CNBC Sport: Sports may be getting more expensive, but not less accessible

A version of this article first appeared in the CNBC Sport newsletter with Alex Sherman, which brings you the biggest news and exclusive interviews from the worlds of sports business and media. Sign up to receive future editions, straight to your inbox. Sports journalist Joon Lee wrote a New York Times opinion column this week about how the evolution of the media landscape has fractured sports fandom as it's become increasingly expensive to watch games on TV. If you haven't read the piece, titled "$4,785. That's how much it costs to be a sports fan now," the crux is as follows: "For most of my life, sports was one of the most accessible forms of entertainment in America," Lee writes. "You turned on the TV, flipped to the game and cheered or booed — with your family, your neighborhood, your city. Being a fan was simple. It was community. This community is dying, because some of its shared moments are disappearing." The column is worth reading. Fox Sports executive Michael Mulvihill tweeted it's "the most important piece written about the sports business this year." I guess now's a good time to let you know I don't agree with most of it. Lee's central thesis is that live sports have become less accessible and more expensive. As an in-person live event, I have no argument. The data is pretty straightforward: Ticket prices just keep getting more expensive. Taking a family of five to a game is simply not the family-friendly activity it once was. My problem with the piece is the idea that sports on TV used to be accessible and now aren't. Cable TV still exists. About 65 million U.S. households still subscribe to a bundle of linear TV channels, according to research firm MoffettNathanson. Granted, that's a lot lower than the 100 million that subscribed about 12 years ago. But Lee's thesis is that people who once watched sports on TV aren't watching anymore because the cost is too high. While it's true that tens of millions of American families have cut the cord on cable, many that have left aren't sports fans. Sports have always been the most expensive part of the cable bundle. ESPN costs about 10 to 20 times more than most cable networks. The problem was, in the olden times before 2010, there weren't many appealing at-home entertainment options beyond cable TV. So, non-sports fans took it on the chin and paid the $100 a month or so for cable TV. Now, with Netflix and Disney+ and the plethora of streaming options, they don't have to anymore. For the cost conscious, sports were actually far less accessible decades ago, when families' options were either cable TV or free broadcast. With ESPN about to debut its direct-to-consumer all-in service this fall, consumers that don't have cable can mix and match to get the sports they want without being forced to buy a bundle. The "a-la-carte" dream has finally arrived. Will some casual fans who used to flip on a game at random drop off? Sure. But I don't think those people really defined the community that Lee's talking about. TV ratings for marquee sporting events – the type that bring communities together – actually don't look all that different from 15 years ago, despite the massive loss in cable TV subscribers. The Super Bowl has set all-time highs for TV viewership in back-to-back years. Ratings for the Stanley Cup the past three years look pretty similar to 15 years ago – in fact, they're a little higher. Recent NBA Finals ratings look pretty similar to what they looked like from 2003-2010. Last year's MLB World Series had the highest TV ratings in seven years . Here's Lee: I subscribe to nearly every service there is with live sports — YouTube TV, MLB.TV, NBA League Pass, NFL Sunday Ticket, Peacock, Apple TV+, Max, Amazon Prime, Paramount — for $2,634 a year. But to watch the Boston Red Sox play the New York Yankees earlier this month, I would have had to fork over an additional $19.99 a month for some obscure baseball-focused service that has that slice of one of the most iconic rivalries in America's national pastime….Dozens if not hundreds of games that make up America's national pastimes are being sliced and diced and sold off to the highest bidder — be that a cable giant, or a streaming upstart, or a regional sports network or a subscription app. Games jump from one service to another with so little notice or apparent logic that even some of the biggest superfans struggle to track what's available where. It's true that if you want to watch every possible game of every major sport, you'll be paying up the wazoo. But there simply aren't many people like Lee who are doing this. Again, if you want to watch most sports, pay for cable (or YouTube TV) and Amazon Prime – a service about 200 million Americans already have. Many streaming services now come baked in with a cable subscription, so you may not even have to pay extra for Peacock or Paramount+. If you're a young person who doesn't pay for