Legendary quarterback Tom Brady said today (February 1) that he is retiring (for real) from the National Football League. Now the question is, when he will start his career with Fox Sports?

Fox will be airing Super Bowl LVII on February 12 but it’s unclear if the network plans to add him to its lineup. Fox’s current top analyst, former NFL tight end Greg Olsen, has been getting high marks for his work during the playoffs.

Last May, Fox Corp. CEO Lachlan Murdoch announced that Brady had agreed to join Fox Sports as lead NFL analyst after his career concludes. Brady had briefly signaled he would retire at the end of the 2021 season, but returned to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. 

“Tom will call our biggest NFL games with Kevin Burkhardt and serve as a client ambassador for us,” Murdoch said at the time. “We are delighted that Tom has committed to joining the Fox team and we wish him all the best in this upcoming season.“

Press reports at the time said the Fox deal would pay Brady $375 million over 10 years. The deal also called on him to serve as a client ambassador for Fox.

Fox reached out to Brady after its top NFL announcing team of Troy Aikman and Joe Buck moved to ESPN after 20 years.

Brady made his announcement on Twitter, saying “I’m retiring, for good.”

Playing with the New England Patriots and the Buccaneers, Brady led his teams to seven Super Bowls, winning more playoffs games than many teams have played in. He spent 23 seasons in the league, playing until he was 45 years old, making him the oldest player in the NFL. ■

Emmy-winning production company Religion of Sports has been at the forefront of the hot sports documentary genre, which has generated viewership momentum and media buzz over the past few years through such shows ESPN’s The Last Dance, Netflix's Formula 1: Drive to Survive and and more recently, Apple TV Plus' They Call Me Magic.

The company, founded in 2017 by NFL quarterback Tom Brady, NFL Hall-of-Famer  Michael Strahan and filmmaker Gotham Chopra, has developed several sports documentaries for distributors across multiple platforms, including Greatness Code (Apple TV Plus), Simone versus Herself (Facebook Watch) and Passion Play (Showtime). Last month won a 2022 Sports Emmy for its ESPN Plus documentary series Man In the Arena: Tom Brady. 

The company announced Monday (June 6) that it has secured $50 million in a Series B fundraising round with the intent to develop new intellectual property that will potentially extend beyond sports.

“We’ve seen a growing demand for sports storytelling across media avenues, a demand that Religion of Sports continues to meet, but we’re ready and eager to expand into new territories and solidify ourselves as an all-encompassing media powerhouse,” Religion of Sports CEO Ameeth Sankaran said in a press release. “We are excited to expand our mission on a larger scale while enabling our talent partners to tell more expansive versions of their story.”

Sankaran spoke with Multichannel News prior to the funding announcement to discuss the company’s sports documentary production strategy. An edited version of the interview appears below.

MCN: What’s the best approach to creating a successful sports documentary – to focus on a particular athlete or to focus on a particular sport or issue? 

Ameeth Sankaran: What we’re seeing is that there is definitely a formula. You can take a high-profile athlete or talent that everybody knows in some way and bring some level of depth to that story and tell it either holistically over time or tell it with a particular angle, because there’s already a built-in audience. That I think is an easier sell because ultimately the networks are looking for ways to drive subscriptions and eyeballs. When you don’t have that character who has that built-in audience and that background, then it becomes more important to lean into the story. We did a documentary with LeBron James and his company (SpringHill) called Shut Up and Dribble, and it was built around how basketball has been at the center of social change for the last 50 years. It’s all about providing a point of view or providing a unique take on the issue.

MCN: What elements do you look for when developing a sports documentary?

AS: You have to consider commercial viability and impact, and they're usually related. When you have a chance to profile Steph Curry or Tom Brady, are you going to get something out of them that's unique and different and that people care about? That’s the first set of questions. When we have other stories that we were talking about, like looking at the steroids era, or we're talking about topics like the business of sports, then it's more thinking about what the angle is, has it been done before, what’s interesting about the timing right now and what impact is it going to create. Then it gets even deeper down on those conversations.

