Here's something that affects you directly: The next time you flip on a WNBA game, a Florida Panthers matchup, or a women's college basketball tournament over Thanksgiving weekend, there's a real chance you're watching because of a decision made in a Cincinnati boardroom.

Brian Lawlor spent 14 years running E.W. Scripps' 60 local TV stations — including WCPO — before his CEO handed him an unlikely assignment: figure out if sports rights could rescue a struggling national broadcast network called Ion. Lawlor had zero sports experience. He said no to running it. He got talked into it anyway. What happened next reshaped free, over-the-air sports television in America.

How Well Do You Know Scripps Sports?

Five questions. The answers might surprise you — especially if you watch local TV in Cincinnati.

Before taking over Scripps Sports, what was Brian Lawlor's actual background?

• Sports rights negotiator — Not quite. Lawlor had no sports experience whatsoever — which is exactly what makes this story remarkable.
• Local TV station executive — Correct. Lawlor spent 14 years running Scripps' chain of 60 local television stations, including WCPO in Cincinnati. Sports was entirely new territory.
• Network news anchor — Nope — Lawlor came up on the business side of broadcasting, not on-air. He joined Scripps in 2009 as VP of sales.
• Cable sports executive — Not even close. Lawlor's entire career was in over-the-air local broadcast — the farthest thing from cable sports.

How much did E.W. Scripps pay to acquire Ion, the national broadcast network at the center of Scripps Sports' strategy?

• $500 million — Way under. Ion was a major acquisition — Scripps paid more than five times that amount to bring it into the portfolio.
• $1.1 billion — Still short. Ion reaches over 120 million homes and commanded a price tag that reflected that massive distribution footprint.
• $2.65 billion — Exactly right. Scripps paid $2.65 billion for Ion — a bet that free over-the-air television still had enormous untapped potential, especially for live sports.
• $4 billion — A bit high. The $2.65 billion price was already one of the largest deals in Scripps' history — but it's paying off with the sports rights strategy now built around Ion.

Lawlor pitched the WNBA on a landmark deal during a 45-minute lunch at what event?

• WNBA All-Star Game in Las Vegas — Close geographically — Scripps does have a Las Vegas affiliate that airs the Aces — but this deal was closed at a different event.
• NBA All-Star Game in Salt Lake City — That's it. In February 2023, Lawlor and Scripps CEO Adam Symson sat down with WNBA Commissioner Cathy Engelbert during NBA All-Star weekend and laid out a vision for a Friday night doubleheader on Ion. She said yes.
• ESPN upfront presentation in New York — Not quite. Lawlor actually had to make his case to ESPN's Jimmy Pitaro in a different context — but the WNBA deal was sealed over lunch at NBA All-Star.
• Super Bowl media week in Phoenix — Nope — Scripps Sports is built around women's sports and local rights, not NFL deals. The WNBA pitch happened at NBA All-Star 2023 in Salt Lake City.

When a regional sports network carrying the Vegas Golden Knights collapsed, what did Lawlor do?

• Passed — Scripps only covers women's sports — Scripps Sports has two tracks: national women's sports on Ion AND local team rights on Scripps stations. The Golden Knights deal was a breakthrough for the local strategy.
• Bid against competing cable networks for the rights — That's not quite the Scripps model. Rather than compete in cable, Lawlor used over-the-air broadcast — completely free to viewers — as the value proposition.
• Rebranded a Scripps Ion affiliate into a team's local broadcast home — Exactly right. Lawlor created an entirely new channel by rebranding Scripps' Las Vegas Ion affiliate — pairing Golden Knights games with nightly local news. The same model has since been used for the Florida Panthers, Tampa Bay Lightning, and Utah Mammoth.
• Helped the team negotiate a streaming-only deal — Lawlor is actually a fierce advocate for over-the-air broadcast — the free antenna signal that reaches millions of homes who don't pay for cable or streaming.

What college football game airs on Scripps stations with ratings in the 30s and audience shares above 50%?

• The Iron Bowl (Alabama vs. Auburn) — That's an SEC rivalry — and those rights are locked up by bigger networks. Scripps found its ratings goldmine in a different part of the country.
• The Brawl of the Wild (Montana vs. Montana State) — Right! The Big Sky Conference rivalry between Montana and Montana State draws extraordinary local ratings across five Scripps stations in Montana. A new extension now gives 18 Scripps stations across eight states rights to air up to a dozen Big Sky football games per season.
• The Civil War (Oregon vs. Oregon State) — Not this one. Scripps' college football breakthrough is in Big Sky country — specifically the Montana-Montana State rivalry, which dominates local ratings like few games anywhere in America.
• The Holy War (Utah vs. BYU) — Scripps does have a Utah presence with the Utah Mammoth, but the college football ratings story belongs to Big Sky Conference — and specifically the 'Brawl of the Wild.'

