Welcome back to The Varsity, my new private email for Puck. I’m John Ourand.

It’s been a busy couple days, as I’m sure it was for you too. After appearing on a couple of Puck’s podcasts and debuting The Varsity, I took in a historic Super Bowl. Vegas was filled with gossip—gossip about the Zaz-Iger-Lachlan sports super-streamer, in particular, and even more gossip about the deals that might get done this coming weekend in Indianapolis, the site of NBA All-Star weekend. The first few weeks of The Varsity will be an itinerant affair, so please respond to me if you’ll be in town. This is my actual email.

A quick programming note: As you may have gathered, The Varsity will be free for the first month-ish. After that, you can only access my work by subscribing to Puck (click here, you can afford it). In addition to my work, you’ll get Matt Belloni’s unparalleled coverage of Hollywood, Julia Alexander’s extraordinary insights in the streaming business, and Dylan Byers’ scoop-filled reportage on the news media—plus the work of 10 other best-in-class authors. Leading doctors also say that Puck subscribers are known to live longer and more fulfilling lives. What are you waiting for?

Mentioned in this issue: Roger Goodell, Jimmy Pitaro, Jim Harbaugh, Jimmy Burnette, Brian Rolapp, Michael Nathanson, Bob Bakish, George Cheeks, Taylor Swift, Ian Eagle, Bob Iger, Jeff Bezos, Dick Ebersol, and many more…

Okay, let’s get started…

1. The NFL is looking for a sports super-streamer loophole: Last Tuesday afternoon, ESPN chairman Jimmy Pitaro spoke with both NFL commissioner Roger Goodell and chief media and business officer Brian Rolapp to alert them about the planned sports streaming service that his network, Fox, and Warner Bros. Discovery would announce just a few hours later. During the call, the NFL executives made it clear that they were unsurprisingly not happy to be kept in the dark about such a public announcement, even if top ESPN and Fox executives had signed N.D.A.s that legally forbade them from discussing this plan with anyone outside the circle of trust. The NFL’s top executives, I’m told, felt blindsided—not only are the two organizations longtime partners, but executives from both have been in even more frequent communications recently as the league has contemplated taking an equity stake in the sports media giant. (Those talks are ongoing, though nothing is imminent.)

   Almost immediately, the NFL had its lawyers scouring its contracts with ESPN and Fox to see if the media companies were within their legal rights to launch such a service. Alas, the initial review suggested that the league could not do anything to keep its games off the new streamer. (After all, it’s hard to imagine that the generously compensated business affairs teams and outside counsels at ESPN, Fox, and WBD would allow something like this to slip through the cracks.) But the NFL is still looking for potential loopholes.

   The NFL relationship matters greatly to ESPN. When Bob Iger picked Pitaro to run the sports behemoth in 2018, ESPN’s relationship with the league was at its nadir—at the time, Pitaro often said that repairing it was his top priority. And it worked. ESPN was rewarded with better schedules and a more receptive and responsive league office. In the end, this will likely register as just a blip in that relationship. But it is significant to note that the lawyers are involved.

2. Amazon’s wild card action: I was not surprised to see Joe Flint’s Friday afternoon scoop that Amazon will carry an NFL wild card playoff game next season. After all, this was one of my 2024 predictions that I considered a layup. Last season, Amazon hit a viewership benchmark with Thursday Night Football that allowed the company to buy the rights to one wild card game, and I’m told that they are paying in the neighborhood of $125 million to broadcast it.

   The irony, of course, is that the move comes just a few weeks after a House committee held a hearing in which several members complained about the NFL’s decision to sell a wild card playoff game exclusively to Peacock. (Have I mentioned yet that I was an expert witness in that hearing? Drink every time I bring this up: I’m not done dining out yet…) But despite all the bluster coming from Capitol Hill, expect the NFL to continue making one of its wild card games available to a streamer every season.

3. The Sunday Ticket Hail Mary: A year or so ago, my best sources scoffed when YouTube TV agreed to pay upward of $2 billion per year for the NFL Sunday Ticket franchise. If DirecTV was hemorrhaging $1.5 billion per year, they argued, how could YouTube TV expect to reap a profit by paying $2 billion in annual fees?

   Now we know: It was all about juicing the platform’s subscriber base, and likely enhancing the lifetime value of each new consumer—and providing an audience base to create leverage in future deals. While traditional MVPDs are shedding video subscribers, YouTube TV is growing. YouTube C.E.O. Neal Mohan announced last week that it hit the 8 million subscriber mark and could be the third- or fourth-biggest pay TV distributor right now, according to MoffettNathanson’s Michael Nathanson. The biggest distribution companies, like Comcast and Charter, get better rates from some of the bigger network groups. And by leapfrogging Dish Network, YouTube TV is now also in line to potentially save billions in network affiliate fees—which makes that $2 billion-per-year deal seem a whole lot smarter.

4. The Rolapp coaching tree: My favorite Super Bowl story from Vegas involves former Michigan and current Chargers coach Jim Harbaugh, who was looking to head from one side of the Strip to another. One chauffeur hired by the NFL had just dropped Rolapp off and had some time to kill. He recognized Harbaugh, and offered to take him where he wanted to go. Harbaugh got into the car and noticed Rolapp’s name in the window. “I used to coach his son,” Harbaugh exclaimed. It turns out that Will Rolapp was a wide receiver for the Wolverines, and a three-time Academic All-Big Ten honoree.
5. R.I.P. Jimmy: Jimmy Burnette, one of the most important advertising executives in the history of sports television, died on February 6 after a lengthy battle with Parkinson’s disease. While working for Dick Ebersol at NBC, Burnette created the concept of selling category exclusivity by the quarter at NBA games, instead of for the entire duration—a practice that’s still used today. The idea of selling a halftime sponsorship? That came from Jimmy.