MCN: Have you run across any documentary projects that turned out differently than how you envisioned it from the start?

AS: That's a good question. When we did the Simone vs. Herself documentary for Facebook Watch we started it pre-pandemic. It started in 2019 with a lead up to the 2020 Olympics, and then of course the pandemic happened. The whole production went dark and there was a big question around whether or not the Olympics would come back. Then as it became clear that the Olympics would happen in Tokyo in 2021 we started filming again with Simone, and the story completely pivoted. It turned into more of a conversation around what the world looked like now and how that impacted Simone mentally. If you watch episodes one through five you can kind of see what was coming in six and seven, which was a lot of issues that she and the team collectively was dealing with. The people who have watched it found that extremely compelling because of how raw and emotional she was in [episodes] six and seven about what she was going through and how she was. I think that was really surprising – not from the point of whether or not it resonated with viewers because I think it absolutely did – but how and where the story took us, which was very compelling.

MCN: Do you get nervous that the genre is starting to become oversaturated given the number of documentaries across multiple platforms?

AS: Yes … we’re definitely in a competitive environment. If it's not already upon us, there may soon be a time where there is that saturation point. It then becomes more incumbent on providers to ask why this documentary is different or why it helps drive change in the marketplace.

MCN: Would you look at developing other projects outside of sports?

AS: We’ve had conversations with people outside of sports. What we’ve learned is that the characteristics that make phenomenal athletes and teams are irrespective of industry. So when you think about lifestyle, business, music or food, the characteristics that drive those people to success are similar, and that’s really compelling. I think it goes back to again what’s differentiating in the market and how we can lean into what we do really well.

Super Bowl-winning quarterback Tom Brady has agreed to join Fox Sports as its lead NFL analyst after his playing career concludes.

The announcement was made by Fox CEO Lachlan Murdoch in what he called "real time" during Fox’s earnings call with analysts Tuesday morning.

Brady would replace Troy Aikman, who left Fox along with Joe Buck to broadcast ESPN’s Monday Night Football games. Aikman and Buck worked as a team on Fox Sports for 20 years.

Also: Tom Brady Series ‘Man in the Arena’ on ESPN Plus

“We are pleased to announce that immediately following his playing career, seven-time Super Bowl champion Tom Brady will be joining Fox Sports as our lead analyst,” Murdoch said.

Brady, 44, briefly signaled he would retire after last season but decided to rejoin the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.

The New York Post, owned by another Murdoch company, reported that Brady's deal will pay him $375 million over 10 years. Aikman is getting $18 million a year ESPN and Buck is getting $15.5 million.

“Tom will call our biggest NFL games with Kevin Burkhardt and serve as a client ambassador for us,” Murdoch said. “We are delighted that Tom has committed to joining the Fox team and we wish him all the best in this upcoming season.“

Murdoch also noted that Fox reached an agreement with the NFL to air an incremental game on Christmas Day. Last year’s Christmas game generated 28 million viewers, he said. ■

The TV sports listings for the weekend before Christmas starts on the football field as NFL Network televises a Saturday evening game with playoff implications as the New England Patriots face off against the Indianapolis Colts.

The Las Vegas Raiders-Cleveland Browns game scheduled for Saturday has been moved to Monday due to a significant amount of COVID-19 infections among Browns players, according to the NFL. An increase in COVID-19 infections among league players has also forced the move of Sunday's The Washington Football Team-Philadelphia Eagles game and the Seattle Seahawks-Los Angeles Rams contest to Tuesday, according to the league.

On Sunday night, Tom Brady and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers host the New Orleans Saints in NBC’s Sunday Night Football telecast. 

College football bowl season begins in earnest this weekend as the first of more than 40 bowl games launch on Saturday. ESPN will televise the Boca Raton Bowl (Western Kentucky-Appalachian St.),  New Mexico Bowl (UTEP-Fresno State), Lending Tree Bowl (E. Michigan-Liberty) and New Orleans Bowl (Louisiana-Marshall.) ABC will air the Independence Bowl (UAB-BYU) and LA Bowl (Utah State-Oregon St.)

