SPORTS
John Ourand
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June 9, 2025
Top Gunnar
Amid the seismic news of the WBD divorce, Zaslav’s hodgepodge of post-NBA sports assets will find themselves in an excised cable company run by a severe belt-tightener. There are worse options, right? Right?! Actually, yes.
John Ourand
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June 5, 2025
Sports Rights in the Multiverse
The full impact of a post-monoculture world, where sports are viewed on multiple platforms, is beginning to emerge. To no one’s surprise, the streamers, who are younger and new to the ad game, are already starting to dominate.
Size Doesn’t Matter: A Sports Streaming Morality Tale
Yesterday’s fine-tuned sports streaming-versus-broadcast math is rapidly becoming obsolete, with Amazon poised to take in billions more in ad revenue this year, Netflix targeting more than $3 billion, and streamers leaning into younger—albeit much smaller—audiences.
John Ourand
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June 2, 2025
The Connolly War
News, notes, and the latest court filings on the Disney–YouTube–Justin Connolly battle royale.
John Ourand
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May 29, 2025
NASCAR’s Demo Derby
Amazon streamed its first NASCAR race over the weekend, drawing fewer, but more youthful, viewers than last year. Is this just a speed bump on the way to comprehensive live sports streaming? As one TV exec said, “Look, the fact is, there’s still a big moat between streaming and broadcast.”
YouTube’s Disney War
The video platform’s surprise acquisition of a high-level Disney executive is the latest, and most poignant, strategic advance in its high-stakes, ongoing battle to become the go-to hub for the burgeoning sports media multiverse.
John Ourand
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May 22, 2025
MLB’s Sophie’s Choice
The current market for new sports media deals suggests that we’ve entered an era of belt-tightening for everyone besides the NFL. Now Major League Baseball, in particular, will have to choose between awareness and pure cash.
Jimmy on the Spot
ESPN hopes its new D.T.C. streaming service… err, app… will become the first stop for sports fans looking to watch a game, place a bet, play fantasy, and anything else sports-related. But it’s a lot harder than it looks—just ask Netflix.
John Ourand
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May 19, 2025
Shanks’ Redemption
As its parentco finally commits to streaming, I had a candid chat with Fox Sports C.E.O. Eric Shanks to discuss the network’s bundled past, its sports and news future, and why the Indy 500 hits different for a Hoosier.
John Ourand
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May 15, 2025
The N.I.L. M.B.A.
Once the domain of backslapping good ol’ boys who excelled at shaking alumni down for donations, big-time college A.D. jobs are increasingly being filled by actual business executives.
Zaz’s Less-With-Less Strategy
As Versant prepares for liftoff and David Zaslav prepares his own spinco, the prenup between sports leagues and cable companies is being renegotiated on the fly. And while cable will no longer vie for the largest packages, there is a path forward for a new strategy.
John Ourand
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May 12, 2025
Upfronts & Downs
Live sports may be the last programming category coveted by both linear networks and streamers equally, but given the miasma of confusion on tariffs and the economy, not even the NBA and NFL can get advertisers to throw caution to the wind.
Test Fubo Baby
If Disney’s struggling Fubo TV can figure out how to be the destination aggregator for sports, and attract a significant portion of the 50 million-strong customer base still addicted to cable, it may yet be a viable business.
John Ourand
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May 5, 2025
Is There Life After ‘30 For 30’?
Connor Schell, the former Bristol content wunderkind and co-creator of ‘30 for 30,’ has heeded the higher calling of private equity–financed production company glory. With Words + Pictures, which he founded with Chernin Entertainment, he masterminded a new age of sports docs—‘Celtics City,’ ‘Court of Gold,’ ‘Full Court Press,’ etcetera—and figured out a new model in the process.
John Ourand
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May 1, 2025
NBA TV Unsolved Mysteries
Like other league-owned channels, the 26-year-old NBA TV was ravaged by cord-cutting, and left with little bargaining power in a bundled and streaming world. Now, without any exclusive games of its own, its future is a mystery.
Peacock’s Hoop Dreams
Comcast president Mike Cavanagh has touted Peacock’s NBA deal as a “launchpad” to streaming supremacy. But it’s not quite that simple.
John Ourand
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April 28, 2025
The Goodell-Harris Doctrine
The real story behind the Commanders’ return to D.C. proper is the NFL’s crafty public-private partnership financing structure that facilitates not only the creation of new stadiums, but also the feel-good stories around them.