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Sunday Edition

January 12, 2025

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Good morning. It was a brutal week for Fox Sports. Read on and I’ll tell you all about it. As always, I love hearing from you at [[email protected]]. Below today’s column, I share some of your responses to last week’s.

Oh, and we broke some exciting news of our own Friday: We’ve added Ryan Glasspiegel [[link removed]], an outstanding and widely read sports media newsbreaker, to our team. Make sure you’re subscribed to our twice-weekly Tuned In newsletter [[link removed]] to get your media fix from Mike McCarthy and Ryan.

— Dan Roberts [[link removed]], FOS EIC

Fox’s Terrible Week: Harassment Lawsuit, Venu Cancellation [[link removed]]

Ron Chenoy/Imagn Images

One week ago, Front Office Sports was first to report the news of a bombshell workplace misconduct lawsuit [[link removed]] filed against Fox Sports by a former hairstylist.

The 42-page lawsuit takes a kitchen-sink approach; enumerating the whole litany of claims takes a lot of words. The most salacious of them are against FS1 exec Charlie Dixon, former host Skip Bayless, and current host Joy Taylor.

Fox, Fox Sports, FS1, and FS2 are all named as defendants in the suit.

The plaintiff, Noushin Faraji, accuses Bayless of years of sexual harassment, offering her $1.5 million for sex, and accusing her of sleeping with Shannon Sharpe; she accuses Taylor of sleeping with Dixon and Emmanuel Acho; she accuses Dixon of grabbing her buttocks at a bar, and elevating Taylor thanks to their relationship; she accuses Fox of ignoring multiple complaints she lodged with HR over the years.

The lawsuit has possible ripple effects beyond those named in the document. Marcellus Wiley [[link removed]], who hosted the FS1 show Speak for Yourself for four years and was replaced on the show in 2022 by Joy Taylor and LeSean McCoy, told Jason Whitlock in the wake of the lawsuit, “Lawyers are reaching out to me. Because when they saw me get surprised by the allegations, especially the one about Charlie Dixon, they said, ‘That is actionable.’ Now I’m trying to make sure that everything that I went through, and everything that I read in that article, is actually true.” It sounds like Wiley is getting legal advice urging him to file his own lawsuit for wrongful termination.

What will happen next? What will Fox do with Dixon [[link removed]]? Who else will come out of the woodwork to corroborate or deny the claims? All we know for sure is that the lawsuit won’t go quietly into the night.

By Friday, perhaps the news cycle around the lawsuit had died down just a little bit, giving Fox’s crisis PR people a reprieve. But then came the news that Venu, the highly anticipated live sports streaming bundle from Fox, Disney, and WBD, is dead [[link removed]].

The news that Venu is canceled came as a shock just a few days after Disney bought 70% of Fubo [[link removed]], the “little guy” who had sued the television goliaths [[link removed]] to block Venu from launching. By swallowing its loudest opponent, it looked like Disney did Fox and WBD a solid and cleared Venu’s path to launch. Nope.

“After careful consideration, we have collectively agreed to discontinue the Venu Sports joint venture, and not launch the streaming service,” the triumvirate said in a statement. “In an ever-changing marketplace, we determined that it was best to meet the evolving demands of sports fans by focusing on existing products and distribution channels.”

Or they determined that the effort has become more trouble than it’s worth, an albatross around their necks that lawmakers are still likely to block, even after Fubo got removed from the equation. A judge in August agreed with Fubo’s accusations that Venu was anti-competitive and granted a temporary injunction [[link removed]] against Fubo that stopped it from launching. In November, the DOJ and 17 state attorneys generals filed amicus briefs [[link removed]] arguing Venu should not be allowed to watch. DealBook [[link removed]] reports that the DOJ “was not pleased to learn that Disney had acquired a rival apparently to make an antitrust case go away.”

The death of Venu is arguably a more crushing loss for Fox than for Disney, which is more focused on its ESPN direct-to-consumer offering “ Flagship [[link removed]]” anyway. Fox has no such exciting imminent OTT offering, and WBD is reeling from missing out [[link removed]] on the new NBA rights package but has responded by gobbling up other rights like college football games [[link removed]] and Unrivaled women’s basketball [[link removed]].

On top of all this, Fox faces a $2.7 billion defamation suit [[link removed]] on the news side of the house from electronic voting system company Smartmatic. It settled a similar lawsuit [[link removed]] by paying Dominion Voting Systems $787 million in 2023.

Fox Sports has endured a tough past few years and remains the perennial No. 2 in the live sports broadcast race. It has attempted to make its college football show, Big Noon Kickoff, a real challenger to ESPN’s College GameDay, but the latter is far ahead [[link removed]], often with double the viewership. ESPN says 2024 was GameDay’s most-watched season ever [[link removed]].

Fox has gone all-in on soccer in the last few years, but losing the next two FIFA Women’s World Cups to Netflix [[link removed]] was another blow.

Despite it all, Fox has the Super Bowl on Feb 9. It’s the biggest annual spectacle left on live TV and a chance for Fox to get some glory back. Tom Brady [[link removed]] will be in the booth. Kendrick Lamar will be on stage at halftime. Fox will look to get people to stop talking about Netflix. FOS will be there with a team on the ground.

