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🎤 QUICK START ✍️

🏈 Aikman’s side-gig. ESPN’s lead NFL analyst Troy Aikman will help the Miami Dolphins search for a new general manager. The role has been deemed temporary, as Aikman will advise the organization through the hiring process but will not take on a permanent front-office position.

🎙️ McDonough ‘nuff. ESPN play-by-play announcer Sean McDonough has been named the 2025 National Sportscaster of the Year by the National Sports Media Association. McDonough has been one of the most versatile and accomplished sports broadcasters for over three decades, calling everything from the World Series to the Stanley Cup Finals to March Madness.

📈 The Athletic’s top story. Katie Strang’s April feature about Ole Miss student Mary Kate Cornett was the most-read story on The Athletic in 2025. The piece — ESPN’s Pat McAfee and others amplified a false rumor. A teenager’s life was ‘destroyed’ — detailed how anonymous social media accounts falsely accused the 18-year-old college freshman of sleeping with her boyfriend’s father, and how that lie followed her everywhere. The story went viral in February, and McAfee referenced it on his ESPN show during a segment with Adam Schefter at the NFL Draft Combine.

️‍🚨 LEADING OFF 🚨

The RSN Reckoning

Amid the number of consolidation stories in media (or de-consolidation in the case of spinoffs like Versant), one that has flown a bit under the radar is DAZN’s potential purchase of Main Street Sports Group, owner of the FanDuel Sports Networks.

The possibility didn’t arise until a surprise Wall Street Journal report last month, but the fate of the RSN conglomerate, and the 29 MLB, NBA, and NHL teams currently under its umbrella, will be decided in a matter of weeks. If a deal is not done by the end of the month, Main Street will shutter operations when the current NBA and NHL seasons conclude. 20 NBA and NHL clubs would then be in local broadcast limbo entering the offseason, while Main Street’s nine MLB clubs would be in an even bigger bind, needing to find a local broadcast solution before Opening Day in March.

It’s hard to understate what’s at stake here. If DAZN does not purchase Main Street, nearly one-third of all MLB, NBA, and NHL teams will need to find a new place to broadcast local games.

The 29 Main Street teams can soon expect a “go-forward plan” from DAZN outlining terms for revised media rights deals should the London-based sports streamer purchase the RSN group. Per Sports Business Journal, those plans will almost certainly include reduced rights fees, even after many teams have already taken haircuts on their original deals as a result of Main Street’s emergence from Chapter 11 bankruptcy just one year ago.

Should DAZN purchase the embattled company, teams will then have an important decision: stay with a DAZN-owned Main Street at a reduced rights fee, or seek an alternative.

Those alternatives can be any number of options. Some teams have already left traditional RSNs for a combination of over-the-air partners and direct-to-consumer streaming services. Such deals tend not to be as lucrative as the traditional RSN deals, but can greatly increase the reach of a team’s local broadcasts. MLB clubs can cede their local rights back to the league, which will then produce and distribute games for them. Six teams already do so. And starting this upcoming season, in-market streaming rights for those teams will be licensed to ESPN’s new app. Expect the NBA and NHL to offer similar options for their teams soon, to eventually sell a centralized package of local rights for most or all of their teams within the next couple of years.

To complicate matters further, Sports Business Journal reported another wrinkle in a possible deal on Wednesday. Should more than 10 of Main Street’s 29 teams choose to explore other options rather than accept DAZN’s updated terms, DAZN will exit the deal entirely.

No matter how you slice it, we’re reaching the End Days for RSNs. If Main Street were to shutter in April because it fails to reach a deal with DAZN, it could serve as the catalyst for local rights centralization sooner than many realize.

So, as stories like the Warner Bros. Discovery sale are rightfully taking up much of the oxygen on the media beat, the future of the FanDuel Sports Networks will probably have a much more direct and immediate impact on the lives of sports fans this upcoming year.