cable, most of the marquee sporting events are free over the air on NBC, ABC, CBS and Fox, and soon you can pay $29.99 per month for ESPN, with Disney+ and Hulu free for a year. Maybe throw in Peacock for $7.99 per month and Max for $9.99 for some college football, NBA games next season, golf, tennis, NASCAR and March Madness. You'll be extremely connected to most major sports, and you'll pay less than traditional cable. NFL Sunday Ticket, NBA League Pass, MLB.TV – these services were never part of the fabric of America. Even at the local level, while others have made the argument that a fractured TV environment has led to lower ratings this year , they're ignoring the fact that bad teams have always had worse ratings. If your team is doing great, guess what? Your regional sports network ratings are usually great too. Lee again: The leagues could have devised ways to pocket streamers' cash while preserving their fandoms. Instead, they pursued the biggest immediate payouts by slicing up games and selling marquee matchups across platforms….The N.F.L. has been slower to move, as it continues to rake in tens of millions by airing its games on traditional broadcast networks. But as more fans move to streaming, it, too, is also starting to slowly carve up its schedule across an expanding slate of platforms. What is true — particularly for basketball and baseball — is that this shift has been almost universally disastrous not only for fans but also for teams in smaller markets that relied on revenue-sharing models. As the old way of doing business fell away, the rich teams were getting richer while the rest were threatened with being left behind. Leagues certainly have made more money by slicing TV rights to include streamers like Amazon, Apple and Netflix. But there's a good argument that moving some games to streaming embraces the future and is fan-friendly. The NFL actually hasn't been slower to move to embrace streamers – it was first to move. The NFL was the first major American sports league to have an exclusive game package owned by a streaming service – Amazon Prime Video. That deal was signed in 2021 for about $1 billion per season. Lee's point about the shift to streaming being "universally disastrous" for smaller markets has to do with the crumbling of the RSN model. But most teams make more money from national media rights deals than their local deals. The NBA Finals is currently the Indiana Pacers vs. the Oklahoma City Thunder – two small market teams. And MLB's small market problems have to do more with billionaire owners simply not spending (because there's no salary floor) more than the RSN transition. Lee ends his piece talking about how private equity is destroying teams by valuing returns over prestige, but private equity firms typically own minority stakes in teams, not majority stakes. While Boston sports fans (like Lee) are quick to point to Fenway Sports Group's downsizing of the Red Sox, there's little evidence that private equity has dramatically changed the way teams are run, because most funds' stakes don't come with any decision-making power. Private equity isn't there to harvest assets for cash, it's there because wealthy families wanted some liquidity out of their teams that are skyrocketing in value. I simply don't buy the somewhat common narrative that the streaming era is much less consumer friendly than the cable era. Loyal readers know I'm a big San Francisco 49ers fan. In the 1990s, I literally could not watch most 49ers games on the East Coast. I used to watch ESPN's "NFL Primetime" at 7:40 p.m. ET to see a freshly cut highlight package to find out if they won. Today, if you want to watch a game, you can find a way to do so, and you can watch on your phone or your tablet or your TV. Yes, the cost of all content keeps rising – and it's definitely more confusing to keep all the options straight – but sports are actually more available than ever before. On the record With U.S. Open winner J.J. Spaun ... I chatted with the man of the hour in the sports world, U.S. Open winner J.J. Spaun , after his thrilling victory at Oakmont on Sunday. While I, of course, asked Spaun about his 3 a.m. run to CVS to get medicine for his sick daughter the night before his final round, I was really interested in hearing what Spaun thought of the PGA Tour's new rules to limit the number of players in a starting field to increase pace of play and strengthen the overall quality of competitors. The new changes go into effect for the 2026 season. They include: Only 20 PGA Tour cards will be awarded to Korn Ferry Tour graduates, down from 30 Standard tournament fields will be reduced to 144 players from 156 The Players Championship will shrink from 144 players to 120 Spaun is one of those Korn Ferry Tour graduates. He also played on the Canadian Tour. His experience – from qualifier to Major winner – speaks to how getting an opportunity on the PGA Tour can be the difference between making millions of dollars