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🎤 QUICK START ✍️

🇨🇦 Canada’s win in the 4 Nations Face-Off was the most-watched NHL game ever. After ESPN analyst P.K. Subban (more on him later) claimed the tourney final could be bigger than a Stanley Cup Final Game 7, the viewers backed up his claim. Last Thursday’s final averaged 9.3 million viewers, more than the 8.9 million who watched Game 7 of the 2019 Stanley Cup Final. Add in another 7 million on Sportsnet in Canada, and the extent of the NHL’s success with the event gets even more massive.

📺 MSG and Optimum reached an agreement to end the prolonged carriage dispute, which was keeping many New Yorkers from watching the Knicks and Rangers on local TV. MSG Network went black for Optimum subscribers on Jan. 1, but will now be back before the NBA and NHL playoffs. At issue was Optimum’s desire to place MSG in a more expensive subscription tier, which would have likely decreased the network’s carriage revenue. But with MSG Networks facing bankruptcy, it gets back a major source of money with this deal.

⚾ New details emerge on the MLB-ESPN split, as CNN reported the “mutual” opt-out decision actually came from the worldwide leader’s side. The network felt as if its $550 million annual price tag was no longer reasonable in a world where Roku is paying $10 million and Apple TV+ is paying around $85 million for their regular season games. And the effects will be immediate: The ESPN+ free Game of the Day will end, while ESPN Radio will also lose its All-Star and World Series rights.

🚨LEADING OFF 🚨

What kind of coverage does MLB expect?

Rob Manfred is right about one thing.

ESPN doesn’t cover baseball like it used to. The best indicator of the looming divorce between America’s pastime and the worldwide leader is that Major League Baseball talk has effectively disappeared from ESPN airwaves.

In a memo to MLB teams announcing the “mutual” opt-out between the league and ESPN for the final two years of their broadcast rights contract, Manfred wrote that MLB has “not been pleased with the minimal coverage that MLB has received on ESPN’s platforms over the past several years outside of the actual live game coverage.”

This was a long-running problem that worsened over time. Notoriously, Manfred’s predecessor Bud Selig used to call network executives and complain that Mike & Mike or other shows were not talking baseball enough. When Jamie Horowitz came to power at the company, he provided data that showed people changed the channel when MLB came up. The sport lost its mojo, so ESPN adjusted.

Per Octagon consultant Justin Beitler on X, Baseball Tonight aired nearly 1/10th as much in 2025 as in 2014.

You won’t find Eduardo Perez or Tim Kurkijan on First Take. Pat McAfee only cares about baseball now that his favorite team happens to employ Paul Skenes.

But this was a parting shot from Manfred, already peeved at the league’s longtime partners in Bristol. The real issue was money, and ESPN took theirs and went home.

So Manfred is on the hunt for a new partner, one that he ideally hopes will cover the league more closely day to day. With apologies to some immensely powerful wishes from Pinocchio or Josh Baskin, Manfred will likely be disappointed by how little his wishes have been accomplished here.

MLB’s other partners do not cover the league daily, despite Fox having a full daytime sports studio show lineup on FS1 to fill. The Herd and First Things First would rather discuss Mekhi Becton’s free agency than Shohei Ohtani. TNT Sports publishes Mookie Betts’ podcast but only posts once or twice daily on its Bleacher Report Walkoff baseball-focused Instagram account. Good luck finding baseball clips on the House of Highlights YouTube channel.

Worse, MLB is actively working against its supposed mission of more baseball coverage. In sucking up local broadcast rights into its digital offerings, MLB has cut back on certain pre and postgame shows around the country. The extra content fans used to get on regional sports networks is gone, and MLB is sometimes not doing the bare minimum on coverage. MLB Network put out awesome stuff in its day with the likes of Bob Costas and Chris Russo, but it is dying with the rest of cable.

The league is also infamous for limiting access. As smaller digital properties work to fill the void, they get pushback on guests and topics from MLB regularly. It’s fun to make the “average American sports fans wouldn’t recognize Aaron Judge if he got in their car” jokes, but when have you ever seen Judge do an interview that the average American would see?

Maybe MLB can work with NBC, CBS, or Amazon to bolster the day-to-day chatter around baseball. But in the downtime between meetings with ESPN’s eventual replacement, Manfred could probably sneak into a bathroom or closet somewhere and take a look in the mirror.

📣 SOCIAL EXPERIMENT 🌟

The original viral sports parody account, which spawned mimics from “NBA Centel” to “Poo Crave,” went viral for a long rant attacking the current owner of the website where “Ballsack” made its fame.

“We’re seeing a few corrupt elites lie, gaslight, and manipulate the public through the media to launch themselves to unrestrained, unchecked power that will be difficult to reverse,” they wrote.

Unfortunately, “Ballsack” won’t be able to put the genie back in the bottle. The parody accounts they inspired have proliferated, making it even harder to find real news on X and other social media platforms.

👏 INDUSTRY INSIGHTS 🗣️

🔴 ESPN could lose two top NBA personalities after this season as Front Office Sports reports that NBA Today and NBA Countdown host Malika Andrews, as well as senior NBA writer Brian Windhorst, are due for new contracts this year. Andrews is a rising star who has taken on more newsy interviews this season while hosting the network’s two top basketball shows, while Windhorst is perhaps the most visible NBA reporter on the network. Both could be candidates for NBC or Amazon as the two new broadcast partners launch their coverage.

