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Welcome back to The Varsity. I’m John Ourand, monitoring the sports
media business from my all-weather BarcaLounger on Bethany Beach this week.
Like many of you, my timeline has been consumed by the Dave Portnoy–Ohio State controversy. In a nutshell, the Michigan alum alleged that the university “banned” him from coming into its football stadium, affectionately known as “The Horseshoe,” for Fox’s season-opening
broadcast. Ohio State, meanwhile, is saying that it didn’t ban anybody, adding that it was Fox’s decision to keep Portnoy out. Of course, this is exactly why Fox hired Portnoy for its Big Noon Kickoff pregame show. At the very least, the pre–Labor Day drama will remind viewers there’s another option beyond Lee Corso’s final College GameDay
broadcast, which will also air from Columbus ahead of the big Texas-OSU game.
In today’s issue, Julia Alexander highlights the emergence of a new type of rights deal, wherein influencers are picking up nonexclusive rights for their YouTube channels—such as a recent Bundesliga package. Sure, this isn’t going to replace the billions that traditional media companies pay for rights, but it’s illustrative of how leagues are experimenting with ways to
reach new fans. As always, Julia’s stories are only available to Puck’s Inner Circle members, so click here to upgrade.
Take it away, Julia… |
Stat of the
Week: $692.11
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Would you spend almost $700 to join a press conference for your favorite college football team? The
University of Oklahoma is betting that someone out there will answer in the affirmative. The fee will be different for each game, but the price tag for attending the presser after the Sooners game against Michigan on September 6 will run $692.11—but only $575 for the one following the Auburn game. A bargain!
Alas, these diehards will not be allowed to ask a question. Instead, they’ll simply get to “hear O.U. coaches and players address reporters moments after the
final whistle” and “watch the story take shape through the questions, the insights, and the atmosphere that set the headlines,” according to the university’s promotion. Everyone spends money on stupid things, but there has got to be a better way to spend $700 than cosplaying as a junior beat reporter for The Oklahoman. |
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- ESPN’s MLB.TV endgame: We’re starting to get a clear picture of ESPN’s strategy for the next decade, thanks to the launch of its all-in-one app and the ways Jimmy Pitaro is choosing to spend his cash. As John noted yesterday, ESPN is preparing to sign a deal with MLB that will bring
MLB.TV’s streaming service to ESPN customers. If enough people bite, ESPN will likely follow in the footsteps of Amazon and Apple by taking a cut of sign-up fees and a percentage of ad inventory. It would be a bold move, theoretically increasing both game inventory and streaming revenue.
Of course, it’s unclear how much ESPN would actually take—or if the streamer will take anything at all once the deal is finished—but these aggregation benefits are part of the reason why companies like
Amazon, YouTube, Roku, and now ESPN are eager to host niche streaming platforms. After all, the user base for MLB’s streaming service is up 27 percent this year compared to 2024, according to the league—and with the R.S.N.s flailing and more audiences moving toward streaming, this may help ESPN get a larger slice of baseball’s audience for a reported $550 million fee each year over three years… which is what it was already paying. - Twitch’s sports
moment?: These days, YouTube is the platform du jour, podcasters are dominating headlines, and livestreams are an essential part of the media landscape… headlines that could have been ripped from 2017. Indeed, I had digital déjà vu reading that former ESPN anchors Stan Verrett and Neil Everett were launching a twice-weekly sports show on Twitch, as first reported by some guy named Andrew Marchand.
Although typically known for its gaming content, Twitch does have a sports hub, which includes live coverage of niche sports, like poker tournaments, as well as commentary from digital-first analysts on every sport under the sun.
None of this is exactly revolutionary: TBPN, the livestreamed tech industry talk show, has seen explosive growth on X. But the Verrett–Everett show might represent a new path forward for TV anchors who are about to get chopped at the big networks, or leave
on their own accord, even if it doesn’t reach the heights the duo are presumably hoping for. Without in-house marketing or a full-blown production crew—not to mention a guaranteed audience, which Twitch can’t necessarily provide—the chance of achieving sustained success is about as likely as my Saints making it to the Super Bowl. - Premier League’s betting problem: As of now, all signs point to sports leagues’ betting-related headaches getting
worse before they get better—if they ever get better. The Premier League, for example, is now facing a potential $135 million advertising revenue shortfall after making the decision to ban betting companies from advertising on team jerseys this season—an attempt to placate the U.K. government, which started to crack down on gambling two years ago. According to The Athletic, nearly half of the league’s 20 teams had betting sponsorships on their kits.
In the Premier
League, top-tier brand deals are difficult to land for all but the six biggest clubs: Manchester United, Chelsea, Liverpool, Arsenal, Manchester City, and Tottenham. Meanwhile, the cost of acquiring or keeping elite players continues to rise as new-money leagues throw hundreds of millions of dollars at talent. (See: Cristiano Ronaldo’s $700 million contract with Saudi Arabian club Al-Nassr.) This problem might be particularly acute for the U.K. and Premier League right now,
but as sports betting becomes an increasingly powerful—and, eventually, critical—revenue generator for leagues in the U.S., and media operators like ESPN, I expect many entities will learn to manage their scruples.
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We’ve entered a brave new world in which individual YouTube creators are signing
deals with leagues for limited sports rights—perhaps foreshadowing an era in which viewers get to choose from 1,000 different Manningcasts. |
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While leagues and networks continue to battle it out for astronomically expensive and highly
lucrative sports rights, the next wave of competition might actually come from individuals. Last week, Mark Goldbridge, a popular YouTuber who runs a Manchester United channel with more than two million subscribers, secured the rights to 20 live games from Bundesliga—a German league with superstar teams like Harry Kane’s Bayern Munich and Gregor Kobel’s Dortmund.
