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Unrivaled updates: Lunar Owls-Phantom, Rose-Mist in action tonight

MEDLEY, Fla. – Unrivaled stars Sabrina Ionescu, Napheesa Collier, Breanna Stewart, Angel Reese and Brittney Griner are all in action as the 3-on-3, women’s basketball league resumes play on Friday night.

Collier and the Lunar Owls, Unrivaled’s best team at 6-0, will face Ionescu, Griner and the Phantom in the first of two games at 7:15 p.m. ET.

Reese and the Rose will face Stewart and the Mist in the second game, starting at 8:30 p.m., as both clubs hope to continue their winning ways from last week.

Here’s everything you need to know about tonight’s Unrivaled games, and stay tuned for live updates from USA TODAY Sports:

Unrivaled score: Rose 23, Mist 14 after first quarter

Angel Reese and Kahleah Copper each scored six points, and the Rose lead the Mist 23-14 after the first quarter. Jewell Loyd leads the Mist with six points.

Unrivaled final score: Lunar Owls 94, Phantom 76

Allisha Gray scored 23 points, Napheesa Collier scored the game-winning basket to finish with 20 points, and the Lunar Owls remain undefeated with a 94-76 win over the Phantom in the first game on Friday night.

Courtney Williams scored 19 points off the bench, and Skylar Diggins-Smith scored 18 points as the Lunar Owls became the first Unrivaled team to score more than 90 points in a game.

The 170 points scored also marked the highest scoring game in Unrivaled’s history.

“You can’t be 7-0 without trusting the ones with you,” Williams said in a postgame interview.

Brittney Griner led the Phantom with 23 points, while Satou Sabally had 17 points and Sabrina Ionescu finished with 13 points. The Phantom fell to 2-5.

Unrivaled score: Lunar Owls 83, Phantom 68 after third quarter

Target winning score: 94

The Lunar Owls are in complete control after the third quarter, where they lead 83-68. The first team to reach the target winning score of 94 points wins.

Allisha Gray has 23 points, Skylar Diggins-Smith has 18 points, while Napheesa Collier and Courtney Williams each have 16 points for the Lunar Owls, who led by as many as 17 points in the quarter.

Brittney Griner leads the Phantom with 23 points.

Unrivaled halftime score: Lunar Owls 53, Phantom 52

Courtney Williams has scored 14 points, including eight straight points before halftime, and the Lunar Owls lead 53-52 over the Phantom after the second quarter.

Allisha Gray has 12 points, while Skylar Diggins-Smith added 10 points, and Napheesa Collier has nine points in the first half.

The Phantom are led by Brittney Griner’s 16 points, while Natasha Cloud has 11 points and six assists.

Unrivaled score: Lunar Owls 32, Phantom 26 after first quarter

Allisha Gray has nine points, while all five Lunar Owls have already scored in the first quarter to take a 32-26 lead over the Phantom. The Lunar Owls’ Shakira Austin ended the quarter with a tip-in at the buzzer.

Brittney Griner has nine points, while Katie Lou Samuelson has eight points for the Phantom.

How to watch Unrivaled games Friday night on TV

Unrivaled is available on cable television on TNT in the United States, and TSN+ in Canada.

How to live stream Unrivaled games on Friday night

Unrivaled games are also available to live stream on Max, and internationally on YouTube.

Watch: Unrivaled games on Sling TV

Lunar Owls (6-0) vs. Phantom (2-4) preview

The Lunar Owls are the only unbeaten team in Unrivaled behind their starting lineup of Napheesa Collier, Allisha Grey and Skylar Diggins-Smith. Collier scored 36 points with 12 rebounds, Gray added 20 points, and Diggins-Smith hit her fourth game-sealing shot as the Lunar Owls beat the Vinyl, 85-68, last Monday. Collier has been Unrivaled’s best player, averaging a league-leading 29.3 points and 11.8 rebounds per game.

Sabrina Ionescu is expected to play for the Phantom after participating at Super Bowl week in New Orleans. She had a monster game with 38 points, nine rebounds and eight assists last Friday against the Rose. Satou Sabally led the Phantom with 22 points, while Brittney Griner had 20 points and eight rebounds in the club’s last game, a loss to the Mist last Monday.

