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🎤 QUICK START ✍️

⚾ Cutting out the crowd. It’s been one whiff after another in Pittsburgh this season, as the Paul Skenes-led Pirates sputter to an 8-14 record while making multiple PR mistakes. Pirates fans piped up on Saturday during a loss to Cleveland, calling on owner Bob Nutting to sell the team, but were cut out by the team-owned TV broadcast. It’s still April!

🏀 Stephen A. Smith takes another L. After Smith said Phoenix Suns owner Mat Ishbia had a chance to go down as the worst owner in NBA history, Ishbia responded by saying he expected an apology. And apologize Smith did. The First Take host clarified that he did not group Ishbia in with the disgraced Donald Sterling, because Ishbia of course does not carry a history of racism and mistreatment of his players. Seems like an easily avoidable mistake…

❗A big statement. The NFL insider and irritant Mike Florio took a break from chronicling America’s biggest sports league to cover what he called a “crisis” in the country, both on his show PFT Live and in an article online. That crisis is the ongoing detention of Maryland resident Kilmar Abrego Garcia in El Salvador. The Trump administration is currently ignoring an order by the Supreme Court to return the man, while the government of El Salvador insists it cannot send him back.

️‍🚨LEADING OFF 🚨

Time for the NFL and YouTube to rip off the sports streaming Band-Aid

Over the past year or so, YouTube executives have been on a blitz to remind everyone in media just how big they are. If anything is replacing cable in the streaming age, it’s the Google-owned video platform soon to celebrate its 20th birthday. The biggest reminder came late last week when news broke that YouTube is considering a bid for a Week 1 NFL game in Brazil.

How you received this news likely comes down to what type of stakeholder you are in sports television. If you work at a network like TNT — which is reportedly bidding against YouTube for the rights — or CBS or Fox, it’s an existential threat. But for everyone else, it would be a huge win for YouTube to air the game.

For the NFL, it opens the biggest portal on the internet, expanding a partnership with YouTube that has grown steadily for years and recently added Sunday Ticket. YouTube can offer the youngest audience of any platform, as well as arguably the best marketing opportunities and the most granular data.

For viewers, the move would place the most popular live event on TV on the most popular platform.

The promise of streaming sports has been slow to come. Prices are still wildly high for diehards to watch everything. Customization and personalization aren’t really there, unless you love Dude Perfect or the Mannings. There has been little innovation when it comes to the live viewing experience.

YouTube is ready to answer those prayers. The platform would offer demographic data and viewing patterns to the second. It has the user interface to organically toggle in alternative broadcasts and second-screen experiences. And it gives the league a chance to collaborate directly with some of the biggest stars online.

Already, the NFL works with content creators through the “Creator of the Week” program and collaborations with the most popular stars. The YouTube version of Sunday Ticket has been received quite positively. Big-time NFL YouTubers and podcasters bring people to the platform to engage with football already.

This fall would just be the start, but it’s not hard to imagine that before long, YouTube could offer multiple viewing options for all different sorts of fans. All of them customizable and monetized based on the audience. And those viewers may well prove to be stickier and easier to retain than network audiences.

In the same week that former MSNBC anchor Chuck Todd predicted that the next NFL media deal could spell the death of at least one broadcast network, it can sound cruel to root for YouTube in this auction. But these changes are coming. Rather than wait for networks to catch up, it’s time for leagues to expedite the evolution. Put games where audiences already spend time, get creative, and reap the benefits.

📣 SOCIAL EXPERIMENT 🌟

Tom Brady has been a busy man since retiring from the NFL and resurfacing on a megadeal at Fox Sports. He brought the energy to Coachella this weekend, where a camera caught him awkwardly dancing to rapper Travis Scott.

NBA postseason viewers could not believe that ESPN’s Jay Bilas (in his very first playoff game broadcast!) claimed that LeBron James does not complain to the refs for calls.

Elsewhere in the NBA, retired guard Dennis Scott was forced to go into play-by-play mode due to some technical difficulties on TNT. It was a reminder of the days in which Scott would call games for NBATV’s “Players Only” broadcasts, of which Scott’s play-by-play ability was one of the lone highlights.

📈💰INDUSTRY INSIGHTS🧐

• Shay Shay Media is on the way up. Shannon Sharpe’s production company is reportedly on the market for a new deal after partnering with Colin Cowherd and The Volume since 2023. According to Front Office Sports, Sharpe is expected to reel in $100 million. That should come as no surprise given that Club Shay Shay and Nightcap are two of the bigger sports-adjacent podcasts on YouTube and likely hundreds of thousands more on audio feeds. If Joe Rogan can get $250 million and the Kelces can get $100 million, Sharpe belongs in that class for sure.

• Rece Davis was the subject of a hearing by the Massachusetts Gaming Commission last week for comments a year ago on the basketball College GameDay referring to advice from an ESPN Bet segment as “no-risk.” Davis and ESPN Bet could be subject to a fine or a loss of license depending on how the commission votes. As noted by Sports Betting Dime, Dan “Big Cat” Katz of Barstool Sports was the subject of a similar investigation in 2023, which helped set a precedent against phrases like “no-risk” or “can’t lose.”

• As Fox Sports and its talent look to settle with former hairdresser Noushin Faraji, a profile at The Cut pulled quite the quote from former FS1 host Katie Nolan. Responding to questions about VP of Content Charlie Dixon, Nolan said simply, “Charlie Dixon sucks.” It’s getting harder to imagine Dixon coming out of this or a separate lawsuit from Julie Stewart-Binks without significant blowback.

🔥 THE CLOSER 🔥

Goodbye to the NBA TV series

It’s an annual tradition in those precious moments between the final buzzer of the last Sunday of the NBA season and the release of the playoff schedule.

In that small window of uncertainty, NBA fans can tease each other about which series is bound for NBA TV. It’s code for “the worst series with the most boring stars.” This billing is for middling seeds in small markets. And this year’s Pacers-Bucks rematch is the last one ever.

When Amazon and NBC join the fray as NBA rights-holders this fall, each playoff game will be available either on ESPN, ABC, Peacock, NBC or Prime Video. No more fake “national” games squeezed onto a dying cable network.

Of course, this is better for fans. We’ll see how many people pay for Prime Video or Peacock to watch NBA games, but NBA TV was only available in 39 million households as of the 2023-24 season. Assuming that number is lower now, Peacock’s 36 million subscribers may have cleared it already. Prime Video’s 180 million certainly slots higher. More superstars and their teams will get exposure to a wider audience with the move.

That said, there’s a little nostalgia that comes up when saying goodbye to the NBA TV series. So many mediocre Atlanta Hawks, Indiana Pacers, Toronto Raptors and Memphis Grizzlies games have been watched on the network. Watching them proved you were a real NBA junkie, a determined consumer.

Somehow this Thursday, the Nuggets and Clippers are scheduled to play their Game 3 on NBA TV. This is absurd. Game 1 was a thriller, and this is one of the more anticipated matchups of the first round.

Yet this too is the legacy of NBA TV. It was funny if they banished a team to the network for a first-round series. But the league often got it wrong. Then you might end up with no way to watch Nuggets-Clippers.

Death to the NBA TV series. Long live the NBA TV series.