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🎤 QUICK START ✍️

🏎️ The Apple of F1’s eye. Apple TV+ seems to be serious about getting into the Formula One business. Shortly after the Financial Times reported that Apple had submitted a bid to earn the broadcast rights for the global racing circuit, Puck’s Dylan Byers revealed that the streamer offered between $150 million and $200 million per year. That figure far exceeds what ESPN currently pays, a reported $85-90 million annually.

📺 ESPN locks down Orlovsky. ESPN NFL analyst Dan Orlovsky has at long last officially re-signed with the Worldwide Leader. The network issued a press release on Wednesday announcing the news. Orlovsky’s role at the network remains unchanged. He’ll be a staple of NFL Live, appear across ESPN’s daytime studio shows, and call games with the No. 2 Monday Night Football team.

🎤 Sal Pal is back, too. Longtime NFL reporter Sal Paolantonio has re-upped with ESPN for another two years, Pro Football Talk’s Mike Florio reports. Sal Pal has mic’d up for the Worldwide Leader for nearly three decades, serving as a national correspondent in addition to roles that have included radio game analyst, sideline reporter and hosting NFL Matchup.

️‍🚨LEADING OFF 🚨

Why the NFL might renegotiate early

Loyal A-Block readers will have noticed in Tuesday’s newsletter, my article predicting the NFL’s media rights situation in 2030 was graciously featured in the “Around AA” section. But I figured, even for those who have already read it (thank you for the positive response, by the way), it was worth expounding on a little bit in the newsletter, especially given there’s not much going on in the way of sports media right now.

Specifically, I want to play out a scenario that wasn’t seen as a possibility until about eight hours after I published the column on Monday afternoon. That night, Puck’s John Ourand reported the NFL might consider renegotiating its media rights agreements earlier than the 2029 opt-out.

There are some good reasons the league might do this. For one, their broadcast rights are already quite undervalued, despite raking in over $10 billion per year from its combination of current deals. That might seem like a lot, and it is, but when you consider that both ESPN and NBC are paying more for their respective NBA packages when they begin this fall than they will be paying for their NFL packages, it’s easy to see why the suits at NFL HQ are a bit frustrated.

There’s also the timing of it all. Think back to the NBA negotiations. The league was able to take advantage of interest from both streamers and legacy media companies. Not to state the obvious here, but more bidders at an auction generally drive prices up. The NBA was able to nearly treble the total value of its deals, partly because it had buyers from both the streaming and linear TV worlds.

The NFL wants to take advantage too. The earlier the league is able to negotiate its media rights, the healthier its current legacy media partners like Fox and CBS will be, thereby strengthening their bids and putting more pressure on the streamers.

In my original piece, I suggested that by 2030, Fox and CBS would be stuck airing “B” packages of Sunday afternoon games, with streamers like Netflix and Amazon carving out “A” packages for themselves. The additional premium packages would obviously generate more revenue for the NFL, while Fox and CBS, knowing that the NFL is a prerequisite for their very existence, would willingly overpay for a second-tier bundle of games because they have no other choice. I still believe this would be a great way for the NFL to maximize revenue, but it wouldn’t necessarily be a popular move with fans.

But after Ourand’s reporting, I realize that the NFL likely wants Fox and CBS negotiating from positions of strength. By renegotiating sooner, the NFL ensures that Fox and CBS still have the capital to agree to multi-billion dollar rights deals without gambling on their businesses being substantially weakened come 2029. And given that these negotiations would extend the terms of the current agreements from 2033 to 2035(ish), the NFL could also pave the way for a cleaner transition to full-on streaming, rather than making the jump too early.

Please, hold your laughter, but the NFL actually cares about its fans being able to watch games with the least friction possible. That’s why every game is broadcast on free, over-the-air television within the local markets. That’s why the vast majority of its inventory airs on major broadcast networks. That’s why its primary streaming deal is with one of the most widely accessible platforms in the country.

Re-upping deals with linear TV partners early means capitalizing one last time on the golden goose that is the pay TV bundle. It’s also risk-averse. It won’t rock the boat with fans, and it’ll set the league up for success into the mid-2030s when streaming will officially be king.

There’s no guarantee the league decides to go this route, but I can see why they would.

💬 AROUND AA 💬

Kyle Crooks on being the new radio voice of Nebraska football

Awful Announcing contributor Michael Grant sat down with the new radio voice of Nebraska football, Kyle Crooks, who enters his first season replacing Cornhuskers radio legend Greg Sharpe, who passed away in February due to pancreatic cancer. Crooks reveals what it feels like to replace such a beloved figure in the community.

📣NOTABLE QUOTABLES🗣️

• “Athletic, sometimes y’all be on that bulljunk. So, I’m really not going to tell you much. You know that. But I’m not here to talk to you about my health; I’m here to talk about my team.” — Colorado Buffaloes coach Deion Sanders calling out The Athletic during Big 12 Media Days after the outlet asked about his health.

• “Oh, frightening. Because there was this smear campaign that started. Any radio affiliate that had my show, you’d be dropped as an ESPN affiliate if you decided you still want to carry me. It was heavy-handed, but I understood.” — Dan Patrick when asked if it was scary to leave ESPN nearly two decades ago.

• “The real criminals are the ones who are loaning you money at 30% interest or getting you to go bankrupt on a sports gambling app. Like, those are the villains. Why don’t we go after them?” — former Fox News host Tucker Carlson going after “predatory” sports betting companies.

• “There’s not a more mistrusted brand in all of sports than the logo that says ‘NCAA.’ Because the people who rule for that body, they look like clowns much of the time.” — Pardon the Interruption host Michael Wilbon ripping the “worthless” NCAA.

🔥THE CLOSER🔥

NFL and NFLPA strike secret deal?

Last month’s reporting by Pablo Torre and Mike Florio about the NFL encouraging its teams to hold back on guaranteed contracts for veteran players in the wake of Deshaun Watson’s fully guaranteed deal in 2022 continues to get uglier.

On Wednesday, ESPN’s Don Van Natta Jr. and Kalyn Kahler filed a report confirming the previous findings from Torre and Florio, while also taking it a step further. The ESPN duo revealed that the NFL and NFLPA had mutually agreed to keep the arbitration decision hidden from players.

“According to ESPN’s reporting, the Jan. 14 decision from arbitrator Christopher Droney concluded there wasn’t enough direct evidence of collusion among owners following Deshaun Watson’s fully guaranteed 2022 contract. But the ruling did find that commissioner Roger Goodell and league counsel Jeff Pash urged owners to resist fully guaranteed deals, a move that, while not technically collusion, still undermines the league’s collective bargaining agreement,” our Sam Neumann wrote regarding the findings.

Per the report, union representatives were “stunned to hear about the confidentiality agreement.”

The entire saga must sow deep levels of distrust between the players and their union representation. Players have long fought for larger guaranteed contracts, and the fact that their own union withheld findings suggesting that the NFL, at least on some level, encouraged its teams to suppress contract guarantees is concerning.

But this story is a heartening win for investigative journalism. For as much flak as Torre caught during the entire Bill Belichick-Jordon Hudson media cycle, it’s indisputable that his podcast has broken numerous stories of actual import. And to see Van Natta and Kahler pickup where Torre and Florio left off is great, too.

Journalism is at its best when it reveals stories that no one would’ve been privy to otherwise. Now, we know a lot more about the inner workings of the NFL and NFLPA today than we did this time last month. And that’s pretty great.