SPONSORED BY UNITED FOOTBALL LEAGUE

The FOS Interview With UFL President Russ Brandon

In the newest FOS Interview [[link removed]], Front Office Sports editor-in-chief Dan Roberts sits down with United Football League president Russ Brandon to review the spring football league’s inaugural season post-merger of XFL and USFL [[link removed]]. They talk ratings, learnings, and future growth—as well as Russ’s view as a former NFL front office executive on private equity and how the COVID-19 pandemic shaped the UFL [[link removed]].

Notes from the Crowd Mailbag: Your Athletes of the Year for 2024

Kyle Terada-Imagn Images

I used last weekend’s column [[link removed]] to think about which athlete most defined 2024. Time chose Caitlin Clark; Sports Illustrated named Simone Biles. I wrote that I would choose Clark and that no other individual came close, but my clear takeaway overall is that 2024 was the year of the female athlete.

Here’s what some of you wrote back.

“I would go with Ilona Maher. Being part of the first-ever US team to win a Rugby 7s medal at the Olympics was a great achievement. But it was her outsized personality, positive social voice, and broad-based appeal that catapulted her into the mainstream spotlight. And that’s an exciting development for the long tail of women’s sports. I bet many more people will be tuning into women’s rugby and rugby 7s in 2025 through LA28 and beyond thanks to Ilona.” —Leela Srinivasan

“Caitlin Clark on the Women’s side, nobody captured the audience and drew new fans to a sport like she did. Scottie Scheffler on the men’s side.” —Rory Spears via email

“Year of the female? I would make the case that Scottie Scheffler was the dominant sportsperson of 2024, with nine titles—a feat comparable to Tiger Woods in his pomp.” —Randy Haynes

“Messi’s impact on MLS is pretty amazing. Caitlin Clark is a close second. Ohtani right behind them and was most impactful across several countries.” —Joe Favorito

“Male athlete of the year is Scottie Scheffler… Masters champ, gold medal at the Olympics. 11 titles in one year.” —Larry Carsi

“My vote is for Freddie Freeman and I am not even a Dodger fan!” —Carol Denardo

Good Week/Bad Week Notre Dame Cashes In, NFL Viewership Dips

Amber Searls/Imagn Images

Good week for:

Notre Dame ⬆ The Fighting Irish defeated Penn State on Thursday to advance to the national championship game. By reaching the final, Notre Dame has earned $20 million in prize money [[link removed]], and because it is an independent school [[link removed]], it does not need to share it with a conference unlike the other 11 teams that made the CFP.

WWE ⬆ The professional wrestling promotion made its Netflix debut of Raw on Monday night and drew 4.9 million global viewers with 2.6 million coming from the U.S. The show averaged 1.2 million viewers per episode last year [[link removed]], according to VideoAmp. The debut was a strong start to WWE’s 10-year, $5 billion partnership with Netflix. It’s also Netflix’s first foray into livestreaming a weekly sports entertainment product.

Bad week for:

NFL ⬇ The league averaged 17.5 million viewers per game during the 2024 regular season, down about 2.2% from last year [[link removed]]. However, the bulk of the decline came from one league partner, Disney, which was down 14% due to cutting the number of games it simulcast on ABC and ESPN. Disney simulcast 16 games this year (before Monday’s wild-card game) to 19 last year, which was driven by the SAG-AFTRA strike.

Miami Heat ⬇ The franchise is facing a conundrum with its star forward Jimmy Butler, whom the team suspended for seven games [[link removed]] after he publicly expressed he wants to play elsewhere. However, because Butler can be a free agent this offseason, teams are reportedly tossing lowball offers at the Heat. Butler will sign an extension with only the Suns [[link removed]]—but Phoenix needs to throw Bradley Beal [[link removed]] in a trade to make the money work. Beal has a no-trade clause, which means the Heat and Suns will have to get creative to facilitate a deal that will likely drag into the Feb. 6 trade deadline.

The Sunday Read—and Watch Saudi Arabia’s Billion-Dollar Play for Global Sports Dominance

Craig Mitchelldyer/Imagn Images

Some of the biggest changes in sports last year were due to the influence of the Public Investment fund of Saudi Arabia (PIF). With $925 billion in assets under management, the PIF has established itself as a major player in global sports, shaping the landscapes of soccer, combat sports, golf, tennis, and esports. But more money is flowing than ever before, and 2025 is shaping up to be an even bigger and wide-ranging year of Saudi influence.

Contributor Asli Pelit looks at how the PIF has already seismically shifted [[link removed]] the global sports landscape, and FOS’s Derryl Barnes breaks down [[link removed]] where the highly controversial money is moving in an episode of FOS Explains.

Advertise [[link removed]] Awards [[link removed]] Learning [[link removed]] Events [[link removed]] Video [[link removed]] Podcast [[link removed]] Written by Daniel Roberts [[link removed]], Colin Salao [[link removed]], Meredith Turits [[link removed]] Edited by Or Moyal [[link removed]]

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