The NFL entered the 2023 season confident it could consolidate — if not extend — its position as not only the most dominant U.S. sports property, but a major American cultural touchstone.

So far, mission accomplished. 

The league ended the season’s first week by gifting a banner weekend to its main television partners, nearly all of which posted significant ratings increases compared to a year ago. The league is projected to have reached 122 million unique viewers this past weekend.

ESPN posted its best-ever “Monday Night Football” audience since picking up the primetime package in 2006 — even with the shocking loss of new Jets quarterback Aaron Rodgers to a season-ending injury after just four snaps. The game drew an average of 22.6 million viewers, beating a 2009 Minnesota-Green Bay game that saw Brett Favre’s return to Lambeau Field. 

Bigger Than Ratings

Opening week enjoyed other successes. NFL Sunday Ticket performed well in its first game with new operator YouTube, and the league said Tuesday that YouTube has already signed up more residential subscribers than DirecTV last year.

The league also fueled the best-ever day for the ESPN Fantasy mobile app, which garnered 10 million U.S. visitors on Sept. 10.

The NFL continues to thrive despite — or even because of — the ongoing fractures in the media landscape. As the traditional cable bundle continues to unravel and streaming services increasingly cater to individual viewing interests, the league is a rare mass aggregator that keeps growing.  

The league is beginning the season with new stadium projects in Buffalo and Tennessee utilizing significant public money — and soon, perhaps another in Chicago and eventually in Washington.

The completed carriage agreement between ESPN parent Disney and Charter Spectrum looks to bring big changes to sports TV in an age of accelerating media disruption, while still retaining the linear reach that remains central to the economics of most major leagues and networks. 

Charter firmly intended to reset the paradigm of programmer-distributor relationships, and the deal — which ended a bitter standoff of nearly 11 days — gives Charter a crucial enhanced ability to customize video packages for consumers to combine linear and streaming programming.

Charter had argued that media companies such as Disney devalued their linear programming by shifting increasing amounts of content to direct-to-consumer platforms. Such criticism was only amplified by ESPN’s developing move toward offering a full, standalone version of its network. 

But in the new agreement, Charter will be able to include for the first time an ad-supported version of Disney+ and ESPN+ in its bundles for linear-TV subscribers — and eventually, the direct-to-consumer version of ESPN. 

The deal will now be an influential template for Charter’s negotiations with other programmers and will likely influence Disney’s relationships with other carriers. 

“A stronger bundle is better for Disney’s existing cable channels, particularly ESPN,” wrote media analyst Ben Thompson. “What should also be clear is that a stronger bundle is better for Disney’s streaming services as well.”

Bundle Big For NBA Bid

The Charter-Disney deal should also significantly impact future sports rights negotiations, perhaps most immediately those of the NBA. 

ESPN is pushing to retain its rights to the league. In striking the Charter deal, it keeps its presence on the country’s second-largest cable carrier with a large market share in New York and Los Angeles — critical markets where the league has four total teams.

“Had the bundle fallen apart, the NBA, which is in the midst of negotiating a new rights deal, would have been in big trouble,” Thompson wrote. “Now it has a future ESPN [that] can more confidently bid.”

An embattled Premier League club could once again receive a new financial lifeline — and once again, the hero would be an American investor. 

Less than three weeks after the collapse of a potential investment of up to $190 million from U.S. investment group MSP Sports Capital, Everton is now nearing a deal with Florida-based 777 Partners for a majority stake, according to multiple reports.

777 Partners — which is steadily amassing one of the world’s leading soccer portfolios and had previously considered an investment in Everton — was seen as a potential reentrant after the MSP deal fell through.

If completed, the acquisition will provide a welcome injection of capital and oversight to the club, which has posted five straight years of financial losses. Currently led by Farhad Moshiri, Everton barely avoided relegation last season and is again below the cut line in 18th place. 

Spending Woes

A new stadium is under construction, but Everton’s costs have risen more than 50% to $945 million. Without the enhanced revenue from the new facility, club losses have reached $500 million over the last five years. 

The club is also under investigation for potentially violating spending rules.

The 777 Partners deal would also bring the number of American-owned Premier League clubs to 10 out of 20 — a group that also includes stalwarts such as Arsenal, Chelsea, Liverpool, and Manchester United.

With the Oakland A’s all but out the door of Oakland Coliseum, the city is reportedly considering a proposal from its local soccer team to make use of the surrounding area.

Oakland city officials are reviewing the terms of an agreement that would allow Oakland Roots SC — which plays in the USL Championship, the second division of American men’s professional soccer — to build a temporary 10,000-seat stadium in the Malibu parking lot near the Coliseum.

The 9-acre lot sits vacant right now, and the Roots are proposing to use it as a temporary venue starting in 2025 while it finds a more permanent solution. The club currently plays its matches at CSU East Bay, located outside the city, and will do so through the 2024 season.

If the Malibu solution isn’t ready by 2025, the team could pay to play games inside the Coliseum itself. In either scenario, the club’s women’s team, the Oakland Soul, would also be expected to play games there.

The use of the area in and around the Coliseum could come down to its owners: Earlier in the week, the A’s rejected a purchase offer from African-American Sports and Entertainment Group for its share of the stadium.

Rooted in Oakland

Meanwhile, the Roots are doing all they can to endear themselves to Oakland fans as one of the last remaining professional sports teams in the city.

The club is running a “community investment round” that will allow any person to purchase an ownership stake in the team for as little as $100.