Who was up and who was down in sports media this year?

After consulting with sports media sources and combing through the Front Office Sports archives, here’s our list for the top winners and losers in 2025.

Winners

The NFL: Any list of sports media winners and losers begins and ends with the red-hot NFL. The Shield has become the foundation holding up both legacy media and streaming programming. The league kicked off the year with Fox pulling a record 127.7 million viewers for its telecast of Eagles-Chiefs in Super Bowl LIX. Nine months later, the league obliterated another TV record, with CBS averaging a monster 57.2 million viewers for Chiefs-Cowboys on Thanksgiving Day. Of course, these numbers position the nation’s richest, most powerful sports league to opt out early from its current 11-year, $111 billion cycle of media-rights deals. It’s the NFL’s world, and we’re just living in it. 

Stephen A. Smith, ESPN: The ESPN superstar signed a five-year, $100 million contract extension in March that allowed him to expand into NFL coverage via Monday Night Countdown, while launching separate owned and operated shows on SiriusXM radio outside the aegis of the four letters. Most importantly, Smith is the only salaried employee at the worldwide leader with the freedom to tackle politics and hot-button political issues. His outsized voice has brought him into the conversation of potential Democratic presidential contenders in 2028. It’s a stunning, history-making comeback for an on-air talent dumped by ESPN back in 2009.

Jimmy Pitaro, ESPN: The chairman of ESPN successfully launched the company’s first direct-to-consumer service in August. But Pitaro’s creativity really came to fruition via three megadeals. First, he traded a package of Big 12 college football rights to TNT Sports for Charles Barkley’s iconic Inside the NBA, then managed to keep the Beatles of basketball coverage together. Then he swapped a 10% stake in ESPN worth $2 billion to the NFL in exchange for NFL Networks and the rights to the addictive NFL RedZone brand. Finally, he saved ESPN’s 39-year relationship with MLB at the 11th hour. The worldwide leader would not be the same without the Grand Old Game.

Rob Manfred, MLB: The commissioner led baseball to its best season in years. This season’s live MLB games attracted 71.4 million fans, capping the league’s first three-year growth run at the gates since 2007. Then, the 2025 World Series between the Dodgers and Blue Jays exceeded all expectations. Fox’s telecast of the Dodgers’ dramatic, 11th-inning win in Game 7 averaged 27.3 million viewers, making it the most-watched World Series game since Game 7 of the 2017 Fall Classic. Time for Manfred to take a deserved victory lap.

Pat McAfee: The former Colts punter turned ESPN superstar has become a unicorn in sports media. Driven by his addictive field-goal kicking contest, McAfee led College GameDay to its best season ever. The venerable pregame show averaged 2.7 million viewers, up 23%, and this season alone featured nine of GameDay’s most-watched episodes. His business model of owning and operating his own show, then licensing it to networks, is the playbook every superstar is copying. But the prickly McAfee reminded everybody he’s still his own boss, lashing out at “old ESPN people” producing GameDay, which his critics called “diva-like” behavior. Perhaps fitting given McAfee’s recent musical turn.

David Ellison, Paramount: The 42-year-old chairman and CEO burst on to the sports media scene like a young Rupert Murdoch. First, he finalized the smaller Skydance’s $8 billion merger with the larger Paramount Global in August. (Editors’ note: RedBird Capital, an investor in Paramount, is also an investor in Front Office Sports.) After nabbing CBS Sports and its lucrative NFL game rights, Ellison has now set his sights on Warner Bros. Discovery, which owns TNT Sports. If he can pull WBD away from the maw of Netflix, Ellison could create a sports media powerhouse rivaling ESPN.

Elle Duncan, Netflix: Call her the digital Bob Costas as Duncan takes on the role of lead anchor, host, and chief storyteller for Netflix’s growing list of sporting events. She is no doubt a loss for ESPN. When the worldwide leader hosted a media summit in the summer of 2024, she was the only woman onstage for a Q&A with heavy hitters Stephen A. Smith, Pat McAfee, Mike Greenberg, and Scott Van Pelt. Christine Williamson is taking over her old roles as cohost of SportsCenter and host of women’s college basketball coverage.

Tom Brady, Fox: After a rocky first season in the broadcast booth, Brady has had the opposite of a sophomore slump this season. The seven-time Super Bowl champ has been smart and loose. He lets the telecast come to him. Fox’s No. 1 NFL analyst may have benefited this year from the league relaxing the “Brady Rules” that restricted him last season due to his Raiders minority ownership. Even with his second-year improvement, it would still be nice to see Brady let it rip when it comes to poor play or bad officiating.

Losers

Bill Belichick, University of North Carolina: Belichick might want a do-over for the entire year. After effectively being banished from the NFL, the six-time Super Bowl winner could have been the next sports TV star as a garrulous, kindly grandfather talking football. Instead, 73-year-old Belichick returned to the sidelines as head coach of UNC in 2025, accompanied by controversial girlfriend/manager Jordon Hudson. The controlling Hudson detonated his cuddly new image via a disastrous interview with CBS News. It was downhill from there for Chapel Bill as his Tar Heels finished 4–8.   

