SBJ Unpacks: Fubo rescinds NBA local broadcast offers

Tonight in Unpacks: Fubo is withdrawing its multimillion-dollar offers to 13 NBA teams for local game broadcasts as the league’s eventual national streaming hub looms over deal talk, reports SBJ’s Tom Friend.

Also tonight:

• Netflix adds UFC luminaries for MMA debut broadcast
• McDonald’s making U.S. naming-rights debut at Fire’s new stadium
• Taking the ACC’s spring pulse
• Op-ed: Building beyond spectators is a smart play

Listen to SBJ’s most popular podcast, Morning Buzzcast, where Abe Madkour discusses McDonald’s sign of confidence in Chicago and MLS, Disney’s sports-heavy upfront presentation, MLB and its players starting down the long path to a new labor deal and more.

Fubo has withdrawn its multimillion-dollar offers to the 13 NBA teams searching for new local broadcast homes, SBJ learned Wednesday, leaving those franchises with one less option as they pursue single-year, stop-gap broadcast deals for the 2026-27 season.

Disney-owned Fubo on Wednesday contacted the former Main Street Sports Group teams -- Hawks, Hornets, Cavaliers, Pistons, Pacers, Clippers, Grizzlies, Heat, Bucks, T-Wolves, Thunder, Magic, and Spurs -- to say upper management would stop bidding for local NBA broadcasts due to what sources labeled as uncertainty surrounding proposed minimum guarantees.

“The opportunity was evaluated but ultimately Fubo could not find a path forward that made financial and operational sense,” Fubo told SBJ in a statement.

According to multiple industry sources, Fubo’s offers to teams for the 2026-27 season had ranged from $8M to as much as $20M, which exceeded bids from competitors DAZN (which offered between $8M and $15M) and Victory+ (which is still pursuing financing). But with Fubo now out of the picture, those industry sources believe most teams are leaning toward airing games next season on over-the-air stations -- as the Pistons and Scripps announced earlier Wednesday -- or through DAZN’s streaming service.

A crucial issue is the length of the contracts. With the NBA expected to launch a consolidated home for local broadcasts in time for the 2027-28 season, teams are looking to do either one-year local broadcast deals or packages with one-year out clauses. But according to sources, Fubo executives could not agree to early termination options for those clubs.

Fubo had been eying local sports broadcasts for over six months and, at one point, contemplated an investment in Main Street Sports Group that might have kept MSSG solvent. It made sense because Fubo was the rare vMVPD that housed Main Street’s Fan Duel Sports Network game broadcasts.

But Fubo and Main Street never struck a deal, and Fubo didn’t re-emerge until MSSG began its winddown -- which is when it began reaching out to teams.

“As we said on our most recent quarterly earnings call, Fubo enjoys its position as a leader in local sports,” Fubo said in its statement to SBJ. “Local sports rights are an ever-evolving landscape, and it is our job to consider all opportunities.”

The development leaves the 13 Main Street teams with less lucrative possibilities going forward. For that reason, sources believe the OTA option along with a coinciding DTC app -- a model currently implemented by the Suns, Jazz, Mavericks, Trail Blazers and Pelicans -- is the most popular one-year plan to tide the teams over until the league platform launches.

But DAZN is offering one-year escape clauses, as well, and it has the billion-dollar backing of CEO Shay Segev -- who has made it clear DAZN would also like to bid to become the NBA’s streaming hub for that 2027-28 season or whenever that time comes.

Amazon Prime Video and YouTube are also interested in the national streaming RSN. So was Fubo, until its management pulled the plug Wednesday.

Fubo’s model had been attractive to several teams. Besides the minimum guarantee, its plan was to do direct-to-distributer deals with cable and satellite entities for linear reach and possibly broadcast 10 to 15 games OTA.

But sources suspected Fubo believed that -- with the NBA’s eventual national streaming hub looming in 2027-28 -- a potential one-year-only investment with prohibitive minimal guarantees wasn’t fiscally prudent.