That's exactly the kind of outsider thinking Lawlor brought to an industry stuck in its ways. Regional sports networks — the cable channels that carried your local pro team for decades — were collapsing under their own financial weight. Cord-cutters were abandoning cable. And yet the audience for live sports had never been larger or more valuable.

Lawlor's insight, shaped by 14 years watching local TV stations fight for relevance, was simple: over-the-air broadcast is free. You don't need a cable subscription. You don't need a streaming account. You just need an antenna — and more than 120 million American homes can already receive Ion's signal. That's not a weakness. That's the entire pitch.

How Brian Lawlor Built Scripps Sports

• 2009 — Joins E.W. Scripps as VP of Sales
• 2022 Early — CEO Adam Symson asks Lawlor to study sports rights for Ion
• 2022 Year-End — Board approves two-track sports strategy: national women's rights + local team deals
• Feb 2023 — 45-minute WNBA pitch at NBA All-Star Game in Salt Lake City — Commissioner Engelbert says yes
• May 2, 2023 — Ion airs its first Friday Night WNBA doubleheader
• Nov 2023 — NWSL deal announced — weekly Saturday night doubleheader added to Ion
• 2023–2024 — Vegas Golden Knights RSN collapses — Lawlor steps in, creates local broadcast home on Scripps affiliate
• 2024 — Florida Panthers, Tampa Bay Lightning, Utah Mammoth added to local rights portfolio
• 2024 — Five-year women's college basketball tournament deal begins — airs every Thanksgiving
• 2024 — Big Sky Conference deal extended — 18 Scripps stations in 8 states, up to 12 games per season
• 2025 — Major League Volleyball set to launch on Ion

Brian is like a dog on a bone. What we needed at that moment was somebody who understood how to navigate the complexity of our organization without letting that drag him under.Adam Symson, CEO, E.W. Scripps Company

That relentlessness Symson describes in Lawlor is the same quality that led the WNBA's chief growth officer, Colie Edison, to say Lawlor came to the table with ideas the league had never heard from a network like Ion — and then backed every word with money and commitment.

For Cincinnati viewers, Scripps Sports isn't abstract corporate strategy. It's the reason free over-the-air television — the kind you can watch without paying a dime in subscription fees — is suddenly one of the most interesting places to watch live sports. And it all traces back to a working group that Lawlor convened in a Cincinnati boardroom in early 2022, tasked with answering a question nobody had fully asked before.

Scripps Sports' Growing Rights Portfolio

What Lawlor built matters beyond sports business box scores. The collapse of regional sports networks has left millions of fans — including many in Ohio and Northern Kentucky — locked out of watching their local teams unless they pay for expensive cable bundles or streaming add-ons. The Scripps Sports model is a direct challenge to that reality.

Lawlor's legacy at this Cincinnati company may ultimately be that he made live sports free again — not through some grand philosophical statement, but through the unglamorous work of understanding how local broadcast stations actually operate, and then building something new from the inside out.

The World Lawlor Walked Into: The RSN Collapse

Regional sports networks — the Bally Sports channels, the YES Networks, the SportsNets — were once the golden goose of cable television. Teams signed billion-dollar local broadcast deals. Carriers paid enormous fees to include them in bundles.

Then cord-cutting hit. When millions of households dropped cable, RSNs lost their subscriber base almost overnight. Diamond Sports Group, one of the largest RSN operators in the country, filed for bankruptcy in 2023. Teams that had built budgets around those guaranteed broadcast dollars suddenly found themselves without a TV home.

That's the crisis that created Scripps Sports' opportunity. Lawlor didn't cause the RSN collapse — but he was ready to pick up the pieces, team by team, market by market, using a free over-the-air model that didn't require viewers to pay a cable bill to watch their home team.

For Cincinnati sports fans, the closest analog is this: imagine if the Reds or FC Cincinnati lost their local TV deal tomorrow. That's exactly what happened in Las Vegas, Tampa, Florida, and Utah — and Scripps was the answer.

Sources & References

• Primary source: sportsbusinessjournal.com
• Sports Business Journal — Primary reporting on Brian Lawlor's career, Scripps Sports' founding, WNBA/NWSL/Ion deals, and RSN acquisition strategy
• E.W. Scripps Company — Ion network distribution reach (120M+ homes), station count (60 local TV stations), and corporate structure
• WNBA — Ion broadcast partnership details, Friday Night Doubleheader format, and distribution model
• Diamond Sports Group / Bankruptcy Filings — RSN collapse context — Diamond Sports Group Chapter 11 filing, 2023, and impact on local team broadcast rights