Welcome to the 36th Media Mailbag for The Athletic. Writing a mailbag — as egocentric as it is — is always a fun exercise. Thanks for sending in your questions via the website and app. There were more than 200 questions, so this is a two-parter. Part 1 appeared last week.
Note: Questions have been edited for clarity and length.
If you were an owner and could have any current baseball announcers as your team’s announcers, who would you want? You can pair them from any of the current MLB team announcers. For TV, choose one play-by-play announcer and one or two analysts. For radio, chose two PxPs. — Mitch E.
Fun question. It’s a particularly excellent moment for play-by-play baseball broadcasters. I’d go with Jason Benetti (White Sox) as my television play voice and pair him with Keith Hernandez (Mets) and Ron Darling (Mets) as my analysts. I’ll cheat a little and use Gary Cohen (Mets) or Jon Miller (Giants) — who both do TV — as my radio play-by-play callers.
With ratings holding strong for the Women’s College World Series, do you think ratings will grow for professional softball and exceed the WNBA? — Peter C.
The WCWS title series already tops the WNBA in viewership. The 2023 Women’s College World Series championship series, which saw Oklahoma defeat Florida State to pull off a three-peat, averaged 1.6 million viewers (down slightly from the record-setting 1.85 million average in 2021). This year’s four-game WNBA Finals averaged 534,220 viewers. The WNBA Finals has to face the NFL in the fall, so there are competition challenges there.

Oklahoma’s third straight Women’s College World Series title averaged 1.6 million viewers, further cementing the sport as a booming TV property. (Tyler Schank / NCAA Photos via Getty Images)
Can Michael Cole win a Sports Emmy for his work in WWE? What do you think will happen with their TV contracts? — Peter A.
I don’t think any professional wrestling performer will ever win a Sports Emmy, but I think Cole has as much a legit argument for a nomination as anyone. As for the TV contracts, my only prediction right now is that you will see more than two partners be part of that deal. It won’t be split between just two companies.
I know this is tough to pin down, but if you’re ESPN and you could place one bid each for an exclusive TV deal on women’s basketball and men’s baseball, what’s the number? — Hunter P.
The women’s basketball tournament is a $100 million property. I’d bid $50 million for college baseball.
I semi-understand that ratings drive advertising dollars, and that makes perfect sense. As a guy at home in a lawn chair, should I care at all about ratings? — Derrick E.
You should care about what you care about. Viewership is one measure — a notable one — of an event’s popularity. It’s just an interesting data point. Some people are fascinated by those numbers; others couldn’t care less. It impacts you to the extent of what companies ultimately own the rights to the games you love.
Pro basketball in Phoenix is going old school and returning to over-the-air free broadcasts. Do you see any other teams following suit, either to rebuild a fan base decimated by erratic broadcast rights deals or to try and replicate the success the NFL has in viewership dominance? — Nate D.
Reach is the new buzzword in distribution, so I think free-to-air broadcasts will be something you’ll see as many of the teams with troubled RSN deals figure out a way to recalibrate their media deals.
When USC and UCLA join the Big Ten next year, do you see them playing on Fox’s “Big Noon” Saturday a lot? Fox is based out of L.A. and, reportedly, had a lot to do with those two schools leaving the Pac-12. I imagine they’ll want to slot some of their games in the noon spot. However, that feels like a huge competitive disadvantage when those schools would be on the road and would be super tough for fans if the games are in L.A. — Kevin R.
Television is driving everything when it comes to the Big Ten schedule. Everything else is secondary. Logic holds that Fox would want to get as many USC games for certain (UCLA games to a lesser extent), and those games would logically be road games given West Coast teams will not be kicking off at 9 a.m. local time. The interesting one for me will be USC at Ohio State in 2025. I would think that will be a “Big Noon Kickoff” game.
What televised sport do you think is currently “punching above its weight” on TV and in the mainstream media? It cannot be a big four sport like NFL, NHL, NBA, MLB. It cannot be MMA or golf. Is it F1, pro lacrosse, MLS or something completely different? — Anonymous
As I have said many times, women’s college softball, women’s college volleyball and men’s college lacrosse are college viewership sports on the rise. MLS will get a big pop from the arrival of Leo Messi.