playing golf and barely making a liveable salary. He explained his mixed feelings about the new rules: "It's maybe disappointing that the line is so thin on the PGA Tour between the 125th guy to the top 10," Spaun told me. "I was that guy the last three years, kind of grinding just inside the top 100. So that goes to show that any player on the PGA Tour can turn things around, or things can happen so quickly and end up having the success that I've had this season. So I think overall, it's a great product. Unfortunately, there's so many great players, but I understand what the Tour is trying to do to create such a strong product and make things a lot more competitive." Watch the entire interview here. Or listen to it here and follow the CNBC Sport podcast if you prefer the audio version, which also comes with a wrap up of the biggest stories of the week with my colleague Lillian Rizzo . CNBC Sport highlight reel The best of CNBC Sport from the past week: It's the end of an era in the NBA: The Buss family has agreed to sell a majority stake in the Los Angeles Lakers to businessman Mark Walter. The deal values the team at $10 billion. The PGA Tour has a new CEO : former NFL Chief Media and Business Officer Brian Rolapp . I spoke with Rolapp during the Super Bowl a few months ago about the NFL. Little did we both know he'd have a new job four months later. Rolapp is the PGA Tour CEO, which is separate from the commissioner title that Jay Monahan holds, but Monahan announced this week he will step down at the end of 2026. The WNBA has renewed its media rights deal with E.W. Scripps' Ion. The WNBA has been airing games on Ion since 2023. This season, the network will broadcast 50 regular season games. Ion is available on pay TV, over the air, and on free ad-supported streaming platforms in more than 128 million homes, as CNBC's Jessica Golden reports. Fanatics Fest is in New York this week – Friday, June 20 to Sunday, June 22. Fanatics CEO Michael Rubin stopped by CNBC's "Squawk Box" to discuss this year's event at the Javits Center – a three-day sports festival featuring hundreds of celebrities, collectables and games. Nearly half of the NFL's starting quarterbacks will be in attendance, Rubin said. The festival isn't a moneymaker for the company. Rubin said the company lost about $15 million on the event last year, and this year's Fanatics Fest is considerably bigger. The big number: $2.25 million That's roughly the walkaway money going to J.J. Spaun for winning the U.S. Open. This factors in both taxes and caddy fees – 10% is the standard. Spaun will net approximately $2.5 million after federal, state and payroll taxes, according to Robert Raiola , director of PKF O'Connor Davies' sports and entertainment group. I asked Spaun what he plans on doing with the money. "My wife and I, and our kids, we like to travel to the U.K. during the offseason and visit the Cotswolds," Spaun said. "My wife's dream has always been to have a nice cottage out there. And it was actually funny this year, she said, 'If you win a major, will you maybe buy me a little cottage in the Cotswolds?' And, you know, I was just like, 'Sure.' Like, my odds to win a major, you know, they're OK, but you know, it's not most likely going to happen anytime soon – at least I thought at the time. So she's definitely taking me up on that deal now." Quote of the week "I'm here to play wherever they want me to play." - Rafael Devers in his introductory press conference with the San Francisco Giants. Devers will likely play some first base for the Giants, a position he refused to play with the Boston Red Sox. Around the league The Tampa Bay Rays are nearing a deal to sell to a group led by Florida homebuilder Patrick Zalupski. The deal values the team at $1.7 billion, according to Sportico. Stu Sternberg is currently the Rays' principal owner. Sternberg and his partners bought 48% of the team in 2004 for an estimated $65 million, according to the Sarasota Herald-Tribune. An old-fashioned Sports Illustrated athlete profile this week – a good read from Chris Mannix on soon-to-be No. 1 NBA draft pick Cooper Flagg. For the first time, streaming has captured a bigger share of total audience than cable and broadcast combined, Nielsen revealed in its monthly The Gauge report. Another TV ratings story: The NBA Finals continue to deliver low TV audiences as their series heads to game six. And given Pacers star Tyrese Haliburton is now hurt , I'd bet ratings will be low again today. Game 5's 9.54 million audience on Disney's ABC was down 22% from last year and was the least-watched Game 5 since 2003, excluding the Covid bubble series in 2020. And, a big week for NASCAR on Amazon Prime Video this week – Prime Video's NASCAR Cup Series race from Mexico City on Sunday had 2.1 million viewers. The race, won by Shane van Gisbergen , outperformed both IndyCar (1.2 million) and F1 (1.57 million). SPOILER ALERT: We will go deeper into the racing world in next week's newsletter.

