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** OPINION
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** Will we ever see the Super Bowl on streaming?
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The Kansas City Chiefs participate during Super Bowl 59 Opening Night in New Orleans on Monday, ahead of their game against the Philadelphia Eagles and the Kansas City Chiefs on Sunday. (AP Photo/David J. Phillip)

Super Bowl LIX will be held Sunday in New Orleans, yet we already have a big winner.

It’s Fox Sports, which is televising the game. The network has reportedly sold out all the ad spots, including 10 commercials that sold for a record $8 million a piece.

The game will be the most-watched television broadcast of the year. By far. It will easily draw north of 100 million viewers. The question is just how far north. Last year’s game drew 123.7 on CBS/Paramount+/Univision. The Kansas City Chiefs beat the San Francisco 49ers in overtime.

The Chiefs return in a matchup that Fox Sports is likely pretty happy about. The Chiefs are going for history. A victory would make them the first team to win three consecutive Super Bowls. While there has been some rumbling about Chiefs fatigue (this is their fifth Super Bowl appearance in the past six years), the data suggest viewers haven’t grown tired of Kansas City. Plus, Taylor Swift is still dating Chiefs star tight end Travis Kelce. The Swift effect might not be as strong as a year ago, but it’s still significant.

On the other side, Philadelphia ranks No. 4 in U.S. media markets.

So Fox is happy. The NFL is happy. Now we just need a good game.

But when it comes to audiences, the NFL is always looking for new ideas. Most believe the league eventually will go to an 18-game regular season. The NFL continues to expand the game by playing internationally. And the league has tapped into changing viewer habits by placing games on streaming platforms.

Amazon Prime hosts a regular Thursday night game. Netflix aired two games on Christmas. And Peacock showed a wild-card playoff game this season for the second year in a row.

It leads me to wonder: Will we ever see the NFL move the Super Bowl to a streaming platform?

On the most recent “Poynter Report Podcast,” ([link removed]) I asked that very question to Richard Deitsch, sports media writer for The Athletic and host of the “Sports Media with Richard Deitsch” podcast.

Deitsch told me, “I mean, never say never, but I don't expect that in our lifetimes.”

Deitsch explained that the NFL is constantly concerned about optics and the public relations hit would probably discourage them.

Plus, Deitsch added, “The juice there isn't worth the squeeze because you'd only go to streaming because Netflix or Amazon or Apple is going to pay you an insane amount of money for the rights to do this. So it's just a money grab by them, and I don't know if the money grab is worth what the long-term headache would be for that game.”

However, Deitsch didn’t put it past the NFL to someday have a conference championship or division-round playoff game on streaming. If someone such as Netflix offered the NFL a ridiculous amount of money the NFL, being as greedy as they are, might say yes. And, we might someday get to the point where the number of, say, Netflix subscribers is so large that the NFL wouldn’t feel as if it is leaving people in the dark on big games.

But the Super Bowl?

Deitsch repeated, “I don't think the Super Bowl is going to be streamed in our lifetime. It's just too big an American cultural event to not be on whatever exists in terms of over-the-air television.”

Check out the entire podcast ([link removed]) for more of our conversation on the Super Bowl, the future of sports and streaming, and a few other topics you’ll find interesting.

A NOTE FROM OUR SPONSOR
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** Enter SFJ’s 2025 Excellence-in-Features contest
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The Society for Features Journalism's 2025 Excellence-in-Features contest is open for submissions! First-place winners get $300. Early-bird deadline is Feb. 18; contest closes on March 5.

Details here ([link removed]) .


** Lee Enterprises is in the red again
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For this item, I turn it over to my Poynter colleague, Angela Fu.

For the fourth quarter in a row, Lee Enterprises lost money, the company announced ([link removed]) Thursday.

The newspaper chain — which operates in more than 72 markets and owns titles like the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, The Buffalo News ([link removed]) and Tulsa World — lost $16 million during the quarter ending Dec. 29. It was the largest quarterly loss the company has suffered since 2013.

As readers and advertisers abandon print, Lee, like many other newspaper companies, has focused on growing the digital side of its business. But the 5% increase in digital revenue Lee experienced last quarter was not enough to offset continuing declines in print. Total operating revenues declined 7% year-over-year to $144.6 million. Operating expenses stayed largely flat.

Lee plans to cut $40 million in costs by the end of the current quarter. Asked on an earnings call for details about those cost-cutting measures, vice president, CFO and treasurer Tim Millage said they would involve “a number of things, including optimizing our print business and driving efficiencies through additional technologies like agentic (artificial intelligence).”

As they did during an earnings call in December ([link removed]) , Lee executives trumpeted investments the company had made in AI. In December, Lee signed ([link removed]) a deal with Amazon Web Services to develop generative AI platforms. The company expects this deal — along with partnerships with ProRata.ai and Perplexity — to accelerate digital revenue growth over the next three quarters.

The dismal earnings report comes just days after “companywide technology issues ([link removed]) ” prevented ([link removed]) several Lee outlets from publishing printed newspapers and e-editions. The past two years have been tough for Lee. The company has reduced print days ([link removed]) at most of its papers and executed multiple rounds of layoffs ([link removed]) .