Rose (2-4) vs. Mist (2-4) preview

The Rose and the Mist will meet in the second of two games on Friday night, both coming off their second wins of the season.

The Rose beat the Laces, 83-69, last Saturday as Chelsea Gray scored 28 points, while Azurá Stevens had 23 points and eight rebounds. Angel Reese was ejected for two technical fouls in the second quarter, but had 15 rebounds before her exit.

Breanna Stewart and the Mist beat the Phantom, 64-61, last Monday. Stewart had 19 points, 13 rebounds and four assists to help the Mist win their second straight game after a 0-4 start.

Unrivaled upcoming schedule

Unrivaled will play two more games on Saturday: The Laces will meet the Vinyl first, while the Mist and Lunar Owls meet in the second game.

Then, Unrivaled will begin its 1-on-1 tournament to be played Monday, Tuesday and next Friday.

Unrivaled 1-on-1 tournament, what you need to know

Thirty of Unrivaled’s 36 players will participate in the tournament where a $350,000 prize pool is on the line.

The winner of the tournament will win $200,000, the runner-up will receive $50,000, and the other two semifinalists will take away $25,000. Each club teammate of the winner will also receive $10,000.

Is Angel Reese playing tonight?

Yes, Reese and the Rose play in the second game on Friday night.  

What is Unrivaled?

Six teams with 36 of the best women’s basketball players in the world, including Sabrina Ionescu and Brittney Griner, will compete in the 3-on-3, full court games.

Where is Unrivaled playing games?

Games will be played at Wayfair Arena in Medley, Florida, which is in the Miami metropolitan area, about 7 miles from Miami International Airport.

Unrivaled team names and rosters

Laces: Stefanie Dolson, Tiffany Hayes, Natisha Hiedeman (relief player contract), Kate Martin, Kayla McBride, Alyssa Thomas, Jackie Young.
Lunar Owls: Shakira Austin, Napheesa Collier, Skylar Diggins-Smith, Allisha Gray, Courtney Williams, Cameron Brink (IR).
Mist: DiJonai Carrington, Aaliyah Edwards, Rickea Jackson, Jewell Loyd, NaLyssa Smith (relief player contract), Breanna Stewart, Courtney Vandersloot.
Phantom: Natasha Cloud, Brittney Griner, Sabrina Ionescu, Marina Mabrey, Satou Sabally, Katie Lou Samuelson.
Rose: Kahleah Copper, Chelsea Gray, Lexie Hull, Angel Reese, Azura Stevens, Brittney Sykes.
Vinyl: Aliyah Boston, Rae Burrell, Jordin Canada, Dearica Hamby, Rhyne Howard, Arike Ogunbowale.

Unrivaled rules to know 

Unrivaled games start with three seven-minute quarters, and games end when the target winning score is reached in the fourth quarter. The target winning score is 11 points higher than the highest team’s score after the third quarter, known as the Elam Ending. 
Players also take just one free throw after being fouled: A free throw equals two or three points depending on the shooting foul. 
How long is the Unrivaled court size? It’s is 72 feet long by 49.2 feet wide. NBA and WNBA courts are 94 feet long and 50 feet wide. 

We occasionally recommend interesting products and services. If you make a purchase by clicking one of the links, we may earn an affiliate fee. USA TODAY Network newsrooms operate independently, and this doesn’t influence our coverage.

This post appeared first on USA TODAY
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Politics

‘JOE, YOU’RE FIRED’: President Trump revokes Biden’s security clearances, intel briefings

President Donald Trump on Friday announced he is revoking former President Joe Biden’s security clearances and stopping his daily intelligence briefings.

‘There is no need for Joe Biden to continue receiving access to classified information,’ Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social Friday night.

The privileges will be revoked immediately, according to the president.

He added the precedent was set by Biden himself.

‘He set this precedent in 2021, when he instructed the Intelligence Community (IC) to stop the 45th President of the United States (ME!) from accessing details on National Security, a courtesy provided to former Presidents,’ Trump wrote. 

The president noted the Hur Report, which he claimed ‘revealed that Biden suffers from ‘poor memory’ and, even in his ‘prime,’ could not be trusted with sensitive information,’ according to the post.

