Welcome back to The Varsity, my private email about all the people that run the business of sports. Happy NFL Draft Day!

I am writing this private email from my hometown of Washington, D.C., where tonight I will be sipping Veuve with media C.E.O.s, members of Congress, senators, cabinet secretaries, and all-around swells on the rooftop of the Riggs. Puck is kicking off White House Correspondents’ Dinner weekend with a party co-hosted with WME and Snap. I’m going to make a beeline for our newest partner, the great political journalist John Heilemann. Back in the ’80s, Heilemann tended bar at the defunct Georgetown saloon Garrett’s, so he and I have really come full circle.

One more note before we get started. I went to the Dodgers-Nats game on Tuesday night and got to see Shohei Ohtani in person for the first time. I was overwhelmed by the diversity of the crowd, the Taylor Swift-effect that Ohtani possesses (everyone had their camera phones out), and the fact that the gambling controversy seemed to be a distant memory. D.C. crowds are much more genteel than our counterparts in Philly or New York, but I found it noteworthy that I didn’t hear one heckle about Ohtani or his interpreter or those 19,000 wagers. It was a total love fest. After he hit a 9th inning moon shot (the hardest-hit ball of his career, apparently), the stands emptied and just about everyone seemed happy… even fans of the losing Nats. I presume they were all headed to Marchand’s organic kombucha-making class.

Let’s get to it…

But it’s hard to shake the idea that the world’s largest company is bottom-feeding. This isn’t the World Cup, after all—it’s a club tournament, scheduled for the middle of summer, which players have already criticized. News of this potential FIFA deal comes as the NBA is entertaining bids for its worldwide rights, and by all accounts, under Eddy Cue, its S.V.P. and resident sports emissary, Apple is not a serious bidder. This FIFA deal confirms what we already know: Apple is still a dabbler in sports rights, at least for now.

1. NBA Inside Stuff: The NBA’s media rights have only been on the open market for a couple of days, and yet there’s already been lots of movement among interested media companies. This is a fast-changing story—“facts” I heard this morning were no longer true by noon. Here’s what I know for now:
1. ESPN and the NBA have essentially come to terms on a package. Obviously, nothing’s signed yet. But I’m told that the two sides agreed to the broad framework of a deal that would keep the league’s “A package” with ESPN, which would include exclusive rights to the NBA Finals on ABC. This was a key point for ESPN, which did not want to share the NBA Finals with another mediaco. As part of its deal, ESPN will have less game inventory, which the league will use to create a third package.
2. Warner Bros. Discovery is not as far along as ESPN, but talks have been described as productive. Like ESPN, WBD’s potential deal will feature fewer games than it has currently, with the excess inventory likewise going to the third package. There’s still work to be done here.
3. NBC has aggressively pursued a package for its broadcast network and streaming service—an interest that would affect WBD the most. But WBD has backend rights that allow it to match competing offers.
4. Amazon Prime still has a ways to go to work out a deal, but all signs suggest that it’s likely to land one. The Amazon talks are more comprehensive, and have included local rights, too. It’s too early to say how that will shake out.
5. The NBA’s lines to Netflix and Apple are still open, but talks with others have advanced further. Google remains interested in carrying the league’s out-of-market package, NBA League Pass.
6. Because these negotiations are so fluid, it’s impossible to come up with accurate financials yet. Disney currently pays an average of $1.6 billion per year and WBD pays $1.2 billion. With its third package, the NBA is expecting to more than double those numbers.
2. Goodell to the stand: All of you have circled June 5 on your calendars, right? That’s the scheduled start date for the NFL’s Sunday Ticket antitrust trial. Judging by the final list of witnesses seen by my Puck partner Eriq Gardner, a bevy of top TV executives will be booking their trips to Los Angeles for a six-week showdown. That includes CBS Sports’s recently retired Sean McManus, Fox Sports’s recently retired Larry Jones, ESPN honcho Burke Magnus, Formula One’s Chase Carey, DirecTV’s Rob Thun, and Cox Media Group’s Dan York, among others. Of course, Roger Goodell is expected to take the stand, as are powerful owners Jerry Jones and Robert Kraft. YouTube’s Jon Cruz is expected to make an appearance, as will reps from Apple, who are expected to provide testimony through depositions concerning unsuccessful attempts to secure rights.

   With a coalition of bars, restaurants, and individual subscribers to the league’s out-of-market telecasts seeking a staggering $6 billion in damages (potentially more, given the trebling of antitrust verdicts), the parties filed an amended joint witness list this past week. Beyond seeking billions in damages, the plaintiffs are pursuing a ruling that would empower each NFL team to individually negotiate streaming deals—an alternative structure that many of the broadcast executives may be pressed to address during the trial.

3. R.I.P., Super League: Remember when I first wrote about the notion of a college Super League—the quixotic, allegedly scholastic-minded notion of combining all the FBS schools in a single league with four tiers? Yes, yes, it was the collective brainchild of bold-faced names, like Brian Rolapp, Jimmy Haslam, and David Blitzer, all built on the correct assumption that college sports (and particularly college football) are undervalued and underexploited. In the intervening six weeks, the group has had more meetings, but it still has no traction. And after yesterday’s comments by SEC chairman Greg Sankey—the most powerful voice in college athletics—the idea of a Super League was officially put on life support. “The fact that people have interest in throwing ideas out, that’s up to them,” Sankey told a group of reporters following CFP spring meetings. “I spend my time on what I have to do.” Sankey also disputed the idea that college sports is undervalued currently. “If I was buying stock, I’d buy stock in college sports. Apparently, a lot of people believe that outside of college sports. Something’s going right.”
4. The Paramount dilemma: If you want to know what’s going on in the Paramount sale process, make sure you listen to a fascinating conversation between my partners Matt Belloni and Bill Cohan on The Town. (An excerpt of the conversation will also appear in What I’m Hearing, Matt’s genre-defining email, later tonight.)