Several NCAA top ten-rated college basketball teams will also be in action this week. On Saturday top-ranked Baylor travels to play Oregon on ESPN2, while third-ranked Purdue will face Butler on Fox. Fifth-ranked Gonzaga will take on 25th-ranked Texas Tech on CBS and sixth-ranked Alabama meets JSU on the SEC Network. 

In the ring, Showtime will distribute a pay-per-view boxing match between YouTube star Jake Paul and former MMA fighter Tyron Woodley. The fight is a rematch of their August 2021 PPV fight won by Paul via a split decision.  

Tom Brady docuseries Man in the Arena premieres on ESPN Plus Nov. 16. New episodes are released on Tuesdays throughout the NFL season. Each episode will focus on one of Brady’s ten Super Bowl appearances. 

A quarterback, Brady played for 20 seasons with the New England Patriots, then shifted to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in 2020, picking up yet another Super Bowl title earlier this year. 

The series is co-produced by ESPN, 199 Productions and Gotham Chopra for Religion of Sports.

Brady, Chopra and Michael Strahan founded Religion of Sports.

“I was a Patriots fan before I was a Tom Brady fan. I was a Tom Brady fan before I was a Tom Brady collaborator. I was a Tom Brady collaborator before I was a Tom Brady friend,” said Chopra. “Man in the Arena is me and the team at ROS bringing all those roles together. It’s a celebration of greatness because that’s what Tom’s career has always been about in the Arena. It’s also a recognition that greatness isn’t an individual pursuit.”

ESPN Plus costs $6.99 monthly and can be accessed with the Disney Bundle. ■

T-Mobile has agreed to pull ads making claims that the National Advertising Division (NAD) of BBB National Programs (formerly the Better Business Bureau), have determined were not supported.

The move is a bit like closing the closing the barn door after the team of horses has gotten out, since both ads debuted during CBS’s Feb. 7 telecast of Super Bowl LV to a huge audience and have been airing ever since.

Also Read: Verizon Agrees to Drop Certain Ad Claims

The two ads featured GOAT quarterback Tom Brady and singer Gwen Stefani in the now familiar format of conversations that get garbled, presumably on the networks of T-Mobile competitors, to humorous and embarrassing results.

NAD can only recommend, not mandate, such actions.

T-Mobile said it “is disappointed by NAD’s conclusion that consumers may take away a negative message from its humorous commercials,” but agreed to pull them anyway.

Wireless and wired broadband companies routinely counter-complain against one another over various service claims.

Tampa Bay quarterback Tom Brady’s first game against his former team, the New England Patriots, highlights a busy first weekend of October in TV sports.

Brady and his defending Super Bowl champion Buccaneers will travel to New England Sunday night in NBC’s featured Sunday Night Football telecast. The game marks the first time Brady has faced his former team and coach Bill Belichick since leaving the Patriots in 2019 after playing 19 years and winning six Super Bowl championships with the team.

During the day Fox and CBS will offer regional coverage of the NFL's fourth week of action.

The final weekend of the Major League Baseball season heats up on Saturday night as MLB Network offers tripleheader coverage and Fox will feature a primetime telecast featuring teams battling for playoff berths.

ABC and ESPN on Sunday will offer WNBA playoffs coverage with ESPN airing the Connecticut-Chicago game and ABC telecasting the Las Vegas-Phoenix contest. 

NBC on Sunday will take viewers to the race track with coverage of the NASCAR Cup YellaWood 500 race at Talladega Speedway in Alabama. 

Read Also: TV Sportsplay: NASCAR's Brian Herbst Drops Flag on NASCAR's Future

Most of college football’s top ten-rated teams will appear on national television this Saturday, starting with number one-ranked Alabama as it travels to play number 12 Ole Miss in a much anticipated matchup airing on CBS. Also, No. 2 Georgia meets No. 8 Arkansas on ESPN and No. 3 Oregon battles Stanford on ABC. The rest of the games include No. 4 Penn State-Indiana (ABC), No. 6 Oklahoma-Kansas State (Fox), No. 7 Cincinnati-No. 9 Notre Dame (NBC), and No. 10 Florida-Kentucky (ESPN).

