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🎤 QUICK START ✍️

📺 FanDuel Sports Network wants more. The group of regional sports networks is reportedly looking to add teams back that previously left in favor of another RSN or a combination over-the-air plus streaming strategy. Most teams that have opted for the second route have taken substantial haircuts to their local media revenue, and FDSN hopes to win some back by paying them more.

🏌️ Schefty hits the links. ESPN’s preeminent NFL insider made his debut as an on-course analyst for PGA Tour Live on Thursday during the first round of the Travelers Championship. Adam Schefter kicked things off by comparing current golfers to NFL quarterbacks, and he kinda aced the assignment!

👑 DK PAC. One of America’s leading sportsbooks, DraftKings, has launched a Political Action Committee (PAC) just in time for sports betting to come under more regulatory focus. According to Politico, DraftKings spent over $400,000 in political lobbying last year, and donated half-a-million to President Trump’s inauguration.

️‍🚨LEADING OFF 🚨

How the MLB commissioner is approaching media rights

Rob Manfred has an uphill battle. Come 2028, Manfred will be leading the charge to reform MLB’s media rights conundrum. That’s the year when the league’s national TV deals with Fox, Warner Bros. Discovery, and whatever combination of mediacos scoop up ESPN’s forfeited rights will expire. It’s also the target date for MLB to institute some form of a centralized local rights platform in which a majority of clubs opt to pool their local rights together and create a (hopefully) more valuable package for a major streamer than the individual teams could earn on their own.

Manfred has already made clear he wants the next set of deals to include more broadcast television windows, eliminate local blackouts, and ultimately cause fewer headaches for fans.

If he’s successful in that effort, Manfred believes baseball’s new media strategy could prove a massive financial windfall for his owners. Why? Look no further than the NBA.

Beginning next season, the NBA will become the beneficiaries of a new 11-year $76 billion set of media rights deals, nearly tripling the average annual value of its current agreements. And while the league is still fighting its own battle on the local rights front, the stability of that 11-year deal is a huge reason why two of the league’s jewel franchises just sold for eye-popping sums. Just last month, the Boston Celtics were sold for over $6 billion. And just earlier this week, the Los Angeles Lakers sold for a staggering $10 billion.

These deals don’t happen in a vacuum. In fact, they likely happened in large part because of the predictable revenue stream NBA teams will be receiving for the next 11 years. And when comparing how franchises are valued in the NBA compared to MLB, whose media rights are completely uncertain, that picture becomes even clearer.

Per Mike Mazzeo of Sports Business Journal, franchise valuations for MLB clubs attract between a 4-11x implied revenue multiple, with the average franchise being valued at $2.8 billion. NBA teams, on the other hand, garner multiples of 10-15x, with the average franchise valued at $4.6 billion. That’s a pretty shocking difference, and it largely boils down to media rights.

And so, Manfred wants to take a page out of the NBA playbook and, in turn, boost those valuations for his owners. Speaking at Braves Investor Day on Wednesday, Manfred said the following (per SBJ):

As a publication that generally tries to serve as a voice for the fan, sometimes it’s easy to forget the true incentive structures at play for these media deals. While Manfred’s plan of bigger national packages and a more streamlined local media rights environment rid of blackouts certainly is fan-friendly, the ultimate goal here is to make his owners as much money as possible. Manfred serves at the will of the owners, not the fans.

Ultimately, that’s why we’re in this decidedly fan-unfriendly situation in the first place. If it weren’t for the money at stake with local exclusivity and blackouts, fans would have a much easier time watching their teams than they do now. But hopefully, once 2028 rolls around, the incentives of Manfred and ownership become more aligned with the fans.

That appears to be the case as we sit here in 2025. Here’s to hoping Manfred doesn’t change his tune come 2028.

💬 AROUND AA 💬

Lakers sale proves there’s nothing to worry about with NBA ratings

Speaking of franchise valuations, Awful Announcing contributor Daniel Kaplan had a bespoke take about just how silly the Los Angeles Lakers sale makes the entire NBA ratings discussion look. I’d highly recommend you read the full column here, but I’ll highlight a short excerpt below where former Fox Sports executive Bob Thompson explains just how little seasonal shifts in television ratings matter:

“Five to 10 percent ratings decline in any given season, whether locally or nationally, is really nothing to get too concerned about. Certainly, a 10 percent decline in ratings every year will, sooner or later, be problematic…

“The Lakers’ sale price is indicative of the recently consummated deal for national NBA rights combined with their outsized local deal. Both deals have ten-plus years to run, which certainly helps justify the economics of the sale price. It’s certainly not predicated on seasonal swings in ratings.”

🗣️THE AWFUL ANNOUNCING PODCAST🗣️

On this week’s episode of the Awful Announcing Podcast, host Brandon Contes interviews ESPN college basketball and NBA analyst Jay Bilas. Topics include:

• Cooper Flagg going from Duke to the NBA Draft

• The future of NIL amid the House vs. NCAA settlement

• Practicing law while becoming a television broadcaster

If you enjoy the show, subscribe and leave us a positive review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, and wherever else you get our podcasts.

📣 SOCIAL EXPERIMENT 🌟

Stephen A. Smith’s daughter made an appearance on SportsCenter prior to Game 6 of the NBA Finals. Watch out, she might be coming for dad’s job!

San Francisco Giants announcer Duane Kuiper got a 75th birthday surprise on-air yesterday.

The Battle of the Streaks (an 11-game losing streak for the Nats and a four-game winning streak for the Rockies) came to an end yesterday. Mercifully, for Nats fans. Bob Carpenter had the call:

📣NOTABLE QUOTABLES🗣️

• “I know that some of you out there may not have wanted to hear a damn thing that Candace Owens had to say, but four plus million people subscribe to listen to her every chance they get. And not everybody in America, or this world for that matter, can say that. What she says matters, and a lot more often than not, she seems to know what the hell she’s talking about. It’s very rare you hear somebody who says, ‘She’s clueless. She don’t know what she’s saying.’ You don’t hear that about her. You wanna refute what she has to say and defy her positions? You better know what you’re talking about because she certainly does usually, if not always. That’s why I had her on the show.” — ESPN star Stephen A. Smith defending his most recent podcast guest, Candace Owens, who has a history of Holocaust skepticism.

• “It was all a surprise to me, honestly. They just told us that we have to go, and I had no choice but to go, so I showed up.” — USMNT and Juventus winger Tim Weah on the bizarre White House visit his Italian club made that saw players standing behind President Trump as fielded questions about the ongoing conflict between Iran and Israel.

• “Because if you’re writing that article as a journalist, you’d be like, ‘Oh Around the Horn is getting canceled, let’s look at the ratings.’ Oh it’s up 5 percent? That’s an interesting sentence to have. But instead it’s, the show is getting canceled, it’s currently hosted — currently hosted — by this other person. And then the next one is ‘expendable’ and ‘overpriced.’ And I don’t know which one I was more insulted by because neither of those are true. To have those things written about you, I recognize they weren’t coming from nowhere. Somebody was feeding this. And it’s like, OK so I get this game is being played.” — Former Around the Horn host Tony Reali on media coverage surrounding the show’s cancelation.