Tonight in Unpacks: ESPN is sacrificing NBA regular-season games to boost its offerings for international and digital channels in its upcoming media deal with the league, sources tell SBJ’s Mollie Cahillane.
Also tonight:
- NBA Summer League likely to benefit with Lakers’ Bronny James in Vegas
- Upper Deck takes over Sphere exterior at NHL Draft
- ACCset to welcome new members amid swirling questions about its future
- Racing prodigy Connor Zilisch eyes full-time NASCAR Xfinity ride in '25
Listen to SBJ's most popular podcast, Morning Buzzcast, where SBJ’s Abe Madkourwraps up the week with the possible long-term implications of the “Sunday Ticket” ruling, the strength of the Atlanta sports scene, the underserved market for licensed merchandise for women’s sports and more.
ESPN’s impending media rights deal with the NBA will include an increased international and digital package timed perfectly with the network’s direct-to-consumer flagship property that is set to launch in 2025, sources close to negotiations told SBJ's Mollie Cahillane on Friday.
Those sources confirmed that for ESPN to secure those international and digital rights, the company needed to concede some regular-season games once the new media rights deal begins in the 2025-26 season. That means Disney will broadcast fewer regular-season matchups in the next deal so the NBA can secure its other two packages with NBCUniversal and Amazon. However, ESPN reportedly does not view the concession as “really meaningful.” ESPN aired 77 games on the cable network during the 2023-24 regular season (including nine as part of the In-Season Tournament). ABC aired 24 regular-season games (only one of those was part of the IST).
The NBA rights deal is expected to close in the next few weeks for $76 billion, as league lawyers continue to finalize details. The deal would see ESPN pay a reported $2.6B annually for the league’s “A” package, NBC pay approximately $2.5B for a second package, and Amazon pay a reported $1.8B for a third package. Other sources close to the negotiations told SBJ at the NBA Finals that the NBA prefers not to do a fourth package -- not wanting to water down NBC’s and Amazon’s bids -- which would leave incumbent Warner Bros. Discovery out of the mix. WBD believes it can match certain parts of either the NBC or Amazon bids, but sources said the NBA disputes that.
Unlike WBD, ESPN was able to reach a handshake deal with the NBA during its exclusive negotiating window with the league from mid-March through mid-April. Sources confirmed that Disney’s handshake deal with the NBA has long been firmed up, with no further negotiations taking place over the last month.
ESPN will have fewer regular-season NBA games under its upcoming media deal.GETTY IMAGES
Minutes after LeBron James Jr. -- aka Bronny -- joined his father on the Lakers on Thursday, ESPN promoted its prime-time July 12 broadcast of the Lakers-Rockets game at the NBA2K25 Summer League, reports SBJ's Tom Friend. In other words, Las Vegas now has its own version of Caitlin Clark.
People inside and out of the NBA already suspect that Bronny James will impact attendance significantly at the Thomas and Mack Center and Cox Pavilion for next month’s summer league, similar to Victor Wembanyama’s July debut a year ago. But the business ramifications of the first ever father-son tandem in NBA history is also likely to extend to the G League as well, where Bronny is expected to draw crowds as a probable member of the South Bay Lakers.
“[Bronny’s] G league games will be packed early on, for sure,” said Doc Rivers, who was the first in the NBA to coach his own son, Austin, from 2014 to 2018 with the Clippers. “And if he plays well, then he'll end up playing on the big league [Lakers]. It'll be a story that keeps coming up, because there's different benchmarks. Summer League, that's going to be a story -- how well is he playing in that? Training camp, there's another story because now LeBron's in training camp with his son. [At the] beginning of the year, is he going to play on the G League team? That's going to be a story. Or if he's not on the G league team and on the big team, that's a story.”
Summer League will bring that first barrage of attention, as courtside tickets for Bronny’s July 12 debut are already being listed for as high as $959. ESPN is already coming off its second-best Summer League viewership on record last summer, fueled by Wembanyama’s debut efforts. Games last summer across ESPN, ESPN2 and ESPNU averaged 310,000 viewers from Las Vegas. That’s behind only 2017, when those same networks averaged 322,000 viewers (due in large part to Lonzo Ball’s father, LaVar, who was making a lot of noise around the league with his Big Baller Brand).
NHL Draft title sponsor Upper Deck is using its moment in the Sphere spotlight to promote its Young Guns collection of rookie cards, reports SBJ's Alex Silverman, as its 2024-25 release marks the line's 30th year. This year is also the trading card company's third as the event’s title sponsor.
Upper Deck collaborated with Sphere Studios, the venue’s in-house content team, to create custom creative that will be displayed today on the exterior of Sphere, known as the “exosphere.” The content showcases popular rookie cards featuring top NHL players and highlights the newly released limited-edition Connor Bedard Young Guns achievement cards available exclusively on the company’s digital platform, Upper Deck e-Pack.
