Rise and shine. This is your Morning Buzzcast for Wednesday, September 2nd. I'm Austin Karp. Well, the final bow was put on the Google Disney carriage deal on Tuesday, and that was integrating ESPN Unlimited content into YouTube TV. When I put the news out on social media yesterday, I was kind of surprised by the massive reaction from followers, but this was a big deal for sports fans, and if you have YouTube TV, you may never need to open the ESPN app again, at least on your television, or at least as long as this deal lasts between the two sides. But right now, YouTube TV is positioned to be the biggest MVPD in this country, and ESPN has, for the time being, made it very easy to watch a boatload of its content. You know, I took a new feature for a test drive last night once I realized the Orioles were not coming back against the Rockies, and it was pretty seamlessly integrated into that live menu there on YouTube TV. I could check out a Dodgers game, English or Spanish.
While nothing was really live amongst a lot of other properties on Tuesday night, fans will be able to get WWE PLEs, La Liga Soccer, NHL out-of-market games. Tennis fans with YouTube TV can surely rejoice as all of the matches at the US Open are going to be available on there now. I even went into the library, threw on a 30-for-30. Very well done. Everything worked very easily. A real test for me, that's going to come Saturday. Maybe I try and do a quad box with college football. Maybe I toss in some US Open or NCAA soccer, USL game. Lots of offerings there on ESPN Unlimited. I want to see what I can do there with the mix and match.
Now, this sort of ingestion deal was already done with Comcast and Disney. You've seen NBCU do similar things with Carrier as well. Now, the next big deal I have my eyes on, let's see what happens with Dish Network and Disney when those talks come up. So around 16 years ago, the New York Times did a profile of Stan Kroenke, calling him the quietest sports emperor. Well, here we are, 2026, and the emperor is still at it. Kroenke Sports and Entertainment, it has added the Anaheim Angels to its portfolio, scooping up the team for an MLB record $4 billion valuation that passes what the Padres just went for at around 3.9. So what's on Stan Kroenke's Sports Empire bingo card?
This gives him teams in baseball, the Premier League, NHL, NFL, NBA, MLS, and even NLL there with the Colorado Mammoth. There hasn't been any person, single person or entity in pro sports history that has had that kind of portfolio of teams. Now, the Angels currently rank in the middle of the pack in MLB for total payroll, just over $172 million this season. If anything, Kroenke has shown with his other clubs that he will invest in the roster and other areas. He's going to become MLB's richest owner. He's got a comfortable lead in that regard over the Mets' Stephen Cohen. But as MLB Network's CJ Nitkowski said on the radio on Tuesday regarding the Angels under Kroenke,
it will become a very desirable place to play. Now, Cronky is coming into baseball at a very interesting time. The CBA that expires December 1st is going to be some major labor strife there. And there are other big projects for the Angels that Cronky is going to have to tackle. SBJ baseball writer Mike Mazzio, he notes at the top of that list is going to be figuring out a future roadmap for Angel Stadium that is owned by the city of Anaheim. The lease runs through 2032, but there needs to be either a big renovation of the ballpark or an outright replacement. Now, Cronky is a developer at heart and owning some space around an Angels ballpark. That would be great. That would be incredibly enticing.
Now, Southern Californians have seen what Kroenke is doing up the road in Inglewood, but there's already a massive mixed-use development project underway right next to Angels Stadium. That's OC Vibe. We've talked about that a lot on the Buzzcast. However, that effort, it's fronted by the NHL's Ducks. The Angels have had little to do with that development outside of just staying out of the Ducks' way. So if Kroenke wants more control of his own mixed-use development, he may need to eye different parts of the Southern California market for a new Angels ballpark. Beyond the stadium, the Angels actually did buy their RSN from Main Street Sports as that company was going under. The Kings, LA Kings, they're on that RSN as well. So the team sits in a very unique spot.
among pro teams eye on local media solutions, especially as Major League Baseball, the NHL, and NBA make these big decisions soon about planned national packages of local rights. Now getting back to the actual sale of the Angels, this puts an end to Artie Moreno's rollercoaster 23-year tenure with the club after he bought it for $182.5 million back in 2003. But the team hasn't made the postseason since 2014. And Moreno, who is keeping a small stake in the Angels, he's seen as having blown much of what was the prime of Mike Trout's Hall of Fame career. ESPN even noted that Trout and Angels shortstop Zach Nito, they reached out to LA Rams players Tuesday to get a feel for Cronky.
