Steph Curry, Kevin Durant and LeBron James not only brought the United States an Olympic gold medal.

They delivered massive viewership numbers as well.

NBC said on Sunday that the U.S. Men’s Basketball Team’s thrilling 98-87 victory over France averaged 19.5 million viewers on NBC and Peacock based on fast national data from Nielsen and Adobe Analytics. The company said it was the most-watched gold medal game since the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta. The game peaked at 22.7 million viewers from 5-5:15 p.m. ET in the final quarter of the game.

It was the fifth consecutive gold medal for the U.S. in basketball. The gold medal game was a massive viewership jump from the final in Tokyo, which drew 9.3 million viewers as well as Rio (11.7 million).

“We got our moment,” said James following the win. “It’s a basketball world. Everybody loves the game. We just hope that we continue to inspire people all over the world.”

The U.S-France meeting was also the most-streamed event of the Paris Olympics across NBCU digital properties with an average minute audience of 2.7 million viewers.

NBC on Sunday also announced the viewership for the women’s gold medal soccer game: The U.S. Women’s National Team’s 1-0 victory over Brazil averaged approximately 9.0 million viewers on NBC and…

John and Tracy Sellers arrived in Lubbock, Texas, the evening of Monday, July 22, with dinner reservations and an intention: to woo the best college softball player in the world to play for Texas Tech.

The dinner was at Las Brisas, a white-tablecloth steakhouse just south of Texas Tech’s campus that serves up lobster guacamole and a 25-ounce bone-in ribeye. The player was NiJaree Canady, USA Softball’s Collegiate Player of the Year.

There were six seats at the table: the Sellers, Marc McDougal (a board member of the Matador Club, a Texas Tech-affiliated name, image and likeness collective), Canady and her parents. No coaches or university administrators. Just a few well-connected Tech supporters and a family with a menu full of options. The group made fast friends over a nearly three-hour meal.

Canady, a 6-foot pitching phenom from Topeka, Kan., was visiting Lubbock for the first time. She was less than two months removed from leading Stanford to the Women’s College World Series semifinals as a sophomore, garnering mainstream headlines in the process. A few weeks later, she entered the transfer portal, the biggest star of a burgeoning sport hitting the open market.

The youngest person at the table that night, Canady held all the power. But she also had a tough decision…

The NBA announced new 11-year TV deals with incumbent ESPN and newcomers NBC and Amazon Prime Video, rejecting TNT Sports’ right to match, which could lead to a legal battle between the network and the league, according to sources briefed on the deal.

The forthcoming agreements with ESPN, NBC and Amazon are not set to begin until the 2025-26 season, meaning TNT could go into this season, its final under its current contract, with the specter of suing the league it is covering.

The agreements, announced Wednesday, also include the WNBA, which is expected to receive a total of $2.2 billion over 11 years.

TNT Sports, according to sources briefed on the matter, has honed its sights on Amazon’s streaming-only agreement, which includes the playoffs, six conference finals, the In-Season Tournament and regular season action. Amazon’s deal is for around $1.93 billion per year, according to sources briefed on the precise numbers. Amazon will also continue to air the WNBA.

“Warner Bros. Discovery’s most recent proposal did not match the terms of Amazon Prime Video’s offer and, therefore, we have entered into a long-term arrangement with Amazon,” the NBA said in a statement.

“Throughout these negotiations, our primary objective has been to maximize the reach and accessibility…

Don Garber is a storyteller.

Over lunch at a Midtown Manhattan rooftop restaurant last month, as he chronicles his journey from Bayside, Queens to the NFL offices on Park Avenue to MLS commissioner, it is clear he knows it is the little details that make a story sing.

He didn’t just work at a gas station in high school, it was Barney’s Gulf, a sponsor of the Tony DePhillips Little League baseball team he played for. He didn’t just deliver newspapers, he learned how to properly fold up the Long Island Press to toss while riding his Stingray bike. He reels off the names of characters he has met along the way, like his wife Betsy’s boss at public relations firm Ruder and Finn, who told her she could find Betsy a better match “than this knucklehead”. “We’ll be married 39 years,” he notes. Or the man who ran the farmstand he worked at during summer break while a student at SUNY Oneonta.

He drops a few surprises, too. Garber’s resume may start at a vocational school near LaGuardia Airport, but his first year and a half after college was spent sleeping in a Ford van, working at bars and installing irrigation lines to pay his way across the U.S. and Mexico with some buddies.

“Old guys have great stories,” Garber says, with a smile.

Next month will mark 25 years for…

Caitlin Clark and Angel Reese joining forces against the U.S. women’s national team for this year’s WNBA All-Star Game not only helped produce a Team WNBA victory, but also shattered the all-time audience mark for a WNBA All-Star Game broadcast.

Saturday’s showcase drew 3.44 million viewers on ABC, per Nielsen. That crushes the previous audience record set in 2003, when 1.441 million viewers tuned into ABC for a Saturday afternoon tilt at Madison Square Garden. That game featured an abundance of all-time greats, including Lisa Leslie, Sue Bird, Dawn Staley, Sheryl Swoopes, Cynthia Cooper, Tamika Catchings, Tina Thompson, Lauren Jackson, Teresa Weatherspoon, Chamique Holdsclaw, Katie Smith, Yolanda Griffith, Swin Cash and Nykesha Sales, among others. (There was also a first-time All-Star guard from the New York Liberty named Becky Hammon.)

