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🎤 QUICK START ✍️

🏀 LeBron a late scratch at the NBA All-Star game. The junior TNT crew of Draymond Green and Co. promptly ripped The King for seemingly deciding at the last second to ditch the game. It was just part of a bigger pattern of TNT personalities taking pot shots at the NBA, its players, and All-Star weekend in the network’s final year playing host.

📺 YouTube TV strikes new deal with Paramount. CBS, CBS Sports Net and the company’s other cable networks will be accessible through YouTube’s streaming TV package. But after a $10 price (or nearly 15%) increase for the service in mid-January, it remains to be seen whether the streamer’s costs went up under the new agreement with Paramount.

⭐️ Two sports stars made brief appearances on SNL 50, the 50th anniversary spectacular that aired opposite the NBA All-Star Game (and due to a delay, the Dayton 500 as well). Peyton Manning was in the building complaining about retirement, while O.J. Simpson appeared in archival footage for an In Memoriam tribute and was the butt of a joke by Bill Murray during “Weekend Update.” Unfortunately, Charles Barkley couldn’t make it because he was in San Francisco for NBA All-Star…

🚨LEADING OFF 🚨

TNT doesn’t hold back at NBA All-Star

A zero out of ten.

That’s what Draymond Green gave the new-look NBA All-Star game while wearing his TNT analyst hat this weekend on his home turf in the Bay. This was during the broadcast of the new “mini tournament,” live on the network hosting the weekend’s events.

But while Green aptly played his usual role of hater well, he wasn’t wrong. Beyond the odd new format, there were also multiple concerts, a shootout hosted by MrBeast, and lots of Kevin Hart. So much Kevin Hart.

It was, all together, the league’s latest effort to salvage a game that is important to the corporate partners who bankroll the league and its players but which no one has bothered to compete in for years now. To Green’s point, it did not work.

In fact, it was doomed almost from the start. Just before tipoff, LeBron James announced he would not be playing due to foot and ankle soreness. Anthony Edwards missed the game due to a groin strain or a cold, depending on who you asked. Two more reminders of what everyone watching already knew: This does not matter.

Yet Green’s punchy take fell flat because everything about this was predictable. And throughout the week, nobody at TNT appeared to hide from that. At the pregame desk, the panel of hoopers unanimously scorched James. When Allie LaForce was barred from interviewing two disqualified players from the Skills Challenge, Kevin Harlan joked that the network needed the news for posterity. During a podcast interview on Thursday, All-Star announcer Brian Anderson said he did not “love” the event and joked that the TNT crew teases Reggie Miller that this will be his problem going forward.

That’s because Miller is jumping to NBC, which will retake rights to the event when it begins its new deal with the NBA this fall. Far from Miller’s problem alone, this mess will be inherited by NBC Sports president Rick Cordella and Co. starting a year from now. It’s hard to imagine a new network flipping a switch and fixing NBA All-Star.

It’s equally hard to imagine NBC being content to air a broken event for 11 years with no complaints. Perhaps there is some inventive format or celebrity emcee who can add life into it. Or, more likely, they hope this moment of All-Star malaise is a blip.

If I were advising NBC, the top priority would be forming relationships with the star athletes. In the 1990s, NBC’s Ahmad Rashad and Bob Costas developed personal relationships with stars like Michael Jordan that showed in their coverage. Dick Ebersol had a close relationship with NBA commissioner David Stern and shared Stern’s goal of growing the league internationally.

Yesterday’s NBA star is not today’s NBA star. But if NBC can form a real bond with the league and its players, it can begin to rebuild the sense of pride and purpose that can propel events like the All-Star game and storytelling around the league to newer heights once again.

If that fails then hey, that mutual respect is better than Green’s charade or Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav dissing the NBA along every step of negotiations.

📈 DATA DUMP 📊 

🏒 4 Nations Face-Off keeps rolling. The NHL’s best-on-best experiment, an embrace of international hockey in lieu of an All-Star game, has been a huge success. Saturday night’s matchup between the USA and Canada on ABC averaged 4.4 million viewers, peaking at more than 5 million as the Americans won, 3-1. Those numbers are on pair with a Game 5, 6 or 7 of the Stanley Cup Final.

🎤 Shaquille O’Neal returns. Shaq Diesel is sticking with Inside the NBA on a multiyear contract extension worth $15 million annually, according to Front Office Sports. With Kenny Smith expected to sign his deal soon, the entire Inside crew looks to returning for their 15th season together when TNT begins licensing the show to ESPN in the fall.

