Rixon Sports Report - Tue. May 27th, 2025

- Disney suing Youtube over poached executive - Reuters

- CFP making some major changes to playoff seeding - Yahoo! Sports

- NHL playoff ratings a geographic mixed bag - Front Office Sports

- Sold Out Indy500 best crowd in a decade - Car and Driver

Transcript

Welcome to the Rixon Sports Report, the fastest 3 minutes in sports business for Tuesday, May 27th, 2025.

Disney and Youtube seem prepped for a legal battle as the House of Mouse is seeking to stop Youtube from hiring Justin Connolly, a long-time Disney Executive, as its new global head of media and sports.  Connolly signed a new three year employment agreement in 2024 which would have him on control until March of 2027.  Disney claiming breach of contract, unfair competition and interference with a contractual relationship.  Connolly spent two decades at ESPN and Disney, so you could easily see why Youtube would be interested as they continue to secure major sports streaming deals, like the $14 billion dollar deal they signed with the NFL in 2022.  Youtube has not responded for comment.  More at Reuters.

Ross Dellenger at Yahoo! Sports on the new College Football Playoff format, moving to place teams based directly on ranking and not by conference championships.  The vote was unanimous.  Currently, the top four seeds are designated to the highest-ranked conference champions.  In the new format, teams are seeded 1-12 with the top four earning byes.  This comes with a significant compromise, the four highest ranked champions, even if they are not a top four seed, will continue to earn $8 million, at least for this year vs. the old format where they got $4 million for qualifying for the CFP and $4 million for making the quarterfinals.  We are also expecting a new format in 2026, with Big Ten and SEC angling for 16 teams in a 4-4-2-2-1 model.  SEC and Big Ten get four automatic qualifiers each, 2 for the Big 12 and ACC then one each for the remaining highest ranked group of six conference championships and three at larges (one of which would be Notre Dame if they made the top 16).  I swear we are seeing changes by the day and I’m sure, at no point, can this get ugly.

I got some flack this week from some folks for being all over the NBA playoff TV ratings but no mention of the NHL.  NHL playoff ratings are down significantly amongst American audiences, with a 28% drop on ESPN and 19% on TNT compared to last year.  The total drop has been roughly 25% across both platforms for second round games.  Many insiders are attributing the reason to more Canadian teams - not sure I buy that considering there are five this year, up one from last year, but no one can argue that the Canadian numbers are astounding.  NHL says that second round games averaged 2.2 million viewers, up 45% from last year.  More at Front Office Sports.

The Indy500, the 109th version of the event, hosted a sold out crowd for the first time since 2016 and the largest in more than a decade at around 350,000 fans.  Fun fact, the Brickyard is not only the oldest continually operated race track in the United States, but it's also the highest-capacity sports venue in the world, with over 257,000 permanent seats and room for an additional 100,000 fans to pack into its 253-acre infield.

Thanks again for listening to the Rixon Sports Report, and as always you can find these stories at RixonSports.com, have a great Tuesday.