NBCSN, NBC and USA combined will telecast four Premier League soccer games throughout Saturday, while NBCN will return to the soccer field on Sunday with more Premier League coverage.  Also on Sunday, ESPN and FS1 will offer MLS soccer action. 

 Sunday's Super Bowl LV game overshadows a busy weekend live sports event  calendar.

The game between the defending champion Kansas City Chiefs and quarterback Patrick Mahomes against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, led by six-time Super Bowl champion Tom Brady, will air live on CBS starting at 6:30 pm (ET). Last year’s Chiefs-San Francisco 49’ers Super Bowl telecast on Fox averaged 100 million viewers. 

Read Also: A Look at NFL Social Video Trends Ahead of the Super Bowl 

Along with CBS' broadcast TV coverage, the Super Bowl will also stream for free on the CBSSports.com and the CBS Sports app, as well as Verizon properties including Yahoo Sports and NFL digital properties. ESPN Deportes and ESPN digital platforms will offer the game in Spanish. 

Read Also: Super Bowl to Stream on Multiple Platforms

Beyond the big game on Sunday, Golf Channel and NBC will team to present final round coverage of the PGA’s Phoenix Open golf tournament. NBC will also hit the ice for a NHL game between the Philadelphia Flyers and the Washington Capitals, while sister sports channel NBCSN will air five Premier League soccer game throughout the day. 

College basketball has a huge slate of games this weekend featuring a number of top 10 teams. Saturday afternoon games include sixth-ranked Texas battling Oklahoma State on ABC and ninth-ranked Oklahoma hosting Iowa State on ESPN2. On Sunday Fox will telecast third-ranked Villanova’s game against conference rival Georgetown and eighth-ranked Iowa’s game with Indiana.

ABC will lace up for a primetime NBA telecast featuring the Golden State Warriors and the Dallas Mavericks, while CBS airs the NFL Honors event. 

Also Saturday, ESPN+ will feature a UFC Fight Night card featuring the Alistair Overeem-Alexander Volkov heavyweight main event bout. 

College football takes the field this weekend at full strength as the PAC-12 kicks off its 2020 season, highlighting a busy TV sports weekend.  

The college football schedule is led by NBC’s primetime matchup between top-ranked Clemson and fourth-ranked Notre Dame. The Tigers will be without its star quarterback Trevor Lawrence for a second straight game due to a positive COVID-19 test.

The Pac-12 on Saturday gets back on the field for the first time this season with Arizona State facing off against 20th-ranked USC on Fox. The conference last month approved a seven-game schedule after initially cancelling the season this past summer due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The conference however, has already canceled two games this weekend -- Washington-California and Arizona-Utah -- due to pandemic concerns.

Other big college football matchups include fifth-ranked Georgia at eight-ranked Florida on CBS and No.7 Texas A&M at South Carolina on ESPN.

DAZN will jump into the boxing ring Saturday night with a lightweight fight between top contender Devin Haney and former world champion Yuriorkis Gamboa. 

On Sunday NBC will telecast NASCAR’s The Season Finale event, the final race of the 2020 season from Phoenix Raceway. 

The NFL enters its 9th regular season week with a full slate of games leading up to NBC’s Sunday Night Football game featuring veteran quarterbacks Drew Brees of the New Orleans Saints against Tom Brady and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.

In other sports, horse racing’s Breeders’ Cup takes place on Nov. 6 and Nov. 7 on NBCSN. 

