Welcome back to The Varsity, my twice-weekly private email about the business dealings surrounding your favorite sports leagues and teams and the selfless heroes and heroines who run it all. Happy NBA Finals Game 1 Day to all who celebrate. (Mavs in six…)

My partner Peter Hamby took to Puck’s infamous #general Slack channel this morning to call the Woj vs. Shams Twitter Scoop Wars “the worst rivalry in sports.” Fair enough, but I actually love watching the competition between these two -information brokers. A couple days ago, of course, Shams Charania singled out ESPN commentator and LeBron co-podcaster JJ Redick as the frontrunner to become the Lakers’ next head coach. This morning, however, ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski scored a most palpable hit with his scoop that the Lakers actually have their coaching sights set on UConn’s Dan Hurley. We’ll see if Shams strikes back…

Meanwhile, I appreciate that some of you illicit forwarders have toned down your behavior since being sent Marchand’s homemade kombucha. Anyone else I catch will receive a pair of front-row tickets to his one-hour special, Marchand to the Beat of His Own Drum. (You’ll need to bring a poncho.)

Let’s get to it…

That news had me scratching my head. Why would almighty Apple allow the Yanks and Doyers’ channels to carry a game that has so much buzz? I suspect MLB pushed for the move and have to believe that there’s contract language that allows MLB to make this move, because Apple doesn’t bow to anyone. Apple has been tight-lipped about viewership for its Friday night games, but this move suggests that the numbers for its package aren’t great, and MLB wanted to broaden its audience. After all, Fox is broadcasting the Dodgers-Yankees game on Saturday, and it isn’t simulcasting the game on the teams’ R.S.N.s. Ditto ESPN on Sunday.

1. ESPN sublicense suspense: It seems increasingly possible that ESPN’s decision to sublicense games to Warner Bros. Discovery might end up being scrutinized by regulators—for reasons pertaining to Venu, f.k.a. “Spulu,” the streaming sports joint venture between Disney, WBD, and Fox. For what it’s worth, ESPN made clear from the outset that it wanted to sublicense some CFP games and would have taken calls from any broadcaster that showed interest. I’m told that Paramount and NBC, the two main players not in the Spulu deal, did not call. WBD also forked over a very handsome sum. Not only was it worth hundreds of millions of dollars per year, but it afforded ESPN control of production and all advertising revenue for at least the first two seasons. (WBD C.E.O. David Zaslav must be looking at the games as a way to maintain leverage over cable distributors in carriage fee negotiations.)

   This deal has the look and feel of business as usual to me. But with the Justice Department looking into Venu, not to mention Fubo’s pending lawsuit, it will likely receive a lot more attention in the coming months, even if there’s no there

2. An NBA non-update update: There has been a lot of press but precious little movement over the past couple of weeks as the league’s attorneys craft contracts that can withstand potential (and endless) legal nit-picking. As readers of The Varsity surely know by now, ESPN is in line for the “A” package, NBCU is likely to pick up the “B” package, and Amazon appears set for the “C” package. We’re all waiting to see how Zaz will apply his matching rights, if he invokes them at all.

   Operating on the theory that WBD is on the outside looking in, many will suggest that WBD should sell its rights for the 2024-25 season to NBC, allowing the network to get back into the NBA business a year earlier than planned. There have been occasions when a lame duck network gets out of a rights deal a little bit early, such as in the summer of 2020 when CBS picked up Champions League rights from Turner. For the right price, of course, debt-strapped WBD certainly could be persuaded.

   But I don’t expect it to happen. CBS’s cost for Champions League was $250 million per year––literally one-tenth of the $2.5 billion that NBCU is expected to pay annually for the NBA. Also, NBC’s bid was predicated on taking over the package in 2025, giving it time to renegotiate with distributors, hire production teams, and sell large advertising packages. It wouldn’t operate the rights as profitably this year. Also, after such an intense negotiation, it’s simply hard to imagine Brian Roberts and Zaz quickly reaching a deal on a fair price for the final year of the latter’s package.

3. Caitlinsanity: WNBA topics dominated ESPN’s daytime programming this week, as Pat McAfee had to apologize for his comments about Caitlin Clark on his show. I asked WNBA commissioner Cathy Engelbert for her thoughts on all the publicity—both positive and negative—that her league has attracted this year. “Being in the mainstream conversation is a good thing,” she told me. “This is what comes with the rise of being a growth stock, being a league that people are paying attention to and bringing new fans into the funnel. The challenge is in keeping them in.” She continued: “We want sportsmanship—we want everything that should go with the game. But all of the conversations around the edginess of it are not necessarily a bad thing.” My wide-ranging conversation with Engelbert will be included in Monday’s private email.
4. A quick note on Diamond…: It looks like The Varsity’s Diamond Sports leitmotif is headed for the end of the road. Yesterday, a bankruptcy judge delayed the date on which Diamond must submit its viable go-forward plan until July 29-30. But the most notable detail of the whole affair was the NBA’s lawyer pushing back on the six-week delay. The league, which was once among the friendliest with Diamond, has truly lost its patience with the R.S.N. company.

   Like MLB, the NBA can start producing its own games immediately if and when Diamond fails to emerge from bankruptcy. And the NBA would like a resolution now—well before its season starts in the fall—in order to provide its teams time to work out deals with local broadcasters and/or streamers. The longer the bankruptcy court delays Diamond’s day of reckoning, the harder it becomes for the NBA to work out these arrangements.

