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🎤 QUICK START ✍️

🏀 NBA opening night, Christmas schedules revealed. And the league is clearly going all-in on the Western Conference. The Oct. 21 return of the NBA on NBC will see Oklahoma City host Houston and the Lakers host the Warriors. Two months later, ESPN will host a 5-game Christmas slate with just one game featuring East teams.

🏈 Fox announces Week 1 NFL assignments. The second season of Tom Brady Watch begins in Washington as the Commanders host the New York Giants. Meanwhile, it looks like Fox isn’t making hires to replace Jimmy Johnson, Peter Schrager or Michael Vick on its pregame shows.

💰 Ocho and Shay Shay settle defamation suit. Just weeks after Shannon Sharpe settled with a woman who accused him of sexual assault, he and podcast cohost Chad “Ochocinco” Johnson have arbitrated a separate, $50 million lawsuit with a Chicago woman who sued them for defamation. The allegation dates back to an April episode of Nightcap in which Sharpe and Johnson falsely stated that the woman was married while reacting to a viral video of her and the singer Usher at his concert.

🏌️ Colin “Company Man” Cowherd. In an on-air appearance during Fox’s broadcast LIV Golf’s Bolingbrook Golf Club tournament this weekend, Cowherd praised the small, experimental league for drawing a younger audience and generating greater fan engagement for golf. Cowherd also shot an episode of his podcast on a studio set at the tournament.

🚨LEADING OFF 🚨

4 more NFL games hit the market

The best way to declare the winner of a sports media deal in 2025 is to answer a simple question: Who gets the games?

In the groundbreaking deal last week between ESPN and the NFL, the Worldwide Leader got three additional games. Its total is now up to 28 per season through 2029, when the league is expected to opt out of its broadcast contracts. But somehow, the NFL also managed to pry four games out of the ordeal.

If you read this newsletter, you know the equation. In short, ESPN kept NFL Network’s seven-game slate intact by moving four of its own games (three ABC exclusives and an ESPN+ exclusive) to NFL Network. The other three are found money. But that leaves four previously NFL Network-broadcast games that need a new home.

The league figures to get a huge sum for them. In 2024, Peacock paid about $105 million for the Week 1 game in Brazil. Netflix pays a reported $150 million for its Christmas Day doubleheader. Amazon pays $100 million or so for its Black Friday game.

Beyond the money, the league gets flexibility. This season (before the ESPN deal goes into effect), NFL Network will air a Week 4 game from Dublin; Week 5, 6 and 7 games from London; a Week 10 game from Barcelona; a Week 11 game from Madrid; and a Week 17 Saturday night game. The announcement of the ESPN deal referenced “exclusive national windows” for the future NFL Network games, meaning it will likely keep the international matchups to itself.

So as Bloomberg speculated last week, the league could get creative. It has a chance to go from seven to 11 international games in its march toward a full, 18-week international package. It could sell all four to one network, or one-offs to different companies based upon location and timing.

Maybe Netflix would want all the games in the United Kingdom. Perhaps Amazon Prime Video would want all the games in November to drive business for holiday shopping. You get the idea.

The NFL also could experiment with even more windows. We’ve already seen Friday games before Labor Day and after Thanksgiving. Last year, Christmas was on a Wednesday and business continued as usual. The NFL is the dominant sports and media property in the country. And it acts like it. A league in a position of power, with new inventory to sell, wouldn’t be afraid to play in the early afternoon on Veteran’s Day, for example. Or go bigger on Fridays late in December and early in January.

This latest bidding war will serve as a major litmus test ahead of the expected opt-out in 2029. By the end of it, we may feel even more like there is no limit to where — or when — the NFL will play in order to make money.

📈 INDUSTRY INSIGHTS 💰

• TNT Sports goes back to streaming. Since the proposed Warner Bros. Discovery was announced earlier this year, one of the big looming questions has been where the network’s sizable sports library would stream. HBO Max is staying with The Warner Bros. Company, while TNT is leaving with the cable networks in spinoff company. Now we know: Discovery Global will launch a standalone streaming service for TNT that will be available in a bundle with HBO Max and Discovery Plus.