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Indianapolis Star

30 minutes ago

• Indianapolis Star

Will Buxton 1 on 1: Formula 1 regret leads to exploring America through calling IndyCar races

A onetime writer and lifelong devotee of Formula 1 who grew up in the United Kingdom, Will Buxton makes his living these days broadcasting IndyCar races on American television. Tabbed as the lead announcer for Fox Sports' inaugural season alongside analysts Townsend Bell and James Hinchcliffe, the excitable and gregarious 44-year-old has immersed himself in the history, prepared tirelessly and learned on the fly. Buxton, who had been to only three tracks on the NTT IndyCar Series schedule before taking the role, will reach the halfway point of his 17-race rookie season during the June 20-22 XPEL Grand Prix at Elkhart Lake's Road America. In a half-hour conversation with the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Buxton talked about growing into the job, criticism, regrets, the season, the tracks — in particular the rural Wisconsin road course that comes next — and what he's trying to accomplish both on the Fox broadcasts and away from the booth. Here are highlights. Question: As the series hits the midpoint this weekend, how is your comfort level? Answer: I don't think you could ever be entirely comfortable doing play by play, I don't think you ever should be entirely comfortable doing play by play. There's always nerves. There's always massive tension. That expectation of the unknown is part of the allure. It's part of what keeps you coming back. We take what we do very, very seriously. We have a lot of fun doing it, but we all go into it with a huge amount of nerves every single broadcast, because you care. Can you characterize how your confidence level or however you want to describe it compares to before the season started? I wouldn't call it confidence. I think it's more comfort in terms of being more engrained with the championship, building more relationships, feeling more established and OK, we're not even half a season in, but that's the way the IndyCar Series is. It's incredibly open-armed and welcoming, and to have felt that has really aided my learning process and my ability, hopefully, to be able to bring out these characters and these stories and get people immersed in the wonder of IndyCar. Have you spent much time studying the broadcasts or does it pretty much need to be full steam ahead at this point yet? As difficult as it is and as horrible as it is to have to listen back to your own voice, yeah, every, every race, every week, every session, we all watch them back individually. We make notes, we bring them to bear at production meetings or private meetings and personal meetings that we have with the production crew, because we're always looking for ways that we can improve. And I think if we take the (St. Petersburg, Florida, season opener) and compare it to the St Louis race, (it's) a completely different broadcast, I think, a completely different sound, a very different look. And that goes not just for me, but for every member of the team. We have a brilliant director in Mitch Riggin who had never directed a single lap of racing, of auto racing, until we got to St. Pete. We have a diverse crew who have been involved in multiple sports, some of them in racing, some of them not in racing over their careers, and they've all been brought together to try to bring something fresh and something different to IndyCar. There's always things we can learn from (what) the fans are saying and the feedback that the fans are bringing to us. I think one of the most noticeable parts of that has been the pylon on the left-hand side of the screen that denotes who is where and what stage of the race they're in, what tires they might be running. That has changed every single race and I think that really exemplifies the constant desire to grow and to learn and to improve. Insider: Rising IndyCar star David Malukas knows 'I need to mature' on track, 'switch off' Team Penske rumors What you say is instantly out there forever. Are there a couple of things you said that you'd like to have back? About 98% of it. That's the addiction. That's what brings you back every time. You know there is no such thing as a perfect broadcast, there never will be, and the day that anybody achieves that, that's the day you quit, because it's never going to get any better. I started out in print. And I loved having the time to be able to craft and edit and amend and then get your article to a place where you are so happy with it, and then you send it in, and your editor ruins it. So to sort of be unedited is both freeing and also terrifying. You can try to polish it too much, and you can try to make it too perfect, but then it doesn't sound real, and you're not reacting in the moment. And the one thing that we want to do with this broadcast, and the one thing that we as a booth want to do, with myself and Townsend and James, is make