📈 DATA DUMP 📊

• Netflix and Prime Video both received new records under the Christmas tree last week. The Detroit Lions-Minnesota Vikings Christmas Day game on Netflix set a new streaming record for an NFL game, averaging 27.5 million viewers according to Nielsen. That’s an increase of 13% versus last year’s comparable Netflix game between the Baltimore Ravens and Houston Texans (24.3 million viewers). Prime Video’s nighttime Christmas game between the Denver Broncos and Kansas City Chiefs averaged 21.06 million viewers, marking the most-watched Thursday Night Football game during the streamer’s four-year run exclusively airing the package.

• A budding rivalry between the San Antonio Spurs and Oklahoma City Thunder proved to be the best viewership draw of Christmas Day for ESPN and ABC. The Spurs’ win over the Thunder averaged 6.71 million viewers across ESPN and ABC in the 2:30 p.m. ET window. It was the most-watched second game of Christmas Day since a Cleveland Cavaliers-Golden State Warriors game at the height of that rivalry in 2017. The window saw a substantial 53% year-over-year increase in viewership compared to the Minnesota Timberwolves-Dallas Mavericks game in 2024 (4.38 million viewers). Earlier in the day, the noon ET Cleveland Cavaliers-New York Knicks game averaged 6.37 million viewers across ABC, ESPN, and the “Dunk the Halls” altcast on ESPN2 and Disney Channel. It was the largest audience for a noon Christmas Day game on record, and increased viewership from last year’s Spurs-Knicks game in the same window by 30% (4.91 million viewers).

• This year’s NCAA Women’s Volleyball Tournament was the most-watched on record, averaging 666,000 viewers across 15 matches on the ESPN family of networks, up 13% year-over-year. This year’s tournament concluded with Texas A&M’s straight-set win over Kentucky in the championship, averaging 1.4 million viewers on ABC opposite the Week 16 Sunday afternoon NFL slate. The championship was the second-most-watched in history, behind only the 2023 title match between Texas and Nebraska, which averaged 1.69 million viewers.

🎙️ THE PLAY-BY-PLAY 🎙️

The Play-By-Play crew makes their sports media predictions for 2026. Check it out!

🔥 THE CLOSER 🔥

Giving credit to NBC…

Earlier this year, we at Awful Announcing published a pretty hard-hitting column about the underwhelming nature of NBC’s NFL pregame show, Football Night in America. The short of it boiled down to two points:

1. FNIA lacks star power in its cast (is anyone really excited to watch Jason Garrett?)

2. The format is not cohesive (what’s the point of bouncing between two separate studio teams during a show that most people only watch for 15-30 minutes?)

As we sit here in January, entering the final week of the NFL season, those issues remain prevalent for the show. But it’s also worth noting that NBC has made a couple of changes to improve Football Night in America throughout the season.

For one, NBC has begun sending the show on the road more often, a trend that has thankfully caught on at other networks as well. (CBS has sent The NFL Today on location numerous times this season.) The NBC show will emanate on-site for a record fifth time this Sunday as Baltimore travels to Pittsburgh for the AFC North title game.

The atmosphere inside a stadium is far superior to watching people talk about football from a Connecticut studio, and that translates into the show's quality. Particularly for NBC’s part, where the trio of Jac Collinsworth, Rodney Harrison, and Tony Dungy travel to the Sunday Night Football game every week, having both its main set and that (still bizarre) side set at the exact location at least helps its cohesion problems a little bit.

Second, NBC has made an effort to cut out some of the fat from its pregame show. In prior years, Football Night in America would run through each and every person in its entirely too big cast and have them give a pick for the upcoming game. Now, the show simply flashes a graphic with everyone’s face below the team they have selected, cutting out several minutes of junk from the broadcast. It’s a small change, but one that makes the show feel a bit less clunky than it did before.

We spend a lot of time here holding networks to a high standard, and often that comes in the form of criticism. So it’s always good to acknowledge when networks are doing something right and moving in a better direction, as NBC appears to be doing with Football Night in America.