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Morning Edition

September 11, 2025

All eight WNBA playoff spots are set. As the league and its players prepare for what could be a contentious CBA negotiation, the gap between the league’s strongest and weakest teams is vast—and those with strong finances and NBA connections have a clear edge.

— Eric Fisher [[link removed]], David Rumsey [[link removed]], and Colin Salao [[link removed]]

WNBA Playoff Teams Highlight Gaps in League Ownership [[link removed]]

Kevin Jairaj-Imagn Images

The WNBA playoff field is set.

The Seattle Storm clinched the final playoff spot following a win Tuesday night over the Golden State Valkyries. Only one of the four first-round series has been set: the No. 4 Phoenix Mercury vs. No. 5 New York Liberty. The No. 1 Minnesota Lynx are the only other team to lock in their seed.

WNBA Playoff Teams

Minnesota Lynx Atlanta Dream Las Vegas Aces Phoenix Mercury New York Liberty Indiana Fever Golden State Valkyries Seattle Storm

Despite changes in the standings, seven of the eight teams that qualified for the postseason were also in the playoffs last year. The Valkyries were the new addition, and they are the first expansion team to ever make the postseason.

Noticeable Gap

The divide between the best and the worst teams is abundantly clear this season. Despite the WNBA rewarding more than half of its 13 teams a playoff spot, all eight playoff teams will finish above .500 this season for the first time since 2011. The No. 9 Los Angeles Sparks could also finish at .500 with a win on Thursday.

If the Connecticut Sun lose their final game to the Atlanta Dream on Wednesday, then the three worst teams in the league—the Sun, Chicago Sky, and Dallas Wings—will have each lost at least 75% of their games this season.

They happen to be three of the five independent WNBA teams, meaning their ownership does not also own another professional sports team in their city. Only two independent teams qualified for the postseason ( Dream [[link removed]], Storm).

The WNBA is adding five more expansion teams between next year and 2030, and every ownership group has an affiliation with an NBA team. The NBA owns 42% of the WNBA.

The Sun, who missed the playoffs for the first time in eight years, are up for sale, and could be moved out of Uncasville, Conn. Front Office Sports has reported that the WNBA prefers the franchise be moved to Houston under the ownership Tilman Fertitta, who also runs the NBA’s Rockets.

FRONT OFFICE SPORTS LIVE

The Rise of E1

On Nov. 6, Future of Sports: The Next Wave [[link removed]]—presented by Front Office Sports and Courtside Sports Advisors, with official partners E1, Team Miami, and Campbell Capital Management—will bring together the sport’s top owners, investors, athletes, and celebrities in Miami for an exclusive, invite-only half-day experience.

Kicking off the event is the E1 Series panel.

Hear from the people behind E1 on how the series came about, its influences, its celebrity backers, and why it’s poised to take off. Joining the conversation is E1 Series founder and chairman Alejandro Agag and CEO Rodi Basso.

Want to join the conversation? Request to attend [[link removed]]. Space is extremely limited.

ESPN’s ‘MNF’ Ratings Up 8% As NFL Surges to Strong Start [[link removed]]

Matt Marton-Imagn Images

The NFL’s opening week of play in the 2025 regular season ended on another historically high note.

ESPN said late Wednesday that it averaged 22.1 million viewers for the Monday Night Football game in Chicago between the Vikings and Bears, up 8% from the comparable game to start the 2024 season. The figure represents the second-highest audience for a Week 1 MNF game, spanning 35 broadcasts, since ESPN gained those rights in 2006. Monday’s game was also shown on ABC.

The total represents a particularly strong coda to what was almost universally a banner start to the season [[link removed]] for the NFL. CBS posted its best Week 1 viewership since regaining NFL rights in 1998, NBC had its best two-game audience to start a season since 2015, and Fox similarly had the best opening-week singleheader viewership in a decade.

