Photo: Bryan Bedder/Getty Images for Puck

Robert Fishman: NFL commissioner Roger Goodell raised the idea of opening negotiations much earlier than your current contract would suggest. Is this something that Fox would welcome?

I don’t think Fox is unique. With probably every media company that’s in sports, there are things in your core portfolio where you’re willing to talk about an extension at any time. Probably as soon as the last deal was signed, people were looking for certainty, and figuring out what would be the elements that would make the NFL use that option.

Getting through that option sooner rather than later? It wasn’t really news to us. We’ve probably been talking to the league for a year about how and when we want to engage. There are a lot of chickens and a lot of eggs. They probably have a labor issue. They want to extend the season. They want to think through new packages. You don’t really know who needs to go first, but we’re ready to go.

Fishman: Let’s shift to college football. What is the best outcome for all these power conferences? And do you like the idea of having them align with private equity?

College football is really a national treasure. Fall Saturdays now really feel like the opening weekend of March Madness every Saturday. Ratings are setting records. More teams now with N.I.L. have a chance to make the College Football Playoff and win a national championship. I went to Indiana, so yes, we’re doing great. Without N.I.L., Indiana wouldn’t be in the conversation.

I believe that the market will eventually figure out N.I.L., either through regulation or legislation. There is regulation on the books now with the N.I.L. clearinghouse. The reason why people think there’s a problem is because a lot of schools front-ran the payments right before the clearinghouse even existed. So the payrolls this year in college football are probably a bit higher than they might be going forward. Time will tell.

With the introduction of P.E.—I mean, a lot of very knowledgeable people in this room know that P.E. comes into businesses where they think they have an enormous opportunity. I don’t know any P.E. company that is a 501(c)(3). We all know P.E. gets into businesses for certain goals that they have in mind. Our position with the Big Ten and BTN has been long and really prosperous. We’ll see where we fit in if P.E. does eventually come into either a conference or at the school level.

Nathanson: Do you see a time when the broadcasters of college football all get to share in the postseason?

I’m very much in favor of expanding the CFP. I don’t see any reason why the CFP can’t be 24 teams. You can fit it into the schedule. You can have automatic qualifiers from the different conferences. There’s a good model to expand the playoff, and still allow some of the Group of Five to be able to get in. That would give the CFP the opportunity to have more networks involved. Still, with 24 teams, you wouldn’t have an enormous amount of games, but I think you can get more people promoting and marketing the playoffs than there are today.

Nathanson: What’s your philosophy with taking equity stakes in leagues?

We’re not a fund. We’re not P.E. When opportunities come up and we think that we can add value and create a like-minded partnership, then we take a good look at it. Probably the most transformative for the entire industry is our relationship with the Big Ten. The Big Ten Network is now 20 years old, and it’s been extremely fruitful. It set off a string of copycat networks, and I would argue none of them have been as successful as BTN.

We have a portfolio of equity investments that all really harmonize together. We’re partners with RedBird and Mike Repole on the spring football league, the UFL. Most recently, there’s IndyCar. We think IndyCar has a lot of room to grow—to get it back to where it was in the late 1980s and early 1990s. I’m really happy with our investment in NYRA Bets. There’s Flutter and FanDuel. And then in the live event space, there’s Cosm, which is a really cool new, live experiential event that’s going to have locations all over the country. Those things, to me, all feel like they kind of work together, and we can add more than just cash.

On Apple’s sports strategy: “I couldn’t help but roll my eyes when Eddy Cue said that Apple brought innovation to sports by not compressing 8K video as much as others. Revolutionary! Apple’s sports strategy is still pockmarked with contradictions. F1 is U.S.-only—but also, Apple needs to own entire sports like MLS.” —A journalist

On the Varsity podcast episode with Greg Wyshynski: “The biggest issue facing the NHL is that, for the first time in history, you have American stars who are the faces of the entire league while the American mainstream media is splintering by the month. Not that many teams have an independent beat writer going to road games, and many teams are going through struggles with regional TV rights. Whatever boost the American stars should be giving the league is at best very muted, and at worst is like a tree falling in a forest.” —A podcast listener

On the NFL’s international schedule: “I saw your chat with the NFL’s Hans Schroeder at your In the Arena event. Can you explain to me how many international games they can air in unique windows? I know airing games in more favorable times for Asia is great, but is any American streamer really going to pay a lot of money for 12 or so games that air at 9:30 a.m. ET, even if they have global rights, plus a couple of games in Mexico/Latin America?” —A Varsity subscriber

See you tomorrow,
John