SPORTS
John Ourand
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March 19, 2026
The World Baseball Classic Gold Rush
Tuesday’s U.S.–Venezuela blockbuster affirmed the World Baseball Classic as a sports and ratings powerhouse, with an audience equal to some World Series games. Now that the tournament is living up to its name, how can baseball make the most of it?
YouTube’s March Madness Competition Killer
The world’s biggest streaming company just unleashed a sports-centric skinny bundle that will air every game for about the same price as a combined ESPN/HBO Max/Par+ subscription. Is the appeal limited to superfans, or is this just the beginning of YouTube TV’s master plan?
John Ourand
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March 16, 2026
Can Netflix Be Big in Japan?
The streaming giant used the World Baseball Classic’s huge Japanese audience to test live sports, while MLB gained a deep-pocketed streaming partner ahead of its 2028 rights talks.
John Ourand
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March 12, 2026
The Jordan NASCAR Rules
During the ’90s, the GOAT helped the NBA ascend to new heights of global popularity and profitability. Now, as the high-profile owner of 23XI, he’s having a similar effect on NASCAR’s usually sleepy spring season. And, of course, his team won the season’s first three races.
Adam Silver’s Next Windfall
As regional sports networks collapse, Adam Silver may be sitting on the streaming industry’s most coveted new package—and Amazon, Google, and a host of hungry newcomers all want in.
John Ourand
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March 9, 2026
Gary Bettman’s Heated Rivalry Fantasies
The NHL is having a breakout season thanks to its competitive parity, emerging stars, Olympic buzz, and, yes, Heated Rivalry. But with the NFL rights renegotiations about to potentially blow up the sports media marketplace, commissioner Gary Bettman knows that his league will need to stay limber to maintain its gains.
John Ourand
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March 5, 2026
Will David Ellison Remake the NFL Market?
When David Ellison plunked down $7.7 billion for UFC rights last fall, he may have inadvertently started another feeding frenzy. If he’d pay that much for MMA, what would he be willing to pay for the NFL? CBS, which needs the league now more than ever, is about to find out.
Formula One’s Apple Gamble
F1 executives are praying their nine-figure Apple partnership will boost their domestic audience and increase the league’s relevance—but streaming scale and audience growth aren’t always correlated. Just ask Major League Soccer.
John Ourand
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March 2, 2026
Brett Yormark’s Hoop Dreams
In a football world, the Big 12 commissioner has made basketball a large focus of his efforts to keep his conference competitive with its Power Four peers. Now that the undervaluing of college basketball is a fashionable talking point, maybe he was onto something.
ESPN’s One True MLB Outcome
The network is betting its $550 million link-up with MLB.TV will attract a host of new users to its ESPN Unlimited app—and point in the direction of its future as a bundler.
John Ourand
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February 23, 2026
The NHL Gold Medal Hangover
The U.S. men’s Olympic hockey team’s exhilarating gold medal victory may be dampened by an inconvenient truth for the NHL: Olympic success hasn’t usually translated into ratings and attendance gains.
John Ourand
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February 19, 2026
The NFL Media Rights Industrial Complex
As analysts scramble to calculate estimates for the NFL’s market-busting media rights, the league must consider the long-term viability of its linear TV partners—and whether sky-high, cutthroat negotiations could amount to a mortal wound.
The NHL’s ‘Heated Rivalry’ Fever
Between the Winter Olympics and ‘Heated Rivalry,’ hockey is suddenly back in the zeitgeist. But with NHL rights locked up in the U.S. through 2028, the league is under pressure to capitalize on the excitement before a potential NFL rights shake-up consumes all the industry oxygen.
John Ourand
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February 12, 2026
Inside the NBA’s Tankonomics
With a number of teams tanking and the usual load-management mishegas, the NBA regular season is veering into spring training territory just as the league is trying to justify its multibillion-dollar value to media partners. As one executive recently put it, “The majority of the value of these media deals is centered around the postseason.”
Goodell’s Bidding War Begins…
The big question plaguing sports media executives who descended on the Bay Area last week: How much will the networks have to pay to maintain their NFL packages when the league opts out of its deals in the fall and the trillion-dollar streamers push their chips into the middle of the table?
Julia Alexander
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February 9, 2026
An NFL World Domination Reality Check
Not content to preside over the most-watched sport in the U.S., Roger Goodell is preparing for an aggressive international expansion. But can America’s new national pastime truly go global?
John Ourand
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February 5, 2026
The NFL’s Big Chill
By moving up the timeline of its rights negotiations to this year, the NFL has thrown the entire sports market into chaos, as secondary leagues (and they’re all secondary to the Shield) scramble to make new deals while the networks prepare to dig deeper than ever.