This week, we’re celebrating the highs, the lows, the best, and the worst of the year with The Awfulies. As we’ve done for the past four years, the Awful Announcing staff has cast its votes for who we think should take home the coveted golden microphone in a wide variety of categories across the sports media industry.
Today, let’s take a look at the sports media business decisions that most impacted this past year, for better or worse.
Best Sports Business Decision of 2025: TKO’s media rights deals
In a year that began with WWE Raw moving to Netflix, TKO negotiated two of the year’s largest media rights deals.
The first came when WWE moved its Premium Live Events (formerly pay-per-views) from Peacock to ESPN, where they now air monthly on the Worldwide Leader’s direct-to-consumer streaming service. Aside from the payday ($1.6 billion over five years), the move is an obvious win for WWE, as it receives more mainstream exposure than ever before.
On the UFC side, TKO negotiated a seven-year, $7.7 billion deal with Paramount, which will eliminate the MMA giant’s longstanding pay-per-view model and move shows to Paramount+. Like the WWE deal, the value of this deal isn’t just the money; it’s the platform, with CBS expected to simulcast select UFC events, including next summer’s show at the White House.
Additionally, Zuffa Boxing made its debut on Netflix in September and has since signed its own deal with Paramount. Less than two years after WWE and UFC first merged to form TKO, the combat sports conglomerate’s power and influence have been on full display. – Ben Axelrod
Worst Sports Business Decision of 2025: Disney & NBC bending the knee to YouTube TV
In 2025, YouTube TV renegotiated a series of distribution deals with some of the top content companies in the country. Disney and NBCUniversal both went to bat against the Google-owned virtual television giant this year and, unsurprisingly, had to make concessions to close their deals.
Disney and NBC both conceded on the all-important ingestion front, an issue that sets the table for YouTube TV to become more dominant in the all-important metric of time spent on the platform. In layman’s terms, ingestion allows YouTube TV subscribers to access content that would typically be exclusive to Disney or NBC apps (in this case, the ESPN app and Peacock) directly within the YouTube TV platform.
But for Disney and NBC, giving way on ingestion is a direct acknowledgment that their pure-play streamers aren’t necessarily well-positioned to go it alone. In doing so, both companies ceded even more ground to Google, whose leverage will only increase the next time distribution negotiations come around.
To be fair, neither deal was catastrophic. Both companies budged only on sports content (the scripted libraries on Disney+ and Peacock are safe for now). But when sports are among your most important content and a key part of your subscription growth/retention plans, allowing YouTube TV to house that programming makes for an uphill battle. – Drew Lerner
Best Sports Broadcast Innovation of 2025: The ACC Replay Command Center
Rarely do we see a significant change in sports broadcasting that goes over as well as the ACC’s decision to let viewers see and hear how instant-replay decisions are made. The concept has been around, but for a Power Four conference to take the leap seemed to give fans greater confidence in these replay decisions and provided great content for viewers. Often, replays result in an additional commercial break. A pivotal replay overturn occurred in the fourth quarter of the Big Ten Championship game when Ohio State went from first and goal to Indiana getting the ball back, all of which was decided during commercials. Not good.
The Big 12 has announced it is joining the ACC next year, and it’s hard not to think the other conferences and perhaps the NFL will also warm up to the idea in time. Fans enjoy the access and seeing the process play out. It’s better not to be in the dark, especially when significant rulings are being decided. Bonus points from us nerds: The replay center can also show you how many cameras are at each game, which can be as low as five in some cases (yikes!). – Ben Koo