The British soccer tiers below the Premier League will keep getting some shine on television under a huge new media rights deal.

English Football League clubs have unanimously approved a domestic rights deal with Sky Sports worth $1.2 billion over the five-year period between the 2024-25 and 2028-29 seasons.

That financial figure represents a 50% increase in value from the two entities’ current agreement, which expires after next season. Compensation will be in the form of $1.1 billion in guaranteed payments and the rest in marketing benefits.

Under the new agreement, 1,059 EFL matches are set to be shown exclusively on Sky Sports — a record number for any club soccer deal, per Sky, and four times the number of EFL games it currently offers.

The Championship — the highest tier of EFL — will receive 328 matches, while League One and League Two will get 248 each. Additionally, all Play-Off, Carabao Cup, and EFL Trophy matches will be shown on Sky Sports.

Sky Sports and the EFL have also committed to providing longer notice periods for clubs and fans as to which matches will be selected for TV.

And more fans could tune in after one of those clubs recently won promotion to EFL. Wrexham AFC — owned by Hollywood stars Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney — earned a spot in EFL League Two next season.

Connor Bedard is two months from his 18th birthday and doesn’t officially have an NHL team, but he just drove a surge in Chicago Blackhawks’ season-ticket sales.

The Blackhawks secured the No. 1 pick in the upcoming 2023 NHL Draft and are widely expected to use it on Bedard, a generational prospect in Canada’s Western Hockey League who has drawn comparisons to superstars like Sidney Crosby and Connor McDavid. Colorado Avalanche star Nathan MacKinnon said that Bedard’s shot release “is one of the best in the world now.”

Though the draft is on June 28, Bedard is already changing the Blackhawks’ fortunes. 

Within 12 hours of securing the top pick, the team had sold $5.2 million in season-ticket packages, including 1,200 full-season plans. 

The Blackhawks, who tied for the second-worst record in the NHL in the 2022-23 season, filled the United Center to 83.7% capacity across 41 home games — good for third-worst in the 32-team league. 

The team measured a bit better by average attendance, ranking 20th with an average crowd of 17,167.

The Blackhawks’ draft lottery win was announced on the jumbotron at Monday’s Chicago Cubs game to cheers, while a “Let’s Go, Blackhawks!” chant briefly broke out at a Chicago White Sox game that same night.

Super Bowl LVII’s record-setting broadcast helped Fox Corporation’s third-quarter ad revenues soar 43%.

Quarterly revenues for Fox reached $4.08 billion, an 18% increase from the same period last year, but the network reported a third-quarter net loss of $50 million due to legal costs at Fox News and broadcast production costs for the USFL and World Baseball Classic.

Fox generated $590 million more in TV advertising revenue for the three months ending March 31 compared to the network’s same period last year. 

The Chiefs-Eagles Super Bowl matchup in February drew 115.1 million viewers across Fox platforms — surpassing NBC’s previous record of 114.4 million for Super Bowl XLIX and making it the most-watched Super Bowl ever. 

The legal costs stem from Fox’s agreement in April to pay $787.5 million to Dominion Voting Systems, settling a defamation lawsuit over false claims that Dominion’s machines swayed the outcome of the 2020 presidential election.

Japan’s defeat of Team USA in March’s World Baseball Classic Final was the most-watched WBC game ever in the U.S., scoring 5.2 million viewers across the FS1 cable network, Fox Deportes, and Fox Sports’ streaming platforms.

The USFL is in its second season broadcasting on Fox and NBC, while Fox Corp. is a minority owner in the spring football league. USFL games this spring have aired during the same window as Disney’s coverage of XFL games, allowing the rival leagues to cannibalize each other’s audiences.