Sports Media’s Winners (and Losers) of 2025

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1:04Eriq Gardner:Congratulations. You made the varsity, the podcast. My name is John O 'Ran and I am Puck's sports correspondent and the host of this pod. And today we return with what I like to call Puck's super friends for another year in review show. Three of my Puck colleagues will join me today to argue about who should be considered the sports business personality of 2025. If you remember, in last week's episode, we hashed out the top sports stories of the year, and today, it's all about the people. We're going to be joined by Julia Alexander, who knows more about the streaming business than just about anyone else I know.

1:42Eriq Gardner:Eric Gardner is also here. Eric is the country's best courts reporter, and I'm really hoping that he does not bring up the 85-point drubbing that I suffered during our fantasy football matchup last weekend. Then there's a great Dylan Byers. Dylan writes Puck's private email on the news business called In the Room, and he hosts, along with Julia, the great podcast, The Real Room. You're really going to like this one. But before we get to our sports media personality of the year, today is Wednesday, December 10th, and here's what I'm watching. And for me, it's all about Notre Dame and its omission from the college football playoff.

2:19Eriq Gardner:Personally, I think Notre Dame should have gotten in, but that's not why I'm interested in this story. If you listen to the reaction from the school, there's going to be some fallout from this decision. Fighting Irish athletic director Pete Pavacqua went on the Dan Patrick show Monday and put the ACC on blast. Pavacqua accused the ACC, the conference, for attacking Notre Dame while supporting Miami's inclusion in the CFP. Notre Dame, of course, is a partial member of the ACC while Miami is a full-time member. Here's what Pavac said. He said that the ACC heads on, quote, permanent damage to their relationship.

2:56Eriq Gardner:It raised a lot of eyebrows here that the conference was taking shots at us, he said. Now, look, I've known Pete for a long time. NBC hired him eight years ago to run the sports division. And here's the thing about Pete. He doesn't fly off the handle. He chooses his words carefully. Honestly, he's probably the most measured voice that I've ever covered in the business. And by measured, I mean not really quote-worthy. He's a really good guy to hang out with, but whenever we went on the record, he wouldn't want to mix things up. So when someone like Pete Bavacqua uses words like permanent damage and accuses the conference of taking shots at us, it's especially meaningful.

3:40Eriq Gardner:Now, ACC Commissioner Jim Phillips, he responded to Bavacqua's comments with a statement that called Notre Dame a valued member. And he said that the ACC never suggested that the CFP should snub Notre Dame. But here's what I know. It's never a good sign when two sides argue with each other in the medium. It certainly does suggest that this relationship has been damaged. Permanently? We'll see. But it's clearly in a really bad place right now. I mean, it's easy to see why Bavacqua is peeved. In the week before the CFP selection, the ACC pushed Miami over Notre Dame on several social posts. And according to The Athletic, ACC Network showed Miami's win over Notre Dame, get this, 13 times.

4:26Eriq Gardner:Notre Dame has been associated with the ACC for the past 11 seasons. It generally plays five or six ACC teams per season. And my sense is that we should all continue to watch this space because this is an arrangement that could undergo serious changes. But for right now, let's get to Puck's super friends, Julie Alexander, Eric Gardner, and Dylan Byers. Another roundtable with my Puck colleagues, Julie Alexander, Dylan Byers, Eric Gardner. We are doing a year-in-review here. We're going to focus on the person of the year as far as sports business is concerned. And Dylan, I want to start with you, your person of the year.

5:10yeah without question it has to be david ellison and um i think anyone who follows the the business the industry of media which julia and i talk about every week um knows just how quickly and aggressively he has moved into this space uh with an incredible amount of capital obviously and a great deal of ambition and that is has had um particular ramifications on the world of sports because by virtue of acquiring Paramount, he immediately bought a stake in the NFL. He moved very quickly to make a deal with UFC. Now he's potentially on the cusp of acquiring Warner Brothers Discovery, which could bring more sports rights into the portfolio.

5:55And this group has talked on another episode about the value of sports in the ecosystem and particularly the value of sports in both cable bundle and in streaming. He somehow has a plan to keep both of those things going at the same time for the foreseeable future. That's part of the strategy. It's not just streaming. And I think that's very meaningful to sports partners. And you look at these deals he's done, you look at how much money he paid for UFC, I think 7.7. It shows a real intention here. Again, real ambition to sort of be a player in this space. Part of the David Ellison thesis with acquiring Paramount, again, potentially WBD, is can you take all of the legacy media assets and can you roll them up and make them competitive with some of the new entrants who have also had a profound effect in the sports space?

