I Don't Know Who Needs to Hear This, But...

Every Disney+ subscriber in the U.S. will be able to stream Super Bowl LXI on February 14, 2027, ESPN and the NFL said on Wednesday. It's the first Super Bowl ESPN will produce, with Joe Buck and Troy Aikman on the ESPN and ABC telecast and a Spanish-language feed on ESPN Deportes. Disney+ will also carry the game in more than 55 international markets, and it gets two Monday Night Football simulcasts first, starting with Cowboys-Eagles on October 26. Also today: ESPN's 30-day exclusive window to negotiate a 24-team College Football Playoff closes Friday, opening the door to CBS, Fox, NBC and Prime Video; Bomani Jones moves "The Right Time" to Playmaker and hints at a subscription; Kalshi, Polymarket and Novig sign-up codes run under the CBS Sports and Fox Sports brands; Kalshi offers to cap its trading desk at 5% of exchange volume; Rogers closes its C$4.35 billion purchase of the rest of MLSE; Tommy Hilfiger and "F1 The Movie" win at the European Sponsorship Association awards; and Hyrox sells majority control at about €600 million. The throughline: sports is reaching people in places that used to belong to someone else.

Music by Cheerry Red

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Paramount completed its $110 billion acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery on Tuesday, and the combined company is now Skydance, with CBS Sports and TNT Sports under one roof. Former CBS Sports CEO David Berson will lead Skydance Sports, while TNT Sports' Luis Silberwasser is leaving. RedBird Capital added $4 billion at closing, for about $6 billion in total, and the company starts life with about $80 billion in debt and a Fitch rating cut to BB from BB+. Also today: Iowa-Ohio State averages 5.966 million viewers on CBS, the network's first most-watched game of a college football weekend since 2023; buy now, pay later company Zip adds the 76ers to a sponsorship push built around Philadelphia; Ferrero will run Nutella and Kinder Bueno spots in Super Bowl LXI as part of a $50 million sports push, after its first Super Bowl ad drove a 140% lift in volume sales; NHL Productions and GameDay Creative roll out a shared graphics package for the Ducks, Hurricanes, Blue Jackets, Stars, Wild and Blues; the NFL and 72andSunny's "Champion" wins an Emmy; and Uganda's tourism board sponsors the Champions Hockey League to reach Swiss travelers. The throughline: the difference between getting bigger and getting more precise.

Intro / Outro music by Cheerry Red

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CBS Sports and Tony Romo have "mutually agreed to part ways," ending his nine seasons as the network's lead NFL analyst. Romo had been on leave since July, and JJ Watt stays alongside Jim Nantz and Tracy Wolfson for the rest of the season. Variety notes Romo's 2020 extension was valued at around $17 million a year, and that the opening comes as CBS's parent heads into its merger with Warner Bros. carrying billions in debt. Also today: Australia's Nine Network signs a seven-year free-to-air deal with Australian Athletics running through the Brisbane 2032 Olympics; Westfield moves onto the front of the Western Sydney Wanderers' shirt, tying in five centres with more than 92 million visits a year; the NHL pulls its "Hot for Hockey" romance audio series after it averaged 2.4 stars; Sofascore gets the NHL's puck and player tracking data; Maple Leaf Foods and Michelob ULTRA win Best in Show at the Sponsorship Excellence Awards; and a federal judge rules a rooftop business can't sell the view of a Cubs game without paying the Cubs. The throughline: who gets to profit from the game, and who decides.

Intro / Outro music by Cheerry Red

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YouTube is still an interested buyer for almost every major U.S. league, CNBC's Alex Sherman reports, but only for whole packages: all of a team's local games, or every game in a tournament. That fits its decision to walk away from a five-game NFL package that Netflix bought. Sports Business Journal has reported YouTube is in advanced talks for 20 to 25 NBA teams' regional rights, and it wants the FIFA Men's World Cup, with games anchoring YouTube Premium at $15.99 a month. Also today: Sports Entertainment Group closes its NZ$130 million purchase of MediaWorks, New Zealand's biggest radio group; an independent commission finds Manchester City guilty over sponsorship "schemes" the Premier League says were worth more than £900 million, with City set to appeal; DAZN Media Plus adds stadium signage, a creator platform, an AI sales agent and a Sports Audience Graph; NBCUniversal cuts several hundred streaming technology jobs months after Peacock's first adjusted profit; Sting and Columbia Sportswear win Grands at the Clio Awards; and Nigeria's Kano Pillars swap a broadcaster for a detergent on the front of the shirt. The throughline: the companies in sports media no longer want one piece, they want the whole thing, and the bigger the package, the more there is to pay for and to answer for.

Intro / Outro music by Cheerry Red

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ESPN's exclusive talks to keep the College Football Playoff are "tough sledding," per Sports Business Journal, with a week left before the October 9 deadline. The sticking point is replacing the conference championship games a 24-team playoff would eliminate: the SEC title game alone is worth about $100 million, and all FBS title games together about $250 million. If no deal is reached, the rights go to market, where Fox, NBC and Prime Video could bid. Also today: India's ISL splits its rights between Sony and YouTube and gives clubs viewing data for the first time; Bridgestone becomes Formula E's sole tire supplier and takes four race title sponsorships; U.S. Bank extends its NFL deal to youth flag football; ESPN renews TGL; and Bulgaria's 1club raises €2.2 million. This week's Friday Deep Dive goes back to the NHL naming Adobe its official creative, marketing and AI partner: what all 32 clubs get, how it follows Adobe's deals with the NFL, the Premier League and MLB, and why the fan-facing AI tools are the riskier half of the bet. The throughline: everyone is trying to reach the fan they don't have yet, without losing the money they already have.