Netflix and Most Valuable Promotions are putting on a mixed martial arts card with some legendary former UFC fighters this weekend, and they’ve assembled some noteworthy names with ties to the TKO Group property as part of the on-air talent team.

The event, headlined by Ronda Rousey vs. Gina Carano, is Saturday at Intuit Dome in Inglewood, Calif. The play-by-play team sitting by the cage will include well-known blow-by-blow announcer Mauro Ranallo along with MMA pundit Kenny Florian, rules and scoring expert Sean Wheelock and reporter Sibley Scoles.

On the analysis desk, Elle Duncan will host and be joined by MMA personality Ariel Helwani and former UFC fighters Tyron Woodley, Cain Velasquez, Cat Zingano and Jon Jones, who announced his retirement from the property but has since flirted with a comeback. Kody “Big Mo” Mommaerts will be the ring announcer.

Fight-week events start Wednesday with an open workout at the Venice Beach basketball courts. The final press conference is Thursday at Intuit Dome’s outdoor plaza, with the public weigh-ins taking place at the same spot on Friday.

The event, which marks the first MMA event for both Netflix and MVP, is Saturday with the preliminary card beginning at 6pm ET and the main card starting at 9pm.

The Fire’s new $750M soccer-specific stadium on Chicago’s riverfront will be known as McDonald’s Park, as the locally based fast-food giant has agreed to its first-ever naming-rights deal in the U.S. for a professional sports stadium. As part of the agreement, the stadium will include a flagship McDonald’s restaurant that will be open to the public 365 days a year.

The Fire’s 22,000-seat stadium is set to open in 2028, with the McDonald’s deal running through 2040. It is technically a 14-year deal with two bridge years prior to the facility’s opening.

Financial terms were not disclosed, but sources with knowledge of the deal said the agreement ranks among the most valuable naming-rights deals in MLS on an annual basis. It is believed to trail the league’s highest-paying agreements, including Inter Miami’s deal with NuBank and NYCFC’s pact with Etihad, while landing in the same ballpark as LAFC’s $10M-a-year deal with BMO.

McDonald’s is the largest publicly traded company based in Chicago by market cap, making the brand a natural target for the Fire’s most valuable asset tied to its new stadium. The deal is the most lucrative in franchise history.

“When you look at the ideal naming rights partner, you want someone who has massive global reach and local ties,” said Fire President of Business Operations Dave Baldwin. “So, as we put together that list just under a year ago, we identified McDonald’s as a dream partner, and we’re really humbled and honored to be in a position today to announce them as our new naming-rights partner.”

Details of the McDonald’s restaurant within the stadium are still being worked out, but it is expected to take up 15,000-20,000 square feet, making it several times larger than a traditional free-standing McDonald’s location. Like about 95% of McDonald’s stores, the one in McDonald’s Park is expected to be owned and operated by a franchisee.

“What I continue to get excited about is how we can take this physical space and use that almost as a media platform to talk about our brand and our role in sports and our role in culture to make it really extend beyond just this single physical location,” said McDonald’s Global CMO and EVP/New Business Ventures Morgan Flatley.

Baldwin said the restaurant will also be accessible to fans during Fire games and other events at the stadium. He added that team is working with McDonald’s and stadium concessionaire Levy to “figure out how and where McDonald’s lives” within the broader food and beverage offerings within the venue.

In addition to naming rights and the franchise location, McDonald’s will receive presenting sponsorship rights to the Fire’s P.L.A.Y.S. Program, which supports free, school‑based soccer programming across Chicago Public Schools. The investment by McDonald’s will double the program’s footprint from 70 to 140 schools by the stadium opening in 2028, with a long-term plan to grow that number to 280.

Excel Sports Management worked with the Fire to source and negotiate the naming-rights deal, with VP/Corporate Partnerships John Nowicki working alongside Fire SVP/Corporate Partnerships Goyo Perez. Flatley said McDonald’s Chair & CEO Chris Kempczinski had direct conversations with Fire owner Joe Mansueto in recent weeks as deal talks became serious.

