Aaron Rodgers is now officially a Steeler, bringing in a significant amount of risk for a notoriously risk-averse organization. 

After months of speculation, even confounding Steelers coach Mike Tomlin, Rodgers at last notified the team Thursday that he would sign, and then officially agreed to a one-year deal on Friday, pending a physical. 

In pure football terms, Rodgers and a pedigree built with four Most Valuable Player awards could represent a sizable upgrade for a franchise stuck in a competitive morass. Under Tomlin, the Steelers have not had a losing season since 2003, four years before Tomlin arrived, a remarkable streak in the hypercompetitive NFL. For all that regular-season success, though, the team also hasn’t won a playoff game since the 2016 season, five years before the retirement of franchise icon Ben Roethlisberger. 

In a broader sense, though, the arrival of the highly polarizing Rodgers also brings a different type of attention to a Steelers organization that, under the Rooney family ownership, has long prized stability, accountability, and minimizing off-field drama. Even before the deal was struck, Steelers legend Terry Bradshaw called the team’s pursuit of Rodgers “a joke.” Since then, New York–area media such as the New York Post openly lampooned the signing and called Rodgers “Pittsburgh’s problem now.”

Must-See TV

One thing is for certain, though, with Rodgers signing with Pittsburgh: The Steelers will be an even more prominent fixture on television this season than the perennially popular team already is. Pittsburgh’s 2025 schedule currently includes four primetime games, including an Oct. 26 clash on NBC’s Sunday Night Football against the Packers, where Rodgers had the vast amount of his prior on-field success. 

The Steelers, meanwhile, also begin the regular season at the Jets, Rodgers’s most recent team, and that game is certain to be a key element of the early 1 p.m. ET window on the league’s first Sunday. TickPick also said that an average ticket purchase price of $326 for that opener represented the most expensive Jets regular-season game that the company has tracked. 

Other key late-season Steelers games, such as late-afternoon matchups against the Bills and Lions that will be shown nationally by CBS and a Sept. 28 game in Dublin against the Vikings on the NFL Network, have gained further prominence with the arrival of Rodgers. Other Steelers games later in the season currently slated for afternoon windows could additionally get flexed into broader windows. 

NFL officials previously said they were keeping factors such as Rodgers in mind when developing the 2025 schedule, but ultimately released it last month on the normal timetable with the quarterback still unsigned. 

Expansion has been a hot topic for the NBA in recent years, with a prevailing thought that the league would add two franchises after it settled its media-rights future.

But even with ESPN, NBC, and Amazon Prime Video starting 11-year, $77 billion deals next season, NBA commissioner Adam Silver doesn’t want to guarantee that the league’s current 30 owners will green-light expansion in the immediate future.

“The current sense is we should be exploring it,” Silver said Thursday night ahead of Game 1 of the NBA Finals. “I don’t think it’s automatic, because it depends on your perspective on the future of the league. Expansion, in a way, is selling equity in the league. And if you believe in the league, you don’t necessarily want to add partners.”

Silver said expansion will be discussed at an owners meeting in July around the NBA Summer League in Las Vegas, which had long been believed to be a front-runner for an expansion franchise alongside Seattle. 

A formal process for adding teams could begin after that. “There’s been no lack of interest,” Silver said, while noting he has so far not engaged with many “unsolicited calls” from prospective cities interested in a team.

“We recognize there are underserved markets in the United States and elsewhere,” Silver said. “And I think markets that deserve to have NBA teams, probably even, if we were to expand, more than we can serve.”

One issue Silver raised for potential expansion franchises is the uncertain state of local media-rights deals in the NBA. “Several of our teams’ regional networks have actually shut down,” he said. “Others have recently come out of bankruptcy. Others seem to be teetering. We’re going through a transition in media.” 

Round 1 in the Disney-YouTube legal battle involving top executive Justin Connolly clearly goes to the Google-owned streamer. 

About two weeks after Disney, the ESPN parent company, filed a lawsuit in California challenging Connolly’s intent to leave and join YouTube as global head of media and sports, a Los Angeles Superior Court judge denied Disney’s bid for a temporary restraining order and preliminary injunction blocking the executive’s move. Additionally, Judge James Chalfant wrote that he denied the order Disney sought in part because the “plaintiff has not demonstrated a probability of success on the merits.”

Chalfant also cited “lack of showing of emergency” and a “balance of harms” still tilting toward Connolly and not Disney. 

That means that, at least for now, Connolly can continue working at the streamer. There, he will look to expand a sports profile that already includes residential distribution rights for NFL Sunday Ticket and a recent deal to carry the league’s return to Brazil on Sept. 5 with the Chiefs and Chargers.

Disney said in a statement that it was “disappointed” in the initial ruling “but will continue to pursue our legal remedies.” The company had claimed Connolly signed a three-year employment agreement last November covering all of 2025–27, with a one-time termination right becoming effective March 1, 2027, and had raised claims of breach of contract, tortious interference of contractual relations, and unfair competition. 

YouTube TV has a soon-expiring carriage deal with Disney, but YouTube has said in legal filings that it has told Disney that Connolly will not be involved in the renegotiation efforts.

The early stages of NASCAR’s new $1 million in-season tournament will come into focus this weekend as fans continue to get used to the sport’s new media partners.

Over the next three races on new rights-holder Amazon Prime Video, performances will determine the seeding for a 32-driver bracket. Drivers will be seeded by their best finish in the upcoming three races, with the first tiebreaker being the next-best finish.

Amazon has averaged 2.39 million viewers for the first two broadcasts of the streamer’s five-race package this season. As expected, that’s down from last year’s ratings on Fox, which averaged 3.17 million viewers over the same two-race stretch (Charlotte and Nashville). However, Amazon said the median ages of its race audiences (55.8 and 56.8, respectively) are far lower than the 62.8 median age of NASCAR Cup Series races this season on linear networks.

Passing the Torch

When Amazon’s slate of races concludes, TNT Sports will air all five races that encompass the single-elimination portion of the in-season tournament, beginning with the June 28 race in Atlanta. 

In addition to the normal race playing out, drivers will advance or be eliminated from the tournament by comparing their head-to-head result against the other driver they are matched up with. The $1 million winner-take-all tournament will crown its champion at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway on July 27.

TNT Sports is adding NASCAR to its portfolio just as its NBA rights expire. Other new sports rights for the Warner Bros. Discovery subsidiary include the ongoing French Open and the College Football Playoff. 

Amazon, TNT Sports, and The CW (Xfinity Series) became NASCAR media-rights partners this season alongside incumbents Fox and NBC, all of which will collectively pay $7.7 billion over the next seven years.