The Jaguars arrive in London on Friday for a 10-day stay and the team’s second two-game U.K. stint in as many seasons.

Jacksonville, which has played 11 games total across the pond, will face the Bears on Sunday at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium as the designated away team, before “hosting” the Patriots at Wembley Stadium next weekend. Both matchups will take place at 9:30 a.m. ET on NFL Network.

London and the Jaguars have become synonymous over the past decade. Jacksonville first planned to play two games at Wembley in the 2020 season, but that got delayed because of the COVID-19 pandemic. 

Now, they are working to extend a contract (that expires after this season) to keep playing at least one game annually at the 90,000-seat venue. “We think that they’re the best partner for us to have, and certainly hope that that continues for a long time,” Jaguars president Mark Lamping told SportsPro Media. “And it’s our expectation that it will.”

The Jaguars get to keep revenue from their Wembley game each year, which is in contrast to all other international games. The NFL operates those and keeps the revenue to distribute across the league.

Jaguars owner Shad Khan also owns Premier League club Fulham, which plays in West London. In 2018, Khan dropped his bid to buy Wembley Stadium for nearly $800 million.

Tea Time

The Jaguars’ presence in London could grow even bigger in 2027, when they are planning to play their entire home schedule away from EverBank Stadium during the final year of a $1.4 billion renovation project. While the team could utilize Florida’s Ben Hill Griffin Stadium or Camping World Stadium in Orlando, it will have the option of playing up to three games in London.

Last season, the Jaguars went 2–0 in London, including an upset over the Bills, after having more than a week to acclimate to being overseas, compared to the 48-hour turnaround for Buffalo.

The flagship, direct-to-consumer version of ESPN will not be a mere streaming service, insists company chair Jimmy Pitaro, but rather a distillation of all the company’s various offerings and capabilities.

Already the most pressing initiative for not only ESPN, but perhaps parent company Walt Disney Co., the forthcoming offering will feature a wide variety of enhanced features, including multi-screen viewing, full integration with ESPN Bet, ticketing, and merchandising, fantasy content, user personalization, and advanced statistics, among others. The existing ESPN+ will also be available within the flagship ESPN streaming service.

“It’s not just about flipping the switch [and making the network available direct-to-consumer],” Pitaro said, appearing Thursday at the Columbia University Sports Management Conference. “When we do this, it will come with significant product enhancements. Yes, you’ll be able to get all of our networks. But the shoulder experience around the video will be much more interactive and it will be much more personalized. …  I could go on and on, but we have an army of engineers and designers on all of this right now.”

The service, expected to cost around $30 per month, is still set to debut next summer, in time for the 2025 college and pro football seasons, as ESPN and Disney officials have detailed for many months.

‘Worldwide Leader’ Tag Again Dismissed

Pitaro, meanwhile, remained quite clear on one of his foremost pet peeves: any reference to the sports media giant as the “Worldwide Leader in Sports.”

The network used that slogan for many years, particularly as it was growing into the dominant, multi-platform entity it now is, and top on-air talent such as Stephen A. Smith still use the moniker now. But Pitaro said the nickname still gets very much under his skin.

“It’s always felt un-ESPN-like,” Pitaro said of the “Worldwide Leader” framing. “The fact that historically we’ve referred to ourselves that way, it’s always felt a bit off from my perspective. I’m fine if other people want to refer to ESPN in that way. But let’s focus on serving the sports fan. Let’s be of service. That’s our mission.”

Those comments expand on those he made in late August during a press day at network headquarters in Bristol, Conn. There, he said of the Worldwide Leader” nickname that “I don’t think it’s representative of the culture here,” building on efforts by the former Yahoo executive to downplay the moniker since he began his current role in 2018.

Instead, Pitaro continues to lean hard into the current ESPN mission statement of “to serve sports fans. Anytime. Anywhere.”

“We really mean that, and any employee [of ours] will be able to tell you that,” Pitaro said Thursday. “I believe our employees know where we’re going and they know what we need to do. We’re operating in an incredibly challenging environment. There’s no way around that. There’s fewer people watching television today than there were yesterday, and there will be fewer people tomorrow.”

Within that mission statement, Pitaro said all network functions are guided by four key business priorities: direct-to-consumer operations, audience expansion, quality storytelling and programming, and innovation, with the flagship streaming service leaning heavily into that last notion.

One of the more highly anticipated college football weekends, a slate circled on fans’ calendars for months, is finally here. And the sport’s shifting dynamics are set to make it just as interesting off the field as it promises to be on the gridiron.

Even before the season started, Oct. 12 was being touted as potentially the best Saturday of college football in the past five years. That led to a viral social media trend of debating when it’s O.K. to skip weddings for college football.

With three matchups of ranked opponents and the continued impact of conference realignment, Saturday promises to be one to remember.

Prime-Time Viewership Battle

From a TV perspective, the most intriguing contests of the day are going head-to-head against each other in prime time. At 7:30 p.m. ET, NBC gets No. 2 Ohio State at No. 3 Oregon, while ABC has No. 9 Ole Miss at No. 13 LSU. 

So far, the most-watched game of the season is Alabama’s 41–34 victory over Georgia, which drew 12 million viewers on ABC. That bested the audience of 9.35 million that tuned in to the early-season Texas-Michigan game, which the Longhorns won 31–12.

Could either Ohio State–Oregon or Ole Miss–LSU top those previous high marks? If they had a bigger spotlight to themselves, maybe, but it’s expected that many viewers likely split between the two.

New and Old Conference Foes

On Saturday afternoon, two networks are benefiting from conference realignment.

At 3:30 p.m. ET, ABC gets the first SEC version of the Red River Rivalry, as No. 1 Texas faces No. 18 Oklahoma. CBS, in its first season with a full Big Ten schedule, will air No. 4 Penn State at USC—those schools’ first contest in the same conference.

Best of the Rest

After ESPN airs Florida at No. 8 Tennessee at 7 p.m. ET, the network gets another crack at ratings-magnet Colorado, which has averaged more than 4.4 million viewers per game during the 4–1 start to Deion Sanders’s second season as head coach, and welcomes new Big 12 foe No. 18 Kansas State to Boulder.

Meanwhile, the MLB playoffs have forced Fox Sports to audible around its successful new Friday night college football schedule. Northwestern at Maryland is moving to FS1, so the main Fox network channel can show the winner-take-all Game 5 of the Padres-Dodgers National League Division Series.