Nov 20, 2025

Welcome back to The Varsity. I’m John Ourand, back in D.C., where my 1–13 Wizards may already be mathematically eliminated from the playoffs. At least we have Caleb, the pride of Gonzaga High.

Pod alert: NBC’s Matthew Berry joins The Varsity this weekend to dish about sports media topics as well as his own successful business venture, Fantasy Life, which counts bold-faced names like LeBron James, Maverick Carter, David Blitzer, Jeff Shell, and Gerry Cardinale as investors. Also, make sure to listen to yesterday’s episode, where Axios’s Sara Fischer and I delved into everything you want to know about YouTube–Disney, Paramount–WBD, Vox, Netflix, and more.

In today’s issue, we look into how Paramount is reacting to the federal investigations targeting UFC; report on Paramount’s latest big-money rights deal; presage how the coming WBD sale will affect sports; and preview Michael Jordan’s federal antitrust lawsuit against NASCAR.

Okay, let’s get to it…

Player of the Week: Jimmy Pitaro

Back in February, when Jimmy Pitaro opted out of ESPN’s deal with Major League Baseball, many suspected that a 35-year-long partnership was irreparably damaged. You’ll recall, of course, that MLB commissioner Rob Manfred responded to the news colorfully in his communications with his owners. Nine months later, however, a reconciliation seems to be formally in place.

Pitaro has emerged with an even better deal for ESPN—one that includes the rights to MLB.TV’s out-of-market games and six teams’ local rights. And it positions ESPN well for the next round of negotiations, in 2028, when MLB will come to market with all of its rights for sale. By controlling MLB.TV within its app, ESPN will be able to assign an exact value to those rights based on usage and subscriber counts. (Also, Pitaro contributed to Puck’s 2025 Mirth & Merriment gift guide. No surer sign of a winner.)

Down to the J.V.: Adam Silver

Anyone searching for actual evidence that load management has become a bigger problem for the NBA this season, look no further: Yahoo Sports’s Tom Haberstroh crunched the numbers and found that 45 NBA stars (defined as players who have made an All-Star team within the past three years) have already missed more than 200 games this season—a pace that is much higher than the past two seasons. At this point in the 2023-24 season, star players played 87.2 percent of the games. Last season, that number dropped to 82.6 percent. This season, it cratered to 67.6 percent.

This will continue to be a nagging issue for the NBA commissioner, especially since we’re only a month into the league’s new media deals with ESPN, NBC, and Amazon. Alas, Silver doesn’t want his biggest stars on the sidelines in street clothes, but he doesn’t have any economic incentive to decrease the schedule. In fact, he has a plethora of contracts effectively preventing him from doing that.

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The Starting Five

F.B.I. investigations sting UFC: Last night, my partner Kim Masters reported that the news of the F.B.I.’s investigations into alleged fight-fixing in the UFC apparently blindsided its new partners at Paramount Skydance. Industry insiders already thought David Ellison paid too much for Paramount’s seven-year, $7.7 billion deal for the UFC’s American rights, particularly considering the lack of other bids. This latest revelation has only intensified the second-guessing.

Could Paramount challenge the deal if the scandal widens and begins to dent the UFC brand? UCLA law professor Andrew Verstein told Kim that it’s not outside the realm of possibility. As Kim noted in her must-read piece: “Combat sports face unique challenges because, unlike with team sports, one athlete can determine the outcome of a match on his own.” Dana White, for his part, said the UFC will “do everything we can to make sure” that anyone involved in fight-fixing goes to prison.
Paramount plays footy: Speaking of potential Ellison overpays, Paramount picked up the U.K. rights to the Champions League with a bid that the British press described as “considerably higher than the £1 billion currently paid by TNT.” The four-year deal starts in 2027 and will see Paramount+ share rights with Amazon Prime, though Paramount+ will carry the vast majority of the games.

Three months after the UFC deal, it’s clear Paramount is still prepared to reach deep into its voluminous pockets for sports rights. And the Champions deal carries special intrigue: Paramount is poaching one of Warner Bros. Discovery’s biggest sports assets while simultaneously bidding to buy WBD outright.
WBD-Day: About that Warners bake-off, today marked the initial deadline for bidders to submit their offers for the company. While there’s going to be plenty to unpack once the first wave of dust settles, Axios’s Sara Fischer recently explained on the Varsity podcast why sports fans should be paying close attention to how this auction shakes out. “We don’t think of Warner Bros. Discovery as a major sports player, but they are,” Sara said. “Their March Madness rights, coupled with CBS’s, would give Paramount a March Madness behemoth. Warner Bros. Discovery has a massive digital sports arm. And Bleacher Report combined with CBS Sports is a pretty formidable competitor against ESPN. Warner Bros. Discovery owns Eurosport, which has Olympic rights. … This is not a deal or merger conversation that you can have without considering sports. Sports fans need to pay attention, because it will change the way they possibly get access to their favorite sports.”
Michael Jordan v. NASCAR: You may remember Michael Jordan’s 23XI Racing federal antitrust lawsuit against NASCAR, accusing the organization of using its monopoly power over stock car racing to limit compensation for its chartered teams. The NBA legend and motorsport giant are set to face off in court next month. This week, Puck legal ace Eriq Gardner broke down what’s at stake.

