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🎙️ What’s in a name? The Dan Le Batard Show is no longer with Stugotz following an announcement made by Le Batard on Thursday, formally removing his former co-host’s name from the program’s billing. “This is many months overdue,” Le Batard said, adding, “the delay in removing his name and the silence surrounding it has been because I’ve been desperately trying to find all the ways to prevent and avoid it.”

✍️ Key signing. ESPN announced on Thursday that it has re-signed NFL analyst Jason McCourty to an exclusive multiyear contract. “Entering his third season with ESPN, McCourty will continue contributing across the company’s expansive NFL portfolio, regularly appearing on signature studio shows including NFL Live, Get Up, First Take and SportsCenter, while providing analysis and insight throughout the NFL season and beyond, as the company prepares for its historic first presentation of the Super Bowl in February 2027,” the announcement read.

💵 A Penske promise. On Thursday, Penske Media Corporation officially announced it has acquired Vox Media’s portfolio of digital brands, which includes publications like SB Nation, Eater, The Verge, and Thrillist. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. As expected, Vox CRO Ryan Pauley will lead the company under Penske ownership.

Read more of today’s top stories at Awful Announcing.

One week of the World Cup is officially in the books. And for all the complaints over hydration breaks, Fox’s coverage of the event, or whether other networks are giving the tournament requisite attention, one thing remains abundantly clear. The World Cup is a viewership event like no other.

Through the first weekend, Fox’s viewership is up 152% versus its Group Stage average for 2022 in Qatar. Telemundo, the Spanish-language broadcaster, is up an even more eye-watering 234%. Unsurprisingly, both are on record pace.

The data would seem to indicate that viewers are still quite happy finding the World Cup on good, old-fashioned linear television. Sure, these numbers include streaming viewership on Fox One and Peacock, respectively, but by-and large, World Cup viewers are watching on linear television.

Next year, no such option will be available. The 2027 FIFA Women’s World Cup will stream exclusively on Netflix in the United States. It’ll be the first major global sporting event to air exclusively on streaming in this country, and could very well be a sign of things to come as we look towards who will broadcast the 2030 FIFA Men’s World Cup.

It’s worth examining the differing economic models at play here between streamers and traditional broadcasters, because that could very well determine where that 2030 tournament goes.

The World Cup is a unique property in the context of other live sporting events, most of which occur on an annual, or at least biannual in the case of the Olympics, basis. That’s an important distinction. Traditional broadcasters like Fox, NBC, or ESPN are still largely in the business of distribution fees. Since the advent of cable and satellite bundles, the overarching economics of these networks can be boiled down to one question: How much is your content worth to viewers? That question determines the per-subscriber fee distributors like DirecTV, Comcast, or Fubo are willing to pay networks. It’s why NFL programming, far and away the most popular content left on television, is borderline existential for legacy broadcasters.

However, the quadrennial nature of the World Cup makes it a difficult bargaining chip for networks during distribution negotiations. Most major distribution deals are done on a three-year cycle. So for Fox, it’s possible that there have been distribution agreements in the past where the network wasn’t able to leverage its World Cup rights at all, or at least had to extend the deal’s term to ensure the value of the event was included, perhaps at a discount. But it’s not simply the cycle disparity that creates issues, it’s the difficulty of valuating an event that only happens once every four years, in different parts of the globe, broadcast to an audience that is historically soccer-agnostic.

The value of a World Cup varies greatly based on where it’s played, and the time zones the American audience will be dealing with. Obviously, one held in North America, with the United States having a guaranteed spot in the tournament as a host country, is going to be a much easier sell to distributors than, say, the 2018 tournament in Russia, where the United States failed to qualify. Location, of course, can be accounted for during distribution negotiations. Those are known far in advance. Whether the United States will be participating? At least back when the field was 32 teams, rather than 48, that was far from a guarantee. That downside risk, at least previously, made the World Cup far more challenging for networks to leverage during distribution negotiations than a surefire annual property like the NFL or college football.

There’s no such calculus for a streamer, whose business fortunes are determined by selling subscriptions directly to the consumer, rather than through a middleman distributor. In that way, purchasing a sports property like the World Cup is similar to producing a handful of big-budget feature films. You hope that the subscriptions generated from the event make the rights fee worthwhile. What you don’t have to do is convince DirecTV that it should pay you more for a five-week-long sporting event that’s 28 months away.