Special Counsel Robert Hur submitted a report on Biden’s alleged improper retention of classified records, which confirmed the former president’s frequent memory lapses and contradicted his claims.

Hur also testified in March that he found evidence that ‘pride and money’ motivated Biden to retain classified documents.

However, he did not recommend criminal charges against Biden.

Trump wrote in the post that he will always protect National Security.

‘JOE, YOU’RE FIRED. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN,’ he wrote.

This post appeared first on FOX NEWS
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Sports

Eli Manning’s Pro Football Hall of Fame case

Perhaps the most subjective honor in professional sports and who is inducted and enshrined is the voting of who belongs in each sport’s Hall of Fame.

The arguments came to a head on Thursday night when it was revealed that former New York Giants quarterback Eli Manning was not inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in his first year of eligibility.

The smallest class since 2005 chose tight end Antonio Gates, cornerback Eric Allen, defensive end Jared Allen and wide receiver Sterling Sharpe. Those four will be inducted in the Hall on Aug. 2 in Canton, Ohio.

For Manning, who didn’t make it to the final stage of the voting, the wait could be longer to get into the Hall of Fame. The four other modern-era candidates, Willie Anderson, Torry Holt, Luke Kuechly and Adam Vinatieri, automatically advance to the final 15 for next year’s voting.

With the addition of next year’s first-year eligible candidates, such as quarterback Drew Brees, wide receiver Larry Fitzgerald, running back Frank Gore, and tight end Jason Witten, Manning’s candidacy will once again be debated and the consensus is he will eventually get in.

All things Giants: Latest New York Giants news, schedule, roster, stats, injury updates and more.

Here is the case for and against Eli Manning being elected to the Pro Football Hall of Fame.

The case for

Manning has two Super Bowl wins as a starting quarterback and was named the Most Valuable Player in both of those victories against Bill Belichick, Tom Brady and the New England Patriots.

He is one of six quarterbacks with multiple Super Bowl MVPs.  Brady, Joe Montana, Terry Bradshaw, Bart Starr, and Patrick Mahomes are the others. Montana, Bradshaw and Starr were each first-ballot Hall of Famers, and Brady and Mahomes will most certainly be when they are eligible.

There have been 13 starting quarterbacks with two Super Bowl wins or more. Jim Plunkett and Manning are the only ones not in the Hall of Fame.

Manning is currently 11th in career passing yards and passing touchdowns. He also ranks 11th in passing attempts and completions and never missed a game due to injury in 16 NFL seasons, making 210 straight starts at one point.

The case against

Manning never was selected to an All-Pro team and has only four Pro Bowl selections.

He has a 117-117 record as a starting quarterback.

He led the league in interceptions three different times.

And his career 84.1 quarterback rating and finished a season in the top ten of QB rating once. Some notables with a higher career QB rating include Gardner Minshew, Andy Dalton, Mitchell Trubisky and Daniel Jones.

The USA TODAY app gets you to the heart of the news — fast. Download for award-winning coverage, crosswords, audio storytelling, the eNewspaper and more.

This post appeared first on USA TODAY
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Politics

‘JOE, YOU’RE FIRED’: President Trump revokes Biden’s security clearance, intel briefings

President Donald Trump on Friday announced he is revoking former President Joe Biden’s security clearance and stopping his daily intelligence briefings.

‘There is no need for Joe Biden to continue receiving access to classified information,’ Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social Friday night.

The privileges will be revoked immediately, according to the President.

He added the precedent was set by Biden himself.

‘He set this precedent in 2021, when he instructed the Intelligence Community (IC) to stop the 45th President of the United States (ME!) from accessing details on National Security, a courtesy provided to former Presidents,’ Trump wrote. 

The president noted the Hur Report, which he claimed ‘revealed that Biden suffers from ‘poor memory’ and, even in his ‘prime,’ could not be trusted with sensitive information,’ according to the post.

Trump said he will always protect National Security.

‘JOE, YOU’RE FIRED. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN,’ he wrote.

This post appeared first on FOX NEWS
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President Trump says ‘we will have relations with North Korea’; it’s a ‘big asset’ that he gets along with Kim

President Donald Trump hosted Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba at the White House Friday and said the U.S. will have relations with the North Korean regime of dictator Kim Jong Un.

