Welcome back to The Varsity, my twice-weekly private email on all the deals that get struck in the luxury boxes—and the ones that don’t, too. Thanks to everyone who sent thoughts and prayers today: Yes, I was in College Park last night for the Terps’ heartbreaking loss to Michigan State. I was sitting next to the Big Ten Network’s Francois McGillicuddy and Pat Kenny, so I had to behave myself. Now, nearly 24 hours later, I can tell you that the loss was almost as upsetting as riding the log flume at Disneyland with Marchand. ( It’s almost Croizet Cuvée Leonie 1858 time, Andrew. I’ll ring the bell when I’m ready…)
🚨🚨 Pod alert: MLS kicked off its season less than a week ago, the NWSL season starts in two weeks, and an America co-hosted World Cup is just 469 days away. So who better to get on the Varsity podcast than Roger Bennett, the A-list soccer analyst who runs the Men in Blazers Media Network. Also, I behoove you to check out my recent conversation with The Athletic’s Evan Drellich. We mulled the likelihood of an MLB labor war, Rob Manfred’s kitchen cabinet, and some ESPN kremlinology.
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Player of the Week: Diana Taurasi
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The soaring popularity of women’s sports has become a leitmotif of this private email since its inception a year ago. But before Caitlin Clark sold out arenas, set viewership records, and accumulated a small army of mainstream partnerships (State Farm, Nike, Gatorade, etcetera), there was Diana Taurasi, who retired earlier this week at age 42. During her two-decade pro career, the former UConn legend averaged 18.8 points, 4.2 assists, and 3.9 rebounds per game—while also playing in the EuroLeague and Russian League in her ostensible offseason. Her on-court success (three WNBA championships with the Phoenix Mercury, three NCAA championships with UConn, six Olympic gold medals, most recently at the Paris Games) and marketing popularity (deals with Nike, Coca-Cola, State Farm) helped set in motion the current trajectory.
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Down to the J.V.: Woody Johnson
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In this year’s NFL Players Association annual team report cards, only one team owner received an actual F from his players. Can you guess? Was it a guy who mortgaged his team’s future on a 41-year-old quarterback, his favorite position coach, and a bunch of old buddies while alienating a roster filled with talented young players—a misadventure that led to the defenestration of the head coach after five games, and the G.M. six weeks later. Congrats to Woody Johnson, who also publicly mulled benching Aaron Rodgers and allegedly took scouting advice from his Madden-playing teen sons. Good luck to Aaron Glenn. He’s gonna need it.
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- Fox and MLB in talks: Buoyed by the success of the Field of Dreams and Rickwood Field games, Fox and Major League Baseball are trying to develop more summertime nostalgia-themed events to hook ambivalent viewers. I’m told that talks are currently focused on the July Fourth holiday, with Fox committing to broadcasting a game featuring a traditional baseball rivalry. Fox and MLB executives are hoping to work something out for this Independence Day, when the league’s slate includes rivalries such as Mets-Yankees, Cardinals-Cubs, Astros-Dodgers, and Giants-A’s. The decision to own July Fourth would represent a volte-face for the league. A couple of years ago, when Independence Day fell on a Monday, several big-city teams, including the Yankees and Phillies, didn’t even have games scheduled. But foregrounding signature games on a holiday would continue a scheduling trend that’s been successful with other leagues—the NFL on Thanksgiving, the NBA on Christmas (at least until recently), and now the NFL on Christmas, too.
Tentpole events, to use the parlance of league and network executives, have done well for Fox and MLB. Nearly 6 million viewers tuned in four years ago for the first Field of Dreams game—played between the Yankees and White Sox on the Iowa location of Kevin Costner’s hit movie—an unheard-of number for a regular season MLB game. Last year’s Rickwood Field game honoring the Negro Leagues brought 2.3 million viewers to Fox. This August, Fox will carry the Speedway Classic, with the Braves and Reds competing on a field built inside a NASCAR venue in Bristol, Tennessee.
- Scenes from MLB-ESPN’s unconscious uncoupling: In last week’s memo to MLB owners, after ESPN exercised an out in its contract that includes Sunday Night Baseball and the Home Run Derby, Rob Manfred said his league had “been in conversations with several interested parties” about ESPN’s package. I can now report that MLB has had talks with Amazon, NBCUniversal, and Netflix, though sources caution that those discussions are in the early stages and are as focused on 2028, when all of baseball’s national rights go on the block. ESPN executives have also said that they expect to reengage at some point. And Fox Sports has expressed interest in the Home Run Derby, on the belief that it would be easier to sell sponsorships and coordinate production if the derby and the All-Star Game were handled by the same media company. (Fox holds the rights to the All-Star Game through 2028.)
