5 Sports Media Predictions for 2025

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Here are our five sports media predictions for 2025:

Black female commentator uses offensive slur to describe Caitlin Clark

Earlier this month, Caitlin Clark apologized for her white privilege in a statement to appease the race bullies who targeted, smeared, and harassed her during her debut season in the WNBA.

“I want to say I’ve earned every single thing, but as a white person, there is privilege,” she told Time. “A lot of those players in the league that have been really good have been black players. This league has kind of been built on them.”

The quote could ease tensions early on, but not long. The anti-white racists covering the WNBA can’t help themselves. Every time they see Clark’s name they seethe with detestation.

The way black females talked about her last year reeked of hatred, particularly those who defended the incidents in which black players clearly tried to injure Clark on the court. 

And because their bosses were afraid to condemn their unprofessional behavior, the women felt empowered to say whatever they wanted. Expect that to continue in 2025 and escalate to the point that one of them uses an offensive term to describe Clark.

It’s inevitable. 

The only question is how aggressive the slur will be. Will the black women in the media call her a “Karen,” a derogatory term used to describe white women? Will they call her a  “bitch,” like several players on the court did last season? Or will they channel their inner Joy Reid and call her a “mayonnaise sandwich“? 

Hard to say.

Whatever it is, just know that if a white man used the term or a white person said the equivalent about a black person, they would be fired immediately and forced to undergo DEI rehab. 

Of course, nothing will happen to the black women.

Here is a list of the most likely people to use a slur when referring to Clark in 2025: Sheryl Swoopes, Sunny Hostin, Elle Duncan, Chiney Ogwumike, Monica McNutt, Ryan Clark, Cari Champion, Joy Reid, Andraya Carter and Tiffany Cross.

TNT Sports cancels Jemele Hill’s new show

Jemele Hill has a new television show. It airs on TNT Sports’ TruTV each Thursday in primetime. However, the ratings for the show are not public, as they are too low to register among the top 200 in cable.

Further, TNT has yet to post the numbers or respond to our requests for them. Translation: They are low — really low.

Hill’s career follows a simple four-step pattern at this point. Step 1, white executives give her a platform to show how inclusive they are. Step 2, she fails. Step 3, they fire her. Step 4, she blames racism.

Because of Step 4, Hill can sometimes hold on to her position for more than a year. But whether it’s ESPN, Spotify, ViceTV, or CNN – they all get rid of her eventually. 

The Joy Reid of sports schtick doesn’t work. Heck, Joy Reid’s schtick no longer even works (her ratings at MSNBC are down more than 50 percent since the election).

By the way, TNT Sports said it had no comment on Jemele Hill posting on X that “white men are the worse [sic] thing in America for decades” and deserve to face “consequences” for that.

Sounds racist, no?

Skip Bayless joins Barstool Sports

Skip Bayless departed FS1 in August in a decision he called “months in the making.” Bayless said he chose to leave network television to focus on building a YouTube channel.

On the channel, Bayless reacts live to sporting events, hosts a show with his wife where they discuss their lives, and a Q&A podcast. Almost four months in, the shows have struggled to cut through. 

For example, the Monday episode with his wife has under 3,000 views. His interview with Lil Wayne from the week prior has just 9,000. Numbers like those do not generate much revenue on YouTube. And the lack of a gambling sponsor, or any sponsor, suggests the channel does not make much at all.

But that doesn’t mean Bayless is finished, per se. He might just need a partner.

In September, he visited the Barstool Sports studios in Chicago and appeared on several of its podcasts. Afterward, Bayless admitted he envied the company Dave Portnoy has built.

“So, allow me to stress to you that the greatest thing about what Big Cat and PFT built is that nobody looks over their shoulders. Nobody says ‘don’t,’ nobody said ‘can’t.’ They don’t have show meetings. They can say the f-word! They can say pretty much anything they want to. Man, do I ever envy their autonomy, their independence. Their freedom. But of course, they perform, and they produce. They have the most successful show in all of sports media. So as long as that continues, and I certainly see no end in sight, they are enjoying the greatest ride in sports media history. They have created my dream show,” Bayless said on his podcast.