‘We will have relations with North Korea, with Kim Jong Un. I get along with them very well,’ Trump told reporters alongside Ishiba.

Trump, who first met Kim in 2018 in Singapore and became the first sitting president to meet with the leader of North Korea, is looking to build off his personal diplomacy he established with Kim during his first term.

‘We had a good relationship. And I think it’s a very big asset for everybody that I do get along with them,’ the president said. 

Trump met Kim again in 2019 and became the first president to step foot inside North Korean territory from the demilitarized zone.

Trump said Japan would welcome renewed dialogue with North Korea because relations between Japan and North Korea remain tense since diplomatic relations have never been established.

‘And I can tell you that Japan likes the idea because their relationship is not very good with him,’ Trump said.

Ishiba said it’s a positive development Trump and Kim met during Trump’s first term. And now that he has returned to power, the U.S., Japan and its allies can move toward resolving issues with North Korea, including denuclearization.

‘Japan and U.S. will work together toward the complete denuclearization of North Korea,’ Ishiba added.

Prime Minister Ishiba also addressed a grievance involving the abduction of Japanese citizens by North Korea in the 1970s and 1980s. Although North Korea released some of the prisoners in the early 2000s, Pyongyang never provided Japan with any explanation for the abduction of its citizens, and there can be no normalization of relations between Japan and North Korea until the issue is resolved.

‘And so our time is limited,’ Ishiba warned.

‘So, I don’t know if the president of the United States, if President Trump is able to resolve this issue. We do understand that it’s a Japan issue, first and foremost. Having said that, we would love to continue to cooperate with them,’ the prime minister added.

This post appeared first on FOX NEWS
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Politics

House Republicans continue Fani Willis investigation, requesting documents from DA employees

Rep. Jim Jordan, GOP chair of the House Judiciary Committee, and Rep. Barry Loudermilk, R-Ga., sent employees from the Fulton County District Attorney’s office requests Thursday to hand over documents and interviews related to the Jan. 6 Committee as they continue investigating District Attorney Fani Willis. 

‘The committee previously wrote to District Attorney Willis requesting documents relating to her coordination with the January 6 Select Committee. Because District Attorney Willis has declined to cooperate, the committee must pursue other avenues to obtain this information,’ a press release states. 

Jordan and Loudermilk sent letters to Assistant Chief Investigator Michael Hill, Assistant Chief Investigator Trina Swanson-Lucas, Chief Senior District Attorney Donald Wakeford and Deputy District Attorney Will Wooten, requesting ‘all documents and communications’ between the employees and ‘any member, staff member, agent, or representative of the January 6 Selection Committee.’ 

The letters also request the employees hand over ‘all documents and communications referring or relating to records in your possession obtained’ from the Jan. 6 Committee. 

All employees were asked to submit the requested documentation no later than Feb. 20. 

The letters sent Thursday say the lawmakers had previously written to Willis ‘requesting documents relating to her coordination with the January 6 Select Committee.’

The lawmakers say they received a letter from Willis in December in which she confirmed the requested documents existed ‘but declined to produce such materials on the grounds that the materials were ‘protected from disclosure by attorney-client privilege, work product privilege, and other common law protections.”

The DA’s office asserted the same claim in a court filing that same month when it declined to turn over any new communications between Willis and special counsel Jack Smith, who had also been investigating alleged efforts by President Donald Trump and his allies to overturn the results of the 2020 election. The filing asserted that the documents either did not exist or were exempt from disclosure under Georgia law.

Fulton County Superior Court Judge Robert McBurney had previously ordered Willis to produce any records of communication with either Smith or the House Select Committee on Jan. 6 within five business days. In doing so, the judge sided with Judicial Watch, a conservative legal group that had filed suit against Willis, determining that Willis had violated the state’s open records act by failing to respond to the lawsuit. 

The House Judiciary Committee launched its investigation into whether Willis coordinated with the House Jan. 6 Committee in December 2023. Jordan and Loudermilk took the lead on the probe after learning that Willis’ office ‘coordinated its investigative actions with the partisan Select Committee.’

The lawmakers said at the time that Willis asked the House Select Committee on Jan. 6 to share evidence with her office.

