Welcome to The A Block, Awful Announcing’s daily newsletter where you’ll always find the latest sports media news, commentary, and analysis.

Did someone share this newsletter with you? Sign up for free to make sure you never miss it.

🎤 QUICK START ✍️

🔗 Bundle up. ESPN and Fox One are bundling their streaming services at $39.99/month, launching October 2. A sign that even the streaming giants are realizing consumers are reaching their breaking point with subscription fatigue.

💸 Billion-dollar blunder. According to Pablo Torre, ESPN let "legitimately over a billion dollars walk out the door" in podcasting talent like Bill Simmons, Zach Lowe, and Dan Le Batard. The math on missed opportunities keeps getting uglier.

🏈 Brady's NFC tour. Tom Brady completes his early-season NFC East visits with Bears-Cowboys in Week 3. Fox is finally giving fans variety beyond the weekly Dallas show.

🚨LEADING OFF 🚨

RIP PPV

UFC's $7.7 billion move to Paramount+ officially killed the pay-per-view model, with all premium events now included in the $12.99 monthly subscription. "The pay-per-view model is a thing of the past," TKO president Mark Shapiro declared, calling it "an outdated, antiquated model."

This headline isn’t just about UFC changing homes. That would be burying the lede. The story here is about the death rattle of an entire business model that once ruled sports entertainment. Shapiro pointed to boxing and DirecTV movies as basically the only holdouts still clinging to PPV, and even those feel like they're on borrowed time.

The math tells the story, but so does the psychology. For decades, PPV trained fans to view big fights as special occasions worth $70-$ 80. You'd gather friends, split the cost, and make it an event. But that model assumed scarcity, that these moments were rare enough to justify the premium. UFC is betting the opposite. That saturation beats exclusivity, that getting casual fans hooked on monthly fights matters more than milking diehards for occasional windfalls.

The deal promises "one-stop shopping, especially for our younger fans in flyover states," who can now get everything for the price of lunch. That's not just marketing speak — it's demographic destiny. Gen Z doesn't buy albums; they stream everything. They don't rent movies; they expect infinite catalogs. The idea of paying $80 to watch one fight probably feels as antiquated to them as buying a newspaper.

For Paramount, fresh off its merger with Skydance, this represents a massive bet on live sports driving subscriber growth. The company called it an "exclusive" partnership, meaning UFC walked away from potential multi-platform deals with ESPN, Netflix, Amazon, and TNT Sports. In a world where content is increasingly fragmented, UFC chose consolidation.

PPV, now a bygone relic of a past era, was once a social ritual. The high price prompted you to turn it into an event, thereby justifying the cost by making it communal. You'd plan for weeks, coordinate schedules, stock up on food, and create a whole evening around it. Now, you can flip on Paramount+ alone at 2 a.m. in your underwear if you want.

This deal doesn't just kill PPV for UFC, but it also makes every other PPV model look ridiculous by comparison. How do you justify charging fans $70 for a boxing match when UFC gives you 13 premium events for $156 annually? The pricing pressure alone will force boxing promoters to either adapt or watch their audience migrate to cheaper alternatives.

The convenience revolution always comes with casualties. We got rid of video stores and lost the ritual of Friday night movie browsing. We killed appointment television and lost the shared cultural experience of everyone watching the same thing at the same time. Now we're trading PPV's artificial scarcity for streaming abundance, and we'll probably miss the forced gatherings more than we realize.

The real question isn't whether PPV is dead. We know the answer. UFC just held the funeral. It's a question of whether other sports will follow suit, and how quickly the streaming wars will reshape how we pay for the biggest events in sports. Once fans become accustomed to premium content at streaming prices, they'll find it hard to return to the higher costs of the cable era. We just might have to work a little harder to find excuses to get together.

📺 INDUSTRY INSIGHTS 🎬

• ESPN-NFL deal faces 2-year regulatory delay as Scott Hanson confirms the Disney-ESPN-NFL Media agreement requires DOJ approval and "anywhere from a year to maybe even two years" before taking effect

• CBS is likely to simulcast all numbered UFC events, expanding beyond the "select" events originally announced.

• ESPN "absolutely" wants back in the baseball business as Jimmy Pitaro confirmed the network remains in "very healthy dialogue" with MLB after their mutual opt-out, expressing interest in local rights as a potential solution

• Andrew Siciliano adds Yahoo hosting to packed schedule. The former RedZone host will anchor Yahoo Sports' daily Inside Coverage show while maintaining duties as the Cleveland Browns radio voice and NBC college football broadcaster.

📣 NOTABLE QUOTABLES 🗣️

"They were satisfied, Pat was satisfied, I was happy with Pat's on-air apology, and we move on." – ESPN's Jimmy Pitaro on allowing Pat McAfee to handle the Mary Kate Cornett situation on his own terms, despite the three-month delay and potential defamation lawsuit.

"I'll show up to that show whenever the f*ck I feel like showing up to that show." – Jon "Stugotz" Weiner, taking another shot at Dan Le Batard amid his prolonged absence from their show, adding "I consider you to be a friend of mine, unlike Dan" to Chris Simms.

"Sometimes you regress a little bit, and sometimes you do things you really like that impress you." – Tom Brady reflecting on his broadcasting growing pains, comparing his rookie broadcast season to being a rookie NFL quarterback, where "that's a lot faster" than expected.

"I can't get a job in television. There's not a lot of forgiveness for people that look like me in this world. And it's my fault. It's absolutely my fault." – Former SportsNet analyst Gregg Zaun, explaining how his 2017 firing over sexual harassment allegations has left him unable to return to broadcasting despite getting sober and working on himself.

️‍🔥The Closer🔥

The streaming revolution will be televised

By the end of the year, sports fans without a pay TV subscription would, in theory, need to subscribe to nine separate streaming services to watch every major sporting event in the United States.

That's right, nine streamers: ESPN, Fox One (Fox’s upcoming streaming sports service), Paramount+, Peacock, Netflix, Prime Video, Apple TV+, the future TNT Sports streamer (currently on HBO Max), and wherever Versant, NBC's forthcoming spinoff, decides to put its sports properties. Add in a regional sports network subscription, and you're up to ten.

When sports fans say streaming is becoming just as expensive as the old cable bundle, they’re not exaggerating.

Of course, no one in their right mind is going to subscribe to nine or ten separate streaming services to watch all the sports they want. At a certain point, a traditional or virtual pay-TV bundle, such as Comcast, DirecTV, or YouTube TV, would become significantly more cost-effective.

But, the sheer absurdity of needing 1o separate streaming services to access everything you used to get for one simple monthly price demonstrates just how excessive sports fragmentation has become.

For more from Awful Announcing’s Drew Lerner on why bundling is the only solution to streaming's fragmentation problem, read the whole piece here.