If NFL, ESPN deal is done soon, it will have an immediate impact on how fans consume the most popular sport in the US

Boston Globe

2 days ago

Per CNBC, the league is expected to take a 10 percent stake in Disney-owned ESPN, while ESPN would have ownership of NFL Network — including its seven live games per season — and Red Zone. Some other NFL Media properties also may be part of the package, though NFL Films is not expected to be one.
The benefits for ESPN are obvious and enormous. ESPN is launching a much-anticipated standalone app in the fall, with the hopes it will revive the network's pre-streaming status as 'The Worldwide Leader in Sports.' Having more NFL content will be nothing short of a gold mine for the direct-to-consumer app, which will cost $29.99 per month. And with the NFL holding a stake in ESPN, it essentially makes the network, as Puck's
John Ourand
put it, 'a forever partner' with the league, and legitimate security when broadcast and streaming rights are up for bid again.
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The benefits for the NFL? The league has been looking for years to find a way to offload or share its in-house media properties, and there's no better partner than ESPN and its parent company, Disney. From a journalistic standpoint, it's fair to wonder whether the NFL believes there is a side benefit to the deal — the possibility of limiting certain critical reporting on the league, which ESPN has done exceptionally well.
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How this partnership would fully affect you and me won't be totally clear until the deal is complete and the parameters are revealed. But the baseline is this:
Much of what you currently enjoy watching on the NFL Network — which will still exist in 24/7 form — will be under the purview of ESPN.
And you're probably going to have to pony up for one more pricey streaming service if you want to keep watching all of it.
This really is fake news
One of the many, many, many scourges of social media — particularly the swamplands of Facebook — is AI-generated content. The vast majority of posts about a pop-culture or sports topic or personality is AI-generated at this point. Some of it seems real. All of it is trash.
A more recent trend is phony but believable stories about an athlete doing an extremely good deed. The Sports Hub's
Scott Zolak
got duped by one recently, passing along on his afternoon show that Patriots quarterback
Drake Maye
and his wife donated all of the gifts from their recent wedding to local homeless shelters and children's charities. It was the kind of story you want to believe, and plausible to some degree. It also wasn't true. It was a lie concocted and spread by a social media content farm.
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Zolak isn't alone. On Thursday, I noticed a longtime prominent NBA media member share a post on the social media platform Threads that Lions quarterback
Jared Goff
donated — let's get this concoction right — 'his entire $15.9 million bonus and sponsorship earns to a homeless shelter in Detroit to help fund 150 units [of] housing with 300 shelter beds.' That was followed by a fake Goff quote about seeing homelessness firsthand growing up.
Listen, if actual media people can't spot a phony story, it's understandable — if disheartening beyond belief — why so much of this sludge is treated as truth by so many. A word of advice: if a story that seems too good to be true (or, on the opposite end, too scandalous), it probably is. Always check to make sure it is something that has been initially reported by a credible journalist. Preferably with a link to an actual story. Please don't tell me that's too much to ask.
Boring or a booming British?
Reader Pete G. reached out this week to ask whether
Scottie Scheffler's
systematic dominance on the PGA Tour, combined with a nature that is
somewhat
less charismatic than
Tiger Woods's
in his heyday, has led to a decrease in viewership in the anti-climactic final rounds.
'Watching the 4th round [of the British Open] was so boring and uninteresting,' he wrote. 'He is annoyingly steady and he never (ok...rarely) gives up a lead when he is in the driver's seat.'
All true. But golf viewers seem to be digging it, at least according to the viewership numbers from Sunday's final round on NBC. Nielsen reported 4.1 million viewers for the fourth round, which was up 21 percent from the final round of
Xander Schauffele's
victory a year ago. Even without much suspense — Scheffler finished at 17 under par to win by four strokes — golf fans stuck around to watch him complete his fourth major victory and second this year.
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McAfee apologizes — five months later
Sentient monster truck
Pat McAfee
apologized Wednesday on his eponymous ESPN show to a female Ole Miss student, a mere
five months
after carelessly amplifying a false rumor that sent her life into chaos. McAfee being McAfee, he did it in the most self-aggrandizing way possible, including deploying the phrase/shield, 'As a girl dad,'' which is almost always followed by an apology for some behavior that humiliated a woman. 'Girl dads' fear lawsuits too, I'd imagine.
"As a Girl Dad, I was very thankful for the opportunity to let Mr. Cornett know that I was wildly regretful for the part that our show played in his daughter, Mary Kate's, pain." - Pat McAfee apologizing for sharing a false rumor about an 18-year-old Ole Miss student on his show.
— Awful Announcing (@awfulannouncing)
Chad Finn can be reached at