The 2024 All Star Game audience number tracks as the most-watched WNBA event on any ESPN network, and the third-most watched WNBA game of all-time, based on data from Sports Media Watch. The audience for the game peaked from 10:30 – 10:43 p.m. ET with 4,054,000 viewers. It is the 17th WNBA game this year that has topped 1 million viewers, a remarkable achievement given the league had not hit the million viewership mark in the previous…

While the NBA remains in a media rights purgatory, waiting to see if and how Warner Bros. Discovery will use its matching rights to try to retain a part of the league’s new rights package, it has ensured that this high-stakes game of corporate chicken won’t happen again the next time around.

The NBA’s new media rights agreements do not contain matching rights for Disney, NBC and Amazon — the three companies that have come together to pay the league roughly $75 billion over 11 years — according to industry sources briefed on the deals. The new rights deals will kick in with the start of the 2025-26 NBA season. They also include roughly a $2.2 billion, 11-year payout for the WNBA as that league’s next rights deal.

The NBA declined to comment.

Although the NBA’s board of governors have voted on and approved the incoming deals, they have not yet been officially finalized. Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav has publicly said that his company has matching rights from the current media rights deal to be able to retain one of the packages. It is believed to be eying the one signed with Amazon, which will pay the NBA an average of $1.8 billion per season for the ability to air six conference finals, playoff games, the NBA Cup and a Thursday night and weekend…

The WNBA landed another frontline sponsorship deal this week, adding DraftKings as its official sports betting partner.

The deal will give DraftKings the rights to the intellectual property of the league and its teams, as well as access to official WNBA data that can then be used for betting and daily fantasy. DraftKings will also be the presenting sponsor for the league’s new content platform that will run in September centered around the WNBA’s playoff race.

The WNBA also has a deal with FanDuel to serve as its official betting partner. The NBA also has the same official partners.

“The WNBA has seen tremendous growth, which continues to be a bright spot in the sports world. We are proud to support the league in its efforts to continue expanding the game,” DraftKings president Matt Kalish said.

The DraftKings partnership is the latest bit of positive business news for the league this week. On Tuesday, the WNBA announced a multiyear deal with New Balance where the sneaker company will serve as one of the league’s official partners.

The WNBA has also gained some certainty about its next media rights deal. The league will receive roughly…

PHOENIX — Phoenix Mercury owner Mat Ishbia is still relatively new to the WNBA. But after purchasing the Mercury and NBA’s Phoenix Suns in February 2023, it hasn’t taken him long to make an impression.

Among the biggest areas of impact he’s made is the Mercury’s new practice facility, a 58,000-square-foot performance center designed specifically for the WNBA team. Building the facility, which officially opened Thursday — coinciding with the start of 2024 WNBA All-Star weekend in Phoenix — was a priority. “It was a main focus from the get-go,” he said.

The facility, which the organization said cost $100 million, features an abundance of amenities. It has a freestanding underwater treadmill, a hydrotherapy room, an indoor and outdoor turf training area, and a full kitchen with a dedicated chef. It features vast open spaces and allows plenty of natural light to shine through, another key design element. “We looked at all sports, all over the world (to see) how do you make this the best of the best?” Josh Bartelstein, the chief executive officer of the franchises, said. “None of it happened by accident.”

The squad put their hard hats on and toured their future home. A sneak peek of what’s to come at the Mercury Practice Facility!

New Jersey governor Phil Murphy says he “would die” to bring Premier League matches to the United States, explaining that he believes it is in the competition’s “enlightened self-interest” to do so.

Murphy, 66, has been involved in football for several decades, including serving on the board of U.S. Soccer and co-owning the NWSL team NJ/NY Gotham FC.

MetLife Stadium, the 82,500-capacity arena situated in New Jersey, will be the venue for the 2026 World Cup final and hosted a friendly between Manchester United and Arsenal last year, as well as three games — two group fixtures and a semi-final — at the Copa America this summer. Real Madrid and Barcelona will play a Clasico pre-season friendly there on August 3.

Asked whether he envisaged these matches becoming competitive fixtures, Murphy replied: “I would die for that. And by the way, the exhibitions — we will have Real and Barcelona on August 3, we’ll have to shrink our capacity a little bit for FIFA — every ticket was sold and the game didn’t count. I would love to — I would die — to see what happens in a game that counts. It would sell every ticket and then some.”

Leading executives at NBC Sports, the American broadcaster that spent $2.7billion (£2.2bn) on a six-year Premier League deal, have been…

LAS VEGAS — Seventeen-year-old Maci Joncich sat in the bleachers at Coronado High School’s football stadium in Las Vegas on a spring day in April, her future in football crystalizing.

Joncich had recently become the youngest player to make the U.S. Women’s Flag Football National Team. While she had no doubts about where she was headed as she took a break from class, she reflected on how cloudy her football prospects once looked.

Just four years prior, Joncich’s options for role models in the world of flag football were slim and she was charting unexplored territory.

“The biggest point of discussion was, ‘What comes next with flag football?’” Joncich said. “When I started, there was no flag in college. There were no Olympics. It was a bit of a struggle at first just getting the motivation to keep playing.”

All that has changed because of the expeditious rise of the sport.

There are 11 states where flag football is sanctioned as a girls’ varsity high school sport. Women’s flag football scholarships are offered at 25 NAIA colleges, and five NCAA Division III colleges will follow suit in 2025. There aren’t currently options for boys or men beyond the club level, but there will soon be a professional option, as the American Flag Football League plans to launch…