   Matt and Bill debate whether Shari Redstone should move forward with David Ellison and Gerry Cardinale’s bid or entertain a competing offer from Apollo Global Management and Sony. Belloni believes Ellison’s bid will win out, due in part to Apollo’s reputation for strip-mining the companies they buy while milking as much revenue as possible. Cohan sees Apollo as the eventual winner, believing it will benefit shareholders in the long run. In one telling moment, Bill soliloquizes about the Ellison-Cardinale structure:
   “I’m old enough to remember the so-called recapitalizations that were all the rage 20-plus years ago. They all promised on the PowerPoint $30 to $40 stocks, and the stocks went to zero and the company went bankrupt because it had too much debt.”

5. Happy trails: A big, but expected, loss at CBS, where the well-liked and hugely respected Jo Ann Ross called it quits after a 32-year career with the company. Ross ran the network’s ad sales business from 2002 to 2022 and her deep relationships with buyers were the main reasons why CBS brought in a Super Bowl record in ad revenue earlier this year. A ton of superlatives have followed Ross’s career, including the fact that she was the first woman to run a broadcast TV ad sales group. Ross’s departure comes just a month after CBS Sports’ long-time ad sales chief John Bogusz announced his retirement from the network.

Loyal Varsity observers know full well the stakes of all this. Amid its attempt to emerge from bankruptcy, Diamond C.E.O. David Preschlack needs to make a series of deals with leagues and distributors in order to save his bacon. And while Preschlack would love to convince partners to adopt a glide path for moving Diamond’s sports networks to a higher-priced digital tier, Comcast and DirecTV appear more inclined to pursue the cliff path, a grinfucking post-prime-cable maneuver that would cut a significant portion of their revenue overnight. In many ways, hyperbole aside, this really is the story of our time in this industry, no matter how unpleasant or seemingly mundane.

Of course, there are significant second-order effects in play, many of which are being sorted out in real time. What will happen to local sports rights if Comcast holds tight to its plan, and puts Diamond’s Bally Sports R.S.N.s on a digital tier? The rights, certainly, will go to local broadcast networks (think Scripps, Nexstar, Gray, Sinclair, etcetera). Just look at the announcement out of Seattle, this morning, that the NHL’s Kraken are leaving the Root Sports R.S.N. for a local broadcaster, Tegna, and Amazon Prime for streaming. Not coincidentally, Comcast recently moved Root Sports to its digital tier…

Diamond’s pitch to its putative distribution partners, like Comcast and DirecTV, isn’t all about pity. Instead, Diamond argues that they will wind up paying more for those local broadcast channels than they do for R.S.N.s in pursuit of local sports. The hope is that this logic will persuade them to cut a deal to keep the regional sports network business in place, and the distributors I’ve contacted over the past several weeks hope so, too. Everyone would prefer the status quo of the R.S.N. system and punt the hard decisions about streaming to a later date when the future is clearer.

But none of the executives that I queried is willing to cut a bad deal just to keep the system afloat. After all, many feel the R.S.N.s grinfucked them for years. “I’m agnostic. I don’t really care,” one highly ranked distributor told me. Even if distributors don’t love the idea of ceding the programming power of sports to local broadcast groups, they value cost savings at this stage of the business cycle. “Frankly, we’d be better off letting it all sit for a while, then figuring it out,” another distributor said. Meanwhile, distributors also have become more emboldened in their carriage disputes with sports networks. Comcast didn’t carry YES in New Jersey and Connecticut for more than a season. And in Phoenix, DirecTV refused to carry Coyotes games when Scripps put them on digital channels. Somehow, the world continued to spin.

Diamond’s scare tactics may not be working—at least not right away—but the scenario that Preschlack is painting is likely to come to pass. In fact, local broadcast groups have taken a step back from pursuing these rights as they wait to see what happens with both the Diamond negotiation and the NBA’s media rights negotiations.

One reason for the slowdown, as far as NBA team rights are concerned, is that local broadcast executives have been told that the league has considered using some of its local inventory to weave together a package for streaming companies. One idea that’s been considered contemplates the NBA selling all its games on, say, a Friday, to a streamer, à la MLB’s Apple TV+ deal. That company would then carry all those games nationally. In order to pull this off, the league would have to reduce local inventory by a certain number of games per season. Sources close to this melee suggest that part of Amazon’s negotiations have been centered on local streaming rights, but it’s not known if that specific idea was discussed. More soon…

“If you want to get the Mouse’s attention, why don’t you float the name of a guy who has been doing deals with ESPN since before it launched? Me!” —A cable executive

“Aaron LaBerge [Disney’s outgoing C.T.O.] is a big loss. He is one of the most creative and innovative tech executives you’ll ever meet. He also has little ego and is extremely well-liked.” —A different former ESPN executive

“Regarding Adam Silver’s love of streaming entities, what do you think would be the best possible combination for the NBA? I think NBC should have one primetime day a week and get the Finals every other year. Amazon Prime should take Friday nights from ESPN and the first round of the playoffs, and ESPN/Turner can split the in-season tournament to make up for lost inventory.” —A sports sponsorship executive

“If a word ever deserved an emoji it is ‘grinfuck’!” —A former Fox Sports executive

“Your Sports Night call-out was superb. I’m fairly sure that show is how I got my now-wife to start to enjoy sports. Now she’s the teacher who helps her students with their fantasy football lineups in high school.” —A happy Puck subscriber