6:57Obviously, Amazon, Netflix, YouTube. If he can do that, that is a real, that's a, that's a real meaningful player to have at the table for the Roger Goodells and the Adam Silvers of the world. You know, as, as we move towards, you know, several years down the line, of course, towards the next wave of rights negotiations. So I just think, look, part of the story of Hollywood and the contraction of Hollywood is that you've got people coming along who claim they might be a savior, claim they're going to change the game. We're all very familiar with the David Zaslav story. It doesn't always pan out the way that they hoped that would, but you look at a guy like David Ellison, he's here to play, not just for, he's not flipping houses the way that Zaslav is.

7:41He's here, he's got a long game ahead of him, and I think he's going to be a very meaningful player, not just in the Hollywood space, not just in the media space, but certainly in the sports space, in the sports media space, I think for a long time to come.

7:55Eriq Gardner:you know dylan i always hesitate to say that anybody's overspent for sports rights because in my entire career the number always seems ridiculous and then by the end of the contract it's like oh what a bargain uh they ended up getting right you remember when the nfl sold 1.1 bill 110 billion dollars where i wish it was 1.1 110 billion dollars worth of media rights deals i was like no what can get higher than that and then the nba comes along like not a year later and that looks like it's undervalued. That being said, you referenced a seven-year, $7.7 billion deal for the UFC, more than doubling, really blowing everybody else out of the water.

8:37Eriq Gardner:And every other media company is chirping in my ear about, you know, they're never going to make any money off of that. It's a way overpaid for those rights. Again, I don't know if they did. We'll find out in seven years if they did or not. Does it matter if they overpaid for those rights though? is this like certainly it's something that uh paramount and uh under ellison can afford it certainly sent a message to everybody else in the in the business of a we're open for business uh does does it matter that if they overpaid yeah well first of all complaining or trying to point out that someone overpaid for something usually is the sour grapes of the losing party who couldn't Who other couldn't pay or just made a different sort of calculation.

9:22But I guess you have to think about this. You know, saying that anyone overpaid for anything, right? Saying that Brian Roberts overpaid for the NBA, saying that, God, like Eddie Q overpaid for F1, saying that David Ellison overpaid for UFC. you could certainly make the argument that that's true on a sort of like quarterly earnings projection, right? Or looking at like how long this might take to materialize and everything that needs to go right based on present day economics. Totally. But if you, again, if you pull back and you think about what is the future media landscape look like? Amazon, YouTube, Netflix, all playing a different game, all living in an entirely different stratosphere with different business models in which the media is just a small bit of the business.

10:12It is almost just the marketing piece of their business, right? How do you gain entry into that if you are not a Silicon Valley player? There's a lot of content and there's a lot of legacy affiliation among fans and audiences built in to Hollywood. And so the strategy is, can you come along and again, can you take that and can you level that up to compete? And so if the price of doing that is a$7.7 billion deal, right? Or is potentially overpaying for Paramount, overpaying for Warner Brothers Discovery, overpaying for everything, does it make sense? Well, again, you have to look at how much capital you have.

11:04And if you're David Ellison and you're the son of Larry Ellison, I'm not suggesting that they are by any means stupid with their money. I don't think Larry Ellison got to where he is by being stupid about money. But you can afford to make certain calculations that are based off of future value where you're not so vulnerable to, again, that sort of like quarterly thinking or annual thinking.

11:31Eriq Gardner:I do find it interesting, though, that they have Jeff Schell. David Ellison has Jeff Schell, who used to be at NBC, of course, and was at Fox before that. Yeah. Big sports fan. Somebody that, in my world, understands the value of sports rights and it's consistently invested in sports rights. And so the idea that, you know, they bid on UFC and then they're going to sort of take a powder and see what else happens. I suspect, you know, baseball's rights are up in 2028. I always reference Jeff Schell as being a season ticket holder to the Dodgers, the seats right behind the dugout, in fact. So I can see where this is going to be, you know, step one of a multi-step process.

12:19Yeah, it is. It's just, it's not, look, there is one thing, again, we talked about this in the previous episode. There's one thing that everyone in this business, whether they're on the old side of it or the new side of it, seems to agree on, which is the value of sports. And again, they come at it with different calculations about value and about what it can do for their business and how meaningful it is to one sort of business model versus another business model. But we all sort of agree as media becomes more fragmented, as people are spending more time, you know, for lack of a better word, around on like TikTok or Instagram, like what are the monoculture moments?