The Fire’s Gensler-designed venue will sit on 10 acres in The 78, a new 62-acre neighborhood being developed by Related Midwest. Mansueto is privately funding construction of the facility, which will feature a canopy over the seating area and a natural grass pitch. The venue is expected to host up to 45 major events per year, including Fire matches and concerts.

The deal with McDonald’s is the latest in a string of major commercial victories for the Fire. Baldwin said the club has quadrupled sponsorship revenue over the past three years, with further growth expected with the move to the new stadium. In addition to McDonald’s, the team has closed deals for two of four “cornerstone” partner positions for the new building, which have yet to be announced. It also recently renewed its front-of-kit sponsorship agreement with Carvana and signed a founding partnership with SeatGeek.

While naming rights represents a new frontier for McDonald’s, the brand is no stranger to soccer sponsorship. The company is a long-time sponsor of the FIFA World Cup and is the title sponsor of France’s Ligue 1.

AMELIA ISLAND, Fla. — Spring meetings tend to be mixed as to whether anything actually gets accomplished, but considering the existential crises facing college sports these days, there was plenty of depth to conversations around the Ritz Carlton the last few days at the ACC’s annual gathering here.

These were a few things I picked up on Monday and Tuesday:

What’s next for the College Sports Commission?

Concern is growing among college administrators about whether the College Sports Commission can function as envisioned when schools agreed to the House settlement. Those frustrations were expected to be voiced during Monday afternoon meetings with CSC CEO Bryan Seeley.

By Monday night, the CSC had an important win to point to. A neutral arbitrator upheld the commission’s rejection of NIL deals between Nebraska football players and Playfly Sports, the school’s multimedia partner, affirming the CSC’s authority in that case to treat Playfly as an “associated entity” under the House settlement. While the decision doesn’t set a precedent, it does confirm the commission’s oversight powers at a moment when just about everyone in the industry is challenging or questioning the reach of its authority.

There’s also a matter of figuring out the cap. Schools are largely spending well above the $20.5 million spelled out in the settlement. How can that be rectified? TBD.

How to make the CFP expansion math work

CFP expansion continues to be a pressing topic among administrators and executives. In my conversations this week, the ACC has largely come around on the idea of a 24-team field — a stance mirroring the Big Ten and Big 12.

Of course, there’s the ESPN of it all. The network, along with the SEC, remains adamantly opposed to doubling the field size. Why would the network want to pay more for the exclusivity it already enjoys?

There’s also the math behind the move. Conference title games would likely be eliminated as part of CFP expansion. Experts suggest the Power Four nets about $200 million combined (SEC: $100 million; Big Ten: $50 million; and Big 12 and ACC: $25 million each) for those championships.

If the eight games added in a 24-team format are worth somewhere between $400 million to $500 million (which may be optimistic), there’s really only $200 million to $300 million of new money coming in for doubling the field while compensating the Power Four for eliminating title games. Spread that across a couple leagues and is the money really there to justify the move?

Meetings galore in the Ritz-Carlton lobby

ESPN met with Octagon representatives here this week as the parties are in the latter stages of discussions for new media rights deals for the West Coast Conference and the MAC. Both leagues’ deals with ESPN end after the 2026-27 academic year.

Octagon’s contingent in Amelia Island included EVP/Global Media Rights Consulting Daniel Cohen, SVP/Global Media Rights William Mao and Director/Media Rights Consulting Justin Beitler.

ESPN, too, was well represented. Execs spotted included SVP/College Sports Programming and Acquisitions Nick Dawson, Senior Director/Programming and Acquisitions Dan Margulis, Senior Director/Programming and Acquisitions Kurt Dargis, Senior Director/Programming and Acquisitions Jeramy Michiaels and VP/ESPN Events Clint Overby.

