ESPN president Jimmy Pitaro said the network has made progress on a potential new deal with MLB, although keeping baseball rights beyond this season is still not guaranteed.

“When I last spoke publicly, I said that conversations were healthy, and I would say, since then, we’ve made good progress,” Pitaro said Tuesday at the Front Office Sports Tuned In summit in New York. “I don’t want to go farther than that, but we’ve certainly made good progress with [MLB commissioner Rob Manfred] and his team.”

In February, ESPN and MLB agreed to opt out of their current deal that paid the league $550 million annually through 2028. ESPN’s contract now ends after this season. However, the two sides reengaged in talks about a new deal this summer.

On Tuesday, Pitaro said ESPN wants more than just rights to national MLB broadcasts. “Local is super interesting to us, and we’ve made that clear,” he said.

MLB is hoping to build a set of new deals, which could still include ESPN, that will end up being worth more than the $550 million ESPN has been paying per season.

NFL-ESPN Deal Flow

Last month, the NFL agreed to a deal to acquire a 10% equity stake in ESPN, which in turn is set to acquire NFL Network, distribution rights to NFL RedZone, and other league assets.

Pitaro said ESPN remains open to striking similar deals with other leagues, which he had been discussing for several years. “If there’s an opportunity with another league that we think makes good business sense for us, and also is beneficial for the sports fan, we’re of course going to pursue it,” he said.

Despite NFL RedZone ads this season creating some fan displeasure with ESPN, Pitaro isn’t too worried about the confusion. “It was interesting for us on the outside to watch this and to read about some of it on social,” he said. “But again, the deal hasn’t closed yet, and even when it does close, we are not operating RedZone. The NFL will continue to own and operate the RedZone product.”

Fox Sports NFL analyst Greg Olsen said he has no problem with his colleague Tom Brady holding dual roles in the network’s top broadcast booth and with the Raiders as a minority owner.

“I’m not a hater. I say more power to him,” Olsen said Tuesday at the Front Office Sports Tuned In summit in New York.

On Monday night, ESPN showed Brady wearing a headset inside the Las Vegas coaching booth at Allegiant Stadium for the Chargers-Raiders game.

“If I’m the Raiders, and I have a minority owner like Tom Brady, who I have access to and he has the experience and I can pick his brain, you would be silly not to,” Olsen said. “Why would you not rely on him?”

This season, the NFL has relaxed the “Brady Rules” that restricted his access as a broadcaster during his debut campaign in 2024. Brady is now allowed to attend production meetings virtually, but still isn’t allowed inside teams’ facilities like other announcers are.

Still, a potential conflict of interest still lingers due to Brady’s dual roles. 

But Olsen said he doesn’t blame the Raiders for using Brady. “What better resource,” Olsen said, “than someone who’s both financially obligated to the success of the organization and has 20-plus years of top-line experience? Why would you not pick his brain? Why would you not utilize every resource and every aspect of your organization to try to find that slight margin to be the difference between winning and losing the game?”

From Brady’s perspective, Olsen said “all of us would love to be an owner of an NFL team,” and how other teams handle his broadcasting access “is up to them.”

In a statement to FOS and other outlets, a league spokesperson said Brady violated “no policies” by sitting in the booth, and that league rules ban all electronic devices other than league-issued tablets.

The league said that Brady is still barred from other teams’ facilities, but he can interview players off-site. “As with any production meeting with broadcast teams, it’s up to the club, coach or players to determine what they said in those sessions,” the league spokesperson said.

Brady’s stint in the coaching booth elicited strong reactions across the league. ESPN’s Marcus Spears called it “abhorrent” and said that it called the league’s integrity into question.

FOS reporter Ryan Glasspiegel asked Fox Sports CEO Eric Shanks about Brady’s potential conflict of interest at Tuned In.

“Not gonna answer that,” Shanks said Tuesday. “If there’s a conversation that needs to be had after last night, we’ll have it.”

Olsen said while he remains “ultra competitive” about his broadcasting career, he’s become friends with Brady, who took his spot as Fox’s No. 1 analyst. “We formed a genuine personal relationship that I value,” Olsen said.

“I can still seek to go out and reach the highest levels of this profession, and [by] no means does that mean I want it to be at the expense of Tom,” Olsen said. “And Tom wants to continue to ascend and achieve everything he wants. That doesn’t have to come at the expense of me. My success is not contingent upon Tom’s failure, and vice versa.”

As far as potentially becoming a No. 1 analyst at a different NFL TV partner, Olsen said he has “no idea what the future looks [like] within the Fox network and all the other players in the industry.”