5. Super Sports Saturday: It’s one thing to create a marketing campaign around your biggest sports events, like the Super Bowl or World Series. But Fox Sports is preparing a marketing blitz around a couple of MLB regular season games and a Triple Crown horse race this Saturday. Sure, these are not just any MLB regular season games. Fox’s package starts with the Mets-Phillies game at 1 p.m. ET from London and ends with a Dodgers-Yankees matchup that starts at 7:30 p.m. ET in the Bronx. “My goal is that somebody turns on their TV at 12:30, and then all of a sudden looks up some 10 hours later and they’re still on Fox,” said Brad Zager, Fox Sports’s president of production and operations. “I want them to say that it went fast, and it was good.”

   Zager’s plan is to connect all these events onscreen. That means hosting a pregame show for the London game from an empty Yankee Stadium, allowing Derek Jeter, Alex Rodriguez, and David Ortiz to walk around Monument Park, take the field, and visit the clubhouse—“things we could never do in a normal pregame.”

   Fox plans to make Jeter, A-Rod, and Big Papi a part of its Belmont coverage, too, with the three doing the “Riders Up” live from the stadium. “When we saw that we had these three events back to back to back—all of them with a New York, major-market, big-star angle to them—we realized it would be a shame if we didn’t take advantage of that and look at the day in a different way,” Zager told me.

And then there is the fourth reason, which has largely gone underappreciated during these months of negotiations: The NBA may be a league with great stars and incredible content, but it’s also benefiting from the fact that there won’t be any other major rights to acquire for the foreseeable future.

Other than the UFC, whose deal with ESPN expires next year, there really won’t be any big-time sports rights up for renewal until 2029, which is when the NFL is expected to exercise an out in its contracts. The MLB and NHL media deals run through 2028. (ESPN is expected to exercise an out in its MLB deal after next season and renegotiate its fees.) ESPN has the S.E.C. until 2034 and the A.C.C. until 2036. Fox Sports, CBS, and NBC will carry the Big Ten into the next decade. Sure, IndyCar, F1, and various European soccer leagues not named the Premier League are on the market, but media companies and streamers have traditionally viewed those rights as nice-to-have, not must-have, content.

As long as I’ve been writing about this business, I’ve been pitched stories about the eventual bursting of the sports rights bubble. But the opposite has occurred: Even deals that looked terrible upon commencement often wind up being veritable steals. In 2021, the NFL signed deals worth $110 billion—an amount that seemed outlandish at the time. Just three years later, those deals already seem wildly undervalued. Executives pretty much know the kinds of audiences that the NFL will bring in—and the NBA, too, for that matter—thanks to built-in fan bases that come back every year. In a decade or so, the $76 billion NBA set of packages will also almost certainly seem like a bargain.

Retrospectively, it’s preposterous that the industry once believed that live sports would always be the province of linear television. The addition of suitors such as Netflix, Apple, Amazon, and Google will completely reset the market for the NFL, in 2029, and as these rights re-emerge afterward. By then, it’s more than a little possible that Paramount and WBD might not even exist.

Indeed, even the once-derided UFC will find a frothy market, especially if Warner Bros. Discovery fails to land an NBA package. Netflix, which cut a rights deal with WWE that starts next year, will almost certainly kick the tires. ESPN, whose executives have repeatedly said that they want to stay in business with UFC, will also be an interested bidder. And so it goes…

On WBD’s NBA bid: “Regarding the seemingly messy interpretation of WBD’s matching rights, has WBD had any conversations with a broadcast network to put together a bid that could match NBC in terms of reach? I thought, given the precedent of the March Madness WBD-CBS joint venture, that this would be a real possibility. I know WBD has their sights set on Amazon’s package now, but curious if these talks ever manifested, as I know the possibility was brought up early on. Not sure if the ongoing Paramount saga plays a role here, but I’d imagine Gerry Cardinale would love to get his hands on some NBA rights.” —A University of Michigan senior

[Ed. note: To my knowledge, Zaz has not had any serious talks with broadcast networks.]

One more on WBD’s NBA bid: “Why doesn’t WBD just try to buy CBS with some of the money saved by not overpaying for the NBA? Just CBS and no other parts of Paramount. This would give WBD a broadcast network for future rights, significant current rights (NFL, NCAA, Champions League) that would help them make Venu work, and some bonus synergism on the news side. How expensive would a stand-alone CBS purchase actually be?” —A self-proclaimed “non-insider”

[Ed. note: Zaz would love CBS, as my partner Bill Cohan has reported. But David Ellison and Gerry Cardinale would never sell it if their deal to acquire Paramount Global finally closes.]

Still another on WBD’s NBA bid: “I had a question about this possible fourth package for WBD and the NBA rights. Is it at all possible that WBD gets highlights rights rather than game rights and Inside The NBA could be a wraparound show once or twice a week? Zaz saves a ton of money and he gets to save a little face with his team. Would that also disallow Chuck, Shaq, and Kenny from being able to opt out of their contracts? Chuck specifically mentioned all the people behind the scenes who make that show what it is. If he’s being honest about his dismay, it could be a workaround, and allows Ernie Johnson to keep anchoring the show.” —A podcast producer

[Ed note: I can’t imagine Disney, NBC, or Amazon being okay with WBD operating a live wraparound show that would compete for viewers.]

On the Franciscan Sports Banquet: “I am so darn happy for Mike Soltys and the well-deserved award that came his way on Tuesday. I was cheering from afar. It was great to have Rosa Gatti introduce him, as well. Love seeing the best ESPN family members reunited.” —A former ESPNer