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John Malone’s Liberty Media Corp. has named Derek Chang president and chief executive effective Feb. 1.

A director of Liberty since 2021, Chang is a veteran executive who has led operating, corporate development and investment teams at prominent companies during various stages of growth including EverPass Media, the NBA, DirecTV, Scripps, Charter and Tci.

He replaces longtime Liberty CEO Greg Maffei, who announced his departure in November.

“I am thrilled to welcome Derek as the CEO of Liberty Media. His expertise in both operating and investment roles, extensive understanding of our industries and familiarity with Liberty make him the ideal leader for Liberty’s next chapter,” said Malone, Liberty Media chairman. “Personally, I have worked with Derek for over 25 years and am consistently impressed by his leadership style, breadth of expertise and global perspective. I look forward to supporting him and the Liberty management team as they continue to drive shareholder value.

Derek Chang has been appointed president and chief executive officer of the Liberty Media Organization.

Chang has been a director of Liberty Media since March 2021 and has led leadership roles at companies including EverPass Media, the NBA, DirecTV, Scripps, Charter and Tci. He takes over from Greg Maffei, who announced he would step down from the role at the end of 2024.

Chang will start in his new role on Feb. 1, 2025, with John Malone, chairman of Liberty Media, serving as interim CEO until then.

“I am thrilled to welcome Derek as the CEO of Liberty Media. His expertise in both operating and investment roles, extensive understanding of our industries and familiarity with Liberty make him the ideal leader for Liberty’s next chapter,” said John Malone, Liberty Media Chairman. “Personally, I have worked with Derek for over 25 years and am consistently impressed by his leadership style, breadth of expertise and global perspective.

There are already plenty of reasons to be wary of Kash Patel becoming FBI director — one of which is his status among believers of QAnon Patel has long thirsted to purge the federal government of the so-called “Deep State,” as have Maga conspiracy theorists who are now hailing Donald Trump’s nomination of Patel to fill a role where he would be well positioned to exact vengeance on the president-elect’s enemies.

According to posts and social media clips that have resurfaced in the aftermath of Patel’s nomination, the...

(Stock image via Pixabay, Graphic by The Desk)

EverPass Media has struck a deal with the National Football League (NFL) and streaming service Netflix to provide two Christmas Day football games to bars, hotels, restaurants and other commercial establishments that are open on the holiday and who want to offer the games to their patrons.

The games will be exclusive to stream through the EverPass platform for commercial businesses, while Netflix remains the exclusive distributor of the games for consumers. EverPass already distributes the NFL Sunday Ticket package to bars, restaurants and hotels on behalf of the NFL and YouTube, after the package moved from DirecTV for Business earleir this year.

“We’re excited to be the first to partner with Netflix to help deliver these marquee games to the commercial market,” said Alex Kaplan, the CEO of EverPass Media. “This partnership, along with other NFL content distribution, is a...

Netflix has struck a commercial distribution rights agreement with EverPass Media for its upcoming pair of Christmas Day NFL games, which will make them available to stream directly on EverPass’ sports and entertainment distribution platform.

Launched in 2023 and backed by RedBird Capital Partners and the NFL’s 32 Equity Investments, EverPass offers in-house streaming solutions and consumer engagement tools to drive growth for bars, restaurants, hotels, gyms and other commercial establishments.

“We’re excited to be the first to partner with Netflix to help deliver these marquee games to the commercial market,” EverPass Media CEO Alex Kaplan said in a statement. “This partnership, along with other NFL content distribution, is a strong point of validation for EverPass as we continue to focus on bringing premium sports content to commercial businesses, revolutionizing viewership for rightsholders and business owners alike.”

The deal with Netflix comes as EverPass already offers NFL Sunday Ticket, featuring...

Thursday Night Football’s NextGen Stats feed on Amazon Prime Video.

The National Football League’s (NFL) broadcast-focused joint venture EverPass Media has inked a distribution deal with Amazon’s Prime Video that makes “Thursday Night Football” games available to streaming-capable bars, restaurants, hotels and other public venues.

The deal, announced on Monday, will begin with the Week 3 football game between the New England Patriots and the New York Jets, which will be broadcast this upcoming Thursday.