   I wrote this piece about him when he retired from Fox in 2007. I will have a Coors Light over ice and will belt out some verses of Danny Boy this week in his honor.

For those who have followed their careers, as I have, it has been an elegant demonstration of succession planning. Thirteen years ago, McManus hired Berson to run CBS’s cable sports channel, CBS Sports Network. He identified Berson as someone who ultimately would take over the whole thing, and Berson has been included in just about every negotiation ever since.

The ease that McManus and Berson have with each other was on display five hours before they were set to produce what is expected to be the most watched telecast in U.S. history. The two hosted Paramount Global C.E.O. Bob Bakish and CBS head George Cheeks in a production trailer to preview of some of the pieces that would run during the game, and then the group ventured out to pose for pictures with talent like Ian Eagle, Charles Davis, Matt Ryan, and Jason McCourty In separate interviews, McManus and Berson also shared with me their candid views on the future of the business. The following conversations have been lightly edited and condensed.

Sean McManus: In the foreseeable future, broadcast television is always going to be the dominant way to showcase big events. At the same time, more people will go to direct-to-consumer services, which is why we make sure NFL is available on our D.T.C. platform. We just need to make sure that we are wherever the viewer is, whether it is in their home watching CBS on a big-screen TV, or watching Paramount+ on a big-screen TV, phone, laptop, or desktop. The two dominant distribution platforms are broadcast television and direct-to-consumer, and I think Paramount’s done a really good job of serving both those audiences really well.

Adam Silver has spoken about the need to redefine the definition of reach, which means that streaming services will soon be able to match broadcast in terms of audience size. Do you agree?

No, I don't. The largest audiences will continue to be on broadcast television in the foreseeable future.

There are probably 20 reasons why ratings were up so much this season. What are your top ones?

One: I just think America really needs the NFL now. It’s a great escape from all the troubles people are experiencing. Two: The league is 365 days a year. There’s almost a daily story about a player or a coach or a trade that leads to a kind of crescendo when the season starts. Three: Every game counts. There are only 17 games. Four: We’re counting viewers more accurately, especially out-of-home viewers. The NFL continues to separate itself from all other entertainment or sports programming, and I don’t see it stopping. I really don’t. As it becomes more difficult to generate large audiences, the NFL is going to continue to be every bit as important and probably more important in the coming years.

You did not mention Taylor Swift.

Oh, there’s definitely a Taylor Swift factor, without question. I mean, I think there are people who have watched NFL games this year to see Taylor Swift. It isn’t so much just seeing her at an individual game. The overall hype of NFL football has increased because now there’s just a different avenue for people to get excited about the NFL.

David Berson: I spent 16 years at ESPN, mostly in programming. Programming was my core. Coming to CBS, I was given the opportunity to touch everything—programming, production, marketing, communications, ad sales, legal, finance, distribution, you name it. I’m not going to pretend I’m an expert in all those. We have experts that run those groups at Paramount. But I like to think that I work really well to support all these groups.

You’re taking this job as streaming is becoming ascendant. How will that change the nature of how you run CBS Sports?

CBS Sports is a storied brand that’s been around for a really long time. It's always been the sports brand of the CBS television network. CBS Sports now is far beyond the sports brand of the CBS television network. That is still the cornerstone property and platform for the brand. But we also have a 24-hour sports network that's doing quite well despite the challenges facing the cable industry. We have a great social media brand with lots of handles and lots of different opportunities there. We are big into streaming with Paramount+. CBS Sports is the sports brand for our entire company, including Paramount+, FAST channels and digital. What was a sports brand for a genre of programming on a broadcast network is now a multimedia brand that's 24 hours a day that connects with fans in so many different ways.

I asked Sean, now I’ll ask you: Why is NFL viewership up so much this season?

One: A lot of people talk about the death of broadcast television. We obviously are big believers in broadcast television. There’s no place to aggregate fans like it. The NFL is certainly aligned with that idea. Sure, they are involved in streaming, too. But the bread-and-butter of their product is on broadcast. Two: We are the home of the AFC, which has stars like Patrick Mahomes, Lamar Jackson, Josh Allen. Three: I'm not going to deny that Taylor Swift being a fan helps. I’m not going to say that it is a massive influence on the numbers, but it certainly puts the NFL more in the public spotlight and creates some new fans. Four: Our games on Nickelodeon are not going to be a huge ratings drive. But it is another way to cultivate more young fans.

“Just listened to your interview on NPR, very insightful. I’ve read some reports that the ABC and Fox affiliates want to be part of the ‘sports streaming’ service. The service would be Swiss cheese without the NFL games on CBS, Fox, and NBC affiliates and NCAA hoops on CBS. But then, adding the affiliates would dilute the exclusively sports nature of the service and add some drain to the $40-$50 I've seen reported on the monthly charge. Just some random thoughts following the Super Bowl. Congratulations on the move to Puck!” —Jeremy Stern, Stern Digital LLC

“I can’t help pointing out one small thing. You undersold Phil Hochberg’s résumé. The nation should know what you and I know is the most important line: He was the public address announcer at RFK Stadium for all those years! I’ll even give you that he did Orioles games now and again.” —Jonathan Tannenwald, reporter, The Philadelphia Inquirer

Until Thursday,
John