Willis charged Trump with one count of violation of the Georgia RICO Act, three counts of criminal solicitation, six counts of criminal conspiracy, one count of filing false documents and two counts of making false statements. 

Trump pleaded not guilty to all counts.

Fox News Digital reached out to Hill, Swanson-Lucas, Wakeford, Wooten and the DA’s Office but did not immediately hear back. 

Fox News Digital’s Breanne Deppisch and Brooke Singman contributed to this report. 

This post appeared first on FOX NEWS
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Top federal agency with history of wasteful spending could be next DOGE target

Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) chief Elon Musk’s efforts to clean up waste and fraud in the federal government will soon shift its focus to the Social Security Administration (SSA) in a move likely to create a firestorm with Democrats.

The SSA, created by the Social Security Act under President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1935 and tasked with establishing a federal benefits system for older Americans, will soon become a focus of DOGE, according to a report from Semafor that was not denied by the White House when contacted by Fox News Digital.

While several Democrats — including Rep. Dan Goldman, D-N.Y., in a post on X — have been quick to accuse this move as being aimed at slashing Social Security benefits for the elderly, several areas with potential waste exist in the agency that don’t involve cutting current benefits. 

Just Facts, a nonprofit research institute, previously reported that the agency disbursed roughly $2 billion in fraudulent or improper payments in 2022, which it calculated was enough ‘to pay 89,947 retired workers the average annual old-age benefit of $21,924 for 2023.’

Just Facts explained that through a policy known as ‘administrative finality,’ once the ‘SSA mistakenly overpays a beneficiary for more than four years, it does not recover past overpayments and deliberately continues to make future overpayments excepting cases of fraud.’

The SSA sent roughly 7,000 federal employees disability benefits in 2008 while they were still taking wages from federal jobs, according to a 2010 report by the Government Accountability Office (GAO).

The GAO estimated that about 1,500 of those individuals ‘may have improperly received benefits’ since their wages went beyond maximum income thresholds. The GAO investigation also found that over 71,000 ‘stimulus checks’ were sent by the Obama administration to people who were deceased, including 63,481 people whose deaths had been previously reported to the agency.

‘Social Security will not be touched, it will only be strengthened,’ President Donald Trump said during a press conference on Friday. ‘We have illegal immigrants on Social Security and we’re going to find out who they are and take them out.’

Trump added, ‘We’re going to strengthen our Social Security, etc. We’re not going to touch it other than to make it stronger. But we have people that shouldn’t be on, and those people we have to weed out, most of them, or many of them, so far, have been illegal immigrants.’

On Friday afternoon, White House Principal Deputy Communications Director Alex Pfeiffer posted a report on X from the Center for Immigration Studies in 2021 that said, ‘We estimate that there are 2.65 million illegal immigrants with Social Security numbers.’

Trump added that DOGE will go through ‘everything’ when it comes to waste and fraud in the federal government.

In a statement to Fox News Digital, a spokesperson for the SSA said, ‘We remain focused and vigilant on the integrity of our programs and take seriously our responsibilities to deter fraud, waste, and abuse.’

DOGE has dominated news headlines over the past week as Musk’s team has moved to slash USAID’s $40 billion spending budget and put on leave the vast majority of its employees, as photos of the sign at the door of the agency’s Washington, D.C., headquarters being taken down have circulated on social media.

Musk has said that both he and Trump ‘agreed’ that the agency should be ‘shut down.’ Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who has been named acting director of the independent agency, on Monday echoed the sentiment, telling reporters, ‘USAID is not functioning.’

‘It needs to be aligned with the national interest of the U.S. They’re not a global charity, these are taxpayer dollars. People are asking simple questions. What are they doing with the money?’ Rubio continued. ‘We are spending taxpayers’ money. We owe the taxpayers assurances that it furthers our national interest.’

Democrats held a rally outside the Treasury Department earlier this week blasting the DOGE efforts as a threat to democracy. 

‘Elon Musk is a Nazi nepo baby, a godless lawless billionaire, who no one elected,’ Rep. Ayanna Pressley, D-Mass., said at a rally, sparking pushback from conservatives on social media.

‘Elon, this is the American people. This is not your trashy Cybertruck that you can just dismantle, pick apart, and sell the pieces of.’

