Tom Mayenknecht: FIFA awarded the streaming service the rights to the 2027 and 2031 Women’s World Cup
Bulls-of-the-Week
It was another notable week for the growth of streaming in the business of sport as FIFA awarded Netflix the rights to the 2027 and 2031 Women’s World Cup. That came one week after FIFA signed a deal with DZAN to provide wall-to-wall coverage of the Club World Cup in 2025. And keep in mind that the NFL has its own doubleheader on Christmas Day.
Despite alarm bells ringing on a significant decline in television ratings for the NBA so far this season, professional basketball had itself a generally positive week with the Milwaukee Bucks defeating the Oklahoma City Thunder to win the Emirates NBA Cup and Sportico announcing its NBA valuation list. The top-ranked Golden State Warriors gained in enterprise value yet again, to the tune of $9.14 billion US. The average NBA franchise is now valued at $4.6 billion, second only to the NFL ($5.93 billion). Every NBA team is worth at least $3 billion, according to Sportico.
Meanwhile, when more than 90 of the top-100 television shows each year in the U.S. are NFL football games, it adds meaning to the Teflon-like reputation the league has as “The Shield”. NFL television has literally been in a league of its own for more than a dozen years in the U.S. In Canada, Super Bowl XLIV represented a significant milestone in February of 2010, when the championship game eclipsed the Grey Cup for the first time as the country’s single most-watched annual televised sporting event.
While the other major North American professional sports leagues have had their share of ups and downs, the NFL has been the exception to the rule when it comes to consistent growth, and this year is no different. Add in the emerging storyline of the 12-team college football playoff in the U.S. and the sport itself has never been as strong across digital, social, television and public opinion. In fact, football’s popularity across the U.S. in particular and North America in general is not limited to television performance. Witness the Insider Gaming report this week that showed that EA College Football 25 has become the best-selling video game in the U.S., overtaking NBA 2K25.
The NFL as the new “Social Network” and football as a television juggernaut is marked yet again tomorrow by one of the best days of non-playoff football television ever. It kicks off at 9 a.m. PT with SMU at Penn State and followed at 10 a.m. with the Houston Texans visiting the two-time defending Super Bowl champion Kansas City Chiefs. The day is rounded out with Clemson at Texas at 1 p.m. PT, another NFL game between the Pittsburgh Steelers and the Baltimore Ravens, and a third college football game at 5 p.m. PT, pitting Tennessee against Ohio State.
Bears-of-the-Week
Baseball has an injury problem when it comes to flame-throwing pitchers, but you wouldn’t know it given how up-and-coming prospects continue to get pushed to throw fastballs. Prospects throwing 95 mph or faster have increased tenfold at the top showcase event since 2018 and more than doubled since the first year of the pandemic in 2020. In many ways, arm injuries and Tommy John surgery have become to baseball what concussions have been to football and hockey.