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Any thoughts on the media rights deals happening in professional wrestling (which I know is not really a full-fledged sport and not typically covered by The Athletic). The themes seem to resonate with the themes of live sports rights)? — Tyler B.
The WWE media rights renewal — and the price it gets from parties — will tell us a lot about the power of pro wrestling as a content play as we head toward 2030. The WWE’s argument: We bring in millions of viewers every week for multiple hours of programming. We’re very strong in the 18-45 demo. We can market other programs. We give our streaming partner (in this case, Peacock) a massive inventory to sell subs. It’s a good story, but it’s also a story they are pitching at a time when media companies are struggling amid a rough ad market and declining cable subs. As for AEW, Warner Bros Discovery clearly sees value in live productions, and I don’t think AEW Collision gets added if they didn’t want it to succeed.
Wrestling, to me, is unique as a content play. It has history, multi-generational fans, and one company that is a global juggernaut. It’s a much different proposition than creating a Power Slap League or something similar. I think you will see both WWE and AEW on cable and streaming in some form over the next 5-10 years. But what they get for the media packages, it’s a big question.
Any thoughts on the next NBA deal? Any chance we see some new media partners, such as Fox or the return of NBC? — Pete G.
I predict we will see new partners, including a streamer. I’ll be writing about that a lot as we get closer.
How come when showing tennis highlights it ALWAYS ends with match point? This is the only sport I know that does this on a regular basis. It just seems there are better ways to end it. — Pete G.
It’s a great observation. I don’t know the answer other than to guess the value of the celebration shot as match point comes. But they should change it up — agreed.
When will there ever be a fan-friendly solution to the Bally Sports fiasco?! There doesn’t even seem to be a reasonably-priced way to watch the local MLB team, & no one (cable companies, teams, Bally Sports, etc.) seems interested in resolving this. I don’t watch Rangers games simply because I CAN’T. — Bruce U.
For some insight, I asked Patrick Crakes, a former Fox Sports executive turned media consultant for his own business, Crakes Media: “One of the challenges with ‘fan-friendly solutions’ to local game distribution is defining just what that is exactly, particularly in terms of current and projected team revenues that support player salaries and other team economic commitments. If you mean access to on-demand games at a price you feel is appropriate, I have to let you know that’s not likely. That’s due to the economics of local game distribution for MLB (and the other two RSN’s leagues — the NHL and NBA) making up meaningful portions of overall team revenue which come from rights fees powered by regional sports networks via pay TV. Adjusting the level of local rights fees’ annual growth downward can have a significant impact on some team operating budgets.
“As a result, extreme care has to be taken when changing a distribution plan,” Crakes continued. “It’s no surprise that MLB, NHL and NBA have found it nearly impossible to pivot away from the general market economics of pay TV in favor of a segmented model that (at present) would walk back local rights significantly by embracing no-fee advertising only on broadcast TV and/or high-cost direct-to-consumer streaming. As far as the future goes, recently a few RSN teams from the NBA and NHL have struck deals that will see — at least in the short run — distribution models that feature a mix of broadcast TV and streaming.”
If a genie gave you three wishes with which you could change anything you wanted about the Canadian sports TV landscape, what would you do? — Ryan F.
First, I’d create more jobs because the sports media industry in Canada (like the U.S.) has cratered. Second, I’d make ESPN more easily available, but that’s more of a selfish request as an American living in Canada. Lastly, and the one I’d want most: I’m hoping my friend Bob McCown recovers quickly.
Who do you think will replace Todd Blackledge at ESPN? — John S.
One of the following: Dan Orlovsky, Robert Griffin III or Greg McElroy.
The Flyers are adding two former players who have worked in sports media to the front office. Part of the justification for those hirings is that the broadcasters have good rapport with the media and a robust Rolodex of connections in the league. Do you agree that former broadcasters have these skills/assets to leverage, and how important do you think they might be to the running of a professional franchise? — P.K. B
Like most jobs, I think it depends on the individual. Clearly, if you work in professional sports as a broadcaster, you certainly have a good contact list. But the job of broadcasting is very different than being a president or GM of a pro sports team. I think if Keith Jones was the only person with GM power here, it would be a much bigger risk. This piece from Charlie O’Connor on the Flyers was really good regarding your question.