Fox News Digital’s Stephen Sorace contributed to this report.

This post appeared first on FOX NEWS
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Stocks

IT Breadth Momentum (ITBM) and IT Volume Momentum (ITVM) Top – Participation Draining

We are currently in a declining trend in the market and internals are telling us that this weakness will continue to be a problem. Our primary indicators in the short- and intermediate-term have topped with one exception. The Swenlin Trading Oscillators (STOs) started down on Thursday and the STO-B continued to fall Friday. The STO-V interestingly turned up, but we wouldn’t get too excited.

The intermediate-term indicators, the ITBM and ITVM, topped and are moving down. It was an eye test on the ITBM on Thursday as to whether it had indeed declined. We checked and it had. Just another reason to look for more market decline.

Participation is leaking from the market. As price has started to turn over, so has participation. We note that participation readings of stocks above key moving averages shows declining trends which confirm near-term weakness.

The Silver Cross Index measures how many stocks have a 20-day EMA above the 50-day EMA (a Silver Cross). It is trying to top right now. We have a declining trend from the October top. With participation sinking, it won’t be long before this indicator tops too.

The Golden Cross Index measures how many stocks have a 50-day EMA above the 200-day EMA (a Golden Cross). That indicator has stagnated and is currently in decline below its signal line. Deterioration is visible on this chart.

Conclusion: We have a short-term declining trend in the market and failing internals. The ITBM/ITVM are declining, along with the STO-B. It is going to be very difficult for price to move higher when fewer stocks are participating.

The DP Alert: Your First Stop to a Great Trade!

Before you trade any stock or ETF, you need to know the trend and condition of the market. The DP Alert gives you all you need to know with an executive summary of the market’s current trend and condition. And it covers more than the market! We look at Bitcoin, Yields, Bonds, Gold, the Dollar, Gold Miners and Crude Oil, and for only $50/month! Or, use our free trial to try it out for two weeks using coupon code: DPTRIAL2. Click HERE to subscribe NOW!

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Technical Analysis is a windsock, not a crystal ball. –Carl Swenlin

(c) Copyright 2025 DecisionPoint.com

Disclaimer: This blog is for educational purposes only and should not be construed as financial advice. The ideas and strategies should never be used without first assessing your own personal and financial situation, or without consulting a financial professional. Any opinions expressed herein are solely those of the author, and do not in any way represent the views or opinions of any other person or entity.

DecisionPoint is not a registered investment advisor. Investment and trading decisions are solely your responsibility. DecisionPoint newsletters, blogs or website materials should NOT be interpreted as a recommendation or solicitation to buy or sell any security or to take any specific action.

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Swenlin Trading Oscillators (STO-B and STO-V)

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Business

New Orleans prepares for Super Bowl 59, its biggest weekend of the year

New Orleans is preparing for an estimated 125,000 visitors and a presidential visit during the weekend of Super Bowl 59, as the reigning champion Kansas City Chiefs take on the Philadelphia Eagles at the Caesars Superdome.

Local businesses are ready, and hotel demand is surging.

Tripadvisor said demand for hotel rooms in New Orleans surged 637% this week as fans of the competing NFL teams scurry to find lodging. Interest from travelers in Pennsylvania and New Jersey has increased more than 14 times, and interest from people in Kansas and Missouri is up 8.5 times since the division championship games in the last week of January, the travel site said.

As of Thursday morning, the average hotel room was going for $650 per night, according to Hotels.com, which is owned by Expedia.

Caesars has the spotlight, however. Along with naming rights to the New Orleans Saints’ stadium, where the NFL championship will be played, Caesars also holds lucrative status as the only casino in New Orleans.

The company has rolled out the red carpet with a nearly half-billion-dollar overhaul of what was formerly a Harrah’s-branded property, and it is using the big game to introduce the brand to new customers.

The biggest football game of the year comes just weeks after a New Year’s Day attack that took place in the city’s French Quarter and killed 14 people, putting New Orleans on high alert.

Security around town is tight. State police, city police and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security all have a heavy presence.

At an NFL briefing on Monday, law enforcement said more than 700 different types of Homeland Security officials will be on the ground during the Super Bowl, and that was before President Donald Trump indicated plans to attend the game.