- Baseball labor strife on deck: Baseball’s labor agreement runs until December 1, 2026, and The Athletic’s Evan Drellich predicted that owners will lock out the players during the offseason after the 2026 World Series. Speaking on the Varsity podcast this week, Evan told me, “I am not convinced at this point that the lockout will bleed into the regular season. It's going to be very loud around the issue of the Dodgers outspending other teams. It’s a line of discussion that’s existed for decades—the disparity between markets. The problem is when these franchises are selling for billions of dollars—and the industry, itself, last year [made] $12.1 billion [in gross revenues]—that’s a lot of money. It does not strike me as a rational decision for anyone on either side to say, You know what? This system needs to be changed so badly that we’re going to forgo billions of dollars. Because whatever change you achieve in that missed time, you’d have to play a long time in subsequent seasons to actually make that money back. And we know in this entertainment landscape, when people do have so many choices… baseball can’t afford that.” Evan continued: “If the owners coalesce around a salary cap, that has always been the third-rail issue for the players. That is the issue that they’ve always been willing to stay out the longest for. I expect owners will propose a cap. I am less confident that the owners will actually stand by a cap long enough to shut down the sport. … My guess is that the lockout ends with some sort of revision to baseball’s revenue-sharing system, a different control of the local TV rights that goes to the commissioner’s office, and probably some sort of greater tax on the Dodgers and teams that would outspend other teams.”
- Zaz is getting over his case of the Shoppies: Since losing out on NBA rights last summer, TNT Sports has been on a buying spree—snapping up the French Open tennis tournament, Big East and College Football Playoff games, the Unrivaled women’s basketball league, Big 12 conference rights, and distribution for the Savannah Bananas. TNT Sports ostensibly needed to add a certain amount of live sports to compensate for its lost NBA rights and ensure that its networks meet the programming guarantees in their cable and satellite contracts.
During Warner Bros. Discovery’s Q4 earnings call this morning, David Zaslav hinted that the buying spree may be petering out—hardly a surprise given that few major rights will come up for years, and the ones that do hit the market are expected to have multiple mediacos bidding up the prices. “It’s going to get more difficult,” Zaz said, referring to sports rights negotiations, quickly adding that WBD is “money-good on almost all of our sports.”
- Maybe next time try the decaf: This Mike Florio dispatch about the spat between Fox’s Jordan Schultz and NFL Media’s Ian Rapoport at an Indianapolis Starbucks is the best piece to come out of the combine in years. Apparently, Schultz was pissed off about a Rapoport item that had thrown cold water on some of his own reporting. In any case, NFL security was called in to take statements. The best line in Florio’s story: “The fact that it happened at a Starbucks provides an intriguing coincidence; Schultz is the son of former Starbucks C.E.O. Howard Schultz.”
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Fox Sports C.E.O. Eric Shanks started his career working at the Indy 500. Now, his network is trying to leverage its NASCAR package with the rights to IndyCar. Can he restore the latter to its former glory?
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Back in the 1980s, IndyCar had an outsize footprint in the American sports landscape. Driver Mario Andretti was a legit star, whose name even made it into rap songs, and A.J. Foyt and Rick Mears weren’t all that far behind. In the intervening years, of course, the circuit’s cachet has wanned. Last summer, Fox Sports picked up IndyCar rights on the cheap—around $25 million per year—with the hope that its fortunes could be reversed. Not only had F1 introduced a whole new generation of Americans into the once-sleepy backwater of motorsports, but Fox also owned a NASCAR rights package. Perhaps Fox Sports C.E.O. Eric Shanks could leverage the synergies of the two leagues into a highly amortizable ratings opportunity?
This Sunday, Fox will test that strategy by carrying IndyCar’s Firestone Grand Prix at noon, and NASCAR’s EchoPark Automotive Grand Prix in Austin a couple hours later. So I sat down with Shanks, an Indiana native who got his start at the Indy 500, to get a sense of what to expect.
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John Ourand: How long have you wanted IndyCar rights?
Eric Shanks: We looked at it for at least the last two or three cycles when its rights were up for bid. Our interest really ramped up when Roger Penske bought the series in 2019 because we knew that it was in good hands. You felt that there was going to be real momentum with the series.
