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Morning Edition

November 18, 2024

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The NBA’s relationship with TNT is four decades old. This weekend, the sides dismissed a lawsuit by reaching a settlement that somehow extends that relationship without granting the network game rights—and that was just the tip of the iceberg. We go into the far-reaching implications of the agreement, including how it led Charles Barkley to ESPN and TNT to save face and plot a different future even as the NBA moves on to a new series of partners.

— Michael McCarthy [[link removed]], Eric Fisher [[link removed]], and Colin Salao [[link removed]]

Inside the Deal That Sends Barkley and 'Inside the NBA' to ESPN

Inside The NBA

As part of the blockbuster settlement [[link removed]] between the NBA and Warner Bros. Discovery that puts an end to WBD’s lawsuit [[link removed]], TNT’s Inside the NBA will move to rival ESPN [[link removed]] in a licensing deal starting with the 2025-2026 season. But if Bristol brass think Charles Barkley will be muzzled from taking pot-shots at ESPN, they’re in for a big surprise.

TNT will maintain “complete editorial control” of the award-winning studio show, Front Office Sports has learned from multiple sources with direct knowledge of the plan.

The Inside the NBA deal is described to me as mostly a rights swap. ESPN gets Inside the NBA from TNT, while TNT gets the rights to more Big 12 college football and basketball games from ESPN.

Since this past summer, TNT has entered college football and basketball in a big way, picking up partial game rights [[link removed]] to the Big 12, Big East and Mountain West conferences as well as the College Football Playoff.

Barkley, Shaquille O’Neal, Kenny “The Jet” Smith, and Ernie Johnson Jr. will all remain TNT employees, and be available for other WBD projects such as a possible Inside Sports-type program that looks beyond the NBA. And Inside the NBA will continue to be filmed in Atlanta, with the same production team.

In essence, not much will change except where to find the show on your TV screens.

“This is a win-win scenario for fans,” one source tells FOS. “The best sports show on TV survives. The Chuckster gets to say whatever the hell he wants. And ESPN finally gets their hands on Barkley and Inside the NBA.”

Another source added: “Charles will be Charles. ESPN might want to cover their ears.”

The survival of Inside the NBA “saves face” for WBD after its risky decision to sue the NBA, notes a third source. “Fans will take that over any [other] studio production.”

ESPN has openly lusted after Barkley for decades. Meanwhile, its own NBA Countdown studio show has paled in comparison to Inside the NBA and been a revolving door of talent, from Bill Simmons and Jalen Rose to Maria Taylor and Sage Steele.

Barkley signed a monster 10-year, $210 million [[link removed]] contract extension with TNT in 2022. ESPN is essentially running the Pat McAfee playbook [[link removed]] to land him and his colleagues. McAfee is not an ESPN employee, except for his separate contract to appear on College GameDay. Instead, he licenses his eponymous weekday show to the network at a fee of $17 million a year.

Inside the NBA probably won’t air as frequently on ESPN and sister Disney network ABC as it currently does on TNT. Instead, it will be treated more like event programming covering the NBA’s biggest periods: All-Star Weekend, Christmas Day, the NBA Playoffs, and NBA Finals.

And WBD did end up with a “ fourth package [[link removed]]” of game rights from the NBA—except it will be an all-international package of over 100 regular season game telecasts in Northern Europe and Latin America.

For more on the settlement and everything it will lead to, read the full story here [[link removed]]. You can also sign up for Michael McCarthy’s ‘Tuned In’ newsletter here [[link removed]].

Why Netflix Won Big Despite Tyson-Paul Streaming Issues [[link removed]]

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Perhaps the biggest storyline to come out of the fight between Mike Tyson and Jake Paul was the inconsistency of Netflix’s stream. Social media was abuzz as viewers dealt with outages throughout the night [[link removed]].

Despite the disruptions, Netflix still reported 60 million households watched Friday night’s main event globally, with a peak of 65 million concurrent streams. The co-main event between Katie Taylor and Amanda Serrano averaged about 50 million viewers.

While the final viewership numbers will still be released in the coming days, the Tyson-Paul bout is expected to break live streaming records. The Taylor-Serrano fight will likely become the most-watched professional women’s sports event in U.S. history.

The user experience may have been faulty, but Netflix proved its point: In a world with a plethora of options for media consumption [[link removed]], and as households continue to cut the cord on the cable bundle, Netflix—which boasts 283 million subscribers—showed it can gather a global audience onto its platform for one event.