12:58What are the things that bring people together? It's sports. It's live. And I think everyone in the game recognizes the value of that. And again, you think about, okay, well, what is fair market value for something like a UFC or for the NBA or MLB or anything like that? I think you also have to take into account what happens if you don't have that, right? What happens if you lose out on those assets? And then how do you gain entry into the future competitive landscape if you're not holding any of those assets in the portfolio? I think that's the calculation you make. I think it's why these companies tend to spend more money than I think immediately makes sense when you're just looking at the hard numbers.

13:46Eriq Gardner:Dylan, let me take a quick break. We're going to come back. Julia, I'm going to get your person of the year.

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14:56Eriq Gardner:So we're going to go from Dylan talking about sports rights and paying so much for sports rights to Julia talking about one of the most expensive sports talents that's out there. Your person of the year. I'm dying to hear you defend this one. Well, first, I'd like to commend us all on not just picking David Allison because he was also top of the list for me, too. my person of the year is Pat McAfee. I think it's impossible to talk about the current sports media landscape, the future sports media landscape, where investment in personalities is coming from, the push for companies like Disney and Fox and Netflix and others into kind of the sports-adjacent media podcasting space without talking about Pat McAfee.

15:51Eriq Gardner:so so talk to me in terms of who pat mcafee is is he a tv star is he a youtube star does it even matter what he is that's the exact right question it doesn't matter pat mcafee who hosts a three hour ish as he will tell you live stream on youtube with the first two hours also available on ESPN is, in my opinion, the future of what sports media looks like from a personality standpoint. He is a former NFL player who's better known for taking his shirt off and singing school cheers and diving into pools at the University of Miami. He's better known for the gimmicks he brings to college game day with the 30-yard kick for students to win money.

16:40he's better known for his drama than he is for anything else and all of this can be spun as a negative right when it was the aaron rogers covid anti-vax moment a few years ago it was a negative it was this idea of people asking why should pat mcafee have a platform on espn why is he worth the i think 85 million correct me if i'm wrong john dollars that uh the 85 million dollars that ESPN was giving him. Why is he the face of College Game Day? And then you look at the results, right? The ratings on College Game Day are up. His YouTube channel is incredibly successful. He has a built-in audience that follows him from platform to platform.

17:22And the thing about Pat McAfee that I think is most important this year is that this was also the year that everyone decided video podcasts were the future of television. I mean, case in point, right? Like this idea that all of these different networks were looking at the authentic relationship that podcasters and live stream hosts had with audiences that who were never going to sign up for cable, but who they were very, very much trying to corral into being paying subscribers to their own platforms. You can't really do that with content alone. Sports has the advantage of live sports and ESPN obviously needs live sports.

18:01But if you're looking at that type of shoulder their programming, it's less so the five, six guys around a desk, right? You have a Stephen A. Smith, you have a Greenberg, but for the most part, what people really want is to build a community around their favorite superstar. And so if you watch a Pat McAfee live stream, as I do almost every single day in this office, the comments are active. He's responding to them. There are inside jokes that feel like the perfect bridge between television of yesteryear and the YouTube creator sphere of tomorrow. And I think he is the example that everyone is chasing, including Fox with their deal with Dave Portnoy of Barstool to a far less successful extent.

18:42But he really feels like the outstanding example of what sports media will look like. And I think it's very difficult to replicate. Can I, John, can I just jump on something Julia was saying there? The other thing about Pat McAfee, and Julia and I talk about this all the time, Pat McAfee now is shorthand for the entire a change that's happening across the media industry, which we love to talk about here at Puck, which is about that the talent is the market unit, right? And you build franchises around the talent. And just to see legacy media players like ESPN and Fox understand, and we're going to see this happen in cable news too.

19:22We're going to see it happen at CNN and MSNBC. Just understand that these digital digitally native you know youtube creators creators on any social media platform and saying um these these people are have figured out what the audience likes and and it says they get to dictate the terms of the deal but we want a piece of it and so even if that means licensing the content and letting them do whatever they want to do and letting them get away with things that ESPN wouldn't let its own talent get away with. That is the game that they have to play. And that is indicative of a change that is going to happen just across the media industry, more broadly speaking.