In addition to its exosphere activation, Upper Deck will be distributing a commemorative nine-card sheet to attendees featuring past top NHL draft picks. It will also have a footprint where fans can create their own personalized trading card, play interactive games and purchase trading card products.
In other draft activations, the NHL, NHLPA, and AstraZeneca are collaborating by celebrating 9-year-old Golden Knights fan Izzy Woodward prior to Round 1 as a “Hockey Fights Cancer Draft Hero.”
Upper Deck tested its Sphere activation on Thursday for tonight's NHL Draft
The ACC’s additions of Cal, Stanford and SMU offer the league the cachet to solidify its spot at No. 3 in the conference pecking order behind the SEC and Big Ten. That new blood is being brought into the family, however, doesn’t solve all ills. Swirling realignment questions and pending litigation make projecting the stability of the 71-year-old conference an increasingly stiff task.
“We live in a changing environment,” Phillips said. “Nothing surprises me anymore. It just doesn’t. And I’m really pleased that we were able to add these three schools. They’re going to make the league better, and the league is going to make those three schools better as well.”
Celebrations will proceed as planned next week and on through the next month, but uncertainty looms, as SBJ's Ben Portnoy reports in this Early Access look at next week's magazine.
Racing prodigy Connor Zilisch is in discussions to compete full-time next year in the NASCAR Xfinity Series for Dale Earnhardt Jr.’s team, sources tell SBJ's Adam Stern, as Zilisch rapidly climbs the motorsports ladder toward the premier Cup Series.
The 17-year-old was signed in January by Trackhouse Racing, which is trying to assert itself as the future of NASCAR in part by amassing driving talent. Zilisch isn’t competing full time this year in one of NASCAR’s three national series because a driver must be 18 to do so, but he will make his Xfinity Series debut in September at Watkins Glen after he turns 18 in July, driving for Earnhardt’s JR Motorsports.
In other NASCAR news, Stern reports that Snapchat will sponsor the No. 43 Chevy driven byRyan Ellis in next week’s racing action around the streets of Chicago to promote its “Less Social Media, More Snapchat” campaign with a special paint scheme.
There’s plenty of synergy this week between the LPGA and PGA Tour, reports SBJ's Josh Carpenter, with both tours’ main events taking place about two hours apart in Michigan.
The Rocket Mortgage Classic and Dow Championship will both air on CBS on Sunday, marking the first time a PGA Tour and LPGA event share the same state, same week and same weekend broadcast partner. Both tournaments also have players competing this week via exemptions from winning the John Shippen Invitational, which has a men’s and women’s tournament. The event was created in 2021 to honor John Shippen Jr., the first Black golf professional in the U.S.
The Dow Championship underwent a significant overhaul from 2023 to this week’s event. In its fifth year, it got a new name, moving on from the Dow Great Lakes Bay Invitational, a new date on the calendar, a mascot for the first time and a new trophy by Tiffany & Co. The new date this year also puts the Dow the week after the KPMG Women’s PGA Championship, as opposed to last year when it was contested in July, the week before another major, the Amundi Evian Championship in France.
The NFL was knocked on its heels Thursday by a California federal jury’s damning verdict in the antitrust lawsuit over the “Sunday Ticket” out-of-market games package. The verdict -- sure to be appealed -- calls for the league to pay nearly $4.8 billion in damages, which could be tripled under antitrust law to $14.4 billion. Up next is a hearing on July 31, where the NFL will likely argue the judgment is excessive and that Judge Philip Gutierrez should set aside the ruling as a matter of law, reports SBJ's Ben Fischer.
This week's SBJ Football newsletter also covers:
- Why do NFL stadium subsidies keep on rolling?
- On Location creates dedicated NFL team, led by Deanna Forgione Carey
- It was a tale of two directions for NHL and NBA postseason viewership this spring, as SBJ's Austin Karp reports in next week's magazine. The Stanley Cup Playoffs across ABC, ESPN, ESPN2, TNT, TBS and truTV averaged 1.54 million viewers -- second all-time behind only the 1996 postseason across Fox and ESPN networks. Meanwhile, the NBA Playoffs were down 12% this year across ABC, ESPN, TNT, truTV and NBA TV compared to 2023.
- The ATP Tour approved the use of in-competition wearable devices from Catapult and STATSports across matches on the Tour and Challenger levels, writes SBJ's Rob Schaefer.
- As Peloton struggles to right its financial ship, it lost three of its most popular instructors: Kristin McGee, Kendall Toole, and Ross Rayburn. As New York magazine writes, this "signaled that Peloton is entering a new, austere era as it is increasingly desperate for cash."