⛳ LIV Golf in the red. The Saudi PIF-funded golf league may have a less contentious relationship with the PGA these days, but its business is no more solid. A new report from Money In Sport shows that LIV’s operating losses rose to an astounding $394 million in 2023. The report suggests that expenses could increase going forward as the lucrative deals the league struck at launch with players like Bryson DeChambeau come up.

🎤 MEDIA MOMENTS ✍️ 

• Stephen A. Smith weighed in on the debate around transgender athletes in an interview with Bloomberg. Our future Mr. President stated that allowing trans women to compete alongside cisgender women is “(preying) on the rights of females.” Smith is just the latest ESPN personality to take this side in the debate, but notably the only one who is also openly espousing his political dreams.

• President Donald Trump took over the top of Fox’s broadcast of the Daytona 500. Before a long rain delay interrupted the race, the NASCAR partner network and feeder system for Trump’s cabinet gave him the floor. Unlike Fox’s Super Bowl broadcast, which barely featured Trump at all, the president introduced the race and interviewed with reporter Jamie Little.

• John Calipari lost his mind, calling his players “fragile” and questioning whether they will ever get it together and be competitive in the SEC. The new Arkansas Razorbacks coach certainly hasn’t lost his spice.

🤔 THINKING OUT LOUD 💭 

Are MLB and NHL entering a period of media rights vulnerability?

The verdict is in and the ongoing collapse of the RSN model is starting to chip away at the local TV revenues that NHL, NBA, and MLB teams had grown accustomed to. On the national front, I'm concerned wer're starting to see the writing on the wall that the NHL and MLB are going to be entering a new reality where their national media rights are less prized than they've historically been as a "Big Four" sport.

The national sports dialogue centering around football and basketball continues unabated. Meanwhile the uptick in ratings in women's basketball (both college and the WNBA) as well as upstart leagues like the UFL, TPG, and Unrivaled seem to have some level of staying power and audience that offers network some level of replacement value programming should networks decide they'd prefer to air something else for cheaper. ESPN is already reportedly going to walk away from their $500 a year MLB deal, presumably to either pay less or get a chunkier package of games.

Sure MLB might be able to find a streaming service to plug that revenue hole if ESPN moves on. But it's a pretty clear sign that unless you're football or basketball, you're no longer a must have, especially with well funded leagues popping up that put on a respectable product (often produced in house), have some level of audience, and more importantly costs a fraction of NHL or MLB rights.

-Awful Announcing Publisher Ben Koo (@BKoo)

🔥 THE CLOSER 🔥 

One potential future of sports broadcasting is already here

Pregame at Super Bowl LIX in New Orleans, the biggest online content creators went at it.

The game of flag football served as a digital entree into the Big Game for legions of fans, with nearly 3 million people watching iShowSpeed’s stream of the event alone. Fans could also watch on the NFL’s YouTube channel. Speed’s opponent in the matchup, Kai Cenat, pulled in nearly 2 million viewers of his own on Twitch. That doesn’t include the content that came out of the event, which also featured Cam Newton, Michael Vick and Shedeur Sanders.

In a post recapping the success of the Super Bowl flag football stream, Speed’s communications manager posted his biggest dreams on LinkedIn: “Imagine a world where young fans all around the globe are able to tune in and watch the biggest games, live, right alongside Speed on his YouTube stream. I'm in.”

It’s not as far-fetched as it might sound. Aside from the fact that creators like Speed are some of the biggest celebrities in the world, YouTube and Twitch are becoming more popular live sports platforms.

Earlier this year, Brazilian soccer streamer Casimito made headlines for leaving Twitch in the dust after one too many copyright issues despite operating with an exclusive partnership with multiple leagues to stream live games through his accounts. This weekend, Cristiano Ronaldo partnered with Premier Padel to stream the league’s finals on his YouTube channel. As I covered in this newsletter last month, WWE gave Speed and Cenat freedom to stream from Royal Rumble and even allowed both streamers to get in on the action.

In the U.S., some smaller leagues stream games free on YouTube. The video platform is also where many international fans can watch American sports leagues and college conferences. But so far, most traditional sports companies have looked at influencers and creators as sideshows. Smaller startups like Overtime and Baller League are creator-first but have not broken through to the mainstream.

At some point, these lines will intersect. Will a creator host a major event like the NFL Draft or be in the booth for a big game? Or could a league strike a deal to make an event available exclusively through a creator’s channels? Teams and leagues will be wary of cordoning themselves off from older audiences, but the payoff for thinking creatively now and forming habits early will be big.

Young fans will continue to associate their favorite creators with sports, and the groups that tap into that relationship will benefit.

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