The games will air on That’s Football, one of the channels under
Goldbridge’s YouTube umbrella, which has 1.3 million subscribers. Meanwhile, The Overlap, a YouTube channel with more than half a million subscribers, secured the rights to broadcast another 20 Bundesliga games. Both channels will provide their own commentary during matches. (Perhaps it goes without saying that neither Goldbridge nor The Overlap has exclusive broadcast rights?) These deals are also part of a larger collaboration between YouTube and the league—although the
former isn’t directly involved with the rights negotiations. Financial details of both deals were unavailable.
This isn’t the first time that a YouTuber has secured professional sports rights. In May, Tim Cocker snatched up the rights to stream a French rugby league’s games on his
channel, Eggchasers Rugby. But the Goldbridge-Bundesliga deal is the most expansive and highest-profile to date, and will likely inspire other leagues to partner with YouTubers. Essentially, the idea is to capture younger audiences while exploring new formats for presenting games and experimenting with different revenue streams. As Bundesliga International C.E.O. Peer Naubert said in a statement announcing the new deal, “We are taking a progressive step in how top-level
football can be experienced.” |
Yes, obviously, YouTubers aren’t going to replace the big media networks for
sports broadcasting. Even with this deal, Sky and Amazon retain the exclusive rights to Bundesliga’s far more popular Saturday and Sunday matches. Meanwhile, exceedingly few YouTube creators, or even media companies, have the capital to become major competitors in the sports rights space. But there’s a reason that a league like Bundesliga, which took in about $5.6 billion in revenue for the 2023-24 season—up more than 7 percent year over year—is starting to take YouTubers seriously.
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PERFORMANCE UNLEASHED
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EXPLORE |
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YouTube now accounts for close to 13.5 percent of all TV viewing in the U.S., up three percentage
points over the past 12 months, per Nielsen’s Gauge Report. In the U.K., where Bundesliga executives are focused, YouTube now takes up 14 percent of all TV time, second behind only the BBC. In short, for Bundesliga, these deals provide access to a global audience who would otherwise have to subscribe to Sky and Prime Video to watch Bayern Munich play Eintracht Frankfurt.
YouTube is also a pathway to future earnings. Bundesliga’s international broadcasting rights have remained relatively
stagnant compared to other major leagues, notably the Premier League, which rakes in just under $2 billion a year. Spain’s La Liga earns around $1 billion per season, and Italy’s Serie A generates about $475 million, per The Athletic. Meanwhile, Bundesliga generates only around $300 million per season. To move the needle, Bundesliga executives
need to prove that there is enough demand from a target audience of preternaturally distracted, but reasonably solvent, young men between the ages of 16 and 35—who will be more likely to watch matches if they’re available on YouTube. At least that’s the hope.
There are also the players to consider. Bayern Munich is widely regarded as one of the best teams in the world, but the Bundesliga doesn’t have nearly the same level of overall star power as the Premier League. As one senior
executive at a prominent European league told me recently, soccer is a global sport—but there’s only one global league, and it’s not Bundesliga. That limits the opportunities for the kind of global spectacles that drive international interest and serious ad buys—like La Liga’s highly controversial-in-Spain decision to play its first-ever match in the U.S., with Dani Parejo’s Villarreal going up against Barcelona this December in Miami. It’s unlikely that a Bundesliga game in the
States would generate the same level of interest—for now at least. |
Of course, it’s an open question whether audiences actually want to watch sports
this way, in a sort of ersatz Manningcast style, minus the Mannings. Recall the NFL’s ill-fated partnership with Amazon’s Twitch, which only lasted one season. But for myriad obvious reasons—scale being the most obvious—YouTube isn’t Twitch, and it’s betting that users will jump at the chance to watch their favorite sports alongside their favorite creators. YouTube’s new “Watch With” feature is specifically designed for this experience as the platform leans
more into sports.
For now, we don’t have enough data to draw any meaningful conclusions about user appetites. But the number of Americans who watched sports primarily via highlight clips on social media feeds increased nearly 35 percent between 2020 and 2024, according to GWI research. And a study by PwC found that 70 percent of Gen Z sports fans reported using social media while watching sports at home to feel connected to a community, and 44 percent of respondents said they
use social media at live sports events for similar reasons. YouTube is hoping to exploit this trend with recently launched features, like Communities, which allows subscribers to join specific channels to essentially hang out and chat about what they’re watching.
Until the fledgling partnership produces reliable insights into what co-viewing on the platform actually looks like, in terms of audience penetration and advertising potential, the investment strategy will remain nebulous. But
YouTube and Bundesliga are banking on the creators’ unique relationship with their audience—where viewers feel like they belong to a tight-knit, interactive community, and the relationship with the talent is not “fixed,” as it is with linear media—to allow the league to capture an audience it otherwise wouldn’t have been able to. |
Thanks, Julia. See you all on Thursday.
John |
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Puck sports correspondent John Ourand and a rotating cast of industry insiders take you inside the executive suites
and owners boxes where the decisions that shape the entire sports business are made. You’ll hear interviews with players, network execs, and everyone in between. The Varsity is an extension of John’s private email for Puck by the same name. New episodes publish every Wednesday and Sunday. |
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Ace media reporter Dylan Byers brings readers into the C-suite as he chronicles the biggest stories in the industry:
the future of cable news in the streaming era, the transformation of legacy publishers, the tech giants remaking the market, and all the egos involved. |
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