The NFL concluded its 2023 regular season in much the same fashion as it began: with the league in a dominant position and only getting stronger.

The league averaged 17.9 million viewers per game across all networks for the regular season, up by 7% from a year ago and the NFL’s best figure since 2015. In addition to the aggregate viewership bump, each of the league’s domestic rights-holders showed growth from 2022:

• Amazon: Up 24% to an average of 11.86 million for Thursday Night Football.
• CBS: Up 5% to an average of 19.35 million for overall coverage and an average of 24.64 million for late Sunday afternoon games. CBS also had the season’s most-watched game with an average of 41.76 million for the Washington-Dallas game on Thanksgiving.
• ESPN: Up 29% to an average of 17.4 million for Monday Night Football.
• Fox: Up 2% to an average of 24.62 million for its America’s Game of the Week national broadcasts. The network was down 2% overall to 19 million for its NFL coverage.
• NBC: Up 8% to an average of 21.4 million for Sunday Night Football. 

The league’s viewership improvement is the result of several factors, including weaker overall broadcast primetime performance due to the writers’ and actors’ strikes, better scheduling that allowed for top contests in national windows, a heightened emphasis on Christmas Day, and additional exposure of ESPN’s Monday Night Football on sister broadcast network ABC. 

The NFL’s rating growth contrasts sharply with a comparable 16% drop in overall broadcast primetime viewership to a record-low figure of 2.8 million, with that figure owing heavily to a decrease in original entertainment programming due to the strikes. So while the rest of the broadcast landscape is shrinking, the NFL continues to build its audience. 

The NFL also showed improvement in several, more-specific measures including female viewership, which rose 9% to its highest level since that record keeping began in 2000, as well as the best levels of viewership in the under-35 demographic since 2019. The league further flexed its television prowess by claiming 93 of Nielsen’s top 100 broadcasts in 2023. 

MLB is poised to finalize a local broadcasting deal with Diamond Sports Group for the 2024 season during an upcoming and highly anticipated bankruptcy court hearing in Houston. But the future beyond that remains decidedly murky. 

The league is nearing an agreement with the Bally Sports parent that could lower some rights fees for the upcoming season but return a broad swath of rights back to MLB after the 2024 World Series, similar to recent deals DSG has struck with the NBA and NHL. That MLB regional sports network agreement has been in development for more than three weeks and would provide some certainty months after the league repeatedly pressed DSG to make known its plans for the upcoming season.

But MLB remains opposed to a separate equity deal DSG is developing with Amazon in which the streaming and online retail giant would invest in the company. That investment—pegged at about $150 million by the New York Post but described by Front Office Sports sources as a smaller figure—is reportedly predicated on DSG acquiring MLB digital rights for multiple years. The league would prefer to keep such broader negotiations out of bankruptcy court, and deal directly and separately with Amazon if a rights deal is to be struck.

“That [larger rights conversation] is making a complicated situation more complicated,” a league source tells FOS.

Tuesday night, a bankruptcy court hearing originally set for Wednesday was rescheduled to Jan. 19 as negotiations continue between MLB and DSG.

Eleven MLB teams are directly affected by the ongoing DSG situation, including the defending World Series champion Texas Rangers, the high-powered Atlanta Braves, and the perennially popular St. Louis Cardinals. Within that group, DSG currently has the digital rights to five MLB teams—the Detroit Tigers, Kansas City Royals, Miami Marlins, Milwaukee Brewers, and Tampa Bay Rays—and has unsuccessfully sought a larger set of streaming rights in baseball.

In addition to those teams, the Minnesota Twins are talking to DSG about a potential reunion after a prior rights deal expired with the end of the 2023 season.

Washington, D.C., officials are still talking with Ted Leonsis and his Monumental Sports and Entertainment about staying at Capital One Arena. But D.C. officials already are developing a backup plan, acting with a speed often unseen in the slow-moving world of stadium and arena negotiations.

Less than four weeks after Leonsis announced plans to build a $2 billion arena and mixed-use development in Alexandria, Va., for the Washington Wizards and Capitals, D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser has formed the Gallery Place/Chinatown Task Force to create a new vision for the area surrounding Capital One Arena. The task force will consider a variety of potential moves for the neighborhood, including potentially tearing down the 26-year-old venue to open the land for other uses.

“We have to have a vibrant space here,” Bowser said. “We can’t have it underused, and there will be people who it would serve their purposes [sic] if we had an underutilized arena in downtown D.C. That will not serve the purposes for the D.C. taxpayer. So I want to be clear about that: We will not allow an underused arena.”

The task force includes both current government officials and private business leaders and is led in part by two of Bowser’s mayoral predecessors, Anthony Williams and Adrian Fenty. Even before Leonsis announced his plans, the Capital One Arena area was the subject of rising concerns about crime and business growth. 

Local Politics

Bowser did not detail the current state of D.C.’s talks with Leonsis, but an offer of $500 million in public money to upgrade Capital One Arena remains on the table. The Leonsis plan to move the Wizards and Capitals to the new Alexandria arena also potentially involves his Washington Mystics shifting its home games from the 4,200-seat Entertainment and Sports Arena in southeast D.C. to Capital One Arena. 

The prospect of moving the WNBA team from D.C.’s poorest ward to downtown has already angered local officials, even as the Mystics regularly sell out  at the smaller venue and have arguably outgrown it as the league soars in popularity. D.C. officials, meanwhile, are thinking about other—and potentially very different—options for the Capital One Arena neighborhood.

“If the teams do move—and we have to anticipate that they will—we have an opportunity to reposition almost two city blocks, five acres, right in downtown D.C. for a new use,” said Nina Albert, D.C.’s acting deputy mayor for planning and economic development.