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🏀 Plum gig. Los Angeles Sparks star Kelsey Plum will join Prime Video’s WNBA coverage this season as a player contributor. The move follows a template Prime Video established on the NBA side with Kyle Lowry, who made select appearances throughout the season.

🏈 For the Fans. Senator Tammy Baldwin (D-WI) issued a strong statement against the NFL’s decision to schedule a Green Bay Packers-Los Angeles Rams game for Thanksgiving Eve on Netflix. “Enough is enough. My For the Fans Act would stop this exact scenario and prevent Wisconsin families from being forced to pay for Netflix just to watch the Packers play this Thanksgiving,” Baldwin said, touting the legislation she introduced last month.

🎤 Halftime headliners. Global music icons Madonna, Shakira, and BTS will headline the first-ever FIFA World Cup Final halftime show. The lineup, curated by Coldplay frontman Chris Martin, will partake in a Super Bowl-esque performance after the first 45 minutes of the World Cup Final.

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

At last, our long national nightmare is over. The full NFL schedule is at our disposal. That means we can finally do one of our favorite annual columns here at Awful Announcing: Winners and Losers of the NFL Schedule Release.

For us weirdos that cover sports media as an occupation, the NFL schedule release is something akin to how the NFL Draft sickos must feel when the last week in April rolls around. It’s an opportunity for us to look at exactly where each network stands in terms of the quality of their package, the value they’re getting for their multibillion-dollar rights fees, and sometimes even the health of their overall relationship with the NFL.

The schedule is both the carrot and the stick for the league; it can bequeath great games to the broadcast partners it favors, and send a message to other partners by giving them a weak schedule.

So without further ado, here are the winners and losers of this year’s schedule release.

In many ways, the 2026-27 schedule feels like a return to normalcy for both CBS and Fox. With few exceptions, CBS’s package skews heavily towards the big dogs in the AFC, and Fox’s package skews towards the NFC’s heavy-hitters.

CBS will feature four Kansas City Chiefs games and is certainly putting prayers up for Patrick Mahomes’ ACL and LCL. Not to mention, CBS gets the Dallas Cowboys twice, a Buffalo Bills-New England Patriots game, and a smattering of other top teams for its 4:25 p.m. ET national windows.

“As far as we’re concerned, the more of the Chiefs we can get, the better,” CBS Sports exec Dan Weinberg told Sports Business Journal.

Fox’s national windows feel very Fox, as in, you’re going to see a lot of the NFC’s best teams. The Cowboys will make three appearances as will the Green Bay Packers. Meanwhile, the Eagles, 49ers, Bears, Lions, and Commanders all make two appearances a piece.

This was intentional from the network. Per SBJ, Fox wanted “an emphasis on being the home of the NFC,” and certainly got that.

Aside from the quality of teams in the national-window games, CBS and Fox came out on top this year because of the additional standalone windows both received from the NFL earlier this week. Fox, as we learned on Monday, struck a deal for an international game in Week 10 and a Saturday game in Week 15. CBS will also air a Saturday game in Week 15.

For Fox in particular, the strength of its schedule was likely a relief considering the NFL could’ve easily chosen to be vindictive about the network’s behind-the-scenes political maneuvering targeting the NFL. That clearly did not happen.

With all of the talk about Sunday afternoon being diminished because of the NFL creating more standalone windows, it seems like there was an emphasis on putting high-quality games at 4:25 p.m. ET each and every Sunday.

Both ESPN’s Monday Night Football package and Prime Video’s Thursday Night Football package have some high highs and low lows, which puts each broadcaster firmly in the “Draw” category.

ESPN, for instance, has great matchups like Cowboys-Eagles, Eagles-Bears, Bears-Seahawks, Patriots-Chiefs, and Cowboys-Seahawks, but they also have some duds like Falcons-Saints and Panthers-Buccaneers.