Lee stock was trading at $12.32 a share Thursday afternoon, down nearly 8% from the previous day's close.


** Pushing back
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On Thursday, President Donald Trump took to Truth Social ([link removed]) and again, without evidence, pushed the conspiracy theory that the government had been paying news organizations to give Democrats favorable coverage. Trump said “billions of dollars” from the U.S. Agency for International Development and other agencies had ended up with the “fake news media.” He also claimed Politico had received $8 million and wondered if The New York Times received money, too.

The New York Times’ Isabella Kwai wrote ([link removed]) , “Records on USAspending.gov ([link removed]) , a federal site that tracks government payments, show that federal agencies have paid Politico for subscriptions, including to its Politico Pro service. The money allocated to Politico across all agencies was more than $8 million in the 2024 fiscal year, records show ([link removed]) . Politico Pro ([link removed]) offers policy-related resources and tracks news and legislation, and has more than 30,000 subscribers, according ([link removed]) to a Politico overview. U.S.A.I.D. paid $44,000 to Politico during the 2023 and 2024 fiscal years, according to the spending records, which described the two contracts as for ‘E&E news subscriptions.’ E&E News covers energy and environmental
issues.”

Still, the narrative on X is that the government was funding Politico for positive stories about Democrats.

On Thursday, Politico CEO Goli Sheikholeslami and global editor-in-chief John F. Harris published a note to readers ([link removed]) that said some of the debate on X was “misinformed” and some was “flat-out false.”

They wrote, “POLITICO is a privately owned company. We have never received any government funding — no subsidies, no grants, no handouts. Not one dime, ever, in 18 years.”

They later added, “POLITICO Pro is different. It is a professional subscription service used by companies, organizations, and, yes, some government agencies. They subscribe because it makes them better at their jobs — helping them track policy, legislation, and regulations in real-time with news, intelligence, and a suite of data products. At its core, POLITICO Pro is about transparency and accountability: Shining a light on the work of the agencies, regulators, and policymakers throughout our vast federal government. Businesses and entities within the government find it useful as they navigate the chaotic regulatory and legislative landscape. It’s that simple.”

They wrote that most of the Politico Pro subscribers are in the private sector, adding, “Government agencies that subscribe do so through standard public procurement processes — just like any other tool they buy to work smarter and be more efficient. This is not funding. It is a transaction — just as the government buys research, equipment, software, and industry reports. Some online voices are deliberately spreading falsehoods. Let’s be clear: POLITICO has no financial dependence on the government and no hidden agenda. We cover politics and policy — that’s our job.”

Then came this story from Axios’ Zachary Basu and Marc Caputo on Thursday: “Trump orders key government agency to cancel all media contracts.” ([link removed])

A MESSAGE FROM POYNTER
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** Deadline approaching for the 2025 Poynter Journalism Prizes
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This contest recognizes the best of U.S. journalism from 2024. Enter your work in categories that honor great writing, accountability, public service and justice reporting, innovation, diversity leadership, column and editorial writing and First Amendment work. Time is running out. Final deadline is 6 p.m. Feb. 14!

Enter now! ([link removed])


** Media news, tidbits and interesting links for your weekend review …
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* Mediaite’s Colby Hall with “Here’s the Bombshell Revealed In CBS Kamala Harris Transcript Trump is Fuming About: They Did Everything Right.” ([link removed])
* NPR media reporter David Folkenflik with “Why CBS stands at the epicenter of Trump's assault on the media.” ([link removed])
* The Hollywood Reporter’s Steven Zeitchik with “Beat the Press: Inside Trump’s War on Big Media.” ([link removed])
* The Washington Post’s Will Oremus with “Elon Musk is making X into his own digital Mar-a-Lago.” ([link removed])
* The Hollywood Reporter’s James Hibberd with “Joe Rogan Says Harris Campaign Lied About Being Misled by Show: ‘We Have the Receipts.’” ([link removed])
* From CBS News: “When a deputy fatally shot Sonya Massey in her kitchen after she called 911 for help, the sheriff called it an isolated incident. But a @CBSNews investigation found dozens of allegations of misconduct against the department going back two decades.” Here’s the story ([link removed]) .
* Los Angeles Times culture columnist and critic Mary McNamara with “How Karla Sofia Gascon turned a historic Oscars first into a historic Oscars nightmare.” ([link removed])
* The Athletic’s Andrew Marchand with “Who is the NFL’s next 9-figure TV talent?” ([link removed])
* The Athletic’s Steve Buckley with “As Super Bowl end zone messages go, ‘Choose Love’ is no ‘End Racism.’” ([link removed])


** More resources for journalists
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* Gain a deeper understanding of Polarization in America and Christian Nationalism. Enroll now ([link removed]) .
* Elevate your editing expertise with the Poynter ACES Advanced Certificate. Enroll now ([link removed]) .
* The 2025 Poynter Journalism Prizes contest ([link removed]) is open for entries until Feb. 14. Submit your entry today ([link removed]) .
* Learn how to cover critical issues surrounding child protection and the foster care system. Apply by Feb. 14. ([link removed])

Have feedback or a tip? Email Poynter senior media writer Tom Jones at [email protected] (mailto:[email protected]) .
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