“We are grateful for our longstanding relationship with Major League Baseball and proud of how ESPN’s coverage super-serves fans. In making this decision, we applied the same discipline and fiscal responsibility that has built ESPN’s industry-leading live events portfolio as we continue to grow our audience across linear, digital and social platforms. As we have been throughout the process, we remain open to exploring new ways to serve MLB fans across our platforms beyond 2025,” ESPN said in a statement.

That sentiment of being open to a new deal wasn’t echoed by MLB in its statement, which claimed lack of coverage surrounding the league and sport compared to other entities like the NFL and college football was the issue.

“Unfortunately in recent years, we have seen ESPN scale back their baseball coverage and investment in a way that is not consistent with the sport’s appeal or performance on their platform,” the league said, ending its statement with “As we get ready for the 36th season of Sunday Night Baseball, we look forward to a successful final year of MLB on ESPN in 2025.” Note the “final year of MLB on ESPN” part.

There’s still a chance the two could reconcile and agree on new terms, but MLB has been shopping around the newly available rights to both traditional and digital companies. Netflix, Apple and Amazon are rumored to be among potentially interested parties, but considering MLB wants to keep a similar price tag on the rights, it’ll come down to how much those companies are willing to pay to obtain another addition to their respective sports portfolios.

Playing a role in that rise in popularity is, a media and commerce company founded in 2021 by the four high-profile athletes Alex Morgan, Chloe Kim, Simone Manuel and Sue Bird. The TOGETHXR brand is the brains behind the “Everyone watches women’s sports” T-shirts, which generated $3 million in revenue in its first seven months post-release. Says its website, “We shatter the often narrow depictions of women in the media with content featuring a diverse and inclusive community of game changers, culture shapers, thought leaders, and barrier breakers.” The site also notes that women’s sports receive 16% of sports media coverage despite women making up 44% of all participants. We spoke with Jessica Robertson, TOGETHXR’s Co-Founder/Chief Content Officer, about the brand’s role in sports and how it will continue to evolve.

How have the first few years gone for TOGETHXR, and what do you see as ‘There’s still work to do’ in these next couple of years?

We wanted to really be clear on the white space that existed. At the time of 100% of total sports media coverage, only 4% of that was dedicated to women’s sports, and that’s not even to address the quality of that coverage or the breadth of that coverage, the diversity of that coverage. So immediately we saw a huge opportunity just to increase visibility in making women’s sports and these incredible athletes front and center, pulling them from the margins, giving them [a] platform every single day.

There are so many brands that just are dedicated to covering men’s sports and especially where it intersects with culture. In the quadrant where women’s sports and culture intersected, it was pretty wide open. We understand that sports is a prism for culture. It’s not even a microcosm—sports is culture. So it was really important for us, yes, to make these incredible women visible every single day, but to also sort of rightfully place them within the cultural context in which they existed.

I think if we look into the future, the white space that I was talking about when we first launched has become a little bit more crowded, and that’s a good thing. I think more is more for everyone in this space. Women’s sports is seen as a smart business investment … We’re not talking about the merits or moral stakes of women’s sports at this point. We’re talking about it being the movement right now, and it’s a little less like it’s the right thing to do to invest in women’s sports, and a little bit more like you’re going to miss out if you don’t.

What’s the significance of having prominent athletes being part of TOGETHXR beyond having a well-known name tied to the brand?

Our co-founders are lightning rods for storytelling, for visibility, for community, for audience, for culture, and for all of their shared greatness. I mean, they are four of the greatest athletes in the entire world. I don’t have to say female or woman in front of that to qualify it. They also represent very different experiences in their life and their DNA and their focus and their values. It was central to our mission to sort of infuse what the four of them stood for, how they lived their careers, how they live their lives, the impact that they want to have, not just for this generation, but future generations, to infuse that into our brand DNA. And it was really important … to really lean into the power of a collective, because women’s sports are used to this, and they have to work in partnership with each other, create camaraderie, create these collectives in order to move the space forward. Not any one individual can do it alone. And Alex [Morgan] really, really embraced that and wanted to build this with other incredible athletes and two to have it be athlete-led and founded … being able to bring them front and center and have their experiences sort of really authentically reflected in the brand and the stories that we tell was paramount to get that right.

What does TOGETHXR see as challenges that still persist relative to women’s sports?

How much time do you have? I would say there’s cultural challenges still that exists. Do we really value these athletes as athletes? Are we really embracing the competitive nature of these incredible women? Are we really celebrating and centering their accomplishments for what they are and not comparing them to men’s sports? That would be one. Women’s sports in particular sits at every cultural intersection. It’s almost impossible to talk about the lack of investment and lack of growth over time in women’s sports without acknowledging the -isms that exist in the space: racism, sexism, homophobia. Those are all very, very real.

