Amazon Prime Video is poised to announce the hiring of Dell Curry as an analyst for its growing NBA coverage team, Front Office Sports has learned.

The father of NBA superstar Stephen Curry and 11-year veteran Seth Curry currently works as a color commentator for the Hornets. Dell Curry, who became that franchise’s No. 2 all-time leading scorer during his own 16-year NBA career, will join a growing list of hires for Prime’s upcoming NBA coverage during the 2025–26 season. 

They include former TNT Sports game analyst Stan Van Gundy; play-by-play announcer Ian Eagle; NBA legends Dwyane Wade, Steve Nash, Dirk Nowitzki, and Blake Griffin; former WNBA star Candace Parker; and studio host Taylor Rooks. The Athletic also reported Thursday that announcer Kevin Harlan and analyst Brent Barry are joining Amazon.

The hiring of Curry puts Amazon in pole position to recruit one of the NBA’s biggest stars when they retire. FOS has written about the company’s relationship with 40-year-old LeBron James, but this broadens one with 37-year-old Steph Curry. 

Hiring Dell Curry could be a preliminary chess move by Prime to recruit his superstar son, with four NBA titles and two MVP awards on his résumé, to be its lead NBA face and voice. Curry’s teammate Draymond Green worked alongside Charles Barkley’s Emmy Award–winning cast on TNT’s Inside the NBA while an active player. Green is also eyeing sports media as a “big part of his future,” agent Josh Pyatt told FOS in January.

James, meanwhile, has a growing business and marketing relationship with Prime that could lead to him eventually joining their NBA coverage. The four-time champion is currently appearing in the online retailer’s “What’s Next” ad campaign for Prime Day 2025 from July 8–11. The Lakers superstar’s Mind the Game podcast with Nash is part of the Wondery network, which was acquired by Amazon Music for $300 million in 2020.

James and his fellow NFL fans from The Shop also created a ManningCast-style alternative stream around Prime’s coverage of Thursday Night Football, dubbed TNF in The Shop. 

Prime will share U.S. media rights with incumbent ABC/ESPN and returning media partner NBC Sports as part of the NBA’s new 11-year cycle of media deals worth $77 billion. As part of the league’s new normal, TNT will no longer operate NBA TV and NBA.com.

Prime declined to comment.

Apple’s entry into the Formula One rights sweepstakes presents an interesting dilemma for the global auto racing league. 

After the Financial Times reported that Apple has made a bid for F1’s United States live rights following the early box-office success of F1: The Movie, which it produced starring Brad Pitt, Puck media reporter Dylan Byers laid out the scenario of how F1 must decide between maximizing money versus audience size when choosing between Apple and incumbent ESPN.

“I’m reliably told that Apple’s offer came in between $150 million and $200 million per year—far above the reported $85 million to $90 million that ESPN is currently paying per annum, and far beyond what ESPN can rationally afford,” the report said. “As with their other bidding wars against tech giants, [Bob] Iger and [Jimmy] Pitaro will inevitably have to persuade [parent company] Liberty’s John Malone and Derek Chang to take less from ESPN in order to maintain the reach and marketing that ESPN provides. (Of course, Major League Soccer commissioner Don Garber learned the hard way how giving near-exclusivity to Apple can somewhat disappear a sport.)”

The dollar figure currently offered by Disney/ESPN to retain its F1 rights is unknown. 

ESPN announced earlier this week that F1 telecasts are averaging 1.3 million viewers across ABC, ESPN, and ESPN2 this season, up 17% as compared to last year’s full-season average. While seven of this year’s twelve F1 events have set U.S. viewership records, its audience still pales in comparison with NASCAR in this country. 

Apple’s MLB and MLS games are not Nielsen-rated, and all indications are that its baseball games draw a fraction of the audience watching games aired on ESPN. A survey published last year by the research firm MoffettNathanson estimated that just 11% of U.S. households use the Apple TV+ streaming service. 

While Apple TV+ does carry the aforementioned MLB and MLS games, many of its subscribers use it for entertainment programming as opposed to live events. ESPN has a flywheel where it can promote F1 races on its myriad other high-reach live sports events, and attract casual viewers who still flip to the channel expecting a live event. 

