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.
Aaron LaBerge is a big name at ESPN and Disney — he’s been there most of the last two decades, overseeing a lot of big projects including the recent Hulu / Disney Plus combination. He cited “personal reasons” for leaving in a note to staff, but also has a new job: after working on the joint betting project between ESPN and Penn Entertainment, he’s Penn’s new CTO.
Both companies filed affidavits in support of Fubo, which is suing to block WBD, ESPN, and Fox’s sports streaming package, The Desk reports.
DirecTV exec Rob Thun wrote that the company has “grave concerns” about the joint venture, saying it could prevent DirecTV from offering “smaller sports-focused bundles of channels.”
The latest entrant into the world of FAST (free ad-supported streaming, like Tubi and Pluto TV) is the NBA. Today it’s introducing the new, free, channel and the NBA Zone that will be exclusive to the Roku Channel for a limited time.
While it might try to upsell viewers to an NBA League Pass subscription, the only live games in it will be from the G League this season, along with highlights, classic games, and more.
ESPN’s digital plan is sort of all over the place. It’s building a streaming version of the cable network, it’s part of the “Hulu for Sports” coming later this year, and now it’s offering listings for some local sports — though you’ll still have to subscribe to your network and watch the actual games separately. Odd!
ESPN has long talked about being something along the lines of a TV guide for streaming sports; seems like this is what it looks like.
While Threads continues to test the waters of federation, the team is working on other features too. Continuing a push that started with “NBA Threads” outreach events around summer league and All-Star Weekend, and snagging posts from newsbreakers like Woj and Shams, it’s now testing live scores of NBA games and plans to add other sports.
Of course, it’s March, so why not start with the Women’s and Men’s NCAA basketball tournaments and bring in the NBA during the playoffs?
The app, which lets you get the latest on your favorite sports teams, view stats, and find betting odds, will now let you follow the NCAA’s March Madness tournament as part of its version 1.1 update. Apple Sports will also add data from the MLB when the season officially kicks off later this month.
An alternate game feed on ESPN Plus, Disney Channel, Disney XD, and Disney Plus will present today’s Bruins vs. Penguins matchup as the NHL Big City Greens Classic 2. It goes beyond Nickelodeon’s slime-filled Super Bowl feed by using NHL EDGE positional data and Hawk-Eye optical tracking to turn real action into an animated version.
Sportico explains that to control their animated avatars, commentators have replaced the motion-capture suits they wore for the first game with Meta Quest Pro headsets.
This is a spectacular read even if you don’t care about car racing. Think “The Kentucky Derby is Decadent and Depraved,” but with cars and much, much more money:
If a tornado came through and wiped the whole thing out, the stock market would plummet and the net worth of a country the size of Slovenia would vanish from the ledgers in a day.
With more than 8 million concurrent live streams for the event, spokesperson Allison Toh says Super Bowl LVIII is now the most-watched event ever on YouTube TV — and more broadly was the “most-watched telecast in history.”
TV is shaping up to be a focus for YouTube. Earlier in February, YouTube CEO Neal Mohan announced that the platform’s subscription TV service had more than 8 million subscribers.
The Department of Justice is planning to review the upcoming sports streaming app from ESPN, Warner Bros. Discovery, and Fox, according to a report from Bloomberg. Sources tell the outlet that regulators will look into whether the service will harm consumers, competitors, and sports leagues once the joint venture is finalized.
One live streaming service, Fubo, has already slammed the sports streaming app, saying it “could dictate market terms in a manner that may not serve the broader interests of consumers.”
After showing off a rendering, the NBA has now posted a clip of the ASB Lumiflex court installed in Lucas Oil Stadium for the Celebrity Game, 3-point shootout, and Dunk Contest that can show real-time stats, animations, and more.
For an idea of how it looks during games and how the LED panels under laminated glass are installed, check out this German video of the court being used for regular-season Bundesliga play.
That was the vibe when the Curb Your Enthusiasm star called himself “an idiot” during an interview with The Associated Press recently. He was part of the glut of FTX Super Bowl 2022 ads angled on FOMO the same year FTX collapsed, and we know how that story went.
Of course, there were no crypto ads during Super Bowl LVIII — unless you count Jack Dorsey wearing a Satoshi shirt again.
Disney CEO Bob Iger had previously targeted next year for the launch of a streaming version of ESPN’s main channel (no watered-down ESPN Plus, just ESPN).
Now that the deal for a sports streaming Voltron with Warner Bros. and Fox is sewed up, Iger said to CNBC’s Julia Boorstin that direct-to-consumer ESPN could launch in late August 2025, and confirmed to investors that it will be available in a bundle with Hulu and Disney Plus.
Initial numbers from Nielsen and NBCUniversal are out, showing the audience Peacock pulled for the first streaming-exclusive NFL playoff game that reportedly cost around $110 million. They note a total of 27.6 million viewers, with a peak average of 24.6 million during the second quarter -- much higher than last month’s “holiday exclusive” game.
The Peacock Exclusive AFC Wild Card ranks as the most-streamed event ever in the U.S. with an average audience (AMA) of approximately 23.0 million viewers across Peacock, NBC stations in Miami and Kansas City, and on mobile with NFL+, according to Nielsen custom fast national data.
The streams we were watching mostly held up, if you saw the game, how was the experience for you?
Disclosure: Comcast, which owns NBCUniversal, is also an investor in Vox Media, The Verge’s parent company.
Over the holiday weekend, Peacock aired its first exclusive NFL game between the Buffalo Bills and Los Angeles Chargers, where it averaged about 9.9 million viewers.
That’s still a far cry from Sunday Night Football viewership, though. In October, a Sunday Night Football game between the Cowboys and 49ers averaged 26.1 million viewers when aired on both Peacock and NBC.
Disclosure: Comcast, which owns NBCUniversal, is also an investor in Vox Media, The Verge’s parent company.