20:08And so, Julia, that's exactly right. McAfee is the sort of like the first mover in a space that is really redefining how these legacy networks, whether it's news sports what have you approach talent and and gain audiences and maintain a stake despite the fact that their industry is in decline all right two questions replicating it two questions actually first for you Dylan

20:39Eriq Gardner:for is this unique to sports like you know the news business better than anybody I know, where can we see a Pat McAfee of the news business? Does that exist right now? Well, you're already seeing ways in which, if you look at the New York Times, you're seeing ways in which they've gone in and talked, sort of at The Athletic, brought in YouTube creators and are sort of, they're sort of dipping their toe in the water there. I know that those conversations are happening in the cable news space. I know that if you look at businesses like, anything from, like, let's take MSNBC, for example, you talk about a punch bowl, which covers Congress day in and day out, you talk about more sort of opinion, or analytical companies like Pod Save America, or the Bulwark.

21:37Are there conversations happening that say, Well, look, no one is watching MSNBC at 1 p.m. or 2 p.m. on a Tuesday afternoon. Could we conceivably do a McAfee-style deal where we license the video feed and bring that in? I mean, I don't want to break the fourth wall here, John, but you're on NESN right now, right? Like someone decided that the work you are doing, you are at the top of your game in covering the business of sports. and that is valuable to an NESN. You're going to see that happen across the industry because the audience and the audience engagement is more meaningful and because the economics, frankly, are just better than that sort of old school model of hiring a bunch of people, trying to build them up, putting a ton of makeup on them, doing a heavily produced round table talk where no one says anything of interest because all the people who have something interesting to say have gone out and joined the pucks or the sub stacks of the world.

22:43Eriq Gardner:I feel like I have to give a shout out to Sportsnet Pittsburgh as well as Nesson. Yes. The other, Julia, McAfee doesn't exist in a vacuum. I mean, you mentioned Dave Portnoy. In sports, other people that have gigantic contracts like Stephen A. Smith, he seems different than from McAfee to me. or a Scott Dan Pelt or somebody who else is in sports that is similar to what McAfee does? In sports specifically, I don't think there is anyone who can do what McAfee does. And I'll give you a good example of how that translates into a more old school product for a new school audience. Look at what McAfee does on college game day.

23:29He is standing up on chairs. He is singing songs. He is doing he is he finds a way to put a smile on people's faces who are normally kind of just standing there. And, you know, they're excited because they're college kids and they're drinking and they're excited for what the game is going to happen. But they feel like McAfee is one of them. Doesn't take much. And I think if you look at the difference between him and Portnoy, Portnoy leans into being the heel. He leans into being the guy that people watch, but they don't necessarily want to hang out with. McAfee's big advantage, which he has learned from some of the most popular creators, is that he wants is that athletes want to hang out with them.

24:08Coaches want to hang out with them. But college kids want to hang out with them. And the ratings on college game day on the linear side are through the roof. The ratings on the linear side for McAfee on ESPN are increasing. So there is, to Dylan's point, a linear audience who's tuning in. It's not just the YouTube audience. But I think the more important thing that McAfee is doing is increasing the value of these licensing deals to other platforms. And so if you look at what Bill Simmons is doing with Netflix, which is bringing some of the Ringer shows over, if you look at the reported Gary Linkler, I always get his last name wrong, deal with the Rest is Soccer, where he is reportedly going to have a daily kind of show during the World Cup on Netflix.

24:49they're trying to find ways into these creator-athlete-adjacent spaces that they think will bring an authenticity for fans who don't necessarily just want to watch SportsCenter. And if you look at what Stephen A. Smith is doing, he's going in the opposite direction, where Stephen A. Smith is part of his contract. Yes, he's getting a report at, I believe, $100 million from ESPN over the next several years to be still the face of that network. But he also is focusing on his YouTube channel, where he's talking more about politics, and he's leaning into the Stephen A. Smith brand. And I think to Dylan's point, the biggest lesson we have in media and sports media is just one of the largest parts of media as a whole is this idea that talent is synonymous with brand.

25:31And the brand of talent goes far beyond what it used to be. It's no longer just being known for a show or a network. And so I think that's the lesson for a lot of these other networks trying to compete with McAfee is that they need to find someone who can both encompass the brand but can also be a standout star on their own.

25:51Eriq Gardner:I'm going to take one more quick break. We're going to come back. Eric, we're going to get your person of the year, sports business-wise. A great choice, in my opinion. We'll be right back.

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