The Financial Times report said that F1’s total global media rights were worth $1.1 billion per year in 2024, and that other bidders besides ESPN and Apple are expected to join the fray. 

Erin Andrews and Charissa Thompson both started their sports media careers at Fox Sports, became stars at ESPN, then returned to Fox in nationally prominent roles. They cohost the Calm Down With Erin and Charissa podcast/YouTube show. Now both are scoring lucrative contract extensions with Fox before the start of the new NFL season, sources tell Front Office Sports.

Andrews and Tom Rinaldi serve as sideline reporters on Fox’s lead NFL crew. But her previous deal expired after the 2024 NFL season, making her a free agent for one of the first times in her sports media career. But Andrews and Fox have agreed to a new deal, say sources. For its part, Fox has acted like it’s business as usual. When the network announced its 2025 regular-season game schedule in May, it posted a graphic on X/Twitter showing Andrews’s face, along with Tom Brady, Kevin Burkhardt, and Rinaldi. 

Thompson works for both Fox and Amazon Prime Video, hosting both Fox’s NFL Kickoff pregame show on Sundays and Prime’s Thursday Night Football pregame show. She has also re-upped with Fox. All along, she’s been emphatic in saying she wasn’t going anywhere. 

“No, I’m not leaving Fox. I was never leaving Fox,” she told Andrews on their podcast in late April. “I don’t know where this took on a life of its own, where I was hosting my family at the ranch for the past weekend. Four of my family members asked, ‘Well, the place looks great. How are you going to afford it now that you don’t have a job?’ I’m not leaving Fox. I was never leaving Fox. I’m not fired.”

Thompson (who started with Fox’s HR department as a 22-year-old) joked she wants to die at the sports network’s studio lot on Pico Boulevard in Los Angeles. “As I always talk about, Fox is my longest relationship.”

Keeping both Andrews and Thompson is great news for Fox since they could have jumped ship for other NFL media partners. But cast changes are coming for the long-running Fox NFL Sunday pregame show, which has reigned as the No. 1 studio show for 31 years. 

In early March, 81-year-old Jimmy Johnson announced he was retiring from TV. (The network hinted at the departure of the former Cowboys coach by running an AI tribute during its Super Bowl LIX coverage from New Orleans.) 

During Super Bowl week, FOS asked Terry Bradshaw and Howie Long how long they’ll keep the band together. Both have been with the show since its inception in 1994. The cast also includes host Curt Menefee, Michael Strahan, Jay Glazer, and Rob Gronkowski.

As Bradshaw said to FOS: “I told my wife before I left the hotel room, I was sitting there, I said, ‘I’ve got two years left at Fox. I’m 76. It’s a young man’s game. I get that. Everybody wants their new [people]. I said, if we can get to the next Super Bowl, I’ll be 80. I think that’s time. That’s pushing it.” 

The 65-year-old Long noted the cast’s loosey-goosey chemistry keeps them coming back for more: “We enjoy it every year. We talk about it all the time, actually, how much we enjoy being here. I think they pay us to fly and stay in hotels—the rest of it we’d do for free.”

Meanwhile, Laura Okmin, the third-longest-tenured sideline reporter in NFL history, told FOS she turned down a contract offer from Fox to focus on her company GALvanize, which trains young women for the sports world.

“They sent me the contract. I printed it out. I sat there. It was just my voice saying, ‘It’s time, this is it.’ I called my boss and my friend Jacob Ullman, who I’ve known for as long as I’ve been at Fox Sports. I’m happy to say he was very surprised. I would have been very disappointed if there was any other reaction. It was a really nice call, because I got to have it with my boss and my friend.”

Fox’s regular-season NFL game schedule will include a Super Bowl LIX rematch between the Eagles and Chiefs, a Thanksgiving Day NFC North clash between the Lions and Packers, and a record 11 doubleheaders, the most of any NFL TV partner ever.  

A Fox spokesman declined to comment on Andrews and Thompson, saying the network does not comment on talent contracts.