Monday is the lone sports equinox of 2025, but the continued fragmentation of sports on TV makes the “holiday” more difficult to enjoy than in years past.

Traditionally, a sports equinox happens when the top four U.S. professional sports leagues—the NFL, NBA, MLB, and NHL—are in action on the same day. On Monday, MLS is playing playoff games, too.

To watch the seven national broadcasts available for those 17 games, one would need subscriptions to either two or three streaming services and access to either three or four different linear TV channels. Good luck crafting that multiview screen.

Here’s Monday’s lineup:

• NFL: Commanders-Chiefs (ABC/ESPN)
• NBA: 11 games (two on Peacock, nine others on local channels or NBA League Pass)
• MLB: Blue Jays–Dodgers (Fox)
• NHL: Two games (NHL Network and ESPN+)
• MLS: Two games (FS1 or Apple TV)

The biggest change in the sports media landscape since the last sports equinox on Oct. 28, 2024, is the NBA’s new $77 billion deals that came with a large streaming component with Amazon Prime Video and Peacock.

Apple TV has global media rights for all MLS matches, but like last year, select postseason contests are being made available on linear Fox Sports channels. 

Ever-Changing

The sports TV landscape will be different during any sports equinox that happens next year, too.

MLB is close to finalizing new media-rights deals that will go into effect next season, as NBC will join ESPN and TNT Sports, and many of the league’s major assets will shift around.

The NFL is also exploring renegotiating with its media-rights partners as soon as next year, as opposed to waiting until after the 2029 season to start opting out of its current 11-year, $110 billion deals that were originally set to run through 2033.

LOS ANGELES — The Dodgers’ embarrassment of riches is such that a second wave of signings beyond the team’s top superstars is fueling the club’s foremost World Series success so far.

As the World Series against the Blue Jays shifts to Dodger Stadium for Games 3–5 this week, the Dodgers will continue to be led by Shohei Ohtani, Mookie Betts, and Freddie Freeman, each former Most Valuable Players and owners of the Nos. 2, 5, and 37 player deals in MLB history. 

Another wave of talent on the Dodgers roster, however, is playing a critical role. The group includes players who were also signed to major deals as the club built up a luxury-tax payroll of $416.9 million, the highest in MLB history. Among the key contributors:

• Starting pitcher Yoshinobu Yamamoto. The Japanese flamethrower threw a complete-game win in Game 2 on Saturday in Toronto, his second straight such feat this postseason, to even up the World Series with the Blue Jays at a game each. Yamamoto signed a 12-year, $325 million deal with the Dodgers before the 2024 season, the largest ever awarded to a pitcher. After flashing his brilliance more occasionally these past two seasons, he became on Saturday the first pitcher since Don Larsen’s perfect game in 1956 to end a World Series contest by retiring the final 20 batters. 
• Starting pitcher Tyler Glasnow. Acquired after the 2023 season in a trade with the Rays, the righthander will start Game 3 on Monday at Dodger Stadium. Following that trade, he signed a five-year, $136.5 million contract with the Dodgers. Because of significant deferrals in Ohtani’s and Betts’s deals, Glasnow is actually the highest-paid Dodgers player in 2025. 
• Catcher Will Smith. One of the longest-tenured players on the Dodgers roster behind legendary pitcher Clayton Kershaw, Smith signed a 10-year, $140 million pact before the 2024 season designed to keep him in Los Angeles for the rest of his career. Smith led the Dodgers’ offense in Game 2, homering and driving in three runs, while also guiding Yamamoto’s exploits from behind the plate. Smith was also one of the lone bright spots for Los Angeles in a blowout Game 1 win for Toronto, driving in another run. 

“He’s really got a flat-line heartbeat, and in the postseason, that’s what you need,” said Dodgers manager Dave Roberts of Smith.

Those performances contrast sharply against Ohtani, who is hitting just .224 this postseason with 19 strikeouts, even with his historic three-homer outburst in Game 4 in the National League Championship Series against the Brewers. Ohtani will make his first World Series start on the mound Tuesday for Game 4.

Toronto’s Glue Guys

Similarly, the Blue Jays are also powered heavily by the bottom-of-the-lineup players such as center fielder Daulton Varsho, third baseman Ernie Clement, and right fielder Myles Straw.

Those contributors have lengthened the lineup considerably well beyond star first baseman Vladimir Guerrero Jr., who signed a $500 million extension with Toronto back in the spring, the third-largest deal in MLB history, or top-of-the-lineup force George Springer. Varsho, Clement, and Straw, however, combined to earn less than $17 million this season—less than six different Dodgers. 

“We said we wanted to be a very diversified offense and know which club to take out of your bag in any situation,” said Blue Jays manager John Schneider, using a golf metaphor to help explain his roster. “We surrounded [our key players] with guys that do make contact, the bottom of the order, the glue guys. I think giving pitching staffs different looks, being able to score in multiple ways, is big for us, not waiting around for a three-run homer.”

The Browns’ $100 million settlement deal with the city of Cleveland, struck two weeks ago, was designed to end years of political and legal friction, but the resolution is not yet final—providing yet another wrinkle on the team’s long-running stadium saga.

The city council, which must approve the deal, is pushing for potential improvements, and more political wrangling is expected in the next several weeks. Cleveland’s planning commission approved the pact Friday by a 5–1 margin, but that was an expected prelude before an upcoming council vote. 

“You have laid with the dogs, and now you have fleas,” council member Brian Kazy said earlier this month regarding Cleveland Mayor Justin Bibb.

Bibb, however, said the pact represents the final offer from Browns owners Jimmy and Dee Haslam.

“At this stage, the deal is the current deal,” Bibb said. “[The Haslams] have not indicated that they’re open to material changes.”

Furthering that, city of Cleveland senior advisor Jessica Trivisonno told the planning commission that the Browns deal “is not an à-la-carte solution, where we get to pick and choose pieces we want to approve or disapprove.”

The settlement is designed to pave the way for the $2.4 billion domed stadium and mixed-use development to be built in suburban Brook Park, Ohio. The planned facility, near Cleveland Hopkins International Airport, has been beset with a lengthy series of political and legal obstacles, but a groundbreaking is planned for early next year. The Browns intend to open the new stadium in 2029. 

There is also an immediate timing element at play, as the first obligation in the settlement deal is on Dec. 1, when the Haslams will pay the city $25 million in the first and largest chunk of a series of planned payments.