The lone outlier in that trend was YouTube, which saw a 14% U.S. audience increase from last year’s NFL game in Brazil on Peacock, but it had a non-accredited measurement [[link removed]] that fell below expectations and drew rebukes from other networks [[link removed]].

These figures continue to show the impact of Nielsen’s Big Data + Panel audience measurement system [[link removed]]. The enhanced methodology is designed to provide a fuller, more accurate picture of viewer behaviors, bringing in tens of millions of additional data points from set-top boxes and smart TVs.

ESPN also generated an average of 1.76 million viewers for the Monday Night Countdown pregame show, the best Week 1 figure for that show in 11 years. The game was also preceded by the Bears’ announcement on Monday of their abandoning a prior plan to build a downtown stadium [[link removed]] and focus fully on suburban Arlington Heights, Ill.

Turning the Page

Attention around NFL viewership now quickly shifts to Week 2, which has another set of big games, including the Thursday Night Football opener on Amazon featuring the Commanders and Packers, and a Super Bowl LIX rematch between the Eagles and Chiefs. That latter contest will be the featured national broadcast on Fox for its America’s Game of the Week showcase late Sunday afternoon.

Fox plans to buttress that production with a two-hour, on-site airing of the Fox NFL Sunday pregame show from Arrowhead Stadium in Kansas City.

“Now we get to roll out the big cannons for Week 2. Cowboys early, Super Bowl rematch late,” Fox Sports president of insights and analytics Mike Mulvihill tweeted [[link removed]].

Amazon’s $1B NFL Package Now Has Wider Flex Game Options [[link removed]]

Denny Medley-USA TODAY Sports

Week 2 action of the NFL season begins with a Commanders-Packers matchup that kicks off Amazon Prime Video’s fourth year exclusively streaming the $1 billion annual Thursday Night Football package, which continues to see its profile grow.

After TNF ratings rose 13% to 13.2 million viewers [[link removed]] per game last season and Amazon broadcast its first NFL playoff game, the streamer will get its first Christmas Day game this season—a Broncos-Chiefs matchup in prime time to cap off the league’s holiday tripleheader [[link removed]]. That will come four weeks after Amazon’s third Black Friday game, this season featuring Bears-Eagles.

Last season, the NFL flexed a Thursday night matchup for the first time, substituting a Week 16 Broncos-Chargers game with playoff seeding implications in for a less-meaningful Browns-Bengals game. This offseason, NFL owners voted to lower the notice required to flex a TNF game from 28 to 21 days—a move supported by Amazon talent.

“On a Thursday night in December you might have a game that you weren’t that interested in all of a sudden become a game that’s going to be two teams that you’re excited to see or a team that you’re like, ‘Man, this team has surprised all of us, we’d love for the whole entire world to get to see them on a primetime stage,’” said Amazon NFL analyst Andrew Whitworth, who works on the streamer’s pregame show. “I think that’s a really cool opportunity for players, for teams, and organizations to create special moments. And so I think that’s pretty special.”

Games in Weeks 14–16 this season will be eligible for TNF flexing.

Meanwhile, Amazon continues to add new AI-based “Prime Insights” features to its main and alternate TNF broadcasts, as well as more interactive shopping integrations during NFL games.

FRONT OFFICE SPORTS LIVE

Less Than One Week Away

Front Office Sports returns to The Times Center in Manhattan on Sept. 16 for Tuned In [[link removed]], presented by Elevate.

With official partner Nielsen, and supporting partners Greenberg Glusker and Antenna, this daylong event will feature candid conversations with the biggest names in sports media, including:

Adam Silver, NBA Rob Manfred, MLB Kim Ng, AUSL Jimmy Pitaro, ESPN Eric Shanks, FOX Sports Luis Silberwasser, TNT Sports Jay Marine, Amazon Rick Cordella, NBC Sports Betsy Riley, NBC Olympics Maria Taylor, NBC Sports Greg Olsen, Youth Inc. Ian Eagle, CBS Sports Noah Eagle, NBC Sports

Additionally, Stephen A. Smith and Clay Travis will hit the stage for a fiery debate about sports and politics.

