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🧐 Missouri AG speaks. Missouri Attorney General Catherine Hanaway said her office has received 26 formal complaints from alleged victims of ESPN NFL Draft analyst Matt Miller in relation to an investigation into his potential fraudulent charity fantasy football leagues. “It does look like it’s going to be kind of a lengthy investigation, because there were a lot of transactions,” Hanaway said.

📺 Burleson’s next gig? CBS NFL analyst Nate Burleson confirmed in an interview this week that he’d welcome replacing The NFL Today host James Brown when the time comes. “I want James Brown around for as long as I can have him. I have learned so much, I wouldn’t be the person I am on-camera if it wasn’t for JB. So selfishly, I want to keep learning from one of the greatest to ever do it. And I don’t want a call from anybody else if I ever get that seat. I want JB to call me,” Burleson said.

🏀 Hawk’s new deal. The Atlanta Hawks have become the fourth NBA team formerly tied to the now-defunct FanDuel Sports Networks to sign an over-the-air local broadcast deal for next season. The Hawks announced a deal with Gray Media to air games on WANF-Channel 46 in Atlanta.

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

Jockeying over who will get the NBA’s future local streaming hub began in earnest this week.

As a quick refresher, the NBA, like its MLB counterpart, is looking to create some form of aggregated streaming hub for local broadcasts as the regional sports network business collapses before our eyes. The idea is simple: create a one-stop shop for fans to find their local broadcasts. No cable or satellite subscription required.

The vast majority of teams, it should be noted, already have a direct-to-consumer streaming option for in-market fans. The NBA and MLB, however, believe that centralizing these local streaming rights and selling them to one platform can help recoup some of the revenue that has been lost by teams who have been forced to abandon their regional sports networks.

The jury is out on if that is possible, but it’s certainly a better option than the alternative. Most teams that have left regional sports networks have stomached major cuts to local media rights revenue, often by as much as 70 percent.

Meanwhile, there is reason for leagues like the NBA and MLB to believe this centralized model will work. At least for the NBA, this week may signal the start of a burgeoning bidding war between media powerhouses for the right to host this future local streaming hub.

Earlier this week, NBA commissioner Adam Silver discussed the league’s local broadcast plans, solidifying the 2027-28 season as the target date to launch its centralized platform. In the meantime, the 13 NBA clubs that were inked to the now-defunct FanDuel Sports Networks will find one-year holdover deals for the upcoming season. Four of those teams have already announced agreements with local, over-the-air broadcast networks, while nine clubs have yet to announce their plans.

But looking towards 2027-28, it appears that there are two early contenders jockeying for hub rights. On Wednesday, Sports Business Journal reported that YouTube is the “leading candidate” to land the NBA’s central broadcast hub. The report indicated that at least 22 teams would seem likely to join: the 13 former FanDuel Sports Network teams, the four teams still tied to NBC Sports RSNs (which seem to be winding down), and the five teams that were already on over-the-air deals prior to this offseason.

22 teams is approaching a critical mass, but each additional team to join creates a more attractive product for a platform like YouTube. But, as has been discussed ever since commissioners publicized goals of creating a central streaming model, it will be difficult to sway glamour teams, like the Lakers or Knicks, to join the product because they are some of the few clubs still holding lucrative local media rights deals.

MLB is aiming to solve this very problem during its upcoming CBA negotiations. As I detailed in a previous newsletter, MLB’s aim to institute a salary cap is leverage enough for the league to compel its large-market teams to agree to centralize and share all local rights revenue, thereby creating a truly central hub.

The NBA doesn’t have that lever in its pocket, meaning its future streaming hub might not feature its most important teams, at least not on an exclusive basis. There is a possibility that teams like the Lakers or Knicks could join while maintaining their current local rights deals, though it’s unclear how such an arrangement would be structured. And crucially, the NBA’s plan only includes in-market rights.

Per SBJ, the NBA’s local broadcast hub will “likely be geofenced,” meaning that fans will only have access to teams within their local market. Fans looking to watch out-of-market teams will still need to purchase NBA League Pass on Prime Video. This creates a situation where local NBA rights aren’t so much aggregated as they are bifurcated between two different platforms. MLB, on the other hand, could conceivably offer in-market and out-of-market rights on the same platform. The league is already offering an in-market and out-of-market bundle for teams currently under the MLB Local Media umbrella.

This is a key difference. Silver reportedly wants to secure a rights fee of at least $1 billion per year for the in-market local streaming hub on top of what Amazon already pays for out-of-market rights on Prime Video. Are these rights worth more together or apart? How the NBA and MLB’s respective hubs shake out might answer that question.

Let’s shift our focus to Player 2 in this bidding war: ESPN. On Thursday, ESPN chairman Jimmy Pitaro appeared at a CNBC conference and affirmed his network’s desire to win rights for this NBA streaming hub. ESPN has already made a couple of concerted efforts on the local rights front. This season, it began licensing MLB.TV, MLB’s out-of-market package, on its direct-to-consumer app. And for years, out-of-market NHL rights have been made available as part of ESPN+ (and now ESPN Unlimited).

But with the NBA, it’s in-market rights Pitaro is vying for. And it seems he made a very pointed statement to the NBA, and commissioner Adam Silver who was attending the conference, during the final sentences of his answer on NBA local rights.

“The last thing I’ll say is, it does not have to be exclusive. We have never once said that we require exclusivity for local, in-market rights. We’re perfectly comfortable with doing something non-exclusive.”

Perhaps that is where ESPN feels it has a competitive advantage over YouTube. It wouldn’t be surprising. ESPN might be willing to live with Lakers and Knicks games coexisting on regional sports networks. For one, the network will already get its fair share of exclusive national games featuring those teams as part of its current NBA package. And secondly, there’s still likely a hefty population of people in those markets who would purchase local broadcasts through ESPN rather than paying for a regional sports network. YouTube, on the other hand, might not be willing to give up exclusivity. For them, it might be an all-or-nothing approach. Pay a premium, get all of the in-market rights.

That’s pure speculation, but this is where the possible rift might lie, reading between the lines.

As this starts to play out over the next 12 months, the NBA will have some important questions to answer. Can it compel all 29 U.S.-based teams to join the hub? If so, will some be afforded non-exclusive terms? Will marquee teams get a larger slice of the revenue pie?

The good news is, the league appears to have at least two willing buyers. And when there’s only one package to go around, that’s enough to start a bidding war.

Seeing this yesterday, it reminded me that a year ago we covered the sports-related fallout and reaction to this incident on both the site and this very newsletter. What a shit show that was. Anyway, for those that have been loyal readers of this newsletter since then, we appreciate your continued support.

In lieu of The Closer today, I’d like to plug the most recent episode of The Awful Announcing Podcast, where now-former ESPN anchor Linda Cohn discusses her exit from the Worldwide Leader, her next venture, Keith Olbermann, John Skipper, and more.

Check it out below!