“We’re thrilled to be partnering with Prime to add Thursday Night Football to our live sports catalog and making it available for commercial businesses to stream,” Alex Kaplan, the CEO of EverPass, said in a statement. “With the addition of this package to our portfolio, we’re excited to offer our commercial business owners even more choice and control over the sports content that captivates audiences and fuels their success. This partnership...

Usually, the best indicator of Donald Trump’s mental state at any given time is the tone and frequency of his social media posts. On Wednesday — in the aftermath of a new election-interference indictment from Special Counsel Jack Smith — the former president seemingly spent the morning scrolling through his Truth Social comments and “re-truthing” all manner of conspiratorial, sexist, and fascist content.

Trump posted dozens of memes and comments from accounts promoting the QAnon conspiracy theory, false claims about the 2020 election, sexist attacks against Vice President Kamala Harris, and the...

(Stock image via Pixabay, Graphic by The Desk)

Charter Communications says it has forged a partnership with EverPass Media that will allow its Spectrum Business enterprise customers to access live sports that are typically only available on streaming platforms.

The arrangement will unlock access to sports packages like NFL Sunday Ticket — which is offered to residential customers through YouTube and YouTube TV — and Peacock Sports Pass, which gives commercial establishments the ability to screen Peacock’s exclusive National Football League (NFL) games during the regular season and playoffs as well as Premier League, Big 10 football and forthcoming National Basketball Association (NBA) games.

Spectrum Business will also be offering Thursday Night Football games that are typically only available through Amazon’s Prime Video platform, the company affirmed.

The Thursday Night Football games will be available to Spectrum Business TV customers who subscribe to the Spectrum Business Sports Fan TV package, which...

The National Football League has been hit with a roughly $4.7 billion verdict after a jury found that its broadcast model violates antitrust laws.

A Los Angeles jury on Thursday agreed with fans who claimed they overpaid for NFL Sunday Ticket. The decision, which was reached after less than a full day of deliberations, could force the league to change its broadcast model that’s made it the most popular sports league in the country.

The 8-year-old legal battle centered on allegations that the league and its 32 teams conspired in violation of antitrust laws to allow the NFL to reach exclusive deals with broadcast partners for the right to air out-of-market games.

In a statement, an NFL spokesperson said the verdict will be appealed. “We continue to believe that our media distribution strategy, which features all NFL games broadcast on free over-the-air television in the markets of the participating teams and...

Consumers suing the NFL opened a trial on Thursday that’ll decide whether the league’s broadcast model violates antitrust laws by highlighting a stark contrast between it and the other four professional sports leagues: Viewers who want to watch games that aren’t broadcast locally must purchase Sunday Ticket. This means that Kansas City Chiefs fans living in Los Angeles must pay hundreds of dollars per year at allegedly inflated prices to watch their favorite team play. There’s no offering that allows them to just watch Chiefs games.

“If you’re a fan that wants to watch a game in the local market other than the three to four being aired,” said Amanda Bonn, a lawyer for the class said, “you can’t go buy a single game” and are forced to buy the entire Sunday Ticket premium package.

The argument set the stage for a trial in...

New Drake-produced doscuseries “Magic City: An American Fantasy” debuted at SXSW Monday night to a roaring crowd packed with friends, patrons and fans of the project’s titular iconic Atlanta strip club, Magic City.

After the first episode of the three-part doc, which does not yet have a distributor or platform attached, was screened, producer Cole Brown and director Charles Todd fielded a few questions from the audience, including “Was there anything too explicit to put in the documentary?”

“We wanted to walk a fine line with nudity, in particular — where you can’t make a documentary about a strip club and not have any nudity, it just isn’t true to form — and you’re trying to tell the true story,” Brown said. “At the same time, we didn’t want it to be salacious, gratuitous. We wanted to use it in such a way that you’re...

As sports fans, sometimes the only thing better than actually being at the game and rooting on your favorite team in person is being in a crowd of like-minded fans cheering on your squad at a watch party at a local bar or restaurant. However, as more and more sports media rights exit traditional TV platforms, the lack of availability of games on streaming services in public places has posed problems for fans. However, on Friday, NBCUniversal announced a deal designed to remedy those issues for its impressive and growing streaming slate of college and professional sports from around the world.