The sports business has spent the last few years focused on premium live rights, and for good reason: The biggest leagues still anchor the market, command the largest media deals and remain the center of gravity for sponsors, distributors and, ultimately, fans.

But the next layer of growth is coming from a wider set of behaviors than the industry has traditionally measured.

That is the shift sports executives need to pay attention to now. The old model assumed fandom started with watching: Audiences tuned in, cheered on specific teams and then, over time, spent more. This still matters. But increasingly, sports consumers, especially younger ones, are entering the ecosystem in different ways — by playing, joining communities, following creator-driven content or engaging with sports as part of a broader lifestyle.

That changes how value gets built.

The sports funnel is no longer linear

Findings from the EY US Sports Engagement Index, which surveyed 3,746 U.S. adults about their engagement across more than 100 sports, shows just how broad the sports ecosystem has become. Eighty-six percent of respondents said they engaged in sports over the past year, meaning engagement is expanding well beyond traditional spectatorship.

This matters because the industry still tends to separate watching from playing. But consumers do not. A person might discover a sport through social content, try it with friends, buy equipment, attend an event and then only later become a regular viewer. In other words, participation is no longer just adjacent to the sports business. In many cases, it also is becoming one of its most effective entry points.

This is especially relevant at a time when leagues, teams and investors are all looking for new ways to deepen fan relationships without relying only on major rights deals or large venue events. As a result, the market is opening the door to new entrants that can engage a broader and more diverse base of sports fans through more accessible, community‑driven experiences. This isn’t about replacing what works — it’s about widening the field.

Participation is becoming easier, and a real business signal

The key point is that not all forms of sports engagement create value in the same way. Traditional followership and attendance still favor sports with strong professional leagues and premium live inventory. Participation points to something different — where new habits, communities and commercial opportunities are taking shape.

Running offers a good example of what this looks like in practice. According to the EY US Sports Engagement Index, running reaches 78.2 million U.S. engagers, including 42.9 million participants. Half of its engagement base is 34 or younger. Pickleball shows a different but equally important signal — 40.6 million engagers, participation up 130% since 2020 and court construction rising 37% year over year. These are not just recreational trends. They point to infrastructure demand, sponsorship potential, event opportunity and commerce growth.

The same pattern shows up among younger audiences. The index finds that younger adults over-index toward sports such as running and boxing, while newer formats such as 3-on-3 basketball are also gaining traction with this group. This suggests the next generation is broadening the definition of sports engagement, not by abandoning the center of the sports world but by building around the activity in new ways.

This is where many companies undershoot the opportunity. They evaluate newer or participation-led sports only by whether they can eventually become scaled media properties.

That is too narrow. A sport can create commercial value long before it becomes a major rights story.

What smart operators should do now

The takeaway is not that every rising sport will become a league-sized business. Nor is it that the more established sports are somehow less important. They will remain the foundation of the U.S. sports economy.

The takeaway is that sports businesses should widen the lens on what counts as a meaningful asset or investment. Sports today should remove barriers to entry and expand possibilities for engagement.

That means looking not only at ratings and reach but also at behavior, such as frequency, community, age skew, infrastructure demand and cultural fit. It means treating participation as part of the fan funnel rather than a separate category. And it means recognizing that a run club, a court network, an influencer ecosystem or a participation-heavy format may have more long-term strategic value than its current media profile suggests.

The best-positioned companies in sports will still invest at the center. But they will also build around the edges, where identity, habit and participation are shaping tomorrow’s consumers before those shifts fully show up in rights valuations.

The sports business does not need to choose between premium spectatorship and participatory growth. The winners will understand how the two play side-by-side.

At Ernst & Young LLP, Javi Borges is the EY Global and EY Americas Media & Entertainment sector leader; Jennifer Walsh is the EY Global TMT Tax leader; and John Harrison is the EY Americas Media & Entertainment growth leader. The views reflected here are the views of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of Ernst & Young LLP or other members of the global EY organization.

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