Every Disney+ subscriber in the U.S. will be able to stream Super Bowl LXI on February 14, 2027, ESPN and the NFL said on Wednesday. It's the first Super Bowl ESPN will produce, with Joe Buck and Troy Aikman on the ESPN and ABC telecast and a Spanish-language feed on ESPN Deportes. Disney+ will also carry the game in more than 55 international markets, and it gets two Monday Night Football simulcasts first, starting with Cowboys-Eagles on October 26. Also today: ESPN's 30-day exclusive window to negotiate a 24-team College Football Playoff closes Friday, opening the door to CBS, Fox, NBC and Prime Video; Bomani Jones moves "The Right Time" to Playmaker and hints at a subscription; Kalshi, Polymarket and Novig sign-up codes run under the CBS Sports and Fox Sports brands; Kalshi offers to cap its trading desk at 5% of exchange volume; Rogers closes its C$4.35 billion purchase of the rest of MLSE; Tommy Hilfiger and "F1 The Movie" win at the European Sponsorship Association awards; and Hyrox sells majority control at about €600 million. The throughline: sports is reaching people in places that used to belong to someone else.

Music by Cheerry Red

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Paramount completed its $110 billion acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery on Tuesday, and the combined company is now Skydance, with CBS Sports and TNT Sports under one roof. Former CBS Sports CEO David Berson will lead Skydance Sports, while TNT Sports' Luis Silberwasser is leaving. RedBird Capital added $4 billion at closing, for about $6 billion in total, and the company starts life with about $80 billion in debt and a Fitch rating cut to BB from BB+. Also today: Iowa-Ohio State averages 5.966 million viewers on CBS, the network's first most-watched game of a college football weekend since 2023; buy now, pay later company Zip adds the 76ers to a sponsorship push built around Philadelphia; Ferrero will run Nutella and Kinder Bueno spots in Super Bowl LXI as part of a $50 million sports push, after its first Super Bowl ad drove a 140% lift in volume sales; NHL Productions and GameDay Creative roll out a shared graphics package for the Ducks, Hurricanes, Blue Jackets, Stars, Wild and Blues; the NFL and 72andSunny's "Champion" wins an Emmy; and Uganda's tourism board sponsors the Champions Hockey League to reach Swiss travelers. The throughline: the difference between getting bigger and getting more precise.

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CBS Sports and Tony Romo have "mutually agreed to part ways," ending his nine seasons as the network's lead NFL analyst. Romo had been on leave since July, and JJ Watt stays alongside Jim Nantz and Tracy Wolfson for the rest of the season. Variety notes Romo's 2020 extension was valued at around $17 million a year, and that the opening comes as CBS's parent heads into its merger with Warner Bros. carrying billions in debt. Also today: Australia's Nine Network signs a seven-year free-to-air deal with Australian Athletics running through the Brisbane 2032 Olympics; Westfield moves onto the front of the Western Sydney Wanderers' shirt, tying in five centres with more than 92 million visits a year; the NHL pulls its "Hot for Hockey" romance audio series after it averaged 2.4 stars; Sofascore gets the NHL's puck and player tracking data; Maple Leaf Foods and Michelob ULTRA win Best in Show at the Sponsorship Excellence Awards; and a federal judge rules a rooftop business can't sell the view of a Cubs game without paying the Cubs. The throughline: who gets to profit from the game, and who decides.

Intro / Outro music by Cheerry Red

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