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🎤 QUICK START ✍️

🎙️ Barstoolflix. Dave Portnoy announced that video versions of Pardon My Take, Spittin’ Chiclets, and The Ryen Russillo Show will be exclusively available on Netflix beginning next month. The audio versions of the podcasts will remain available on platforms such as Spotify and Apple. But if you want to watch the shows, you’re soon going to need a Netflix subscription.

🏀 Gottlieb gotta focus. Doug Gottlieb tried to have it all, serving as a Division I men’s basketball coach at Green Bay and a sports talk radio host at Fox Sports. Those days are over, however. After a home victory over UC Santa Barbara, an emotional Gottlieb took to the podium and announced that he would be stepping down from his daily radio show to focus on his coaching duties. Don’t worry, he’ll still podcast.

🏈 Open the playbook. ESPN announced the launch of a new NFL altcast, MNF Playbook, to debut on ESPN2 during the upcoming San Francisco 49ers-Indianapolis Colts game in Week 16. This new broadcast will feature “live probabilities, advanced metrics, and AI-driven insights” for the data-inclined viewer. MNF Playbook will also air alongside the Los Angeles Rams-Atlanta Falcons game in Week 17.

💸 Wrong rights. Among the reasons Warner Bros. Discovery stated for why it was rejecting Paramount’s offer to purchase the company in favor of Netflix’s deal was a filing in which WBD called out what it perceives as Paramount paying “above-market” rates for some of its media rights deals, one of which is likely their seven-year, $7.7 billion agreement with UFC. Paramount also faces uncertainty about whether it can renew its deal with the NFL after its next opt-out.

🏈 Dumbstream. Los Angeles Rams wide receiver Puka Nacua criticized NFL referees during a recent livestream with Adin Ross and N3on, saying they intentionally make calls to brag to one another. While everyone awaits the fine he’ll get for that, there’s also the fact that he promised to do a “Jewish emote” celebration if he scores a touchdown, which involved rubbing your hands together in a greedily looking fashion. So far, neither the Rams nor the NFL has commented.

🚨 LEADING OFF 🚨

Prediction markets predict trouble

The college football world moved into red alert mode on Wednesday over a report that prediction market Kalshi would open props allowing users to trade contracts and bet on college athletes entering the NCAA transfer portal.

According to ingame.com, the prediction market submitted a filing with the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission that stated contracts would be posted based on “Will <player> <enter/withdraw from> the transfer portal in <time period>?” The filing said the trades would happen as early as Wednesday, December 17.

College football media members appeared to swarm to their preferred social media platforms, all essentially shouting the same thing: This is a terrible idea, and someone needs to stop it.

While there were many valid reasons as to why this kind of gamble shouldn’t take place, The Athletic’s Stewart Mandel offered one of the most stark.

“Well, this seems like a great shady way to boost a guy’s NIL deal,” he wrote on X. “Bet on him to enter the portal before he announces it, then give him the winnings.”

So vociferous and intense was the pushback that, by Wednesday evening, Kalshi released a statement saying that “despite our competitors having these markets live, we have no immediate plans to list these contracts.”

You can read between the lines in the statement’s phrasing. It reads like a little temper tantrum from a teenage boy who didn’t get his way but isn’t exactly sorry either.

That speaks to the broader concerns about these prediction markets, which are essentially ways for people to place wagers without it technically being called a wager. It’s gambling in every sense of the word, except that they’re trying to make sure no one calls it gambling.

The big question moving forward is whether sports leagues and organizations such as the NFL, MLB, NBA, NCAA, and many others will go along with the charade or have the backbone to protect their audiences.

While we probably know the answer to that question eventually, the NFL is at least kicking the tires, saying they’re deeply concerned about prediction markets because of their susceptibility to manipulation and the unregulated nature of many props. It also doesn’t help that those companies used NFL trademarks and logos without permission. That’s a major no-no in the eyes of the NFL, but precisely the kind of give-no-cares attitude that these companies seem to have.

There’s been no better example of this than the discovery that both Kalshi and Polymarket have been partnering with fake insider accounts on X and elsewhere. Fake sports media accounts create fabricated stories or quotes, drive them viral, and then link to a prediction market related to the erroneous story they’ve amplified.

It’s the epitome of scummy, sleazy tactics with no ethical or moral center. It also appears to be the status quo for these companies.

“The long-term vision is to financialize everything and create a tradeable asset out of any difference in opinion,” Kalshi co-founder Tarek Mansour recently said at the Citadel Securities Future of Global Markets Conference. In other words, companies like his want to turn everything and everyone into a commodity.

With that kind of thinking, it makes sense to them to offer a way to further commodify college athletes through the transfer portal. You can also see that this is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to these things. Slippery slopes get thrown around too often these days, but you’ll find few more slippery than this one.