“It’s a rare moment when a major sports league finds itself under the antitrust microscope for deciding who gets to play and who gets benched,” Eriq wrote. “But don’t expect NASCAR to argue that its allegedly exclusionary tactics were justified because they fattened up the media rights pie. The judge tossed that line of reasoning, ruling that NASCAR can’t simply rebrand a revenue grab as ‘procompetitive.’ That said, NASCAR’s broadcast deals aren’t totally off-limits. The court will allow evidence of those agreements when it comes to calculating damages, which could get interesting.”
ESPN comms moves: Congrats to Derek Volner, who was just promoted to communications V.P. at ESPN. Recall that ESPN’s comms shop doesn’t hand out V.P. titles every day (there are four of them), so this is kind of a big deal in Bristol. Derek has been with the network since 2013, supporting college and pro football. Most recently, he’s been Troy Aikman and Joe Buck’s main contact while overseeing ESPN’s overall NFL comms effort. Derek is sliding into a vacancy that was created two months ago when Katina Arnold left to become senior vice president of Disney’s advertising communications.

And now, on to the main event…

The Petitti Offensive

It’s been a rocky season for the Big Ten. Now comes word that media partner NBC is taking a long, hard look at its options for next year’s conference championship game.

John Ourand

The Big Ten has gone through a particularly rough patch the past couple of months. For starters, there was commissioner Tony Petitti’s $2.4 billion private capital plan that put him at odds with Michigan and USC, two of the conference’s marquee schools. Michigan threatened to leave the conference altogether and go independent if Petitti pushed the deal with UC Investments, the California pension fund. The deal, perhaps not surprisingly, has fizzled out.

Meanwhile, the conference’s media partners have been grumbling about the lack of depth among the Big Ten’s football programs. Yes, yes, Ohio State and Indiana are the top-ranked teams in the nation, Oregon may be playoff-bound, and Michigan and USC are sniffing around on the fringes of the CFP. And Iowa has been in and out of the top 25 this season. Ditto Illinois. But Penn State’s season capsized spectacularly, UCLA seems like it’s in terminal decline, Northwestern is still Northwestern, and Rutgers is 31.5-point dog against the Buckeyes this weekend. CBS and NBC are each paying more than $350 million per year for lopsided games, and their executives expected better competition. Their deals run through the 2029-30 academic year.

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Adding to the conference’s chaos at the moment, NBC has been exploring a deal to sublicense next year’s Big Ten Championship game; multiple sources have told me that the network has had talks with Netflix and Amazon. Sources described the Amazon deal as in early stages. Netflix, notably, expressed little interest, which came as a surprise given its previous interest in broadcasting a USC–Notre Dame game this season. Many assumed that a conference title game would ensure a competitive matchup—Ohio State and Indiana look set to clash in the game this season—and satisfy Netflix’s eventized erogeny.

NBC Sports did not offer a comment when asked about selling the rights to next year’s game. “We enjoy our partnership with the Big Ten,” a spokesman said. But everyone needs to play nice at this stage—particularly because it’s unclear whether NBC can even pull this off. Both the conference and Fox, which owns the majority of the Big Ten Network, would have to ratify a deal. They certainly would bristle at the idea that one of their network partners would try to cherry-pick a game to sell elsewhere.

But there are a couple of legit reasons why NBC would want to give up a game that has always attracted more than 10 million viewers. For starters, the Big Ten Championship is a one-off for NBC. The network only has the rights to it once as part of the Big Ten’s seven-year media deals. It’s hard to build a business around that infrequency. Also, NBC is facing the same fate as all the other linear television networks. As rights fees continue to escalate, the number of paying subscribers continues to fall, and a secondary market sale might arbitrage this interstitial moment.

After all, NBC is now forking over approximately $200 million a year to MLB on top of its $2.5 billion-a-year NBA deal, and the zillions it will have to spend when Roger Goodell and the NFL go back to market. These sorts of deals may become the norm as the incentives of legacy players and streaming companies diverge, and deals age with different wafts. But the news sure didn’t make Petitti’s week any easier.

From the Cheap Seats

One more on Disney vs. YouTube: “ESPN completely fumbled their opportunity to convert YouTube TV subscribers to ESPN Unlimited with an abysmal product. Multiview never works (it frequently offers me only options for Bundesliga games while college football is airing), it signs me out on all of my devices all of the time, and don’t get me started on the preroll ads I’m served whenever I select a live game feed and the delays they create. There are already ad breaks! How did the worldwide leader in sports make a product with such poor quality, and that so fundamentally misunderstands what a modern sports fan wants out of its streaming platform?” —A Puck subscriber

On YouTube’s sports plans: If YouTube TV wanted to get the full sports package, why didn’t they get in the mix on the NBA? I miss having League Pass through YouTube TV. Amazon has been okay, but it was so much more convenient via YouTube TV for the very reason noted in the article: not having to leave the app to watch games (especially while watching other games via the multiview option). Same question goes for them going away from carrying R.S.N.s, but I imagine that’s more about the economies of scale on those.” —A Varsity subscriber

On Tennis Channel: “Is Sinclair still looking to sell Tennis Channel? That talk was very hot this spring, but I figured that if there was going to be a sale, it would have happened already.” —An on-air type

[Ed. note: It’s still on the block.]

On the Varsity drinking game from Monday’s issue: “Ingestion? DRINK!” —A D.C. lawyer

Have a great weekend. See you Monday,
John

This issue was assembled with the help of Curtis Rowser.

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