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🎤 QUICK START ✍️

⚾️ ESPN reaches deal with Savannah Bananas. As ESPN continues to fill out its summer programing, the network is turning to one of America’s most popular baseball teams. Only it isn’t the Yankees, Dodgers or Red Sox, but rather the Savannah Bananas, who will play 10 games that will air on ESPN platforms from late-April to mid-August, including a July 5 matchup at Fenway Park.

🏈 Netflix to air Brett Favre doc. Brett Favre is getting the Netflix Untold treatment. Next month, the streamer will debut an episode of its sports documentary series focused on the Hall of Fame quarterback’s off-field controversies. The episode, “The Fall of Favre,” will address his sexual misconduct scandal while with the New York Jets, as well as the Mississippi welfare episode that’s dominated the headlines in recent years. Former Front Office Sports senior reporter A.J. Perez will serve as an executive producer on the project, which will release on May 20.

🏀 LeBron, Ja, dominate on digital. With the NBA’s regular season in the books, the league has compiled data on its most viewed digital clips during the 2024-25 campaign. And while a pair of spinning Ja Morant layups that led the way, it was LeBron James who was responsible for driving the most traffic, with the Los Angeles Lakers superstar generating 3.23 billion (with a B) views.

🚨LEADING OFF 🚨

Let the bidding begin

The exclusive negotiating window between UFC and ESPN for the MMA giant’s next media rights deals officially expired earlier this morning. And as expected, it did so without a new agreement coming to fruition, meaning that UFC is now free to take its product to the open market.

That’s hardly a surprise considering that UFC appears to be well positioned at this point in its negotiations. Time will tell whether it reaches its reported goal of $1 billion annually, a sizable bump from the five-year, $1.5 billion deal it signed with ESPN in 2019. But it appears obvious that a significant increase is in order.

Not only is UFC one of the few major sports properties set to become available in the near future, but it also happens to have a preexisting relationship with Netflix via its sister company’s deal for WWE Raw. And with the streamer continuing its push into live rights, UFC’s rights package couldn’t have come available at a better time, current state of the economy notwithstanding.

The same could be said of Warner Bros. Discovery as a potential suitor, as TNT Sports continues to fill its NBA-sized void with a hodgepodge of offerings. That’s not to say that UFC is a lock to land at Netflix and/or TNT Sports. But it would have been irresponsible for the TKO-owned company to not at least shop its product around.

To that end, it will be fascinating to see how UFC’s next media rights deal takes shape, both in terms of where it lands and what the agreement (or agreements) looks like. Not only has TKO indicated that it’s open to removing a pay-per-view paywall ala WWE’s current deal with Peacock, but UFC president Dana White said this past weekend that the promotion would also be willing to strike deals with multiple rights partners.

“When the window opens, we’ll obviously start talking to lots of different people and we’ll see what the options are out there,” White told reporters during his post-fight press conference following the UFC 314 pay-per-view this past weekend. “We’ve said this every time: there could be a time when we end up on several different networks like all other sports do.”

The company line from both White and TKO appears to emphasize flexibility, which is also a part of what makes UFC such an appealing product. A network/streamer could take its pay-per-views and continue to charge for them, just as ESPN has done for the last five years. Or it could buy out the rights for the pay-per-views and offer them for “free” (or at least for the cost of a subscription to the streaming service) like Netflix has done with its boxing events.

As is the case with any negotiation, it will be a matter of dollars and sense for all involved. And when it comes to the former, it appears there is going to be plenty to go around, making it easy to see why UFC was eager to get to the open market.

🎤 MEDIA MOMENTS ✍️ 

• The Ohio State football team’s visit to the White House didn’t go off without a hitch, as Vice President JD Vance — an OSU alum and big Buckeyes fan — accidentally fumbled the national championship trophy in a moment captured on live television.

• Speaking of the Buckeyes, head coach Ryan Day’s wife, Nina Day, took some time out of her trip to Washington D.C. to check out social media. There, she disputed Clay Travis’ allegation that her husband dyes his beard.

• Donald Trump is already a member of the WWE Hall of Fame. So it’s perhaps not a surprise that WWE chief content officer Paul “Triple H” Levesque sees plenty of pro wrestling influence in the 45th an 47th president’s public persona, which he discussed on the latest episode of comedian Andrew Schulz’s podcast, Flagrant.

📱 SOCIAL MEDIA POST OF THE DAY 🏆️ 

Is there a better fit than CBS and the Masters?

🔥 THE CLOSER 🔥 

Is The Rock going to be involved in WrestleMania or what?

It’s been more than a month since John Cena first turned heel, a seismic moment in the world of pro wrestling and pop culture.

But while bad guy Cena has been plenty involved in the build to this weekend’s WrestleMania 41 in Las Vegas, the same can’t be said of the catalyst for his heel turn, The Rock.

For the uninitiated, Cena’s joining of the dark side saw him align with The Rock (and rapper Travis Scott) in a brutal beatdown of the current WWE champion, Cody Rhodes. While a WrestleMania main event between Cena and Rhodes had been solidified, all indications at the time were that “The Final Boss” would be in Cena’s corner for yet another star-studded build to WWE’s biggest show of the year.

And yet, with five days to go until WrestleMania 41, The Rock hasn’t been anywhere to be found — or at least not anywhere connected to WWE. In fact, his name has barely been mentioned in the build to Rhodes vs. Cena, a stark shift from the heel turn angle that many considered to be one of the best in pro wrestling history.

Perhaps The Rock will show up at some point between now and next Sunday and this will all make sense, whether that was always the plan or becomes something the company’s creative team retrofits on the fly. In any event, The People’s Champion’s absence hasn’t just been curious, but has admittedly dulled down the buzz for this weekend’s Sin City spectacle.