Intro / Outro music by Cheerry Red

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Madison Square Garden Sports' board has approved spinning off the New York Rangers from the Knicks, with completion scheduled for October 26. The parent becomes MSG Knickerbockers Corporation and keeps the Knicks; the new MSG Rangers Corporation takes the Rangers, the Hartford Wolf Pack and the MSG Training Center. Shareholders get one MSG Rangers share for every two MSG Sports shares, trading under MSGK and MSGR is set to begin October 27, and James Dolan will run the Rangers company while keeping his roles at the Knicks. Also today: the NHRA splits its season between Fox and The CW from 2027, with FloSports streaming qualifying and a reach of more than 125 million households; Verizon's Visible signs with Learfield across USC, Oregon, Minnesota and Rutgers, including one of college football's first corporate helmet bumpers; the CFTC prepares a crackdown on prediction-market promotions; Novig raises at up to a $2 billion valuation, four times its February price; Nike's "So Win" and Novartis' "Relax, It's a Blood Test" win ADWEEK Media Plan of the Year honors; and Sports Entertainment Group completes its NZ$130 million purchase of MediaWorks. The throughline: how you package something can change what it's worth, from stocks and TV seasons to sponsorships and bets.

Intro / Outro music by Cheerry Red

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The New York Islanders have agreed to sell roughly 15% of the franchise at a $3 billion valuation, Sportico reports, pending NHL approval, with Scott Malkin keeping control. That slice is worth about $450 million, almost exactly the $485 million Malkin and Jon Ledecky paid for the entire club in 2014, and the price is more than 50% above Sportico's own $1.93 billion valuation from last year. Also today: NBC's first Sunday Night Baseball season averaged 2.7 million viewers, the package's best since 2007; Paze replaces PayPal on the Phoenix Suns' jerseys; Fox was the only network to air taxpayer-funded ads featuring President Trump during football; Alibaba becomes the Brooklyn Nets' technology, cloud and jersey patch partner; Clearlake buys out Todd Boehly to take full control of Chelsea; football clubs sweep three Grand Prix at Cannes Lions; and the Big Bash League's franchises go up for sale. The throughline: everything in sport is being sold in pieces, from stakes and TV rights to jersey patches, and every piece now carries a price of its own.

Intro / Outro music by Cheerry Red

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The Steinbrenner family is selling at least 4% of Yankee Global Enterprises as part of Apollo Sports Capital's $2.6 billion investment, at a valuation above $10 billion per Sportico, and the money arrives in tranches: an initial payment, future share purchases and a $1 billion loan. The New York Post reports Apollo would end up with 16%, roughly half of it in preferred stock that converts after four years, while Hal Steinbrenner keeps control. Before this deal, 18 of MLB's 30 teams already had private equity owners. Also today: Charles Barkley doubles down on retiring from Inside the NBA; Kylian Mbappé's move from Nike to On becomes official; Accredited Debt Relief hires TCA as its first media agency, with Bill Cowher in a new ad as US household debt hits a record high; the NHL names Adobe its official creative, marketing and AI partner for all 32 teams; KFC Canada, Uber Eats and Nike's winning Clio Sports work; and Superstat raises $3.5 million to automate stats for amateur sport. The throughline: money keeps pouring into sport, but it arrives in very different forms, as loans for the owners, marketing tools for the leagues, and ads aimed at the fans.

Intro / Outro music by Cheerry Red

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Manchester United drew £120 million from its revolving credit facility across three summer tranches, repaid £30 million, and ended up with total debt of £1.15 billion, still above a billion despite two years of cost cutting under Sir Jim Ratcliffe. Summer spending on new players came to £191.7 million, and only £153 million of that can be traced to announced fees. Also today: several of MLB's national TV deals would add a free 2029 season if a lockout wipes out 60 games per team; Premier League front-of-shirt revenue is up 8% to £444 million in the first season without gambling sponsors on the front, though the betting money has moved to sleeves and training kits; Indeed hires Little Dot Studios to activate its Brentford shirt deal; New York sues Polymarket for at least $4.6 billion; Guinness and Three/Chelsea FC Women win at the ESA Awards; the Hawks move to local broadcast TV; and the LTA hands British tennis's social channels to Two Circles. The throughline: risk in sports business rarely goes away. It just gets moved somewhere else.

Intro / Outro music by Cheerry Red

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Dolphins owner Stephen Ross is in advanced talks to sell a 20% stake in Formula One's Miami Grand Prix to private equity firm Otro Capital. It's the latest step in Ross carving his sports empire into pieces that can each be priced on their own: 13% of the Dolphins, stadium and race to Ares and Joe Tsai at about $8.1 billion in 2024, 1% of the Dolphins to Lin Bin at a record $12.5 billion this March, and everything moved into Ross Sports & Entertainment in August. In this week's Friday Deep Dive, we look at the buyer (Otro, whose lock on selling its Alpine F1 stake expired this month), the asset (a race contracted through 2041 with a five-year sellout streak), and the seller. Also today: the NHL signs local TV deals for four teams with Charter's Spectrum, paid per subscriber, after the FanDuel Sports Networks collapse; adidas renews with Benfica through 2033 in a reported €120 million deal that puts its name on the club's academy; the Premier League's first non-gambling shirt sponsors say the shirt is paying off; and team owners back sweat-sensor company Nix Biosensors' $10 million Series A. The throughline: sports properties are being taken apart and sold one piece at a time.

Intro / Outro music by Cheerry Red

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