Bayless showed off a more personable and likable side of himself while visiting Barstool. People seemed to like it. His “Sundae Conversation with Caleb Pressley” video drew almost 400,000 views on YouTube. Perhaps that version of Skip, as opposed to the 73-year-old man stressing about whether LeBron is better than Jordan, suits him better.

Of course, Barstool couldn’t pay him anywhere near the $8 million per year FS1 did. However, the two sides could work out a revenue share that would behoove both sides. 

Very few shows with Barstool fail. And the company has already found success with former television stars, like Deion Sanders or Jon Gruden. 

ESPN overpays for Stephen A. Smith

Sources tell OutKick that Stephen A. Smith has not yet agreed to a contract extension with ESPN but that the company expects him to do so by the spring. 

Specifically, Smith wants more than $20 million a year, Disney to invest in his production company, and a clause in his contract that permits him to sign outside deals without ESPN’s approval.

We expect ESPN to meet all three of his demands, but question whether he’s worth it.  Yes, Smith is ESPN’s biggest star. However, that does not necessarily make him worth the most money. 

ESPN reportedly pays Pat McAfee around $20 million a year to license his daily talk program and appear on College GameDay (the belief is these deals are separate). But ESPN did not sign McAfee to traditional talent contracts. McAfee owns, produces, and pays for the production of the Pat McAfee Show, which ESPN pays him to air. In contrast, ESPN pays Smith to appear on First Take, a show the network owns.

Further, McAfee’s presence on GameDay in 2024 helped lift the show to its highest-rated season in its 27 years of existence, with an average of 2.2 million viewers. Stephen A. has had no such impact on ESPN’s NBA Countdown. In fact, ESPN recently announced that NBA Countdown would serve as its B-show in favor of Inside the NBA, which will move to ESPN/ABC in 2025.

Pat McAfee is worth more to ESPN than Stephen A. Smith. So are Joe Buck ($15 million a year) and Troy Aikman ($18 million), whose additions to Monday Night Football helped the network land marquee NFL matchups the past two seasons.

Finally, Stephen A. Smith is not a threat to ESPN on the outside. Given his price tag and the lack of reach for non-ESPN sports channels, no other network could conceivably hire him and position him to eat away at ESPN’s daily ratings.

ESPN is bidding for Stephen A. against itself.

NBA flops on Amazon

Speaking of the NBA, the league debuts on Amazon Prime in 2025 as part of a new 11-year agreement with Amazon, Disney, and NBC. Amazon will stream games on Thursday nights after the end of the NFL season, among other windows. Thursday Night Football is a success. Thursday Night Basketball won’t be.

Streaming services primarily judge the value of live sports by the number of new signs up. Hence, the Peacock-only NFL Wild Card matchup was viewed as such a success last year after around 3 million joined the service in the three-day window before the Chiefs-Dolphins playoff game. 

Moreover, 71 percent of those new users were still subscribing to Peacock three months later. The success led to Amazon outbidding Peacock for this year’s streaming-only Wild Card game for the price of $120 million. 

Here’s the concern for the NBA: fewer people than ever watch the NBA for free on television. NBA viewership is down 48 percent since 2012 and 28 percent on ESPN year-over-year. The new in-season tournament is already down double digits from its inaugural season a year ago, and four of the five lowest-rated NBA Finals of the past 30 years have occurred in the past four years.

Shades of CNN+, when CNN thought people would pay for extra CNN content when they weren’t watching for free on cable. 

And as sports radio host Dan Patrick noted last week, an increasing number of fans have decided they are better off just watching NBA highlights on YouTube after the game.

“[The NBA] feels like this is late-night TV. It used to be you’d stay up and watch Carson, Letterman, Leno. Now you just get a clip that you see the next day,” Patrick said. “That feels like what the NBA is becoming, just a viral clip that you’ll see the next day. You may not stay up and watch games.”

That’s fine for the NBA, but Amazon didn’t agree to pay $1.8 billion a year for fans to consume highlights on social media. According to the Wall Street Journal, some NBCUniversal executives already believe NBC paid too much ($2.5 billion a year) for its upcoming NBA package. We predict Amazon execs will share that same feeling come Christmas Day 2025.