July 28, 2025

Welcome back to The Varsity. I spent the weekend in the Shenandoah Valley region of Virginia, taking in both the Blue Ridge Mountains and the Shenandoah River while Marchand worked on his watercolors and ensured the Yeti was filled with sancerre. Fun fact: The inspiration behind John Denver’s “Country Roads” actually comes from a street in Montgomery County, Maryland. Don’t tell WVU alum Pat McAfee…

🚨 A public service announcement: I know, we’re in the middle of summer, and it feels like it’s 1,000 degrees outside, but… you will be able to watch an actual NFL game this week. NBC carries the Hall of Fame game between the Chargers and Lions on Thursday. For most of us, this game is the annual sign that summer will be over sooner than you’d imagined, but at least football is coming back…

🎧 Pod alert: My partner Marion Maneker publishes an essential private email covering the art business, which might seem like another planet to some of you philistines. (Sign up for Wall Power here.) But Marion’s work increasingly focuses on the hyper-growing realm of collectibles—cards, sure, but also memorabilia, which has become highly en vogue since the pandemic. He even recently profiled Ken Goldin, who has become the Leo Castelli of this rare orbit. (Google it, Andrew…) Marion and I chat about this phenomenon on the upcoming edition of the Varsity podcast. Also, make sure to listen to yesterday’s episode: ESPN’s Don Van Natta Jr. dissected all the chaos at the NFL Players Association during Lloyd Howell Jr.’s reign.

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The Starting Five

NFLPA chaos: The NFL Players Association is expected to vote on an interim executive director as soon as this week, and ESPN’s Don Van Natta Jr. expects the role will be filled by a former player. On yesterday’s Varsity podcast, Van Natta identified two frontrunners: the NFLPA’s Don Davis and his ESPN colleague Domonique Foxworth. Here’s Van Natta…

“Both Don and Domonique are interested in the job, and I think both of them would be quite good,” he said. “It’ll be a tryout for the player reps to determine whether that person is the appropriate person to carry through to the next C.B.A., and all of the major choices confronting the union in the coming years. What I understand is that the people on this list not only would want to be the interim executive director, but they would want the job permanently.”
The NFL’s 18th-game discourse: For the past several years, NFL league and team executives believed that they’d be able to add an 18th game pretty much whenever they wanted, even if they needed the blessing of the players association. And it dovetailed with officials’ increasing confidence that the players would agree to a mandatory international game per season. After all, this marriage of an 18th game with an international hook could create a highly monetizable sales package, which would cascade down to the salary cap.

Those plans were thrown in disarray after the NFL Players Association’s executive director, Lloyd Howell Jr., abruptly resigned earlier this month. Detractors viewed Howell, the former C.F.O. of Booz Allen, as discomfittingly owner- and team-friendly. Whereas his predecessor, DeMaurice Smith, led the NFLPA through the CTE wars, championing player safety above all else, Howell seemed preternaturally corporate-minded. Anyway, in the wake of Howell’s departure, negotiations around the expanded regular season and international schedule are back to square one. “There’s going to be an opt-out on the media deals coming up in 2029,” Van Natta told me on the podcast. “Obviously, if you can get 18 games before you open up for a bidding frenzy with all of your broadcast partners and streamers, then there’s a lot more value you can unlock.”

Van Natta predicted that the NFLPA’s new leader will take a more aggressive approach with Roger Goodell and the NFL owners. “The mood music of the conversations I’m having with people is that they want a Gene Upshaw type… somebody who’s going to be willing to go toe to toe with Roger Goodell and these owners, who are masters of leveraging every single thing they can for as much money as they can, and who have gotten the better of the players in the past two C.B.A.s—a view widely held by a lot of people around the league and, most importantly, by the owners themselves.”
Baseball’s labor woes: By now, you’ve surely seen reports about a nose-to-nose confrontation between MLB commissioner Rob Manfred and superstar Bryce Harper in the Phillies clubhouse over the mere specter of a salary cap. (For the record, it looks like The Bandwagon was the first to report this.) The story provides great theater, of course, but it’s really just further confirmation that a lockout will descend after the conclusion of next season.