Turner Sports’ live telecast this past Sunday of a charity golf tournament featuring Tiger Woods, Phil Mickelson, Tom Brady and Peyton Manning scored big ratings numbers, continuing a trend of strong ratings performances from the return of live sports events amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

The May 24 Capital One The Match: Champions for Charity drew 5.8 million viewers across TNT, TBS, truTV and HLN, according to Nielsen. The event, which generated  $20 million for COVID-19 relief efforts, was the most-watched golf telecast in cable TV history, according to Turner.

The Match event marked one of a few but growing number of live sports events that have taken place since the pandemic forced the shutdown of most events in mid March. Most sports events that have returned have brought a large following of fans to TV screens. 

Fox Sports has averaged nearly 4 million viewers for its first three live NASCAR telecasts, led by its first post-pandemic telecast. The May 17 race at Darlington drew  6.3 million viewers on Fox Broadcasting -- the second best performing race this season on Fox Sports, according to Nielsen.  

RELATED: Fox Sports Revs Up For NASCAR Return 

ESPN has pinned down some impressive numbers for its live UFC telecasts. The sports network averaged more than 1.2 million viewers for the main card of its May 16 UFC Fight Night: Overeem vs. Harris telecast after generating a reported 700,000 pay-per-view buys for its May 9 UFC 249 event.

With most live sports sidelined since early March due to the coronavirus outbreak, industry observers say sports fans have been salivating for live sports events, whether or not they were big fans of the sport being televised.

“The audience for televised sports is not going away --if anything it’s getting larger and perhaps more passionate because they miss what they haven’t been able to see during the past few months,” sports analyst Lee Berke said.

As more sports make their way back to television -- pro bowling, auto racing events and a potential boxing match are on deck for June -- Berke said that viewership for live sports events will only increase.

“You can’t go out to games, you can’t go out to shows, you can’t go to the movies, so the audience is starving for live events and content,” he said. “If sports can be brought back safely there’s a ready-made, large audience ready to watch.” 

Turner Sports this Sunday (May 24) will take viewers to the golf course for a live competition featuring Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson that is expected to raise $10 million to benefit COVID-19 relief.

Capital One’s The Match: Champions for Charity will feature Woods and Mickelson in a sequel to their November 2018 Turner Sports-distributed pay-per-view golf match, as well as iconic NFL quarterbacks Tom Brady and Peyton Manning. The event is Turner Sports’ first live sports telecast since the COVID-19 pandemic forced most live sports events to the sidelines. 

Live coverage of the tournament airing on TNT, TBS, truTV and HLN will feature access with all players having open mics throughout the entire competition. The players will have the capability of communicating directly with other golfers and  broadcast commentators, which includes former NBA star Charles Barkley.

Turner Sports chief content officer Craig Barry recently talked about the origins and production of the event.

How did this event come together in light of the pandemic?

It’s really been months of preparation and it’s touched every part of our organization. Despite the pandemic, and with everyone working remotely, we’ve all come together in support of the event and we’re excited to produce a fun, entertaining event this weekend. We have four of the most iconic athletes on the planet involved and it’s all for COVID-19 relief. We hope fans will be able to take a break and enjoy it.

How big is The Match for sports-starved fans in general and golf fans in particular?

From the response we’ve been seeing, there’s strong interest in this event from both hardcore and casual sports fans. Above all, we hope it will drive meaningful funding for COVID-19 relief, while also offering people a bit of distraction from everything else they are facing in this unprecedented moment in time.

How has advertisers responded to The Match?

We were seeing a very strong marketplace before the pandemic, so it’s not a surprise that this event has generated an overwhelming response from our advertising partners. Capital One, as the title sponsor, and all of our marketing partners have enthusiastically supported both the event and its mission to drive funding for COVID-19 relief. We’re proud that we’ve been able to bring together these partners and hopefully deliver some moments that bring levity to viewers, all while maximizing how much funding we can raise in those relief efforts.

What production adjustments has Turner Sports made to televise the event due to the pandemic?

As you can imagine, our event footprint is significantly reduced to only include those individuals that are essential to the production. Most of those personnel have been hired locally for this event. That said, we’re confident in producing a high quality, entertaining show for our viewers.

What are your viewership expectations for The Match?

