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YouTube’s Skinny Sports Rights Diet

For a while, it seemed as though YouTube was coming to eat everyone’s lunch in the sports media business. But after its recent miss on a suite of NFL games, many media insiders are wondering how much the Google guys really want to be in on the actual game action—and if they need the league at all.

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Ar'Darius Washington of the Baltimore Ravens and Drake Maye of the New England Patriots
Ar'Darius Washington of the Baltimore Ravens forces a fumble on Drake Maye of the New England Patriots Photo: Michael Owens / Getty Images
John Ourand
June 18, 2026

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When YouTube C.E.O. Neal Mohan talks to big-time sports commissioners, he often invokes a familiar refrain that few in the industry could ever disavow: Live sports are, to steal ESPN chairman Jimmy Pitaro’s phrase, needle-movers. And what commissioner, pray tell, wouldn’t want to hear that love language from arguably the most significant C.E.O. in the media industry, who controls the largest video platform and feeds from Alphabet’s $4.4 trillion market cap?

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