Sign Up $5.99+ / month peacocktv.com

NBCU and EverPass Media announced a multi-year deal that would provide the latter with exclusive rights to distribute all of Peacock’s exclusive sports programming to businesses across the United States. This deal will not include games, matches, and events simulcast on Peacock from other NBCU channels including NBC,...

Directv has been the home for NFL Sunday Ticket since the out-of-market package’s very first season on the air. And while YouTube TV will officially be taking over the bulk of the rights beginning with this fall’s season, it was announced on Thursday that the satellite company will still be in the Sunday Ticket game. Thanks to the technological and contractual differences between streaming and traditional TV providers, Directv for Business will continue to bring every Sunday afternoon game to bars, restaurants, and other businesses.

Sign Up $349+ / month tv.youtube.com

Save $100 off any Sunday Ticket package if you sign up before June 6.

This news comes two months after it was announced that the NFL had partnered with Red Bird Capital Partners to deliver the Sunday Ticket package to commercial establishments. Red Bird funds EverPass Media, which made the multiyear deal with Directv to keep the satellite provider involved in broadcasting the package,...

DirecTV announced a multiyear deal to sell the NFL’s Sunday Ticket out-of-market games package to commercial venues in the U.S., starting with the 2023 season.

Under the pact with the NFL’s EverPass Media, DirecTV will continue to offer the Sunday football games to customers including casinos, restaurants, bars, hotel lounges and retail shops. The announcement comes after DirecTV lost its 28-year hold on Sunday Ticket for consumers, with Google securing a seven-year deal with the NFL to sell the package via YouTube.

The satellite TV operator didn’t announce pricing for Sunday Ticket — which includes all Sunday day games broadcast by CBS and Fox — under the new commercial agreement. In past years, DirecTV’s pricing for the package has been tiered based on fire code occupancy (Fco) rates starting at $650/season for establishments with a certified Fco of 1-100, stepping up to $6,000/season for establishments with capacity of...

DirecTV, which held the rights to NFL Sunday Ticket for nearly three decades until YouTube took over the package, has struck a deal to continue distributing it to bars, restaurants and other commercial businesses.

The satellite operator, which is owned by AT&T and private equity firm Tpg, closed a multi-year agreement with EverPass Media, a specialist in delivering live sports and entertainment programming to businesses. The arrangement begins with the upcoming NFL season.

Sunday Ticket, whose main packages cost $249 or $349 per season, caters to NFL fans looking for a full menu of simultaneous games instead of the two or three regionally targeted ones offered on Sunday afternoons by CBS and Fox. YouTube reportedly paid $2 billion a year in a 7-year deal for the package, which is available as an add-on to subscribers of YouTube TV or as a stand-alone option via YouTube’s channel store.

During the 1990s and 2000s,...

The NFL is partnering with Gerry Cardinale’s RedBird Capital on a new venture that will offer NFL games to commercial venues like bars, restaurants and hotels.

The new company is called EverPass Media, and has a multi-year license to sell the NFL’s Sunday out-of-market TV package NFL Sunday Ticket to commercial venues. The NFL says it will be offered on a non-exclusive basis through all cable and satellite TV companies.

YouTube has the consumer streaming rights to Sunday Ticket beginning with next season.

“Making our games as widely available as possible has been the bedrock of our media strategy and Sunday Ticket’s presence in bars, restaurants and other commercial venues provides millions of fans a way to watch all out-of-market games on Sunday afternoons,” said Brian Rolapp, the NFL’s Chief Media and Business Officer. “We look forward to working with EverPass Media to expand the Sunday...

Former President Donald Trump spent Tuesday morning feverishly sharing content from supporters on his social media platform Truth Social, posting or re-posting more than 60 times since early Tuesday morning, including content from QAnon accounts and the far-right message board 4chan.

Trump is spending his morning on Truth Social directly posting 4chan and Q messages, a day after calling to be reinstated as president. He’s doing explicitly what he used to try to shade or use coded language for. pic.twitter.com/ksCMJnJ8KW

— Kyle Cheney (@kyledcheney) August 30, 2022

In the...