Fox is paying a reported $485 million for this year’s World Cup, a price that some experts say is two- or three-times under market value, thanks to the no-bid contract FIFA awarded the network on account of moving the 2022 Qatar World Cup to autumn. It’s safe to assume, then, that when FIFA goes to market with the 2030 World Cup, it’s expecting upwards of $1 billion for the rights.

The question becomes, does the quadrennial event drive more than $1 billion in incremental distribution revenue for legacy broadcast networks? Maybe, but it’s a tough sell, particularly when the majority of that event will be played in Spain, Portugal, and Morocco.

Of course, this is a bit of an oversimplification. The World Cup also drives plenty of ad revenue and streaming subscriptions for legacy broadcasters. But at a time when these same broadcasters are tightening content spends in preparation for an expected increase in price of NFL rights, the World Cup might fall firmly in the “nice to have” rather than “must have” category. Between the volatility in value and the fact that it’s simply hard to capitalize on an event that happens in only one of every 48 months, the World Cup just seems to make more sense for a streamer.

If so, the World Cup Final one month from today could mark the end of an era.

New York City mayor Zohran Mamdani shouted out New York Knicks legend and James Dolan nemesis Charles Oakley during his speech at the team’s championship parade … with Dolan seated right behind him.

James Dolan subsequently made sure to get his digs in at Mamdani during his parade speech.

Could the USMNT schedule been optimized for some better television audiences? That’s the question Awful Announcing’s Matt Yoder is asking, as the Stars and Stripes prepare to play a mid-afternoon weekday game followed by a late-night Thursday game to close out the Group Stage.

The momentum for the U.S. Men’s National Team has arguably never been higher after a thorough 4-1 victory over Paraguay to open the 2026 World Cup. But for their next two games, fans may be left wanting a bit of an easier path for following the USMNT.

The USA’s victory in their opening game in Los Angeles was one of the best single-game performances in the modern era of American soccer. And it has greatly increased the hype and interest in seeing just how far the team can go on home soil. The World Cup as a whole, and the USMNT in particular, are also off to historic starts as far as viewership numbers on television. The 2026 tournament has more than doubled the 2022 edition on Fox, and the USA-Paraguay game was watched by an incredible 25 million viewers between Fox and Telemundo.

The second game for the USA will be against Australia in Seattle with a 3 p.m. ET kickoff time on Friday. The final group game against Turkey is set for Thursday, June 25, at 10 p.m. ET in Los Angeles.

These times are less than optimal for the American viewing audience. Yes, this Friday is a national holiday, Juneteenth, so that should open up the viewership possibilities a great deal compared to other weekdays. But it’s also a mid-afternoon weekday start time for the East Coast and noon local in Seattle. That’s just not when sports fans are programmed to tune in to major events.

The 10 p.m. ET start time for the final game against Turkey is an even bigger ask for most fans across the country as the game won’t end until midnight on a weekday evening. We know how late start times are the bane of existence for sports fans across the eastern two-thirds of the country. Some events have taken a little bit of effort to make it more palatable in recent years, but it’s still an issue.

What makes it all the more strange is that there are plenty of other available start times on those dates with games happening throughout the day. The USA games against Australia and Turkey could have both theoretically aired during primetime at a reasonable 8 p.m. ET or 7 p.m. ET start times when other matches are taking place.

So how did we get here? Is this just obtuse decision-making from the World Cup organizers to not do everything they can to maximize the audience in their biggest home market? And could Fox have had a say to get better windows for the USMNT?

The truth is actually very complicated.

Read Matt’s full column here.

After Dana White, the RNC chairman, and Joe Rogan put some rather lofty viewership expectations on UFC Freedom 250 following the successful, if controversial, event, the official numbers are in.

Paramount+ averaged 7 million viewers in the United States for the seven-fight card on the White House lawn last Sunday, and an additional 1.2 million viewers in Latin America. That’s good for one of the most-watched MMA cards in U.S. history, falling just short of Netflix’s Ronda Rousey-Gina Carano fight night, which averaged 9.3 million viewers in the U.S.

While the event was a success by any measure, it certainly didn’t come anywhere close to the Super Bowl-level viewership Rogan touted on his popular podcast, where he speculated 150 million people tuned in.

In fact, UFC Freedom 250 was more in line with the 2025 Bad Boy Mowers Pinstripe Bowl between Penn State and Clemson, which averaged 7.6 million viewers.

Credit to UFC for putting on a spectacle that 7 million people clicked into Paramount+ to watch, but the crazy figures being floated from someone like Rogan, who calls the fights, only serves to distract from an otherwise successful night for the sport.