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🎤 QUICK START ✍️

🏈 Pro Bowl shakeup. After questions emerged earlier this week about the future of the NFL’s Pro Bowl, it appears the league is looking to reshape the all-star event as part of Super Bowl week. Per Ben Fischer of Sports Business Journal, the league is looking to hold a reformed version of the event in the same location as the Super Bowl each year. Details over the game’s format are still TBD, but it will likely still focus on flag football.

🏆️ Heisman hype. For the first time in three decades, the Heisman Trophy Ceremony will air on broadcast television. ESPN announced on Thursday that the award for the nation’s top college football player will be presented on ABC this year after airing on ESPN every year since 1994. CBS was the last broadcast network to air the ceremony in 1993.

⚾ NBC’s MLB launch. Puck’s John Ourand reported Thursday evening that NBC will air a standalone primetime MLB game on the second night of the season, with Netflix having secured rights for Opening Day. 28 of the league’s 30 clubs will play on the second day of the season, giving the league and network plenty of games to choose from.

️‍🚨 LEADING OFF 🚨

Why Netflix would publicly declare they aren’t interested in NFL rights

Longtime Pardon the Interruption host Michael Wilbon has frequently deployed the word “slurp” (or slurping, slurpage, slurpers, etc.) as a, well, descriptive way to call out any behavior that is overly effusive.

For me, it’s the first word that comes to mind when I’m thinking about how the NFL’s broadcast partners treat the league. Earlier this year, Fox Corp. CEO Lachlan Murdoch suggested the NFL’s impending 2029 media rights opt-out, something that poses a near-existential threat for the company, would be “an opportunity” to “deepen our relationship” with the league. In other words, “we’re ready to assume the position, Mr. Goodell.”

Of course, this is the case. The NFL is second-to-none in terms of live programming that can draw a massive, broad-based audience.

So it was maybe surprising to some when Netflix CEO Greg Peters appeared at a Bloomberg conference earlier this week and suggested a regular package of NFL games “doesn’t really fit our strategy as we understand it right now.” The comment comes after another Netflix executive, Bela Bajaria, (kind of sort of) remarked earlier this year that Netflix would be interested in a package of Sunday afternoon games were they to become available.

Bajaria’s comments, which came under duress from the ace Hollywood interviewer Matthew Belloni, left plenty of room for interpretation, though many outlets covered her answer as a sign of Netflix’s certain interest in the NFL anyway.

Perhaps Peters’ recent remarks were designed to reel back that perception. “We think about what we’re doing as an events strategy, and turns out … sports are big events … and so we can plug those into that strategy, but we also want to make sure that we’re being really, really disciplined about … are we buying, are we investing in ways that are profitable for the business and some of the big league sports things,” Peters said. “We don’t actually have a way to figure out that math.”

Netflix has a history of saying one thing publicly but doing another. The two most high-profile examples would be the streamer’s stance on password sharing, which it famously encouraged as recently as 2017 before cracking down on the practice a couple years ago, and its stance on advertising, which former CEO and current chairman Reed Hastings described as exploitative in 2019, suggesting Netflix would remain a “respite” from ads, before launching an ad-supported tier in 2022.

In the case of Netflix’s future relationship with the NFL, the CEO’s recent comments are a reflection of the streamer’s strength in the larger media landscape. Unlike the NFL’s other broadcast partners, Netflix doesn’t need the league to survive and thrive. It can afford not to have the NFL when legacy media companies need the league more than ever.

So when Peters talks publicly about how the NFL “doesn’t really fit our strategy,” it’s a way of signaling to the NFL that it can’t be pushed around like the league’s other partners.

The strategy is decidedly different from its streaming giant peers at Google and Amazon, who have taken a more slurp-heavy approach in their relationship with the league. In doing so, they’re playing directly into the league’s hands, at least according to media consultant Patrick Crakes, who suggests effusiveness from streamers only serves to “shadow pump future rights fee bids.”

“We are constantly dealing with situations where our competitors outbid us, and what I try and remember with our team is we should bid up to the point where we think it’s going to deliver back value, back to business,” Peters said when addressing a question about Netflix’s interest in UFC, which ultimately went to Paramount for over $1 billion per year.

With history as our guide, it’s safe to say Netflix is playing the long game here. They aren’t going to overpay for sports, nor are they going to help artificially drive up the price of live sports rights. No matter what the company says publicly, it reserves the right to reverse course, as it has done so often in the past.

So don’t be fooled. Netflix is still interested in the NFL. They have Christmas Day games after all! But don’t think the company will sacrifice its leverage, as some of its competitors have.

📈 DATA DUMP 📊

• The NHL rebounded in a big way on Opening Night, averaging 768,000 viewers across ESPN’s tripleheader, a 37% increase over last year’s horrid start (559,000 viewers). The primetime window, featuring the Pittsburgh Penguins’ 3-0 win over the New York Rangers, averaged 1.09 million viewers, the second most-watched Opening Night game on cable in history, behind only Connor Bedard’s NHL debut in 2023.

• In a bit of a weird stat, the Professional Bull Riders event on CBS last Sunday drew a bigger audience than Game 2 of the ALDS between the New York Yankees and Toronto Blue Jays on FS1 in a similar window. PBR averaged 2.71 million viewers while Game 2 averaged just 2.18 million viewers. The caveat? PBR had a cushy NFL lead-in, 19.58 million viewers on CBS. In other words, PBR lost 86% of its lead-in audience. But hey, lead-ins and lead-outs matter. That’s how you get anomalies like this.

• The WNBA Finals is averaging 1.5 million viewers through its first two games. Game 1 averaged 1.9 million viewers on ESPN, up 62% versus last year’s Finals opener. Game 2 averaged 1.2 million viewers on ABC. Per The Athletic, it’s the best two-game average for the WNBA Finals since 2000. Viewership for Game 3 has not yet been posted.

📱 SOCIAL EXPERIMENT 🌟

Ryan Clark was the latest ESPN personality to issue an on-air apology about comments he made regarding Kyren Lacy earlier this week.

🔥 THE CLOSER 🔥

Just because you can, doesn’t mean you should

We are once again about to be subject to artificial intelligence that absolutely nobody asked for.

This likely flew under the radar for most on Tuesday, but NBC debuted the AI-generated voice of the late Jim Fagan during a preseason game between the Chicago Bulls and Cleveland Cavaliers. Fagan is the legendary voiceover artist who narrated the NBA on NBC until the network lost the package in 2002.

His “return” to the air was uncanny valley to say the least. Take a listen for yourself:

Nothing about the promotion seemed inherently wrong. It’s just off-putting in the way that all artificial intelligence can be. It was human, but not quite human. And simply knowing that Fagan is no longer with us makes for an uncomfortable experience hearing his “voice.”

NBC has experimented with this type of thing before. During the 2024 Paris Olympics, the network solicited the voice of Al Michaels to narrate personalized AI-generated highlight packages for fans on Peacock. The difference is that Michaels is still alive and actively calling games. It’s not as bizarre to hear his voice.

The question that comes to mind is simple. Why? Is anyone’s viewing experience enhanced by the knowledge that, instead of a living, breathing human, NBC has the computer-generated likeness of Jim Fagan telling us that the halftime show is sponsored by American Express? I’d argue it isn’t. It’s just a weird, frivolous use of AI.

Why not start developing the next Jim Fagan for your broadcasts instead? Or is NBC set to use Fagan’s likeness in perpetuity?

Eventually, will we just have AI-generated Ian Eagle calling all of our NBA games? I hope not, and I think most would agree. But I’d be remiss if I didn’t say that’s where it feels like this is all headed.