On one side, you have players who say they’re willing to lose an entire season to prevent a salary cap. On the other, you have a growing list of owners who are openly advocating for a cap. There’s no middle ground here, which is particularly dispiriting given that the unit economics of baseball are in desperate need of reinvention, as the R.S.N. business fades and the sport’s footprint is diminished on streaming. The Rays are reportedly to be sold for $1.7 billion—42 percent of what the Suns fetched, 28 percent of the price Josh Harris paid for the Commanders, and about 17 percent of what the Lakers went for. Sure, the Rays aren’t a historic franchise, but the economic reality appears to be baked into the price.
Caitlinsanity: It’s not every day that Wall Power, Puck’s great private email on the art business, delves into sports. But Julie Davich highlighted the Caitlin Clark effect on trading cards in yesterday’s edition. “A one-of-one signed Clark rookie card sold last week for $660,000, an auction record for a woman’s sports trading card, on the site Fanatics Collect,” Julie reported. “The previous record was $366,000, set by a different one-of-one Clark rookie card that sold at Goldin Auctions in March. (Before that, the record belonged to a Serena Williams NetPro tennis card that sold for $266,400 in 2022, also at Goldin.) The $660,000 card is a Rookie Royalty Flawless, printed by Panini, with a jersey patch and an autograph, including the inscription, ‘769 pts and counting,’ referencing Clark’s rookie season statistics with the Indiana Fever.”

Julie continued: “As Travis Landry of Landry Pop Auctions explained, card makers release ‘booster boxes’ containing several packs of First Off the Line cards directly on their site in Dutch auctions, pricing them in the thousands of dollars and slowly decreasing the price until they’re sold out. Collectors typically pay up for these FOTL cards, knowing that the special releases are more likely to contain good cards. Collectibles influencers also get in on the action, livestreaming themselves ‘breaking’ new cases on Fanatics Live and WhatNot, another online auction platform. Another autographed one-of-one patch Clark card, inscribed ‘ROY 24,’ is currently on offer at Goldin—and there is chatter it might set another new record.”
People news: Thanks to all the people who forwarded the story of the Venezuelan Little League team that was denied travel visas to participate in the Senior League World Series. To answer the most frequent question I’ve seen about this story: No, it doesn’t raise my angst about next year’s World Cup, which is actually on a list of events that will get visas. The SLWS isn’t. … Another day, another gambling scandal hits the sports business. This time it’s Guardians closer Emmanuel Clase, per ESPN’s Jeff Passan. … Brian Rolapp, who used to be the NFL’s top business executive, officially started his new job as the PGA Tour’s C.E.O. today. Let the onboarding begin. … I was not expecting to read about friend-of-The-Varsity Paul Rabil in People with the headline, “Who Is Vanessa Kirby’s Boyfriend?”

And now, the main event...

Shell’s Bells

The questions and enigmas following Skydance’s finally approved acquisition of Paramount Global don’t seem to extend to CBS Sports, a no-drama zone amid a network in existential crisis. That’s largely because of David Berson’s even-keeled leadership, and Jeff Shell and David Ellison believe they can build around his CBS Sports.

John Ourand

About a month ago, a lineup of sports business royalty descended upon The Peninsula’s rooftop bar in New York to toast Brian Rolapp, the departing NFL chief business officer who was headed to become the C.E.O. of the PGA Tour. There were plenty of top broadcast executives, like Fox’s Eric Shanks, NBC’s Rick Cordella, and Versant’s Mark Lazarus. CBS Sports president David Berson, who inherited his throne from Sean McManus a little more than a year ago, was at the center of it all, holding court with NFL commissioner Roger Goodell and Patriots owner Robert Kraft, among others.

Amid all the existential cacophony of Paramount Global’s long-gestating merger deal with David Ellison’s Skydance—oh, you know, the 60 Minutes lawsuit and settlement; countless CBS News defenestrations; the recent Colbert mishegas; and even the South Park micropenis scandal—CBS Sports has remained remarkably drama-free. In fact, when Ellison and incoming consigliere Jeff Shell began their due diligence on CBS during the merger process, they found little in the sports division that needed fixing. That stability became a crucial factor, especially as the NFL weighed exercising a change-of-ownership clause that would allow the league to exit its media deal with CBS. (In an interview with CNBC last month, Goodell cited the NFL’s long-standing and robust relationship with CBS Sports as a key reason why he’s unlikely to invoke that clause.) That NFL relationship extends to the Ellison level, where the NFL and Skydance have a joint venture in their Skydance Sports unit. But it’s also deep at the network level, where Berson has personal ties with everyone from league executives like Goodell to influential owners like Kraft and Jerry Jones.