Advertisers will likely look at the viewership numbers, and the hold the event had over the sports world, as a significant positive indicator. The Super Bowl, which perennially secures over 100 million viewers in the U.S. [[link removed]], will still be the grand event for advertising. But Friday’s fight (albeit in a much shorter time frame than a typical game) showed a streaming service behind a paywall can produce enormous numbers—higher than just about any other U.S. sporting event.

However, the leash for Netflix to fix its live stream won’t be long. The company has a little over a month before it streams an NFL Christmas Day doubleheader [[link removed]] for the first time. This could be a pivotal litmus test for the streamer, particularly in the U.S., given the loyalty and fervor of NFL fans.

As Netflix has embraced live streaming and slowly secured the rights to larger events, however, it has shown signs of improvement. In April 2023, Netflix had a disastrous debut [[link removed]] for its live stream of the reunion of reality TV show Love is Blind, but was able to avoid a similar situation for The Roast of Tom Brady in May. The latter was the 26th most-streamed show on Netflix [[link removed]] in the first half of 2024, securing about 22.4 million views.

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Dallas Wings Secure No. 1 WNBA Pick Projected to be Paige Bueckers [[link removed]]

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The Dallas Wings will select No. 1 in the 2025 WNBA Draft after winning Sunday’s draft lottery.

There was a 45.4% chance for the Wings, who finished 9–31 last season, to walk away with the No. 1 pick, with 22.7% coming from their own pick and another 22.7% coming from the selection of the Chicago Sky, as Dallas owned a pick swap.

The second pick will be made by the Los Angeles Sparks, who would have held the best odds at 44.2%, if not for the pick swap. The Sky secured the third pick, and the Washington Mystics, who had just a 10.4% chance at the top pick, settled for the fourth pick.

The Golden State Valkyries, the WNBA expansion franchise that debuts next season, [[link removed]] hold the fifth overall pick.

The Paige Bueckers Draft

While the WNBA draft won’t take place until April, and follows a full NCAA women’s basketball season, the Wings are expected to select University of Connecticut star Paige Bueckers with the first pick. The 23-year-old can play both guard positions and would provide a needed boost for a Wings squad that has been searching for a backcourt mate for several years to complement star scorer Arike Ogunbowale.

It’s unlikely Bueckers can replicate the fanfare that followed Caitlin Clark, but she still projects as a massive draw for the WNBA and Dallas given her exciting play style, longevity in the spotlight, and the rise of the women’s game. She has already signed NIL deals with Nike and Gatorade, and is also the first college basketball player to secure equity in a professional basketball league after agreeing to a deal with Unrivaled in August [[link removed]].

Bueckers has a $1.4 million NIL valuation, according to On3, which is second among all NCAA women’s basketball players [[link removed]] and 30th among all NCAA athletes. She has over five million followers across Instagram, TikTok, and X, more than any men’s football or basketball player.

Bueckers, a redshirt senior, is averaging 21.3 points, 4 assists, and 3 steals through three games to start the 2024–2025 NCAA campaign. She was the No. 1 recruit in the 2020 high school class [[link removed]], ahead of many of the top rookies from the 2024 WNBA draft class, including Clark, Angel Reese, and Cameron Brink. During her freshman year at UConn, Bueckers won the Wooden award and the AP, Naismith and WSBWA National Player of the Year awards.

In the following years, however, she battled injuries and missed the entire 2022–2023 season due to an ACL tear. She was eligible to enter the 2024 WNBA draft, and was projected to be drafted in the lottery after Clark, but announced in February she would return to UConn.

Bueckers does still have another year of eligibility left due to injuries, and could stay in school through the 2025-26 season. But she is expected to declare for the upcoming draft.

How Taylor Swift’s Tour Is Fueling Blue Jays Owner’s Sports Empire [[link removed]]

Denny Medley-Imagn Images

Concerts have long been a crucial revenue stream for pro sports teams and facility operators, but the climactic end of Taylor Swift’s record-setting Eras Tour is taking on an even greater level of importance for Rogers Communications, which is now cornering the market on Canadian pro sports.

Swift began on Thursday a six-concert run at the Rogers Centre in Toronto, and she will end the 21-month tour, which has grossed about $2 billion, with three shows next month at Vancouver’s BC Place.