Included in your ticket is a full day of programming, lunch, top-tier networking opportunities, and a post-event cocktail hour.

Secure your ticket now [[link removed]].

Ryder Cup Boost Hitting This Week’s PGA, European Tour Events [[link removed]]

Kyle Terada-Imagn Images

This week, two dueling golf tournaments more than 5,000 miles apart are getting exposure boosts from becoming de facto training camps for the U.S. and European Ryder Cup teams.

With the highly anticipated biennial team event [[link removed]] at Bethpage Black Golf Course in New York now just two weeks away, players from each squad are gathering together for one more competitive tournament before the Ryder Cup.

Ten of the 12 U.S. Ryder Cup team members are in the field at the PGA Tour’s Procore Championship in Napa, a $6 million event that’s part of the FedEx Cup Fall series typically reserved for golfers looking to keep their PGA Tour card for the following season. LIV Golf’s Bryson DeChambeau, who is ineligible to compete, and Xander Schauffele, whose wife recently gave birth, are the only U.S. team members not playing. U.S. captain Keegan Bradley is on-site but not competing.

At the DP World Tour’s BMW PGA Championship in Wentworth, England, 11 of the 12 European Ryder Cup team members, and captain Luke Donald, are competing. Sepp Straka, whose wife gave birth in August, is the only player not in the field. The BMW typically has a strong international field, though, with a $9 million purse.

Both tournament organizers worked with the respective Ryder Cup teams to pair teammates together for the first two rounds. In Napa, all 10 Team USA players are playing in four consecutive groups, and Golf Channel’s three-hour coverage window is different on each day—6–9 p.m. ET on Thursday and 1–4 p.m. ET on Friday—to maximize Ryder Cup player exposure.

Larger-than-normal crowds are expected in Napa, as the Ryder Cup presence has added 10 players from the top 22 in the world rankings to the field. Last year’s Procore Championship had just five of the top 50 players in the Official World Golf Ranking. In England, it’s the first time the BMW PGA has completely sold out of tickets for the second, third, and final rounds of competition.

Conversation Starters The custodial crew at Lane Stadium, home of Virginia Tech, thanked Vanderbilt’s football team for leaving the visitors’ locker room clean after they beat the Hokies. Check it out [[link removed]]. For every punt pinned inside the 20-yard line, Jaguars punter Logan Cooke will donate $1,000 [[link removed]] to help bring clean water to families in Kenya. Take a look [[link removed]] at the renderings for NYCFC’s future $780 million stadium in Queens. Editors’ Picks NFL Asks Nevada Supreme Court to Rehear Jon Gruden Case [[link removed]]by Ben Horney [[link removed]]The arbitration fight between Gruden and the league continues. NCAA Bans 3 Basketball Players for Violating Betting Rules Last Season [[link removed]]by Amanda Christovich [[link removed]]The former San Jose State and Fresno State players have lost eligibility. NCAA Hockey Scouts Denied Passes for Crucial Recruiting League [[link removed]]by Meredith Turits [[link removed]]The CHL won’t welcome scouts on passes: “It comes across as petty.” Question of the Day

Does the inclusion of more Ryder Cup players competing in this week’s PGA Tour and DP World Tour events make you more likely to watch?

YES [[link removed]] NO [[link removed]]

Wednesday’s result: 85% of respondents were not surprised that the NFL keeps setting ratings records.

Advertise [[link removed]] Awards [[link removed]] Learning [[link removed]] Events [[link removed]] Video [[link removed]] Shows [[link removed]] Written by Eric Fisher [[link removed]], David Rumsey [[link removed]], Colin Salao [[link removed]] Edited by Or Moyal [[link removed]], Catherine Chen [[link removed]]

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