The sports world has always been at the leading edge of technological progress. Athletes dominate the list of most-followed celebrities across social platforms. Teams and players have used everything from video games to fitness trackers to AI in order to get an edge over their competition. Nothing has shaped the future of TV more than the bidding wars over live events like the Super Bowl or the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris. You’ve seen Microsoft’s Surface tablets thrown all over NFL sidelines, VR cameras promising a courtside view of the NBA Finals, and shoes that make marathon runners even faster somehow. From VAR and robotic umpires to hyperrealistic Formula One simulators and league-affiliated esports, the future of sports is as much a story about technology as it is about wins and losses. It’s taking place across sports, across the globe, and at record-breaking speed.
Instead of offering MLS Season Pass as a separate subscription, you might be able to watch MLS games next season with just a base Apple TV subscription, like how Apple TV will be the place to watch F1 in the US, ESPN reports.
During an earnings call, Disney CEO Bob Iger said the company isn’t “trying to break any new ground” on a deal that would end the ESPN blackout:
The deal that we have proposed is equal to or better than what other large distributors have already agreed to... While we’ve been working tirelessly to close this deal and restore our channels to the platform, it’s also imperative that we make sure that we agree to a deal that reflects the value that we deliver.
What happens when AI agents take over the work of comparing ticket prices and seat selections across vendors, potentially diminishing the value of all those marketplaces? Sportico writes about the DoorDash problem of the entertainment industry, and how ticket vendors are preparing for a world of agentic buying.
[Sportico.com]
Ahead of one of the biggest games of the NFL season so far, I have a feeing there might be something he wants to talk about. He’ll be on the show at 8PM ET.
Bluesky was the best place on the internet during the World Series last weekend. I wrote yesterday about how the matchup between the Los Angeles Dodgers and the Toronto Blue Jays was a feast for fans old and new, and now we have some numbers to illustrate that: Bluesky says at least three percent of all posts on Saturday (Game 7) were about baseball, and the site had a 30 percent surge in traffic.
The company said in its Q3 2025 earnings report that it’s “making progress” on the new service, which it initially teased in September. Upon launch, WBD will take sports content off HBO Max and put it into TNT Sports, which will be available as yet another streaming bundle option.
Whether you should, or would, clone a pet is not the point of People’s article about Tom Brady’s cloned dog Junie.
It’s to tie in with news about a company he invested in, Colossal Biosciences (which claims it has de-extincted dire wolves), buying Viagen, “the leader in animal cloning.”
The standoff between Disney and YouTube started just before midnight on Thursday evening, and unlike the 36-hour tiff in 2021, there’s no sign of an end yet. Disney said it asked Google to turn the networks on for 24 hours for election (and probably football) coverage, but YouTube declined.
There are plenty of other options for customers - election news information is very widely available across other broadcast stations and news networks on YouTube TV, as well as on the main YouTube service, for free. In fact, on the last two U.S. election days, the vast majority of tuned in YouTube TV subscribers chose not to watch ABC.
My beloved Blue Jays are currently up 3-2 in the World Series, in part due to an outstanding performance from 22-year-old Trey Yesavage, who apparently uses doomscrolling as a way to prepare mentally. Professional athletes: they’re just like us!
Apparently, there’s more going on than just Jontay Porter. ESPN, ABC News, and NBC News report that Miami Heat guard Terry Rozier and Portland Trail Blazers coach Chauncey Billups have been arrested by the FBI in separate cases, with a press conference planned for 10AM ET.
[Rozier and Jones are] among six people charged Thursday with turning professional basketball into a criminal gambling operation by using inside information to place unlawful wagers, law enforcement sources told ABC News.
No reason was given for Strava’s voluntary dismissal, three weeks after it attempted to block sales of Garmin devices due to alleged patent infringement.
[DC Rainmaker]
The bundle, announced previously in August, offers monthly savings of around $10. It includes access to live sports and news across ESPN and Fox’s linear channels in both of their respective streaming apps.
[ESPN Press Room U.S.]
The Jordan Peele-produced sports horror doesn’t quite come together in the end, but some of its core ideas are potent.
ESPN NBA writer Brian Windhorst points out that when Aspiration signed up to be the Clippers’ jersey patch sponsor (and, allegedly, help circumvent the NBA’s salary cap) it replaced another company.
That was Honey, the shopping tool exposed for swapping referral codes, which actually got ads featuring Kawhi.
OpenAI and the Mets are partnering on a bizarre promotion involving a custom pin “powered by ChatGPT”, an AI-generated Citi Field guide and custom portraits from a ChatGPT photo booth. Hey, maybe GPT-4o will hallucinate the Mets winning a game and let fans dream for a bit.
There’s been a backlash to the news that RedZone’s “commercial-free football” promise is coming to an end, but the host explained on X that the new ads shouldn’t be too intrusive with a few points, matching an earlier report by Front Office Sports:
The Schutt F7 Pro is being adopted fast, but that’s not usually the case for the NFL.
Every Sunday, you can watch seven uninterrupted hours of NFL football via RedZone, a program that cuts to the every game that features a team within scoring distance. Not only could you get a glimpse at out-of-market matchups but RedZone also cut away during ad breaks, sparing you from spots hawking beer, gambling, and insurance.
But yesterday, the host Scott Hanson confirmed that this season, RedZone will feature ads of its own. “We are not going to sacrifice any great football for the business side of things,” Hanson said on a podcast, after describing how the show would sacrifice great football for the business side of things.
Forget toilets, a report by Pablo Torre claims the ex-Microsoft CEO invested $50 million in a fraudulent tree-planting company, Aspiration, passing $28 million to Kawhi Leonard in a fake endorsement deal.
The Clippers called the accusations “provably false,” while Mark Cuban says he’s “team Ballmer,” and that the team was scammed.