The key number we’re focused on for this event is the amount of funding for COVID-19 relief. That’s at the center of everything we’re doing. We don’t project viewership numbers, but we have four of the best athletes in the world on display and we think it is going to be a lot of fun for us and our fans.

Is Turner Sports developing on any other live sports events to televise in the near future?

We’re constantly seeking innovative ways to deliver premium sports content for our fans across all platforms, with this event being the latest example of that commitment. We’re very engaged with all of our partners and we’re going to keep exploring opportunities to provide content that truly resonates with fans.

Illustrating the pent up demand for live TV sports, Turner Sports has sold out the sponsorships for the upcoming Capital One’s The Match: Champions for Charity, pitting Tiger Woods and Peyton Manning against Phil Mickelson and Tom Brady.

In addition to Capital One, presenting sponsors are Audi of America, Michelob Ultra and Progressive.

Cisco and DraftKings are content integration partners and AT&T, HBO Max, Callaway, Wheels Up and E-Z-Go are associate sponsors.

The event will be simulcast on TNT, TBS, truTV and HLN on May 24 at 3 p.m. ET., which pre-match coverage on the Bleacher Report App.

While television ads are sold out, some digital packages are still available via Bleacher Report, House of Highlights and Xandr.

Turner Sports’ parent company WarnerMedia and the golfers will be donating $10 million to COVID-19 relief charities.

The event is a rematch of the Tiger-Mickelson pay-per-view showdown in 2018. Because of technical difficulties viewers wound up watching for free or getting their money back.

“The COVID-19 pandemic has caused unimaginable tragedy and heartbreak,” said Jeff Zucker, chairman, WarnerMedia News and Sports. “We’re hopeful this event and platform will help raise meaningful funding for COVID-19 relief, while also providing a source of brief distraction and entertainment for all sports fans.”

Live coverage will feature unprecedented access with all players having open mics throughout the entire competition, including the capability to communicate directly with other golfers and the broadcast commentators.

“At Capital One, we’re committed to supporting our customers, communities and partners through this difficult time, and that is why we are proud to be the returning title sponsor of Capital One's The Match: Champions for Charity. This wonderful event will bring four of the world's best athletes together for a tremendous cause," said Marc Mentry, chief brand officer, Capital One. “Capital One knows our customers are passionate about sports, which is why we are excited to support this event and to help bring awareness to these amazing charities."

Despite Tom Brady's second worst loss as a pro, ESPN still managed to ring up its second-largest Monday Night Football telecast of the season.

The worldiwide leader's presentation of the Kansas City Chiefs' 41-14 throttling of the New England Patriots averaged an 8.8 household rating, 10.2 million households and 14.4 million watchers, according to Nielsen data. The telecast peaked in the 9:30 quarter hour with a 10.2 rating and over 17 million viewers. During the second half, coach Bill Belichick benched Brady (pictured) after a series of turnovers.

The Sept. 29 telecast, which ranked only behind the 14.9 million who saw the Philadelphia Eagles beat the Indianapolis Colts in the waning moments of MNF on Sept. 15, helped ESPN win the night among all networks in households, viewers and all key male and adult demos. The game ranked as the top telecast of the night across cable and broadcast among the key male demos, as well as adults 18-34 and 18-49.

The Patriots-Chiefs game averaged an 8.8 household US rating, representing 10,219,000 households and 14,426,000 viewers (P2+), according to Nielsen. It peaked from 9:30-9:45 p.m. with a 10.2 rating and 17,012,000 viewers.

In the Boston DMA, the telecast delivered a 9.7 rating on ESPN, and a 1.8 on WMUR-ABC and 18.7 on WCVB-ABC, for a combined 30.1 rating. In Kansas City, the contest delivered a 13.9 rating on ESPN and a 29.8 on KMBC-ABC, for a combined 43.7 rating in the market

Through the first four weeks and five games, ESPN’s MNF has averaged an 8.4 household US rating; 9.75 million households and almost 13.6 million viewers.