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Those are among the reasons industry sources don’t expect significant changes at CBS Sports as Shell and Ellison seek out their billions in synergies post-close. As the merger wound its way through a protracted federal approval process, Skydance cited the division’s long-term rights deals with the NFL, the NCAA’s March Madness tournament, and the PGA Tour as examples of the network’s health. CBS Sports also owns the rights to major college football properties, including the Big Ten and the annual Army-Navy game. Those deals are built atop decades of deep relationships with leagues and teams—an approach that helps explain, for example, the network’s uninterrupted coverage of the Masters for the past 70 years. Naturally, the leagues and conferences seemed pleased when Brendan Carr’s F.C.C. finally approved the merger.

Still, there will inevitably be changes in the media rights landscape at CBS in the coming years—especially when MLB and NHL contracts come up for renewal. Shell, after all, was at Fox Sports in the late 1990s when the division pursued a regional network strategy, eventually launching the Fox Sports Net (which later became FanDuel Sports Network). At NBC, he led the effort to create a 24/7 sports network, which eventually became NBCSN. In fact, when Shell launched the channel as Versus 20 years ago, he actively tried to persuade Berson to run it—but, sources say, Berson’s ESPN boss at the time, Mark Shapiro, refused to let the young executive out of his contract. (Shell’s sports bona fides include actually being a fan. He’s an avid Dodgers season-ticket holder and active fantasy football player.)

Berson, who took over when McManus retired last April after 27 years, is a similarly drama-free character to his predecessor, and manages in the same manner—focused on deepening relationships with leagues, conferences, and on-air talent. But he’s also made moves that put his stamp on the sports division. For the NFL Today pregame show, for example, Berson replaced Phil Simms and Boomer Esiason with Matt Ryan. He also made the decision to take the show on the road for regular-season games for the first time in its history—pregame, halftime, and postgame segments included. And he decided to move J.J. Watt from the studio show to the booth, where he will be paired with Ian Eagle.

Perhaps the most unique aspect of Berson’s tenure, however, is that he’s eschewed publicity—certainly an uncommon attribute for a sports business executive. Berson negotiated several key deals—including the arrangement that saw CBS take over the production of Netflix’s NFL games—and yet, few details regarding either on-air changes or negotiated deals (extending the Army-Navy game to 2038, for example, and the Women’s Champions League through 2030) have leaked. Indeed, the network’s sports division continues to exist with comparatively little drama, even as the chaos of the merger approval process has unsettled the market. And as Ellison and Shell prepare for the rodeo ahead, that sort of omertà offers considerable value.

From the Cheap Seats

On the coming NFL-ESPN deal: “If the deal comes together, some may assume that the NFL won’t exercise its early out, like it might with other networks. If the NFL owns part of ESPN, that could mean ESPN has NFL rights on ABC-ESPN essentially in perpetuity, regardless of what they determine is the cash exchange. On the other hand, Turner has run NBA.com and NBA TV, and that didn’t ensure that TNT kept the NBA.” —A sports business veteran

On the NFL Media packages: “The NFL’s primetime TV games on Sunday and Monday nights are great for U.S. TV audiences, but ugly for the rest of the world—areas that the NFL is interested in reaching via the streamers. Remember, 8:20 p.m. ET is 1:20 a.m. in the U.K./Ireland and 2:20 a.m. in Central Europe, so only NFL diehards and insomniacs are going to stream those games live. On the other hand, a Sunday game at 4:25 p.m. ET would kick off at 9:25 p.m. in the U.K./Ireland and at 10:25 p.m. CET—times that would avoid clashes with most European countries’ domestic soccer/football games, too.” —A writer

On NBC’s planned sports channel: “You wrote about NBC looking into launching a sports channel, but you didn’t mention NBCSN! How will the planned channel be any different from what they shuttered in 2021?” —A media executive

More on the NBC sports channel: “The amount charged for EverPass, the gatekeeper of Peacock content, is cost-prohibitive for nearly all small- and medium-size bars and restaurants. Could this potential rebirth of a linear NBC sports cable channel give these commercial establishments the access to Peacock programming that they’ve gone without? I can tell you that the small- and medium-size businesses look forward to NBC’s newest linear cable offering on The Premier Holy Shit Tier™️.” —A sports TV executive

On the most miserable Orioles season of all time: “I was really hoping that mini-run before the All-Star break would launch a magical second-half sprint. What a bummer of a year.” —A Varsity subscriber

See you tomorrow,
John

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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