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PERFORMANCE UNLEASHED
With a distinct sporting personality, the Range Rover Sport is a
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The Indy 500 on Memorial Day weekend is so great. But then you have to deal with a bunch of smaller races. How do you grow those other races?
Every league has its jewel events, and its tentpole events, and then they have the rest of the season. NASCAR has Daytona and Talladega. Baseball has its playoffs and opening day. We know the potential of this league. In the 1980s and 1990s, IndyCar owned the conversation. It had racing internationally in Brazil and Japan. It had single-name famous drivers, like Mario [Andretti] and A.J. [Foyt] and Rick [Mears] and Emerson [Fittipaldi] and Danny [Sullivan]. It’s [about] reactivating those fans and creating new ones to make this sport bigger.
How do you do that?
The tentpoles are a big part of it. The beginning of the season [in St. Petersburg] is obviously exciting, because of all the anticipation for the first race, combined with this really gorgeous, Formula One-esque environment with yachts. It will be a combination of a street race and then racing through an airport. We have to figure out the other tent-poles. The race in Long Beach has always been a tentpole. We’re working with IndyCar to exploit the potential that we know is there.
What does that look like?
You work hand in hand with the league to make the spectacle of the event as big as it possibly can be, so that it looks like a top-quality TV event. The other levers you have to pull involve the big moments that create memories and get shared socially. Our broadcast has to look amazing, and our marketing has to be world-class; then the event itself becomes a shareable moment. Our job is to get you to be familiar enough with the names of the sport that you talk about them with one name. So we have Josef [Newgarden], Pato [O’Ward] and Alex [Palou]. If you know anything about IndyCar, those three names stand out.
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How confident are you that IndyCar will complement NASCAR?
This will be the first time where people will see the potential for pairing IndyCar and NASCAR together. Part of the strategy here was to lift all boats and commingle the two. We’re hopeful that this is going to help both. It also solidifies our leadership in motorsports. This year will be the first time that both the Indy 500 and the Daytona 500 will be on the same network. Those are the two crown jewels of American motorsports.
What does your research say? Are they the same fans?
There’s potential to get more crossover between both series. We’re going to have IndyCar and NASCAR races on the same day several more times. There was only so much we could do with the schedule within the timeframe that we got the rights in the summer. In future years, you’re going to see even more of it.
What should viewers expect this weekend?
The racing will be extremely exciting. The league already has an incredible, exciting, fast product on the track. I’m looking for more passes for the lead in
this one race than Formula One will have all season—that’s a true stat, by the way. The production quality we’re investing in is going to make the sport as sexy as it’s ever been and as approachable as it’s ever been. Motorsports has an issue—the stars are completely covered up with helmets, and these really cool looking cars. If you’re tuning in for the first time, you don’t know who’s in what car. So, for the first time ever, we invested in technology so that when you tune in, you’ll be able to see who’s driving what car. Just like we have on NASCAR—we’ve got some really cool elements around drones and new camera angles and new ways to explain the rules and what’s happening to the viewers.
You’re an Indiana guy. How much of your upbringing created this rights deal?
My first real job in sports was at the Indy 500 track. I was a summer intern for GTE Sports Marketing. (GTE was a phone company in Indiana and they had a sports marketing division.) I got to spend the first month at Indy when the sport was in its heyday. So, I have this connection. I just want to bring Fox’s assets to a sport that has had such an impact on my life. It is kind of just paying it forward a little bit. On Fox News this week, all the stations were in IndyCar promotion mode, having drivers on-air. We had an IndyCar on the street on Sixth Avenue in New York yesterday. Fingers crossed it makes a difference when we get the ratings on Tuesday.
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On NIL spending: “On your podcast with Val Ackerman, it was interesting to hear you talk about Maryland basketball versus football, and how spending money just to be .500 in football may be misguided for a school whose fans prefer basketball. I wonder if there is a Power 2 athletic director who is willing to row upstream, per your suggestion. Indiana would have been my guess before last season, but now that they have tasted the College Football Playoff, there goes that idea…” —A Varsity subscriber
On Ackerman’s contention that geography has kept the Big East from expanding to the West Coast: “Are Creighton and Marquette in the east? I don’t think so.” — A Varsity subscriber
On The Varsity’s editorial calendar: “I hope you decide to dedicate one newsletter to the future of youth sports and the media component that surely will come with scale.” — An executive involved with youth sports
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Have a great weekend,
John
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