sports

The deal includes football, men’s and women’s basketball, as well as Olympic sports through 2032.

Marie Donoghue, who parlayed a stint at ESPN into a job helping Amazon break into the U.S. sports-media business, is leaving the company, according to a person familiar with the matter. Amazon declined to comment.

The YES Network and MSG Networks have formed a streaming joint venture that could one day lead to New York Yankees and New York Knicks games being housed on a single service. Gotham Advanced Media and Entertainment, or GAME, is the new 50-50 venture, which is aiming for technical and operational synergies. Like many players in the cash-intensive direct-to-consumer business, the two sports entities have found streaming to be a costly proposition.

The NCAA and ESPN today announced a $920 million, eight-year agreement that will give the cable network exclusive rights to 40 championships, including the Division I women’s basketball tournament, an event growing in popularity that the association has been accused of undervaluing in the past. Pictured: Iowa guard Caitlin Clark (r) celebrates in front of Michigan State guard Moira Joiner after her three-point basket won the game on Jan. 2. (Charlie Neibergall/AP)

In addition to major across-the-board viewership growth during the NFL season, Amazon Prime Video says it had major gains among younger and female viewers in its second year of the Thursday Night Football franchise. Younger 18-34 viewers averaged 2.4 million per game in 2023 — up 14% over a year ago versus its first year Prime Video airing (2.11 million) and 26% higher than the total that Fox/NFL Network earned in 2021 (1.9 million). For its entire 13-game schedule, Nielsen-measured TNF viewership was up 24% to 11.86 million viewers versus a year ago.

Boosted by a full season of games on ABC, rising viewing on Prime Video Thursday Night Football, and three big extra Christmas Day games, NFL’s average regular-season game is up 10% to 17.9 million Nielsen-measured viewers through 16 weeks of the season. ABC, which added a full season of Monday Night Football games simulcast with ESPN, witnessed a massive boost of 33% to average 17.1 million. Prime Video’s TNF package of games is 25% higher versus a year ago to 11.8 million viewers.

Dwayne Johnson and Dany Garcia on Sunday unveiled plans for the United Football League, the new spring pro football league born from the merger of the XFL and USFL. During an appearance Sunday morning on Fox’s NFL on Fox, the pair said the UFL‘s debut season will begin March 30, 2024, with a game between the Arlington Renegades and Birmingham Stallions, the previous champions from each league. More details are expected soon regarding teams and markets. A promo logo suggests games will be played on ABC, ESPN, Fox and FS1.

With the 10th edition of the College Football Playoff set to cap off a high-rated season starting on New Year’s Day, Disney says advertising inventory is nearly sold out for the semifinals and championship. The level of buy-in is a welcome development for Disney as a challenging 2023 winds to a close. This season’s viewership surge precedes the expansion of the CFP field and negotiations for new media rights deal

The NBA on Wednesday approved Cuban’s sale of a controlling interest in the Mavericks to the Adelson and Dumont families, who run Las Vegas Sands Corp. The deal was approved just shy of a month since Miriam Adelson and Sivan and Patrick Dumont announced their intention to buy the club. The purchase is in the valuation range of $3.5 billion.

The Dec. 23 contest, the first to be exclusively on Peacock, will be commercial free. NBCUniversal says there will be a 40% reduction in the standard ad time for an NFL game that should result in at least 12 additional minutes of game-related content.

The agreement, which was contained in a court filing made Wednesday, is subject to court approval. Diamond Sports has been in Chapter 11 bankruptcy proceedings in the Southern District of Texas since it filed for protection in March. The company said in a financial filing last year that it had debt of $8.67 billion.

Puck is stepping into the sports arena. The buzzy digital subscription publication that offers readers an inside look into the media, technology and politics sectors — and the ego-obsessed titans who lead them — told CNN on Monday it had hired veteran journalist John Ourand to lead a new sports vertical, marking the outlet’s first foray into the sprawling and lucrative business powering leagues and athletes.

Amazon is in talks to invest in the biggest regional-sports programmer, a move that would advance the e-commerce giant’s aggressive push into sports content as it takes on streaming rivals like Disney and Netflix. If an agreement is reached, Amazon’s Prime Video platform would eventually become the streaming home for Diamond’s games.

Signaling a major thaw in the icy relationship between Major League Baseball and bankrupt regional sports networks operator Diamond Sports Group, lawyers for the league on Friday said they’d agreed on a framework through mediation to keep 11 MLB clubs on Bally Sports channels through the 2024 season.

The monthly sports magazine helmed by Bryant Gumbel is calling it quits in its 29th year. The final, 90-minute episode premieres Tuesday at 10 p.m. ET. Gumbel is 75, at the end of a contract, and HBO is now controlled by a company, Warner Bros. Discovery, on the hunt for cost savings. While the show’s exit makes sense, the fear is that a form of sports journalism is leaving for good, too.

TVNewsCheck Editor at Large Harry Jessell and Editor Michael Depp look back over an eventful year in broadcast business news and ahead to the steepest challenges it will confront in 2024. A full transcript of the conversation is included. [Ed. note: Jessell erroneously noted Nexstar stock took a 32% hit, when it actually lost 32 points. Since this episode was recorded, its stock rebounded to 155 yesterday.]

In the days leading up to the Dodgers’ historic $700 million signing of Shohei Ohtani, baseball’s hot stove season had been in the grips of a cold snap, as uncertainty over the future of the RSN model seemed to keep GMs in a state of suspended animation. As it happens, Ohtani’s blockbuster payday wouldn’t have been possible without the club’s wildly lucrative local-TV business, an irony that only serves to accentuate the magnitude of the chasm separating the haves from the have-nots. (Ashley Landis/AP)

A handful of New Orleans Pelicans games could be coming to over-the-air television this season. There are still significant technical hurdles to overcome before a deal can come to fruition. Bally Sports’ financial issues also threaten to alter these plans. Any deal is unlikely to be finalized until mid- to late December. Until that happens, the Pelicans will not be able to decide which of their 10 games will be shown on Gray Television’s WVUE.

In this new role, Havens will provide strategic and operational leadership for the MLB team and will oversee the senior leadership team for all front office functions save for baseball operations. He will report to Steve Cohen, Mets owner, chairman and CEO.

He will oversee the company’s strategy to make Tennis Channel’s television network available directly to customers via a new streaming platform, planned for 2024.

Amazon Prime Video plans to carry the first “Black Friday” game later this week, serving Americans touchdowns and online shopping as an alternative to battling deal-seekers at the mall. The technology giant plans to load up the game with sales promotions in a bid to turn the Friday after Thanksgiving into a major digital shopping day.

New golf league TGL, backed by golfers Tiger Woods and Rory McIlroy, said it will postpone the start of its inaugural season by a year after the dome it will play in collapsed last week. The TGL was planning to tee off Jan. 9. Now its first season won’t start till early 2025, the league said. ESPN acquired rights to televise TGL play.