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🥊 Netflix will continue its foray into the fight game with a dream matchup between MMA legends and celebrity figures Ronday Rousey and Gina Carano. It’s been a combined 26 years since the pair stepped foot into an octagon.

🥌 Former gold medalist John Shuster talks with AA about his transition to Olympic broadcasting and his starring role on Gold Zone.

💰 Paramount is still not giving up on its acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery. And for now, the company is at least listening to the latest offer.

🏀 Former Mavs owner Mark Cuban thinks the NBA should be more worried about affordability for its fans than tanking.

The 2026 Winter Olympics in Milan-Cortina have been a hit, not just in the United States but around the world. New stars are being born, ratings are up, and the competition across sports, new and old, is better than ever.

Already this year, we’ve seen the courage of Lindsey Vonn, the stunning collapse of Ilia Malinin, the speed skating dominance of Jordan Stolz, curling controversies, skiing drama, and much more. And that’s still with major medals to hand out in marquee events like figure skating and ice hockey.

But what if the Winter Olympics could offer more… like basketball?

It’s an idea that gained popularity during the 2026 Milan-Cortina Games, most notably from Dan Wolken at Yahoo Sports. The reasoning makes sense. The Winter Olympics are, by nature, less popular and accessible than their summer counterparts. The biggest basketball stars from around the world moving from summer to winter would not only give them more of a spotlight to themselves, but it would instantly become the biggest attraction at the winter games.

Yes, it may come at the cost of taking some of the shine off of figure skating, hockey, and most importantly, curling. And basketball isn’t traditionally seen as a “winter” sport; it does take place indoors in pretty much all professional settings. But a quick look at the Olympic schedule and you quickly see that everyone would benefit from basketball shifting to the winter.

Better balance

Basketball is a major draw at the Summer Olympics, but it must share the spotlight with headliners such as track & field and swimming. With other sports, such as flag football and baseball, coming to the Olympics in 2028, the top stars of the NBA may not be the only major professional athletes competing in the summer showcase. The Olympics currently lists a whopping 48 sports as part of the summer lineup. In contrast, the winter lineup only features just 16 sports. That imbalance is huge.

More stars

The Summer Olympics are filled with some of the most recognizable athletes in the world. Global stars in tennis, golf, cricket, and soccer will take part in 2028, in addition to the sports listed above, representing some of the world's biggest sports. At the Winter Olympics, only hockey truly features athletes who are featured outside the fortnight in year-round sports. While we all love meeting new stars like Korey Dropkin and Cory Thiesse, comparing them to LeBron James and Steph Curry isn’t a fair comparison. Featuring basketball would immediately give NBC and the rest of the world a central selling point for the Winter Olympics every cycle, in addition to the traditional sports on display.

Stronger ratings

The Winter Olympics deliver strong ratings, but they often lag behind what the Summer Olympics traditionally deliver. The 2024 Paris Olympics averaged 30.4 million viewers across NBC, a figure usually only the NFL can match on a regular basis. By comparison, the 2026 Milan-Cortina Olympics are averaging 26.5 million viewers across all networks. Adding a consistent basketball tournament audience in the winter will further boost the overall product and bring the two seasonal games closer in prestige.

Winter Olympics’ impact on the NBA

Of course, the major sticking point might just be what the NBA thinks about the idea. Right now, summer basketball is played during the middle of the NBA offseason. Would the NBA be willing to interrupt its regular season (and risk midseason injuries to stars) and sacrifice time for the Olympics?

It could actually be a positive. As soon as the NFL season ends, the sports media world has no idea what to do with itself. So they pivot to an NBA season that has hit its pre-All-Star doldrums and finds a slew of injuries, load management, and tank jobs. Inevitably, every February, the NBA always ends up in some kind of crisis, whether real or manufactured. How much better would we all be served if we had Olympic basketball to talk about instead of whether or not players may actually be playing hard in an exhibition game?