Shannon Sharpe, Shay Shay Media: In April, the Pro Football Hall of Famer was closing in on a $100 million deal to sell his owned and operated Shay Shay Media. But after an anonymous woman filed a $50 million lawsuit accusing  Sharpe of rape, those talks collapsed, say sources. In late July, Sharpe also lost his contributor gig at ESPN, where he was positioned to become Stephen A. Smith’s successor on the powerhouse First Take morning show. Sharpe is slowly but surely coming back. But can he reach the heights again?

Brett Favre: The last shreds of the legendary QB’s credibility were shattered by the premiere of Netflix’s Untold: The Fall of Favre documentary film on May 20. The hourlong doc chronicled his sexual harassment of Jets host Jenn Sterger and the seamy welfare scheme in his home state of Mississippi. As executive producer and former FOS reporter A.J. Perez noted in the doc: “He has an image of being an All-American, good old boy, gunslinger. But through his life, and even in this welfare scandal, there are people covering for him.”

Charlie Dixon, FS1: He was one of the first management hires at Fox Sports’s FS1 in 2015 as the upstart sports cable network quixotically set out to challenge the powerful ESPN. But Dixon’s 10-year reign came to an ignominious end after former on-air talent Julie Stewart-Binks and ex-FS1 hairstylist Noushin Faraji named him as a defendant in two separate sexual harassment lawsuits in early 2025. Fox dumped Dixon in April.

Around the Horn: Nothing lasts forever on sports TV. Just ask Tony Reali and the dozens of sports journalists who cut their teeth on ESPN’s iconic weekday show. ESPN ended the show’s 23-year run in May. Former panelist Jay Mariotti blamed ATH going “woke” on political and social issues. But Reali told FOS the decision to expand the original cast beyond the same six to eight rotating commentators turned out to be the “strength” of the show.  

ESPN Bet: ESPN entered the sports-betting market too late to compete with first movers DraftKings and FanDuel, and in November, ended its 10-year, $2 billion partnership with Penn Entertainment after only two years. DraftKings capitalized on the breakup, signing a multiyear deal to become ESPN’s exclusive sportsbook and odds provider.

Venu Sports: This planned streaming service by ESPN, Fox Sports, and Warner Bros. Discovery was scrapped in January. Within months, ESPN came back with its own direct-to-consumer platform. Adiós, Venu.

ESPN researcher Mackenzie Kraemer did not violate company guidelines when he won $1 million in a DraftKings “best ball” fantasy contest this week, a source told Front Office Sports.

Kraemer, who has worked at ESPN since 2011, announced Monday that he finished second in a massive DraftKings contest, propelled by big performances from Bears receiver Luther Burden this week and Falcons running back Bijan Robinson all season.

While there was some chatter on social media about a perceived conflict of interest since DraftKings is the official sportsbook of ESPN, it bears mentioning that this was a season-long contest in which participants drafted their players prior to the NFL season—before ESPN unwound its sportsbook deal with Penn Entertainment and switched to DraftKings.

This is also not analogous to the infamous incident in 2015 when a DraftKings employee won $350,000 in a contest at rival FanDuel and was suspected of having an unfair advantage. 

An ESPN spokesperson declined to comment.

ESPN’s employee gambling guidelines were publicized by Covers in 2023, and primarily prohibit journalists and insiders from wagering on sports they cover. As a researcher, Kraemer would not fall into this category. 

Nevertheless, it’s possible ESPN will revisit its employee guidelines in light of DraftKings having more offerings in the fantasy space than Penn, and in particular, contests in which you’re competing against other users, as opposed to against the house.

The NFL and two of its network partners got a late Christmas present over the weekend as three stand-alone games have major playoff stakes in Week 18.

NBC gets Ravens-Steelers on Sunday night in a “loser leaves town” matchup, where the winner takes home the AFC North and gets a home playoff game. ABC, meanwhile, gets a pair of Saturday games, with the first matchup having, in all likelihood, the same stakes in the NFC South when the Bucs face the Panthers. There’s a scenario where if the Falcons win their final game, against the Saints, the Panthers would still win the division with a loss.

In the second leg of the ABC Saturday doubleheader, the Seahawks play the 49ers for the NFC West title and the top seed in the conference, which comes with a first-round bye. The loser will be a wild-card playoff seed and have a road game in the first round. 

“Wow, we get both those games? Well thank you very much, NFL,” a pleasantly surprised Scott Van Pelt said on ESPN (which operates ABC’s sporting events) after the Week 18 schedule was announced.

The NFL schedule is set up in a way that allows the league to be nimble with its Week 18 slate, as game times—and even dates, in the case of two games occurring on Saturday—are not set until late Sunday night of Week 17. Furthermore, since the 2010 season the NFL has scheduled divisional opponents for the last week of the season, with the hopes that there will be several games with the postseason on the line.

This year, the league needed a little bit of luck to get this fortune. If the Packers had beaten the Ravens or the Steelers had beaten the Browns—which were both the favored outcomes before the respective games kicked off—the Steelers would have wrapped up the division before their game against the Ravens. 

If the Bears had beaten the 49ers on Sunday night, the Seahawks would have clinched the NFC West. While the Bears and Seahawks still would’ve been vying for the top NFC seed next weekend, they would likely have been doing so in concurrent games Sunday afternoon on Fox or CBS as opposed to in a stand-alone slot.