“I am confident that the safest areas to be in the country this weekend is under the security umbrella our team has put together,” said Cathy Lanier, the NFL’s chief security officer.

Since the Jan. 1 attack in New Orleans, NFL Executive Vice President Jeff Miller said the league has redoubled its safety efforts.

“We added resources, and we feel really good about where we are,” Miller told CNBC.

This post appeared first on NBC NEWS
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NFL has entirely conquered the American sports calendar

An intermingling of seasonal rites will occur Sunday afternoon, a collision that’s not quite a disturbance in the force but jarring, nonetheless.

In the Arizona desert, Chicago Cubs pitchers and catchers will lace up their spikes and take the fields in Mesa for their first workout of the 2025 season.

A few hours later, under the domed roof of New Orleans’ Superdome, the Philadelphia Eagles and Kansas City Chiefs will kick off Super Bowl 59, wrapping up the 2024 season with all the attendant glitz and gorging associated with the USA’s biggest secular holiday.

And for the second consecutive year, the NFL season will bleed into the symbolic start of the following baseball season, an oddity that will likely become the norm as Big Football expands its footprint and other leagues aim to keep up.

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Like animals roaming beyond their natural habitats, major professional sports seasons are increasingly unbeholden to their traditional calendars.

The trend will only deepen: In 2027, the Super Bowl will be played on Valentine’s Day, coincidentally in the same year commissioner Roger Goodell aimed for the NFL to exceed $25 billion in annual revenue. That goal is expected to be hastened by the addition of an 18th regular season game, which will require amending the league’s collective bargaining agreement, yet also expanding the revenue-sharing pie for owners and players.

Barring any unlikely schedule adjustments, an 18th game would push the NFL season closer to March than January and align with the league’s utopian vision for global domination.

“The NFL is not concerned about it getting any bigger. The NFL’s goal all along has been to have people talking about its league and its games around the calendar,” says Dennis Deninger, professor emeritus at Syracuse, former producer for ESPN and author of ‘The Football Game That Changed America.’

“When you look at the NFL draft pushing into spring, the training camps in the middle of the summer, it has taken over the calendar of sports.”

It’s a content drift nearly a half-century in the making.

Trends towards March

In 1977, the NFL played its final 14-game season, across a footprint that looks unrecognizable to the modern eye.

The first Sunday of games fell on Sept. 18 – and the Super Bowl still was completed by Jan. 15. A year later, the 16-game schedule debuted, with a Sept. 3 Sunday kickoff and a Jan. 21 Super Bowl.

Over the next two decades, a handful of factors dictated the start and end of the NFL season.

In 1990, a bye week was added, pushing the Super Bowl to Jan. 27 and then Jan. 31 two years later. In 1993, an ill-fated double-bye schedule made for an 18-week regular season, but with a pre-Labor Day start, the season still ended on Jan. 30.

It wasn’t until the 9/11 attacks in 2001, which canceled the week’s second season, that the Super Bowl crept into February, but with just one week between conference championships and the big game, it returned to January the next season.

Yet the game has landed in February every year since Feb. 1, 2004, and in most years the NFL has adopted an “all of the above” approach to scheduling:

A post-Labor Day Week 1, to optimize TV ratings. Two weeks between the conference title games and the Super Bowl, to maximize the buildup. And, since 2021, a 17-game regular season.

Not only does that keep eyeballs on the field – and the flat screen – from September to mid-February, it also cuts down any notion of dead time.

The NFL combine begins barely two weeks after the Super Bowl concludes. The new league year is fully rolling by mid-March. And the NFL draft – inarguably the biggest non-game sporting event on the calendar – lands in late April, with bottomless speculation in the run-up.

By then, the start of training camp in late July is almost in sight.

“The NFL season comes to life, it seems like, 365 days a year, now,” says Dean Corrington, chief marketing officer of Anheuser-Busch.

Just about.

NBA thought Christmas was ‘our day’

Deninger cites a study that indicates the NFL leads all sports leagues in fan interest 11 of 12 months of the year, with June the only period in which it’s trumped by MLB.