the folks at home feel like they're sitting on the couch with us and that our reactions are their reactions and anytime something big happens, it's almost like you're jumping over the couch at them and putting your arm around the viewer and be like, 'Come on, my god, look at this, this is crazy,' and bring them in for the ride. Even the great calls, the legendary calls that go down in history and that we have, that resonate in our minds forever, the announcers who made those calls, they will still look at it and think, timing was a bit off, could have used a different word there. Insider: Why IndyCar's 1 million viewers on Sunday night is good ... but not as good as it looks How do you deal with critics? Anyone who likes to jump on social media and tell me that they don't think I'm good enough, trust me, that thought goes through my mind daily. You should always strive to be better and strive to improve. I find social media a challenge. There's been a very clear shift over the past decade from where it was as a place of community and interaction and trying to share joy and positivity to something that is now inherently negative and can be quite painfully toxic. And I find that a real sadness, because what it has done is it has made me intentionally kind of draw back from the interaction that I used to enjoy so much, and that interaction was all about bringing fans closer to the sport, but it's so difficult not to be affected by the tidal wave of negativity that I have kind of had to take a step back. But I do occasionally go on, and I do occasionally search my own name and have a bit of a giggle at some of the hideous stuff that is written, because you can't take it seriously. There's a great mantra out there, which is don't take criticism from people you wouldn't take advice from, and that's a good one to go along with. 'It's terrifying': Meet Will Buxton, next voice of IndyCar. (He's never attended an Indy 500.) I imagine Indianapolis was an outsized portion of your early preparation. How has the work or the focus changed since May? Actually, I've dedicated I'd say probably equal time to every race and to the championship and the history as a whole. Growing up in Europe, Formula 1 was the sport that I watched the most, and so a lot of its history and its major moments were things that just sort of seeped their way into my subconscious through osmosis. IndyCar is a championship I've always loved, but it wasn't as readily available in the European market as it was in the American market. And so the history and that side of the knowledge base that I need to have, I have had to work at that, and I will always have to work at that in order to get myself to that same place. The 500 was really interesting for me, and I did spend, obviously, quite a bit of time going into the history of it. The 500 is 110 years of history. You just have to do that much more to be that more aware of everything that has gone on there. But with every race weekend, I think you know, the first part for me is learning the recent history, certainly learning the history of the current drivers and what they've achieved on that track and how they might fare there. You've been to some of the tracks on the schedule, but not all, right? Pretty much every track for me is a new experience. I'd done the Milwaukee Mile (as a pit reporter). I'd been to the Indianapolis Motor Speedway to do qualifying, but never the 500. I've been to Road America, that we're going to this week, but only as a guest of (racer-turned-broadcaster and fellow Englishman) David Hobbs when we were colleagues back in the NBC and Speed Channel days (of Formula 1 coverage in the United States), because he has a house out at Elkhart Lake. So been there, been to Siebkens (a famous local hotel/restaurant/bar with a long reputation among racers). Just once. Barber (Motorsports Park), for me, absolutely blew my mind. It was like an amalgamation of some of the most beautiful European racing circuits that I've ever visited. Going and doing a race under the lights on a short course oval like we did at (World Wide Technology Raceway outside) St. Louis was absolutely incredible. I'd been to Belle Isle before, so I've been to Detroit, but I'd never done the Detroit street race before, so it's lovely What I'm discovering is, and what I love about this year, is for my entire professional life, I've been used to traveling the world and experiencing different countries and different cultures. And I think it's true what people say about America, that every state and every city within those states you know, is almost like visiting a different country. … I'm loving that kind of cultural discovery of America. What were your impressions of the actual racetrack in your time at Road America? Hobbo actually took me out in a road car at Road America. And yeah, it's a tough track. The drivers all recognize it as a very, very tricky circuit. One of the ones they enjoy the most, obviously, is a circuit steeped in