By pausing the regular season and focusing on the Olympics, the NBA can take a breath and give everyone a reason to celebrate basketball. Instead of trying to create a mid-season showcase with a new All-Star Game format every year, basketball can harness some of the great energy that hockey has experienced when best-on-best international competition hits in the prime of its sports calendar. The NBA can then reset and focus on the stretch run of the season after a healthy break, preparing for the playoffs.

Basketball at the Winter Olympics sure seems like a winning proposition all the way around. Of course, that means it will likely never happen, but it doesn’t hurt to dream of the possibilities.

Mike Ryan of The Dan Le Batard Show went in on Boomer Esiason and his selective enforcement of athletes sticking to sports and staying out of politics.

We’ve barely had pitchers and catchers report to spring training, and it already looks like new Giants manager Tony Vitello will be a fascinating follow this season.

You may not see a funnier clip of unintentional humor in the sports world this year than this beauty from F1 testing sessions.

“You talk about a dude that would not shoot the damn basketball that is the biggest thief. I mean, if Ben Simmons runs near a basketball arena, he should be arrested. That’s how bad it was.” - Stephen A. Smith will always have a diss ready for Ben Simmons, no matter what year it is.

“He’s a threat. If you’re a Democrat who wants to run for president, or if you, as the party in general, don’t want someone like Stephen A.’s popularity or don’t want people to start paying more attention to his politics, and you don’t want people to give more consideration to him running, then you nip this in the bud. You start taking him seriously.” - Speaking of SAS, Jemele Hill thinks Democrats should not mess around with his political ambitions.

"The good thing about this business, because it’s not that complicated, right — you make more from national games than you make from local games. I want to get into a paradigm where I can maximize the amount of national revenue that I get." - MLB commish Rob Manfred wants more games on national television.

“This conversation is all bipartisan. It happens that one’s a Republican president, one’s a very conservative governor of our state. Coach Saban and I were there as guests, and it was all about our thoughts on how to make this thing better.” - Urban Meyer gave a little bit of insight into his golf round with Nick Saban, Donald Trump, and Ron DeSantis. Because if there’s one thing Donald Trump and Ron DeSantis embody, it’s bipartisanship.

In yesterday’s newsletter, we incorrectly stated that 22.5 million viewers watched NBC’s live Olympic figure skating coverage prior to the NBA All-Star Game, implying that the NBA, which averaged 8.8 million viewers, lost more than half of its lead-in audience.

While exact figures for NBC’s live Olympic coverage are not yet available, it was substantially lower than the figure stated, meaning the NBA retained a much larger percentage of its lead-in audience.

The FanDuel regional sports networks are approaching the end of hospice care as the clock runs out on the NBA and NHL seasons. With MLB fully ready to turn the page and move on, the end of an era is coming soon. Major layoffs are expected to hit at least two local markets where Main Street Sports Group operates when the NBA and NHL regular seasons conclude.

While the RSN industry has been on life support in recent years, surviving bankruptcy amidst a cord-cutting epidemic, it was ultimately a matter of when and not if the medium would finally meet its end. While some teams have found lucrative success with regional sports networks, mostly big brands in big markets, the vast majority of pro sports teams tied to RSNs are going to have to start building a whole new economic model.

AA’s Manny Solomon explores the history of how we got here and the future of what’s next for RSNs. It starts with most changes in the modern television landscape - the rise of streaming and the collapse of the cable bundle.

As people cut the cord, the economics of regional sports networks no longer made sense. With fewer customers, cable companies decided that paying the fees regional sports networks wanted just didn’t make financial sense. That’s why you still can’t watch FanDuel Sports Network on YouTube TV, Sling, or Hulu.

The key advantage of cable for the regional sports network is that even people who never watched the channel paid for it. Unfortunately, non-sports fans have cut the cord at a much higher rate than sports fans. So even though local viewership for sports has not meaningfully decreased, the number of people paying $2 a month for a regional sports network has.

Worse still, teams were able to secure long-term contracts with regional sports networks. The way these contracts are structured means the money is not tied to how the networks perform. But now it means that the networks are locked into long-term contracts based on revenue and profit from a totally different age.

So now what?

The only thing that seems certain is that how you watch your local team will change.