In May, the Flyers hired Keith Jones, who spent nearly 20 years as an analyst for NBC and TNT, as president of hockey operations and promoted Daniel Briere to full-time GM. (Matt Slocum / AP)
Whither Rachel Nichols? — Matthew W.
She’s found a nice post-ESPN spot as a host and content creator at Showtime as well as hosting an interview show at Monumental Sports Network, which has rebranded from NBC Sports Washington.
What is your take on the Pac-12 media deal taking this long to finalize? — Daryl C.
As has been written and voiced by many covering this with much more depth than me, there appears to be a clear disconnect between how conference officials value the rights package and what the package will ultimately go for in an open market. It’s also a very soft ad market right now. Personally, I’ve always been a huge fan of the Pac-12’s non-football assets, especially given Stanford’s excellence in sports across the board. I think it’s a great women’s basketball conference. But football is driving the bus here as it always does.
How much play will the Women’s World Cup get especially as it will be around the world in Australia and New Zealand? — Joshua E.
Do you think Fox will make a big push to keep the Men’s/Women’s World Cup or will ESPN/CBS be more aggressive? Also, is Fox a likely suitor for the Kentucky Derby/Preakness now that they have the Belmont? — Mike S.
I think the Women’s World Cup will get a ton of attention in the U.S. given the USWNT is a successful and popular team. The WWC time difference will be beneficial for Fox when the team plays in prime time (their first two group-stage games start at 9 p.m. ET) and obviously the opposite for any 3 or 4 a.m. ET starts. Viewership will be determined by how far the team goes.
If the World Cup rights come up for bid in the U.S., I think you will see multiple suitors go after it, including streamers. NBC has broadcast rights to the Kentucky Derby, Preakness Stakes and Breeders’ Cup through 2025, but I do think Fox will kick the tires on some of those properties as NBC attempts to retain.
There’s a lot of discussion around viewership numbers for events and how they’re affected by certain matchups (e.g. Nuggets-Heat). Do ratings for individual games affect how much a network gets paid, or does it just affect future value? If the latter, wouldn’t people factor in that variability when estimating how much something is worth, meaning one “bad” matchup shouldn’t make much difference? — Zachary B.
For all the hand-wringing about who was in the NBA Finals, in a relatively one-sided affair, they still averaged 11 million viewers a game. How important is that for “small market” NBA teams and for the NBA in negotiating its new deal? Not to mention for NBA teams that aren’t the Lakers, Celtics, Knicks, Bulls, Warriors or Sixers? — Jesse K.
Ad rates are determined by ratings/viewership obtained the previous year, but there are some things immune to year-to-year viewership such as the Super Bowl. There is no single-game data point that would impact the NBA’s media rights valuation, but leagues want to see increases (obviously) and viewer momentum.
The NBA had a very good story to tell in 2023. Per Sports Media Watch: The complete NBA playoffs averaged 5.12 million viewers across ABC, ESPN, TNT and NBA TV — up 7 percent from last year (4.77 million) and the most-watched postseason since 2018 (5.2 million). That it came with the Nuggets and Heat as the finalists — small markets compared to some other teams in the league — is great news for the league as it heads toward the end of its current media rights deal. Some of that bump is certainly due to out-of-home viewing, which has been used for all sports since 2020.
What the NBA wants is a continued influx of young stars that fans gravitate toward because the league is national and global. Victor Wembanyama will be an interesting viewership study this year, and as I previously wrote — I would load up on national games for the Spurs this season.
This Sally Jenkins feature on Chris Evert and Martina Navratilova — Bitter rivals. Beloved friends. Survivors. — is the best sports piece I’ve read in 2023. You won’t regret reading it.

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(Top photo of Jason Benetti: Ron Vesely / MLB Photos via Getty Images)