Meanwhile, Olsen addressed the reaction to his comments last week on Wake Up Barstool about Syracuse football coach Fran Brown making his team run sprints on the field after beating UConn.

“I was shocked that a random question in a segment was trending,” said Olsen, who clarified that he was simply cosigning what Jon Gruden and Dave Portnoy were saying about the move being performative. “I’m not trying to strike hot takes,” Olsen said.

Fox Sports CEO Eric Shanks has overseen six Super Bowls since taking the helm in 2010. But he’s not afraid to admit the 2026 World Cup will be the tallest task in company history.

“It’ll be the biggest logistical undertaking that Fox has ever done,” Shanks said at the Front Office Sports Tuned In summit in New York.

Fox owns the English-language domestic broadcasting rights for the 2026 FIFA men’s World Cup, which runs from June 11 to July 19. It’s the first time the quadrennial tournament will be held in the U.S. since 1994. Canada and Mexico are also hosting the tournament, which is expanding from 32 to 48 teams next year.

According to The New York Times, Fox is paying 10% more for the 2026 World Cup rights than in tournaments in 2018 and 2022, which totaled $425 million.

Shanks said there hasn’t yet been much buzz around the country, but he thinks that should change when the calendar turns to 2026 as more local fans learn about the tournament.

“This country has no idea what’s going to hit it next summer,” Shanks said.

Deal With Dave

FOS reported in July that Fox Sports agreed to a partnership with Barstool Sports and its founder, Dave Portnoy. Fox and Barstool’s deal brings additional programs like Wake Up Barstool on FS1, while Portnoy has appeared on Big Noon Kickoff, the network’s college football pregame show.

Asked how to navigate that partnership with some of the company’s other partners and stakeholders, including the NFL and, most recently, Ohio State, which have had some issues with Portnoy, Shanks said it’s no different from other balancing acts he’s done before.

“We’ve put, in the past, some baseball talent, baseball wasn’t exactly happy with. We thought it was good for the show, and everybody was grown-ups and they trust us. … Hopefully, over time, we can find that trust and that medium in there because we’re not out to poke anybody. We’re here to try to make every one of their businesses bigger,” Shanks said. 

Valuing the Streaming Bundle

It’s been less than a month since the launch of Fox One, the company’s streaming service that includes Fox’s broadcast sports portfolio, FS1, and the Big Ten Network. 

Shanks acknowledged the new media landscape has made it “naggingly hard” for sports fans to navigate during game day. He said the sports streaming bundle, and the inclusion of broadcast channels within the bundle, is “the best thing for sports fans,” and that “sports fans have been taken advantage of.”

“We have this theory that wins. … Accessing the broadcast TV channels is still simpler than accessing any other service,” Shanks said.

The Commanders’ planned return to the District of Columbia is up for another vote Wednesday, and this time, the proposed $3.8 billion project is expected to face far less drama. 

The Council of the District of Columbia initially approved about $1.1 billion in public funding on Aug. 1 for a domed facility and mixed-use development on the grounds of RFK Stadium, the NFL team’s former home. Now, that measure is back for a second and final vote as a result of local rules requiring the multistage process to approve legislation. 

D.C. council chair Phil Mendelson reiterated Tuesday that he believes he still has the necessary votes to complete the Commanders’ stadium funding. The first reading of the bill passed by a 9–3 vote, but only after considerable debate and significant modifications to the original proposal, and a similar sentiment is expected this time. In this second reading of the bill, a straight majority of “yes” votes among the 13-member council, amounting to seven votes, is required for passage. 

Expected changes to the bill include establishing further clarity around specific milestone dates within the broader redevelopment of the RFK Stadium campus. 

“We can focus on the negative, that the Commanders are supposedly ne’er-do-wells, or we can focus on the positive, the reality, which is that this is a very attractive development opportunity,” Mendelson said. 

In addition to the forthcoming amendments, the second vote will include the return of Ward 8 council member Trayon White, who was previously expelled from the council following an indictment on bribery charges. White then won a special election to reclaim his seat and was sworn back into the legislative body.

The Commanders are set to contribute at least $2.7 billion toward the stadium and are responsible for all cost overruns. The team and District leaders are aiming for a 2030 opening for the new venue.

The team is also part of a fast-growing stadium development wave across the NFL. In addition to projects for the Bills and Titans that are well into active construction, teams such as the Bears, Broncos, and Browns are all actively pursuing new venues, and others, such as the Eagles, are considering ones as well.