Also, investment. Women’s sports has been held back for generations. It has a lot of catching up to do. It’s happening. We’re seeing the investment growth, and it feels like we’re in a moment where we’re not on a boom-and-bust cycle, which we’ve seen in the past. It feels like this is sustained, that this is lasting, which is incredible to see, but the investment still has to be right-sized relative to the product that you see on the court or on the pitch, the value that these women actually bring and what their value actually is relative to the sports space overall. That’s just going to take some time, also inventory. That’s a thing I think that we’re hyper-focused on in 2025 and beyond.

ESPN and Formula 1’s partnership seems to be coming to a close. According to a report from Puck, the network informed F1 that it wasn’t renewing its rights agreement after the conclusion of the 2025 season. ESPN is paying around $90 million per season. Rumored to be hovering around as the next F1 rightsholder are NBC and Netflix. It makes sense considering the former held the F1 rights before ESPN got them and Netflix served as the catalyst for F1’s growth in America with “Drive to Survive.”

Major League Rugby inked a multi-year media rights deal with ESPN. The agreement will see ESPN+ stream all regular season and playoff games, but a select number of matches will be put on ESPN2. Replays of each match, highlights and other content can be found on The Rugby Network after a 72-hour delay. The season kicked off Feb. 15, with the season running 18 weeks through the MLR Championship on June 28.

“The credibility and authority he has brought has lifted our NBA coverage, as he’s educated and entertained fans through his unmistakable style,” Silver said.

ESPN Chairman Jimmy Pitaro and President, Content Burke Magnus joined the train of congratulations coming Brown’s way. “Hubie has left an indelible mark on the game of basketball and on everyone fortunate enough to know him and learn from him. Hubie’s endless knowledge and unwavering passion for the NBA shines through on every game he calls,” Pitaro noted, while Magnus added, “Hubie has taught generations of fans everything they need to know about the game he loves so much. Working alongside Hubie has been one of the great blessings of my life.”

Brown’s commentator colleagues, including Lisa Salters, Doris Burke and Mike Breen, emphasized Brown’s ability to break down the Xs and Os. But Dave Pasch pointed out Brown’s longevity and the eras of basketball he’s been able to witness and describe to fans. “Hubie is one of the very few people on this planet who have participated in and observed every significant era of the NBA. He is a living monument to everything that’s wonderful about the game and how it’s presented and explained. His recollections of players and games are mesmerizing,” Pasch said.

Women’s college basketball is hitting its stride as March Madness looms. The Feb. 16 doubleheader on ABC checked in as the No. 3 and 4 most-viewed WCBB games all time on ESPN platforms. UConn’s 87-58 rout of South Carolina had 1.8 million viewers and peaked at 2.2 million. Texas’ 65-58 win over LSU checked in with 1.7 million viewers and a peak of 2.3 million. Additionally, ESPN had its most-watched regular-season women’s “College GameDay” since 2010.

NBC is hiring future Hall of Famer Carmelo Anthony as an analyst for its imminent NBA coverage, per a report from The Athletic. NBC is working to finalize its roster of NBA studio reporters once it begins airing coverage at the start of the 2025-26 season, having hired Jamal Crawford and Reggie Miller already as analysts. NBC holds the rights for the All-Star Game, Peacock-exclusive Monday night games, Tuesday games on the NBC broadcast net and Sunday night events in addition to 1/3 of the playoffs over the next 11 years (six of which will include coverage of a conference final). The report also noted NBC’s holding recent talks with Charles Barkley, but that didn’t escalate much further as the “Inside the NBA” mainstay still has seven years left on his TNT Sports deal (worth a reported $21 million per season).

Joe Buck is putting on the headset next month, but not for football. The “Monday Night Football” commentator will call the Opening Day matchup between the Yankees and Brewers on ESPN come March 27 at 3pm. Buck’s last nationally televised baseball call was when he was still with Fox Sports, having called the 2021 World Series when the Braves outlasted the Astros. Buck made the switch to ESPN shortly after in March of the following year.

ESPN inked multi-year extensions with reporters Alexis Nunes and Nedum Onuoha. The European-based Nunes will continue to cover soccer and report from marquee events, also remaining integral in ESPN’s digital and studio coverage for both English- and Spanish-language audiences. Onuoha, a former Premier League defender, will remain covering soccer for ESPN. On top of his regular spots on “ESPN FC,” Onuoha will contribute long- and short-form features on ESPN’s website, YouTube channel and other social media platforms in addition to pitch-side analysis of FA Cup matches.

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2019: A then-relatively unknown basketball prospect set the Iowa Class 5A state tournament single-game scoring record with 42 points. That prospect was Caitlin Clark, who went on to average 28.4 points and 8.2 assists per game during her four years at Iowa and became the NCAA Division I all-time scoring leader.