Similarly, Prime Video has a handful of high-quality games like Lions-Bills, Seahawks-Broncos, Patriots-Bears, and Chiefs-Rams, but also some games that could end up being one-sided like Panthers-Packers. Luckily, most of Prime Video’s weaker games on paper are divisional rivalries: Steelers-Browns, Commanders-Giants, Colts-Texans might not be top-crust games, but will certainly be meaningful and have potential playoff implications.

Both schedules seem to be just right in terms of quality; mostly desirable games with a few weaker weeks here and there. Neither broadcaster should have much to complain about.

If there has to be a loser, NBC’s Sunday Night Football would probably be the package that underperformed its billing the most. As the premier NFL package, Sunday Night Football is rightly held to a higher standard than its peers. And while NBC got its fair share of quality games, a lot of the matchups look underwhelming on paper.

Tell me if any of these games feel like Sunday Night Football-caliber matchups: Lions-Panthers, Ravens-Falcons, Buccaneers-Bears. Sure, we’re picking nits here, but this is the top package in the league. There’s also a lot of question marks down the stretch, perhaps by design given those games can be flexed.

“We always really want to focus on the beginning part of the season and how do we get out of the gate in a big way,” NBC Sports exec Justin Byczek told SBJ.

The strategy makes sense. There are protocols in place to ensure bad games don’t end up on Sunday Night Football late in the year. But the Steelers, Vikings, Jaguars, and Cowboys all feature in late-season games. All of those teams could find themselves out of the playoff picture during that period. And the NFL doesn’t want to use its flex-scheduling procedures every week.

In NBC’s defense, they get the Cowboys three times (the first two early in the season), and the Chiefs twice (thrice if you count Thanksgiving). The network was also able to snag an extra Saturday game in Week 17 with teams TBD. And there are plenty of good matchups, too. Chiefs-Seahawks, Bills-Packers, Eagles-49ers, and of course Chiefs-Bills on Thanksgiving.

But given some of the duds thrown in there, it seems like NBC got the short end of the stick out of the five primary NFL partners this season.

Awful Announcing contributor Ellyn Briggs dives into the partnership between FIFA and TikTok for this summer’s World Cup.

TikTok is making yet another formal foray into the sports media ecosystem ahead of the 2026 FIFA World Cup.

On Wednesday, the video-sharing app announced a group of 30 users who will serve as “Creator Correspondents” throughout the tournament’s five-week duration this summer—an initiative that is part of its broader “Preferred Platform” partnership with FIFA. Unveiled earlier this year, the tie-up aims to position TikTok as the primary digital destination for World Cup discovery, highlights, and fan engagement. 

Per a press release, the Creator Correspondents will be stationed in host cities across all three host countries—Canada, Mexico, and the United States—and will be tasked with providing “behind-the-scenes access” at places like bus arrivals, training sessions, and press conferences, as well as “fan-led storytelling” during games to “bring the competition to life.”

The crop of creators—who were selected following an extensive review process designed to identify people who had organically built soccer- and sports-focused communities on the platform—hail from four continents and nearly a dozen countries, reflecting the tournament’s global nature. (TikTok says “more than 60 million sports creators” are currently active on the platform.)

Some names are already well-established in mainstream sports creator circles, including Rachel DeMita. Others come from soccer-specific niches that have exploded on TikTok over the last several years, producing content such as refereeing explainers and supporter culture. 

Its the latest push by TikTok to activate around a major sporting event. The platform sent seven creators to the Milan and Paris Games as part of NBC’s Olympic Creator Collective program, to which other platforms, including YouTube and Meta, also contributed talent. (The Paris Creator Collective was particularly successful, earning approximately 300 million total views across social platforms.) But with 30 creators and that “Preferred Platform” status with FIFA, this effort is uniquely sweeping.

Notably, TikTok’s broader FIFA agreement also grants official World Cup 2026 media partners “the ability to live-stream parts of matches” on the platform, a carve-out that Fox Sports—the official English-language broadcaster for the tournament in the U.S.—reportedly didn’t approve of. 