🏛️ Pushback on Stephen A. Smith’s political candidacy from an unlikely source, as former ESPNer turned Fox News host Will Cain rejected the idea in a big new feature on Smith from the Washington Post. Cain acknowledged Smith’s outsider POV was reminiscent of Donald Trump but said, “He’s like a shiny object that someone would be forgiven for taking seriously.”

🏀 CBS helped honor “Bill Walton Day” at UCLA as the school hosted Ohio State in men’s basketball. With top announcing duo Ian Eagle and Bill Raftery on the call, CBS aired many of the tributes throughout the day — and even scored a rare interview with Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, who was in the building to celebrate the fellow Bruin legend and late ESPN announcer.

✍️ AROUND AA ✍️

The (very fast) rise of P.K. Subban

If you watch NHL coverage on ESPN, you’ve heard from P.K. Subban.

However, Subban wasn't exactly a household name, partly due to the network not having NHL rights until 2021 and partly due to the same network largely ignoring the sport even since bringing it back. That may have changed last week.

As tens of millions of Americans checked out 4 Nations Face-Off content, Subban was everywhere. Not just ESPN’s studio game coverage but also PTI, First Take and Get Up. It was certainly one of those “you prepare your whole life for a moment like this” type moments for NHL analysts, and Subban seized it.

In a new column at Awful Announcing, Matt Yoder wonders whether Subban could emerge as this generation’s Barry Melrose, the face of the NHL on ESPN:

There’s something to be said for someone taking the torch from the legendary Barry Melrose in Bristol. For years, Melrose was the NHL presence on the network. Even in the dark ages, when ESPN did not have NHL rights and the league was a distant afterthought, Barry Melrose was still there to speak to hockey fans and show that the network still had a presence covering the sport.

However, times have changed in 2025 in the sports media world, particularly at ESPN. It’s one thing to be “the hockey guy” and get called into action on a line change when it’s your turn to cover a niche sport and break up the monotony of Dallas Cowboys and LeBron James chatter. It’s another to be able to go outside your lane, go on First Take or Get Up, and help set the narrative for the day in sports.

One of the most popular questions after the 4 Nations’ success is how ESPN and the NHL might build upon the positive energy for the tournament in the second half of the regular season and postseason. And truthfully, one of the best ways it can happen is for P.K. Subban to continue regularly appearing on these daily shows to help lift the sport’s profile even further. Ironically, hockey’s moment in getting more daily coverage comes as ESPN opts out of its MLB deal amidst complaints that the network didn’t do enough to promote baseball.

Subban is the perfect person for this time, place, and opportunity. Although he is not without his critics, he has the hockey resume to be the face of the network when it comes to being the authoritative voice on the sport. He also has the passion and energy to be its spokesperson for casual fans. Finally, Subban has the crossover appeal and personality to be a regular on these shows and sit next to Mike Greenberg and Stephen A. Smith and talk about any subject. Maybe that makes him more of the NHL version of Dan Orlovsky rather than the modern-day Barry Melrose.

Read the full article right here.

️‍🔥The Closer🔥

An Apple a day keeps Messi away

If Brian Windhorst were watching his own contract year at ESPN play out, he would probably give it the signature Windy “what’s going on in Utah?” reaction, finger-pointing and all.

It was more than conspicuous to hear late last week that Windhorst is headed into free agency, timed to the new NBA media rights package, after turning the very nature of hoops coverage into a hobby horse all season. The first hint of Windy’s troubles came last November when he appeared on Thanasis Antetokounmpo’s podcast and said NBA broadcasters were “devaluing things” that helped “build the league up.” A shot at his colleagues, sure, but also phrased as almost an apology to the elder Antetokounmpo brother for how players were treated these days.

Fast forward to the All-Star break, and Windhorst was belting the same tune, telling Sports Business Journal, “I think there should be some more celebration of the night-to-night greatness that we see in the league.”

Coincidence is too tame a word to describe the long game Windhorst is playing. The longtime ESPN NBA reporter is just being a good podcast guest, but it doesn’t hurt that these interviews double as advertisements for his own employment.

The networks should oblige him. Let Windhorst be the change that he seeks in the world. He’s the best man to do it.

We’ve never seen Windhorst fully unlocked. Coming up the old-fashioned way as a local newspaper beat reporter, Windhorst jumped to ESPN more than a decade ago when his muse LeBron James signed in Miami. Since then, Windhorst has joked that former ESPNer Adrian Wojnarowski was the 31st NBA franchise with his sourcing and intel trading. If that was Woj, then Windy is the fabric of that franchise’s jerseys. Watching Windhorst on TV or his podcast shows he has more to give. He’s almost always holding back something more he has to tell.

If NBC or Amazon want more density in their NBA coverage over the next 11 seasons, Windhorst can provide interviews, intel, or whatever.

It’s impossible to hear Windhorst talk about the NBA and not come away a bigger fan. That’s the job. Maybe he keeps doing one at ESPN, but the jig is up. We know he’s campaigning. A word for network executives: Let him do his thing on your NBA studio show, just like he’s been asking.