We can only hope that what few roadblocks remain, in the form of sports leagues, players’ unions, and athletes themselves, resist the lures to allow these kinds of things to happen, especially in unregulated environments such as these.

Kalshi and Polymarket have been facing significant scrutiny in recent months. David Purdum and Shwetha Surendran at ESPN reported in June that gambling regulators across the U.S. had ordered Kalshi to cease offering sports markets. However, Kalshi refused, in part, citing its close ties to President Donald Trump (Donald Trump Jr. is a strategic advisor). Meanwhile, Polymarket, which just recently returned to U.S. markets, is still blocked in several countries due to gambling laws. The company is reportedly exploring an internal market-making team that would trade directly against users, which, to many gambling experts, sure sounds like what a sportsbook does.

Like a pair of teenage boys who weren’t told no enough times, Kalshi and Polymarket are banking on that continuing in the years ahead, especially when it comes to sports.

🗣️ NOTABLE QUOTABLES 🗣️

“The one thing that his behavior, even with the apology included and accepted, did for me was that it made me regret my Heisman vote.” - Rece Davis on Heisman runner-up Diego Pavia.

“Somewhere, Walt Frazier and Willis Reed and Red Holzman are saying, ‘Really?' We’re going to celebrate this stupid thing? This inauthentic creation to jazz up the regular season, which means absolutely nothing in the big picture.'” - Chris Russo, reacting as only he can to the idea of an NBA Cup Champions Knicks banner.

“I’ll never forget this as long as I live. They said, ‘Once we get to this number, you will become a United States Senator.’ It’s that simple. It was all about money.” - Paul Finebaum on what he was told by political operatives.

“Not sure there is a game I personally look forward to more EVERY year than Army and Navy-they play for the love for each other and love for the game-and anybody who has ever watched me for the last 30 years on TV knows how I feel about that game. Sorry for any confusion and again any disrespect that this created-it was a simple case of miscommunication.” - Kirk Herbstreit reacting to criticism he received over a since-deleted clip that made it seem like he was disrespecting Army-Navy.

📈 DATA DUMP 📊

• Saturday is the closest thing we have to a Football Equinox. Both the College Football Playoff and the NFL will play vital games in competing television windows. However, with two CFP games that could easily be blowouts vs. an NFL doubleheader of quality games, this could be a ratings bloodbath. The NFL doubled the CFP’s audience last year. This year could see a triple. Maybe even more.

• A shift from ESPN to ABC led to the Heisman Trophy Ceremony's largest television audience in over a decade. Saturday’s ceremony, in which Indiana quarterback Fernando Mendoza took home the award, averaged 4.3 million viewers on ABC. It was the first year that the Heisman Trophy Ceremony moved from ESPN to its sister broadcast network. The hour-long special was sandwiched between two college football games: the FCS Quarterfinal on ABC at 3:30 p.m. ET, and the Bucked Up LA Bowl at 8 p.m. ET.

🎙️ THE PLAY-BY-PLAY 🎙️

In the latest episode of The Play-By-Play, Awful Announcing's Ben Axelrod and Drew Lerner discuss Barstool's new deal with Netflix, the 2025 Awfulies, and what made Pablo Torre worthy of being named our Sports Media Person of the Year.

️‍️🔥 THE CLOSER 🔥

The evolution of ESPN

2025 has been one of the most critical years for ESPN in recent memory. It’s perhaps fitting that the Worldwide Leader in Sports spent the final portion of this quarter-century preparing for the next quarter-century. ESPN made several industry-defining moves this year with a focused eye towards the future. And when media observers look back on ESPN’s history many years from now, they’ll circle 2025 as a turning point for the network.

This year alone, ESPN finally took its cable networks over-the-top, making the ESPN family of networks available to consumers without a pay TV subscription for the first time in its history. As one of the last holdouts without a direct-to-consumer offering for its flagship channels, ESPN’s escape from the bundle marks the true beginning of the late-stage cable and satellite businesses.

The network also inked a ginormous deal with the NFL, which will see the behemoth league take a 10% equity stake in ESPN, paving the way for a long and fruitful partnership between the two sports giants.

They also made a savvy move with Major League Baseball, ditching its national Sunday Night Baseball package in favor of a local-focused package centered on MLB.tv. This deal could help ESPN secure a foothold in the lucrative local sports broadcasting market over time.

But 2025 didn’t come without its warts. ESPN continues to move further into opinion and sports debate programming, often at the expense of newsgathering and reporting. Pat McAfee’s influence on the network’s daytime lineup remains evident. However, these decisions indicate how ESPN views its future in vying for consumer attention.

We awarded “the evolution of ESPN” as our Awfulies winner for Top Sports Media Story of 2025.” Click to read Drew Lerner’s deeper look at just how meaningful this year was for ESPN.