And Neto said that they were told that he just wants what's important for the players and is going to invest in anything they need behind the scenes. It's a hell of an opening endorsement for Stan Kroenke and the Angels players. In the end, though, Moreno's final act was to leave the team with an experienced steward of pro sports in Stan Kroenke. Fans really seem to want a clean break here. That's what they got. And they get an owner with a big pocketbook. Speaking of local media decisions, the last few weeks have really given us a tale of two cities in the streaming space. I'm talking about DAZN making serious inroads and Victory Plus, all the disappearing from the scene.
Now, the Cavaliers on Tuesday, they became the third NBA team to exclusively house their local broadcasts on DAZN for this upcoming season. That's per my colleague Tom Friend. It's going to be a flexible arrangement that allows Dan Gilbert's Emerging Rock Entertainment Sports Network to produce the games in-house. The Cavs will also get 15 free games in front of that DAZN paywall for the 2026-27 season. Maybe they can do some sort of local arrangements there. We've seen that with other teams. Sources also told SBJ this deal with DAZN gives the Cavs an ad sales revenue share, an equity package, a marketing budget funded by DAZN, a data share provision.
and an opt-out for whenever the NBA launches this centralized hub for local broadcasts, which has been expected to launch for the 27-28 season. There's an annual right to be involved here, believed to be in the $20 million range, according to sources, and a chance that it could get to $30 million plus with equity, revenue sharing, and other ancillary games. Now, DAZN's final two exclusive deals, those are expected to be with the Spurs and the Grizzlies in the coming days or weeks. Pay close attention to that. Add in digital-only contracts with the Knicks, Nets, Wizards, digital deals coming with the Magic and Hornets, and this platform is going to host a third of the NBA this coming season. DAZN really making moves there.
On the flip side of this coin, victory plus, it has now lost the Texas Rangers, Anaheim Ducks, Dallas Stars, the entire NWSL package it had, Texas high school football gone. And now the WNBA's Minnesota Lynx are going to be looking for a new home next season. This was a fast platform done in conjunction with the Stars at the launch. It was supposed to be a place where so many of these teams were going to look for a home after Main Street Sports Group fell. But DAZN picking up the slack and DAZN now gets a chance to show what it can do before the NBA, NHL, and Major League Baseball make these important decisions on their own packages.
Some other quick hits to wrap things up this morning. Tony Romo, on Tuesday, he pleaded no contest to a charge of OWI, and in a statement said pain from multiple back surgeries. That led to a dependence on pain medication, and efforts to get off of that led to an over-reliance on alcohol. What was really telling about all this is that he expressed a desire to return to CBS in time. This statement, like CBS's, incredibly artfully crafted with legal language, but just about everyone I continue to speak to across the media space, very few think Tony Romo's going to sit in that top CBS analyst chair again.
North Carolina and TCU from Ireland, that was the most viewed college football game in week zero, around 4.9 million viewers, well above the 4 million that Kansas State and Iowa State got from Dublin in week zero last year. It's behind only Georgia Tech and Florida State two years ago. That was also from Ireland. In terms of a week zero audience for ESPN, that game two years ago got around 5 million viewers. And speaking of ESPN, new numbers from Nielsen show there is a multi-channel universe of around 70 million homes. That's across all the multi-channel homes, but ESPN and ESPN2, both under around 54 million homes for the first time in a long time, decades even. They're sitting at around 53.6 million homes each.
They were in around 59 million at the start of the year. Other networks to keep an eye on, FS1, rolling into the football season, rolling into the playoffs there for baseball, around 51.8 million homes. Golf Channel, 43.4 million. BTN, 42.3 million homes. And NFL Network, around 38.8 million homes. Sitting above ESPN, you got TBS at around 54.7 million and TNT at 54.6 million homes. Well, that does it for your morning buzzcast for Wednesday, September 2nd. I'm Austin Karp. I hope everybody has an easy hump day. My colleague, Josh Carpenter, will bring you the buzzcast on Thursday. Make good choices out there, and I'll talk to you all again soon.