Stadium News
Breaking News from the Bench to the Bleachers
Early indications suggest Disney’s lofty Super Bowl advertising expectations might have hit a speed bump. The company has reportedly sold more than 10 30-second Super Bowl commercials for around $9 million a piece, per Brian Steinberg in Variety. At $9 million per, the price falls about a million short of Disney’s initial ambitions to attract…
David Newton never made it to law school. The ESPN Panthers beat reporter announced Thursday that he is retiring after 20 years with the network and 45 years in the business, saying he will wake up from hip replacement surgery ready to start a new chapter. The plan coming out of Wofford College in 1981…
After introducing federal legislation last month to ensure fans are guaranteed a free, live option to watch broadcasts of professional sports teams within their home state, Senator Tammy Baldwin (D-WI) is coming after the NFL for its recent scheduling practices. On Wednesday, Sen. Baldwin issued a statement regarding the NFL’s decision to schedule her hometown…
There is apparently a simple explanation for why Sean McVay looked like he was attending a funeral at his own draft pick’s press conference. Chris Simms revealed on Westwood One Sports’ You Better You Bet that McVay told him the mood at the podium had nothing to do with Ty Simpson. The Rams head coach…
For the first time ever, FIFA is putting on a Super Bowl-style halftime show for the World Cup Final. On Thursday, we learned which global icons would star in the performance. The show, curated by Coldplay frontman Chris Martin, will be headlined by the Queen of Pop, Madonna, Shakira, who recently released this summer’s World…
Lane Kiffin may not have been “calculated” when speaking about the challenges of recruiting Black players to Ole Miss, but Tim Brando thinks he was just being stupid. It’s been nearly six months since Kiffin ditched Ole Miss for LSU. But Kiffin’s prolonged and ugly divorce from Ole Miss gained a new chapter this week…
As the Worldwide Leader in Sports, ESPN has the power to supercharge any sports league it decides to put on its airwaves. Unfortunately for mixed martial arts promotion PFL (Professional Fighters League), ESPN has made it an afterthought. PFL CEO John Martin recently appeared on veteran MMA journalist Ariel Helwani’s podcast and ripped the network…
For decades, NFL Thanksgiving meant two things: the Lions hosted somebody in the early afternoon, the Cowboys hosted somebody around dusk, and if you were still upright by the time the night game kicked off, that was a bonus. It was reliable in the way that family recipes are reliable — not because anyone sat…
If anyone has anything bad to say about Mike Vrabel or Dianna Russini, Michael Irvin wants them to check their own self-righteousness first. Irvin joined a recent episode of The Ariel Helwani Show where he discussed the Cowboys, Jerry Jones, Bill Belichick, and Mike Vrabel among other topics. And during the interview, Irvin was asked…
Versant is a unique company in the sense that it has the ethos of a scrappy upstart, but it derives most of its revenue from legacy cable networks with almost no growth prospects. It’s why the company has been so focused on making acquisitions outside of linear television, and growing the non-TV assets it already…
Not much has gone right for the Athletics in recent years, both on the diamond and in the broadcast booth. But things are taking a turn for the better in 2026. The A’s currently sit atop the AL West at 22-20 after failing to eclipse .500 in every season since 2021. And while hard feelings…
Earlier this week, longtime sports reporter Jemele Hill clashed with WNBA fans online over her criticism of the league’s locker-room access policy. Hill joined ESPN NFL reporter Ben Baby (who is also a journalism professor at SMU) in calling out the WNBA for keeping reporters out of locker rooms and significantly restricting media access compared…
The Detroit Pistons are taking their local broadcasts over-the-air. The franchise, which was one of 13 NBA teams under contract with Main Street Sports Group, owner of the now-defunct FanDuel Sports Networks, has officially inked a deal with Scripps Sports to broadcast games on local over-the-air affiliate WMYD TV20 Detroit in the Detroit market. Scripps…
More details are emerging about how Duke pulled off its landmark deal with Amazon, with ACC commissioner Jim Phillips shedding new light on the arrangement Wednesday. “ESPN was in every one of the conversations,” Phillips said. “To Duke’s credit, they came up with something creative and brought it to ESPN and us. Where it finished…
Patrick O’Neal is out after 13 years with the Angels. The team released a statement on Wednesday confirming his departure from the broadcast team. “The Angels organization would like to thank Patrick O’Neal for his 13 years of dedication to the Angels broadcast team,” the statement read. “He brought a sense of pride to each…
The NFL this week announced a nine-game slate of international games for the 2026 season, featuring games from Melbourne to Munich, and JJ Watt is sounding the alarm. The CBS NFL analyst took to social media on Wednesday to call out what he sees as an excessive tilt toward overseas games, writing “international game slate…
We officially know what Netflix’s newly expanded NFL package will look like this upcoming season and beyond. The streamer formally announced on Wednesday that it would be adding three games to its NFL slate this season on top of its usual Christmas Day doubleheader, and has extended a media rights deal with the NFL through…
Paul Pierce doesn’t like LeBron James, and he doesn’t like one of LeBron’s biggest media supporters in Nick Wright either. Wright joined Chris Canty and Maggie Gray this week in calling professional athletes out for bringing their kids to press conferences. This comes on the heels of Joel Embiid being criticized for having his son…
Fox and iHeartMedia have come together to offer fans an audio option for consuming this summer’s World Cup. The companies announced on Wednesday that Fox Sports will provide audio from the network’s television commentary for all 104 matches in the upcoming FIFA World Cup to iHeartMedia for distribution across the audio conglomerate’s platforms. Match commentary…
The CW will continue to carry ACC football and men’s and women’s basketball for the foreseeable future. The Nexstar-owned network announced on Wednesday that it has reached a sublicense agreement with ESPN for ACC programming through the 2030-31 season. The deal will see The CW carry 14 regular-season football games, 30 men’s basketball games, and…
ESPN does not want the College Football Playoff to go beyond 16 teams, according to ACC commissioner Jim Phillips, who confirmed Wednesday that the Worldwide Leader has been making its preferred playoff size known directly to conference commissioners. “ESPN has been pretty clear with all of us that they’d like it to stay at 12,…
LeBron James deserves credit for a lot of things, but turning the Los Angeles Lakers into a national brand isn’t one of them. During Tuesday’s Nightcap, Shannon Sharpe took note of the Lakers basically handing the keys to Luka Dončić by letting him pick and choose who he wants to play with. Sharpe took note…
Players keep wasting ABS challenges, and Gary Cohen is tired of it. The challenge system only works when teams treat it as a resource, not a reflex, and so far in 2026, too many players have been doing the latter. The Mets 10-2 win over the Tigers on Tuesday was the latest example, and the…
Violence is never the answer, but sometimes it is, and Reggie Miller thinks Victor Wembanyama throwing an elbow at the throat of Naz Reid was one of those times. Wembanyama was ejected from Game 4 of the Western Conference Semifinals between the San Antonio Spurs and Minnesota Timberwolves Sunday night for the vicious elbow. But…