history, and one that you love to see still being on the calendar, because it's one of those ones that really means something to people. But I loved it. I loved driving around. I loved visiting Siebkens and the historical aspect of it. And I think that's what's so wonderful about this championship, going to your classic racetracks like your Laguna Secas and Long Beach and obviously Indianapolis and Road America and places like that, and then also discovering circuits that have only been on the calendar for a decade or less. We've got Arlington coming onto the calendar next year as a brand new race. I actually really enjoyed Thermal, and I know it gets bad press but I enjoyed the facility. I enjoyed the race. Because, again, I come from the world of Formula 1. We had drivers fighting their way up through the field. Will Power had an amazing race that day, and then we had a guy who had sat in third place for most of the race, came out 11 seconds behind the leader, and over the course of the next 10 laps, battled past the two dominant cars of the weekend and pulled off into the distance to win. That in Formula 1 terms is a generational race, but in IndyCar terms was seen to be somewhat below par, and that really taught me a very early lesson about what the expectations are in this championship for an exciting race. As the series has moved from place to place to place, have you had the opportunity to take in the surroundings, or has it been mostly hotel, booth and back? One of the big regrets of my 25 years in Formula 1 was that I don't think I took as many opportunities as I should have done to go out and explore and experience some of the amazing places that I got to visit. I went to China I want to say 12, 13, 14 times (covering Formula 1 as a journalist or broadcast host). I've never seen the Great Wall other than flying over it. Admittedly, the race was nowhere near it, but you'd think you'd probably try and take some time. We went to India a couple of times. I never got to the Taj Mahal. Those things, they're regrets, because you don't get to travel to those places all the time, and when you're traveling there for work, I probably should have taken a couple of days and got out and seen some of the great wonders of the world. I am trying to go and see everything I can. When we went to Barber, I made a point on my first day there, because I had about a half a day where I knew I wasn't needed to do anything, I went and explored the history of Birmingham, the civil rights movement, which is still very recent history of America ... and how important that is, not just to the history of this country, but to the present and the future of this country. And I'm trying to do that everywhere I go. I'm trying to take in the city, the area, the history, together, a fuller context of not just where I am in the moment and that city, but the country, which is one that I love. I've broadcast in America for such a long time, be it with Formula 1 or now with IndyCar, and I feel immensely privileged to be able to do so, but I don't think that you can properly broadcast to a nation unless you fully understand its history and its complex history and what makes the people and what makes the country what it is. So I'm trying to do that everywhere I go. 'Blown out of proportion': Nolan Siegel's radio rant no biggie for Team Penske's Scott McLaughlin After a wild night at World Wide Raceway, what are you looking for this weekend? St. Louis looked like it was going to be a Chevy weekend, and especially like it was going to be a Penske weekend. (Josef) Newgarden looked phenomenal. Obviously, (Will) Power took the pole. And then in the race itself, (Conor) Daly was so impressive. (Christian) Rasmussen was unbelievable. (Pato) O'Ward was in the hunt the entire night. And yet, here we are with not just another Honda win, but another Kyle Kirkwood win. And I think people have been sleeping on Kyle Kirkwood for too long. … And now he's emerged as the guy most likely to challenge Alex (Palou) for the title in 2025 and it's a wonderful story, and it's one I can't wait to tell. But can Penske find a way back? They're having an absolutely horrible season, and everything that could go wrong seems to be going wrong for them. So that's a fascinating narrative, and there are just so many young drivers looking for their breakthrough moment. (David) Malukas has been so impressive over the last few races, and I brought up Rasmussen, he's been mega as well, sixth at the Indy 500, third last time out in St. Louis. A wonderful breakthrough performance for PREMA Racing as well, with (Robert) Shwartzman finishing in the top 10 for them for the first time. There are so many great stories in the NTT IndyCar Series, and that's one of the things that brought me over from F1 was the fact that this, at its heart, is a drivers championship, where the driver makes the difference. And on any given Sunday, it doesn't matter where you start the race, you have a chance to win.

