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📺 Insider Central. ESPN is reportedly “closing in” on a deal with yet another NFL insider. Adam Schefter and the Worldwide Leader are close to a long-term extension that would see the preeminent NFL insider remain at the network “several years into the 2030s,” according to Front Office Sports. The deal comes on the heels of ESPN retaining fellow insiders Ian Rapoport and Mike Garafolo from NFL Network.

😬 Spurs nightmare. Jacob Tobey, the TV play-by-play voice for the San Antonio Spurs, was reportedly relieved from his duties on Thursday after an alleged affair with the sister of Spurs player Lindy Waters III. The allegation went viral earlier this week when Tobey’s girlfriend appeared to post on his Instagram story proof he was cheating with Waters’ sister.

💵 Pushed back. After initially targeting July 16 as the earliest date it could close its $110 billion deal to acquire Warner Bros. Discovery, Paramount has now pushed that date back to July 22 amid regulatory pressure from a coalition of state attorneys general and foreign regulators. Rubber will hit the road if a deal isn’t consummated by September 30, when a $7 million daily ticking fee would kick in that Paramount would need to pay to WBD shareholders.

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

It’s been a year and three days since Puck sports correspondent John Ourand first reported the possibility of the NFL engaging its broadcast partners for new deals several years prior to the league’s opt-out options at the end of the decade, and the will-they-won’t-they dynamic of the NFL’s efforts to court those partners has been arguably the most important sports media story ever since.

As recently as a couple of months ago, it seemed as if momentum was moving away from the NFL when it came to the league getting its wish of new, more lucrative broadcast deals before its contractual opt-outs hit. Seemingly every corner of the federal government had the NFL’s antitrust exemption in their crosshairs, leverage seemed to be shifting towards the networks — all of whom surely wouldn’t mind a few billion dollars in cost savings between now and 2030 — and there seemed to be an appetite from some to roll the dice by kicking the can down the road, betting the NFL would still need them as much as they needed the NFL in four years’ time.

It now seems like that was just a flash in the pan, and leverage is firmly back on the side of the NFL, the proprietor of the most valuable programming in the United States. Wall Street analysts are nearly unified in the belief that the NFL will successfully reach updated deals with its broadcast partners in the next year or so. Now Ourand, the reporter who broke this story initially last July, believes it’s likely that the NFL and its broadcast partners will come together for new deals by next offseason.

“I do get the sense, on both sides, that the NFL and the broadcast networks want to get some sort of deal done,” Ourand said on a recent episode of The Main Event with Andrew Marchand. “My prediction is negotiations are going to happen during the season, and new deals could come — who knows how the negotiations are going to go — but the new deals could come by the end of the season or at some point during next offseason. I don’t see the broadcast networks as holding out until 2029-2030, which I think we had talked about being a possibility even just two months ago.”

So what has changed in two months? Well, actually, a lot.

Two of the NFL’s media rights partners underwent serious shakeups in that period. Fox announced a deal to acquire Roku for $22 billion, and Comcast announced plans to spin off NBCUniversal.

Shortly after the Fox-Roku deal was announced, the analysts over at LightShed Partners suggested the deal would “embolden” the NFL to play hardball in negotiating its early renewal with Fox. On the surface, that seemed counterintuitive. After all, the Roku acquisition stands to diversify Fox away from the linear television business, which is so hyper-dependent on retransmission fees from distributors and local affiliates. Shouldn’t the Roku purchase make Fox less reliant on the NFL?

Maybe, to a point. But in reality, what Fox wants to accomplish through the Roku deal requires access to the premium programming only the NFL can offer. Roku, for the uninitiated, is a popular streaming platform aggregator boasting over 100 million users globally. It is the portal by which millions of people access whatever content they consume on their televisions. On Roku, folks click into apps like YouTube TV, Peacock, Fubo, and Hulu.

Fox’s ownership of Roku, paired with NFL rights, gives the company a formidable one-two punch in distribution negotiations. Let’s use YouTube TV, soon to be the largest pay-TV service in America, as an example. To be a viable product, YouTube TV needs to carry Fox because Fox has must-have programming like the NFL. YouTube TV also needs to be available on Roku; otherwise, YouTube TV subscribers with Roku will simply switch to one of the service’s many competitors, like Fubo or Sling, that are available on Roku. Remember, many people use Roku simply because it is built into their TV. Folks would sooner switch to a YouTube TV competitor than purchase a new TV in a hypothetical scenario where YouTube TV were taken off Roku.

It’s easy to see how Fox could demand higher rates from a distributor like YouTube TV now that it owns Roku. Retaining NFL rights, however, is a key part of the leverage-maximization equation, making Fox more amenable to an early renewal with the league. (Not to mention, it’s easy to imagine the NFL saying: You had $22 billion for Roku, I think you can shell out a few billion more for us.)

