday morning finish of the Players Championship, a playoff between Rory McIlroy and J.J. Spaun, averaged 1.5 million viewers and was the most-watched live sporting event of the day, beating out a Heat-Knicks game in primetime on ESPN. That’s pretty impressive for a 9 a.m. ET start on Golf Channel, though the competition window was much shorter than a full NBA game. McIlroy took care of business in three holes.

️‍🔥THE CLOSER🔥

Should MLB copy the NFL model?

Manny, the author of the invaluable TV Media Blog Substack threw out an idea on social media the other day that really caught my attention. He suggested that if Fox were to increase its MLB inventory via ESPN’s old package of games, as their executives have publicly mulled, they should take an NFL-like approach to scheduling.

The concept is pretty simple. Air regional action in the afternoon windows and a marquee national game at night. That method has worked wonders for the NFL, but could it work for baseball too?

It’s an interesting thought experiment. Baseball is a regional sport. One look at ESPN’s Sunday Night Baseball ratings will tell you that there’s not a ton of people interested in tuning in for a regular season game that doesn’t involve their team. But this type of scheduling could be a method of generating that interest.

See, the beauty of the NFL is that fans are willing to watch whatever game is on, no matter who is playing. Yes, scarcity plays a big role in that but it’s also momentum. One game leads into another which leads into a (normally) high-profile matchup in primetime.

What if Minnesota Twins fans could watch their game in the afternoon, and then be guaranteed a game featuring Shohei Ohtani, Aaron Judge, or Juan Soto at night? It wouldn’t get everyone to stay tuned, but it’s the type of thing that could move the needle.

MLB is at a point where it needs to get creative. National interest in the sport has cratered, but regional interest is still strong. How do you get that national interest to rebound? You do things that help market your biggest stars, putting them on our television screens more, and getting baseball fans to care about what happens on other teams.

Whether it’s Fox, NBC, Netflix, or FedEx that gets ESPN’s package of regular season games, I’d like to see some better strategic scheduling to get MLB’s biggest stars into more wide-reaching windows.