At the time of writing, TikTok and Fox have not publicly reached a deal to extend any of these live look-ins to the U.S. market. In a statement to Awful Announcing, TikTok’s Global Head of Sports, Rollo Goldstaub, said the platform sees itself as “complementary to broadcasters and rights holders, extending the reach of their content, helping find new audiences, and driving value back to their core platforms.” 

TikTok also said the content produced by its Creator Correspondents will focus on “fan-first storytelling,” rather than matching livestreams. 

The full correspondent roster includes creators from the U.S., Brazil, Argentina, England, Germany, Japan, Mexico, South Korea, Spain, Poland, Scotland, and France. Their content will live within dedicated FIFA World Cup 2026 “hubs” powered by TikTok GamePlan, an in-app resource launched by the platform in 2025 to help drive user engagement with sports teams, leagues, and broadcasters. 

YouTube announced a similar platform-level agreement with FIFA in March, though it has not yet shared details about any specific creators who will produce content for the tournament. Regardless, it’s clearer than ever that the sports coverage craze isn’t limited to traditional publishers; platforms are increasingly all-in too—and creator cohorts appear to be one of their favorite tactics.

The analysts over at LightShed Partners decided to cut through the noise a bit regarding the cost of watching NFL games and put together a handy little graphic to display an array of options for fans.

Every season, it seems that some crazy estimate goes viral about what it would cost to watch every NFL game in a given season. Usually, those estimates land on something above $1,000. The truth is, most of those estimates include redundancies that drive up the total price (and add to the shock value).

As you can see in the graphic above, the truth is something a bit more reasonable. And I’d argue, LightShed could’ve included an option even more affordable than its cheapest selection if one is willing to sacrifice a few games.

Starting all the way on the left is the antenna + a la carte streaming option. An antenna will get you the Sunday afternoon games on CBS and Fox that are designated for your market, every Sunday Night Football game on NBC, and many of the Monday Night Football games, which are increasingly simulcast on ABC. So far, you haven’t paid a cent (other than the one-time cost of an antenna).

Next are the streaming services you’ll need. Prime Video has Thursday Night Football, but even if you are not a Prime member, you can stream the game for free on connected TVs via the Twitch app. Next come the one-offs and mini-packages. Three months of Netflix (five games) comes to $26.97, one month of Peacock (one game) is $10.99, and six months of ESPN Unlimited (seven NFL Network games and seven Monday Night Football games not simulcast on ABC) will run you $179.94.

Assuming you are not someone who requires NFL Sunday Ticket (an additional $378 cost to acquire all of the Sunday afternoon out-of-market games), your total antenna + a la carte streaming cost comes to $217.90. For that price, you can get every single NFL game aside from out-of-market Sunday afternoon contests.

But we can actually make this even more affordable if you can do without six months of ESPN Unlimited, which is the vast majority of the total cost. It’s not an entirely unreasonable ask. Five of the seven NFL Network games are international contests that will air early in the morning on the East Coast. Sacrifice those, and you’re down to two Saturday games in Week 16, which can be bought with just one month of ESPN Unlimited. Additionally, seven of the first nine Monday Night Football games of the year will be simulcast on ABC. You could reasonably get by with just two months of ESPN Unlimited during the final months of the regular season, and only miss a few games before then. With this route, an entire regular season would run you under $100, and every postseason game would be covered by the antenna (with one Wild Card game on Twitch).

Now, that’s not realistic for everybody. Some people live in areas that don’t get strong over-the-air signal. Others need Sunday Ticket if their favorite team is not located within their home market. But no matter how you slice it, there are ways to watch the NFL that are much more affordable than the oft-cited “over $1,000” talking point.

Whether it’s too complicated to find and purchase NFL games is another story entirely. Nothing about this is user friendly, especially if you’d like to keep it affordable. But savvy consumers should be able to get NFL games at a relatively low price. It’s the fragmented experience that’s frustrating.