Indianapolis Star

2 hours ago

• Indianapolis Star

How to watch Caitlin Clark: TV, prediction for Indiana Fever vs Las Vegas Aces on June 22

The Indiana Fever are 6-6 after a June 19 loss to the Golden State Valkyries on the road. Caitlin Clark recorded 11 points, nine assists and seven rebounds against Golden State. Head coach Stephanie White missed the game due to personal reasons. Sunday's game against the Aces marks the first time the two teams have faced off this season. Chloe Peterson is your best Fever follow, and sign up for our Caitlin Clark Fever newsletter. Chloe Peterson's prediction: Fever 75, Aces 70 "The Fever have not beaten the Aces since Caitlin Clark joined the team last season, but that could change on Sunday. The Aces, who were the 2022 and 2023 champions, have had a tough start to the season at 5-6. "A lot of it, I think, depends on A'ja Wilson's availability. Wilson has been out with a concussion since June 11, when she was hit in the head against the Sparks. She was upgraded to questionable for Friday's game against Seattle, but she will take some time to readjust after a week off. "The Fever are coming off a deflating loss to the Valkyries, in which Clark scored just 11 points (2 in the first half) on 3-of-14 shooting. Clark usually does not have back-to-back poor shooting nights, so I would expect her to bounce back against the Aces." 3 p.m. ET Sunday, June 22, 2025, at T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas, Nevada. TV: ESPN Streaming: Fubo (free trial) In seven games this season, Caitlin Clark averages 19.9 points, 8.7 assists, 5.7 rebounds and 1.3 steals, making 35.5% of her 3-pointers. ESPN's matchup predictor gives the Aces a 60.6% chance of winning. Fever-Aces start at $35 on StubHub

San Francisco Chronicle​

4 hours ago

• San Francisco Chronicle​

Bay Area sports calendar, June 21-22

BASEBALL COLLEGE BASEBALL FOOTBALL GOLF 6a Royal Ascot Channel 11 Channel 3 Channel 8 9:30a America's Day At the Races FS1 MOTOR SPORTS MAJOR LEAGUE RUGBY PREMIER LACROSSE LEAGUE 1p New York at Philadelphia ESPN 4p Boston at Maryland FS1 SOCCER SOFTBALL VOLLEYBALL WNBA 10a Phoenix at Chicago Channel 7 Channel 10 5p Los Angeles at Minnesota NBA TV SUNDAY BASEBALL 8:30a Baltimore at N.Y. Yankees Roku 10:30a Texas at Pittsburgh MLB Net 1p Boston at Giants NBCSBA (680, 104.5) 1p Cleveland at A's NBCSCA (960) 1:05p Minors: Glacier Ridge at Ballers (860) 1:30p Kansas City at San Diego, joined in progress MLB Net 4p N.Y. Mets at Philadelphia ESPN ESPN2 BASKETBALL 10a BIG3: Baltimore Channel 5 Channel 13 Channel 46 12:30p BIG3: Baltimore Vice COLLEGE WORLD SERIES 11:30a Finals, Game 2: Coastal Carolina vs. LSU Channel 7 Channel 10 ESPNU FOOTBALL 2:30p AF1 playoffs: SW Kansas at Nashville Vice 5p IFL: Arizona at Bay Area Panthers NBCSCA (1050) GOLF HORSE RACING MOTOR SPORTS NBA FINALS 5p Game 7: Indiana at Oklahoma City Channel 7 Channel 10 (1050) PREMIER LACROSSE LEAGUE 9a Utah at Denver Channel 7 Channel 10 SOCCER SOFTBALL VOLLEYBALL WNBA Noon Indiana at Las Vegas ESPN 4p New York at Seattle NBA TV 5:30p Connecticut at Valkyries Channel 44 (95.7)