Certainly, fan engagement is not a zero-sum game, evidenced by the multibillion-dollar TV contracts enjoyed by MLB, the NBA and Power Four football conferences, and the stratospheric growth of women’s athletics, particularly basketball, at the collegiate and professional level.

Yet prime viewership slots are finite, and there’s little to keep the NFL wedded to Sundays.

LeBron James put that in stark relief on Christmas Day.

It was long the domain of the NBA, which grew the occasion from a game or two featuring single-name superstars (Shaq and Kobe, Michael and the Bulls) into an all-day quintuple-header, the better to satisfy its national rights holders.

With its regular season starting amid the World Series and NFL stretch drive, Christmas grew into a de facto opening day for the NBA. Until this year.

While Christmas has fallen on football-conducive days such as Saturday, Sunday, or Monday before, this year’s holiday would be celebrated on a Wednesday.

No worries: The NFL simply moved a pair of games to the previous Saturday, brought those four teams back on three days’ rest and staged a holiday doubleheader.

Oh, and lured Beyoncé to her hometown of Houston for an iconic Cowboy Carter halftime show.

Hours later, James led the Los Angeles Lakers to victory over the Golden State Warriors – LeBron vs. Steph keeping with the holiday superstar theme – and afterward bemoaned what he could sense was diminished shine thanks to the NFL doubleheader.

“I love the NFL,” James said in a postgame interview, “I love the NFL. But Christmas is our day.”

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Days later, James’ steadfast pride gave way to pragmatism.

The football doubleheader lured 65 million viewers to Netflix, which was making its NFL streaming debut. The second game featuring the Ravens and Texans peaked at more than 27 million viewers.

Lakers-Warriors? It averaged 7.7 million viewers and peaked at 8.3 million. In the post-ratings spin, the NBA could tout that it was the most-watched regular season game since 2019 and its most-watched Christmas slate in five years.

Yet it’s clear a holiday party crasher took a pretty massive hunk out of the ham.

“From a viewership (standpoint), you all kicked our (expletive),” James said on Travis and Jason Kelce’s podcast a couple of weeks later. “But when you go out there, you got your little brother, and he may get beat up one time. You’re like, ‘Hey, we didn’t lose that fight. We’re staying here.’

“That’s how I felt. I had to stand up. I had to stand up for the NBA.”

‘Survival of the fittest’

It’s a tango that almost every sport is doing.

College football hoped for more exclusivity to the third Saturday in December for the opening round of its Playoff; the NFL ceded a primetime window but still ran a doubleheader up against a CFP tripleheader – and easily prevailed in ratings.

Meanwhile, semifinal rounds were held on a Thursday and Friday to duck the NFL. And the championship game was held on a Monday, Jan. 20, assuming the Monday Night Football slot that was extended a week because of – wait for it – the expanded NFL Wild Card Weekend.

It’s not optimal to stage a title game so late in the year that other college teams are already running gassers in anticipation of the next season – or stocking up in the transfer portal. But ducking the behemoth is something every sport has to do – which is why MLB World Series games are no longer contested on Sunday nights.

“It’s the survival of the fittest,’ says Deninger. “And if the NFL sees a good reason to be on any day during their calendar, they’ll pursue that. They’re not going to step aside and make way for other sports. What always happens is other sports make way for the NFL.”

Yet it’s getting pretty cramped in the corners. An 18th regular season game could push the Super Bowl to the third week of February – lining it up with Presidents Day Weekend and creating a holiday for many fans the day after the Super Bowl.

That would also conflict with the NBA All-Star Game, once again forcing a league to move a jewel event forward or backward on the calendar.

And so it goes.

With eyes on expanding international games to 16 per year and keeping both legacy and nascent broadcast partners well-fed, Goodell’s revenue dreams are drawing closer.

Other leagues have similar dreams to span the globe and harvest more audiences.

The Cubs are reporting Sunday because they’ll open the season early, with mid-March games in Japan pitting their own Asian stars such as Seiya Suzuki and Shota Imanaga against the Dodgers’ trio of Shohei Ohtani, Yoshinobu Yamamoto and Rōki Sasaki.

The years aren’t getting any longer. But the calendar’s only getting more crowded, so make way for odd bedfellows – like pitchers and catchers reporting, and a Lombardi Trophy presentation, all in one day.

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