• Sarah Spain promoted. The former radio and TV host at ESPN has found a strong second act at iHeartMedia, where she just earned a promotion to Content Director. On LinkedIn, Spain wrote that she will now help lead content and sponsorship strategy for the iHeart Women’s Sports Audio Network in addition to hosting a podcast for iHeart called Good Game.

• No opt-out for NFL Network. While CBS, Fox and NBC are looking over their shoulders at tough fights to keep their NFL broadcast rights ahead of an opt-out in 2029, ESPN won’t have to after its new deal with the league. Per Puck’s John Ourand, all seven NFL Network games are not subject to an opt-out and will continue through the end of the rights deal in 2032.

• Netflix eyeing the Derby. As MLB searches for a short and long-term answer for its broadcasting future, Netflix is reportedly interested in airing the Home Run Derby. Per Bloomberg’s Lucas Shaw, the streamer could also add other baseball inventory as part of its continued, shy flirtation with live sports rights. The Derby is available starting in 2026 after MLB and ESPN mutually opted out of their deal earlier this year.

• ESPN to air Lee Corso tribute show ahead of 2024 college football season. Before his last show, ESPN will honor legendary analyst Lee Corso with a one-hour special, Not So Fast, My Friend: A Lee Corso Special, airing August 22 at 9 p.m. ET on ESPN (with re‑airs on ESPN2 and ESPN+). Corso will make his final headgear pick on Week 1’s College GameDay — live from Columbus on August 30 — capping a nearly four-decade run.

💬 AROUND AA 💬

A blessing in disguise in the WNBA

The Indiana Fever have been one of the 10 or 20 most popular and important individual pro sports teams in America since the arrival of Caitlin Clark last spring. It was a career-altering opportunity for many great reporters in the market, including Pat Boylan.

Since 2018, Boylan has called Fever games for local television. That means Boylan has seen every game Clark has played, and watched this season as the team and the WNBA have navigated repeated injuries to the superstar point guard.

Boylan spoke with Awful Announcing about the Fever and his career:

I would say that she, already in her early 20s, is just about as popular as any athlete, professional or collegiate, in the history of the state. When you come to a Fever game day and you walk near the building, you see a sea of red and a sea of 22 jerseys and shirts. I think at the level that you would have seen 31 Reggie Miller jerseys, 18 Peyton Manning jerseys…”

Read the full Q&A with Boylan right here!

🔥 THE CLOSER 🔥 

Does Hard Knocks have anything left to give?

Caitlin Clark has a lot on her shoulders. Not only is her prodigious talent expected to turn the Indiana Fever into contenders for the WNBA championship (they have the fourth-best odds to win it), but a slew of soft tissue injuries have sidelined her for weeks. All the while, Clark is the most influential player in the league. She was a key presence at collective bargaining talks last month and is the biggest draw of any player.

In an interview last week with retired WNBA star Sue Bird, Clark acknowledged the weight of it all. Particularly when it comes to the overflowing arenas she flies to throughout the league, full of paying fans, it is hard to ignore. Clark wants to play and give them what they paid for. And she wants to keep trend lines around the league, from its soaring TV ratings to its franchise valuations, pointing in the right direction.

Then, she clarified: “And not that I think there’s a fear of any of this going away. That doesn’t happen when like, LeBron or Steph get hurt.”

Much as she hides it, Clark understands where she sits. Yes, she feels pressure to return. But also: why? The best of other sports don’t worry that when they sit, it will all come crumbling. Neither, she suggests, should she have too.

Good news for Clark is she may not have to much longer. The wunderkind point guard has played just 13 games this season, yet more people are watching. At the All-Star break, viewership was up 23 percent for the season. Nearly 2 million people watched a Sky-Fever game on June 7 in which Clark sat. A recent rematch of the 2023 WNBA Finals between Las Vegas and New York drew more than 700,000 average viewers.

These marks would have been huge news even two years ago. If they are the new baseline without Clark, the league should be thrilled. She is not just a megastar and growth-driver, but a rising tide that is lifting everyone.

Clark’s Fever have stayed in the playoff mix without her and have a puncher’s chance at the Finals. Everyone wants to watch her push for it. But one thing she can shed is her status as the only popular product on WNBA hardwood. Fans are tuned in.