INDIANAPOLIS — The Bengals are ready to make Ja’Marr Chase the highest-paid non-quarterback in the NFL—and they’re up for the “tall task” of re-signing their other top-earning players, too.

Chase is set to make $21.8 million in 2025 playing on his fifth-year option from his rookie contract, but he’s likely in line for a huge raise. 

“Ja’Marr is always going to be our priority,” Bengals director of player personnel Duke Tobin said late Tuesday afternoon at the NFL Scouting Combine. “He’s a fantastic football player. He’s going to end up being the No. 1–paid non-quarterback in the league. We’re there, let’s get it done. The earlier we can do some of this stuff, the freer it [makes] us to build the rest of the team.”

Vikings receiver Justin Jefferson is currently the highest-paid non-quarterback in the NFL, under a four-year, $140 million extension he signed last offseason that pays him an average annual salary of $35 million. So, Chase will be set to surpass that mark with an extension of his own.

The highest-paid player in the league is Cowboys quarterback Dak Prescott, who signed a four-year deal worth $240 million in 2024. 

Chase’s counterpart in Cincinnati’s passing attack, receiver Tee Higgins, is set to be a free agent unless the Bengals place the franchise tag on him again, which appears unlikely. “Our preference with Tee Higgins is to do a long-term agreement,” Tobin said. “Always has been. It continues to be.” Higgins played the 2024 season on the franchise tag, which paid him nearly $22 million.

Behind the Scenes

The Bengals don’t have a GM, but Tobin is the team’s top-ranking front-office executive. On Tuesday, he said the franchise ownership group, led by president Mike Brown, remains “highly involved” in personnel decisions. 

“They’re there every day,” Tobin said. “They’ve been there every day, every day of their careers, and they’ll continue to do that, and they’re super good at what they do.”

As the Eagles have garnered praise for their use of void years to manipulate the salary cap, Tobin said he prefers to play things more straightforward. 

“We’ve managed our cap well,” he said. “We’ve got low dead money. We want a high payroll, and low dead money so that the people that are in Cincinnati playing for us can get all the money.”

Tobin said he hasn’t spoken to Joe Burrow about restructuring his contract—something the quarterback said he would be willing to do to help sign players like Chase, Higgins, and defensive end Trey Hendrickson, who has one year left on his contract. 

Burrow’s input is valued, though, Tobin said: “I haven’t heard anything he’s said that I’m not in complete alignment on. I want the good players, too, and I think they ought to be paid to their ability level, and that’s what we’re going to do.”

Streaming’s great rebundling is showing accelerating traction with consumers, providing a key lesson for all programmers, including sports rights holders.

Newly released data from streaming subscription analytics firm Antenna showed that bundled services possess some of the strongest retention rates in the industry, and well in excess of comparable figures for individual streaming services. Topping the list last year was a cross-network offering combining Disney’s own Disney+ and Hulu with Warner Bros. Discovery’s Max, as 80% of subscribers who initially subscribed to the bundle retained the service after three months. 

Antenna also said that by the end of last year, 2.2 million people subscribed to that particular bundle, which includes a heightened level of sports between ESPN recently gaining a tile on Disney+ and WBD airing much of its live sports on Max.

That retention figure for the Disney-WBD initiative even topped industry behemoth Netflix—which disclosed it had more than 300 million subscribers in a recent earnings report. The company saw meaningful spikes in new subscribers after a Jake Paul–Mike Tyson fight in November and a Christmas Day NFL doubleheader, and is now looking heavily to live sports to further boost those numbers. 

A similar finding in Antenna’s data showed Apple TV+ garnered about 1.5 million sign-ups in 2024’s fourth quarter from Amazon Channels—with most of those incoming users never having tried the service previously. 

Bigger Trends 

The streaming bundling effort, which gained significant momentum last year, is a critical tool to reduce subscriber churn, a heightening concern across the business. Live sports figures to be a prominent element in that dynamic as streaming embraces more inter-company deals and continues to look more like traditional cable and satellite TV.

Regarding the early success of the Disney-Max streaming bundle, Antenna CEO and cofounder Jonathan Carson said, “We really think this is a wake-up call that these cross-company bundles could really be a game-changer and a solution for the industry.”

Both ESPN and Fox, however, currently have large-scale streaming initiatives underway that do not involve content from other networks. 

One prominent inter-company streaming bundle that failed to succeed, of course, was the aborted Venu Sports from ESPN, Fox, and WBD. That effort, however, grappled with extensive legal challenges, most notably from Fubo—which is now entering into a joint venture with ESPN parent company Disney. 

Indianapolis is used to fans flocking to the city to catch a glimpse of Caitlin Clark. But on Sunday, fans sold out Butler’s Hinkle Fieldhouse not to catch Clark, but instead the visiting UConn Huskies and star guard Paige Bueckers.

Bueckers, together with USC’s JuJu Watkins, has carried the torch left by Clark as the top attraction in NCAA women’s basketball. The December game between the Huskies and Trojans drew 2.2 million viewers, the most-watched NCAA women’s basketball game of the season. It was also Fox’s second-most-watched game, behind only last year’s game when Clark broke the NCAA scoring record.

Given that Clark may be one of the biggest ratings anomalies in the history of sports, it’s unlikely NCAA women’s basketball can replicate last year’s March Madness tournament that saw the championship game draw nearly 19 million viewers and eclipse the men’s title game. NCAA women’s basketball viewership is down this season compared to last year.

But viewership is up double digits compared to the 2022–2023 season, which was Clark’s junior year. The recipe of star power and wide-open standings has the league poised for another strong ratings season—and one that may sustain for years to come.

Creating Stars

Fans who may have tuned in to see Clark in last year’s tournament were exposed to other names, many of whom have stayed in college because the WNBA requires U.S. players to be 22 years old in the draft’s calendar year—a stark contrast from the NBA, where players may declare for the draft after just one year removed from high school. International athletes can declare at 20.

Players like Bueckers, South Carolina’s MiLaysia Fulwiley and Te-Hina Paopao, LSU’s Flau’jae Johnson, and former Tiger turned TCU Horned Frog Hailey Van Lith played in front of millions during Clark and the Hawkeyes’ run last year. All of their schools are in the top 10 in the latest NCAA women’s rankings, alongside powerhouse programs like No. 1 Texas, No. 2 UCLA, No. 3 Notre Dame, and No. 8 UNC.

This year’s tournament could also provide the same effect as Bueckers, who is expected to be the No. 1 pick in the 2025 WNBA draft. Her stardom could be the attraction that exposes more fans to stars like the Bruins’ Lauren Betts—who announced she won’t join this year’s draft—or Fighting Irish guard Hannah Hidalgo, who, like Watkins, will not be draft-eligible until 2027.