There have been multiple intersections between Rogers’s sports holdings and the Swift shows. The company-owned Blue Jays proclaimed on social media [[link removed]] they are now in their “Tayronto Era” as the club publicly celebrates the pop icon filling their home ballpark.

The Blue Jays also have made the opportunity to purchase Eras Tour tickets available to Rogers Centre 200-level season-ticket holders who renew for the next two seasons. That two-year provision there elevates from similar sales incentives that many teams have used over the years in which a year of season-ticket purchasing is required to access tickets for coveted events such as an all-star game or playoffs.

On a corporate level, Rogers is the presenting sponsor of the Canadian shows of the Eras Tour, operating a series of Swift-themed giveaways and also using the tie-in to tout its 5G mobile network [[link removed]]. As prior shows on the Eras Tour have shown massive demand for mobile data by attending fans, Rogers also spent nearly $6 million ($8 million Canadian) on a 5G network upgrade at Rogers Centre—a move that will also benefit Blue Jays fans once the club returns for next season.

The efforts arrived soon after Rogers’s deal in September to acquire a controlling stake in Maple Leaf Sports & Entertainment [[link removed]], amplifying its claim as the most powerful team ownership entity in all of sports.

What About Buffalo?

As the Swift shows in Toronto also pull in a significant number of fans traveling from western New York, there is a notable four-day gap between each half of Swift’s six concerts in Toronto, a period that would easily have allowed for the roughly 110-mile trip on Sunday afternoon to Highmark Stadium in Orchard Park, N.Y. Travis Kelce, boyfriend of Swift, and his Chiefs played the Bills that day in what is being billed as the NFL’s game of the year thus far [[link removed]].

Swift, however, reportedly did not attend the game [[link removed]], which was anticipated to potentially set a new high for an NFL television audience during the 2024 regular season.

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If the House v. NCAA settlement receives final approval in April, all Division I schools will be allowed to share revenue with players for the first time in history. Beginning in 2025, schools can pay up to about $22 million total to all of the athletes in their departments, and all power conference schools, as well as some others, are expected to participate.

But with revenue-sharing just a year away, schools are scrambling to figure out how to fund these payments—despite the fact they rake in well over $100 million, and in some cases more than $200 million, per year.

Read the full article [[link removed]] and find all things college sports in our Business of College Athletics [[link removed]] content hub.

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How ESPN Added Charles Barkley

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‘Inside the NBA’ is heading to ESPN. Tuned In columnist Michael McCarthy joins the show to reveal how this settlement came together and why it is likely to be a win-win scenario.

Plus, we hear from Golden State Warriors guard Brandin Podziemski about the influence of the NBA’s business side on players’ day-to-day, and how his future Hall of Famer teammates are inspiring him on and off the court.

Also, Netflix’s tech issues, Kirby Smart rips the College Football Playoff committee, and the Rays stadium deal may be dead.

Watch, listen, and subscribe on Apple [[link removed]], Spotify [[link removed]], and YouTube [[link removed]].

Conversation Starters The get-in price for the game between No. 2 Ohio State and Northwestern at Wrigley Field was $249— more than $200 higher [[link removed]] than the get-in price for No. 1 Oregon against Wisconsin in Madison. Stephenville High School in Texas is building a $40 million, 7,500-seat football stadium. Check out [[link removed]] the renderings. Millions of people tuned into the stream former NFL star Antonio Brown [[link removed]] hosted on X of the Tyson-Paul bout as Netflix faced issues. Editors’ Picks NBA Ratings Rorschach Test: Buy the Dip [[link removed]]by Daniel Roberts [[link removed]]Was it the election? Too many threes? Lack of storylines? Executive Decision: When Richard Nixon Named a College Football Champion [[link removed]]by Alex Schiffer [[link removed]]In 1969, the 37th president unilaterally named the winner of the season. Netflix’s Tyson-Paul Failures Raise Huge NFL Game Questions [[link removed]]by Michael McCarthy [[link removed]]Netflix’s Tyson-Paul stream flops; Amazon shines, raising questions about live sports streaming. Question of the Day

For those who watched the Tyson-Paul fight: Did you experience issues with the Netflix stream?

Yes [[link removed]] No [[link removed]]

62% of respondents predicted that a Formula One driver will race in the Indianapolis 500 in 2026.

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