Let’s move on to Comcast’s planned spin of NBCUniversal. This one is a bit more straightforward. Comcast is in the connectivity business. Its primary revenue driver is selling internet to millions of households across the country. NFL programming was always critical for the health of NBCUniversal, but it was never critical to the health of Comcast’s overall operation.

Previously, when Comcast and NFL execs got together to hammer out a broadcast deal, there was always a credible possibility that the Comcast side would decide NFL rights weren’t worth the price and simply begin winding down its linear television business entirely (or at least downsize to a sustainable post-NFL level). There is no longer a threat of that happening.

Outside the Comcast umbrella, NBCUniversal is wholly dependent on NFL rights to maintain the lucrative retransmission fees and advertising business that secures its viability as a company. The last thing NBCUniversal wants is any uncertainty about its NFL future when it becomes a standalone entity in about a year.

Suffice it to say, both Fox and NBC now have compelling reasons to enter into negotiations with the NFL in hopes of securing long-term stability with the league. CBS, of course, is already in formal negotiations with the NFL because the change-of-control provision triggered by Skydance’s purchase of Paramount last summer, so they’re a practical shoo-in to play ball as well. That leaves only ESPN, which the NFL now has an ownership stake in, and Amazon’s Prime Video as the only question marks. One would think ESPN and the NFL would be able to figure something out given their new equity arrangement, and Amazon isn’t really pinching pennies, and they appear happy with the success of Thursday Night Football so far.

All of this would seem to suggest that the NFL will get its wish and secure early media rights renewals. The question now becomes how much more broadcasters will be willing to pay, and whether the new deals will look substantively different from the status quo.

Colin Cowherd is encouraging San Antonio Spurs announcer Jacob Tobey to lawyer up…

I wanted to quickly highlight an interesting roundtable the Joe from Queens Substack did on how varying people within sports media are (or are not) using artificial intelligence in their work.

Joe spoke with Tim Graham (The Athletic), Jeff Pearlman (NYT Bestseller), Sarah Spain (iHeart), Greg Wyshynski (ESPN), Gordon McGuinness (formerly PFF), and Thad Brown (WROC). It was quite eye-opening the different approaches people within the industry are taking with AI. Highly recommend you check it out here.

Brendon Kleen takes us through a Wall Street Journal report from Thursday outlining Netflix’s move toward bundling, live TV, and potentially more sports to combat its declining share of overall television viewership.

Netflix could soon be even more aggressive in its pursuit of live sports rights as it fends off streaming competitors.

A new report from the Wall Street Journal depicts nervousness within Netflix around user engagement, or the amount of time each subscriber is spending on the platform. Netflix’s total share of watch time, as shown in Nielsen’s The Gauge chart, has slid in recent months.

WSJ reports that Netflix has explored live channels, which are becoming more popular on YouTube and FAST services from Amazon, Tubi and Roku, as well as deals to ingest other services such as Peacock. These feeds would ideally improve watch time and bolster Netflix’s advertising business.

The idea of Netflix absorbing Peacock has been rumored for a while in media commentary, either as a purchasable add-on, as it is on Prime Video and Apple TV, or as part of Netflix’s potential acquisition of NBCUniversal.

At the same time, the Journal confirmed other recent reports that Netflix is actively exploring bids for the 2030 and 2034 FIFA men’s World Cups. The streamer already owns rights to the women’s World Cups in 2027 and 2031.

The reported concerns at Netflix have been evident in the company’s recent moves. First, in Netflix’s failed pursuit of Warner Bros. Discovery, which spooked investors who believed it signaled internal fears about engagement, which have now been confirmed by the WSJ report. Then, in Netflix’s flurry of deals to add not only video episodes of hit podcasts but soon, also short-form video content by top publishing and editorial brands like Vogue.

These investments in new forms of content clearly seem to be about stealing the thunder from YouTube or even TikTok, where users go down the rabbit hole, one video after another.

But Netflix’s reported pursuit of live programming is more about capturing users’ attention for much longer swaths of time. Two recent data points show how valuable this can be. One is Netflix’s T1 ingestion in France, which allows subscribers in the country to watch the broadcast network live and has seemingly been a success. Here in the U.S., Netflix recently simulcast a Formula 1 race that aired on Apple TV+, and a Netflix executive told Axios the company expects to partner with Apple on additional future races.

Of course, Netflix is not just now realizing it needs sports. Each Monday night, WWE Raw airs. It will broadcast a total of 5 NFL games later this year, adding a Week 1 international game, a Thanksgiving Eve game, and a late-season Saturday game to its NFL Christmas GameDay doubleheader. And it bought a small slice of MLB rights this year, which includes an Opening Day game, the Field of Dreams special, and the Home Run Derby.

If Netflix’s unsuccessful attempt to buy WBD and its slippage relative to streaming competitors are indeed spurring more interest in live programming, sports are undoubtedly the most valuable target. Netflix was already seen as a strong competitor for a larger NFL package as well as other top broadcast rights in the coming years. Now, it could become an even more serious player.