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But some want to know why they didn’t spark the same outrage the blood-infused Lil Nas X Satan shoes did.

Tony Hawk shows off a vial of his blood and a note verifying he’s allowing it to be used in the skateboard series.

The bloody skateboard idea was a collaboration with water company Liquid Death Mountain Water. The company said on its Instagram that Hawk’s blood was sterilized before being added to the paint and also noted, “Although it could arguably make the world a better place, never ever use these boards to make clones of Tony Hawk.”

A representative for Liquid Death confirmed to CNET that the paint on the custom decks was mixed with two vials of Tony Hawk’s blood. It gets weirder.

“Tony Hawk is a member of the Liquid Death Country Club,” the representative said. “So he previously sold his soul to Liquid Death via a legally binding contract, meaning the brand technically owns Tony’s blood.” Sure thing, and also, yikes! The Liquid Death Country Club appears to be a fan group that gives members perks for signing up. We can’t answer for the whole soul-selling part of it.

The skateboard is called the Hawk Blood Deck, for super-obvious reasons. Only 100 were made, priced at a blood-curdling $500, and they sold out early Wednesday morning shortly after going on sale. Some of the proceeds from the sale will go to 5 Gyres, a nonprofit aimed at reducing plastic pollution, as well as Hawk’s own organization, The Skatepark Project, which helps under privileged communities build skateparks.

That’s a hawk skull the executioner is holding, as in Tony Hawk.

The red-painted skateboard bears the slogan, “Murder Your Thirst,” with an image of the company’s “Thirst Executioner” character with a Liquid Death can for a head, holding a hawk skull. Hopefully, not Tony’s.

This isn’t the first celebrity-endorsed, blood-infused product of 2021, as weird a sentence as that is to read. Back in March, rapper Lil Nas X collaborated with streetwear company MSCHF on a quickly sold-out offering of what the company dubbed Satan Shoes. The devil-themed shoes each contain a drop of human blood, though drawn from MSCHF employees, not Lil Nas X.

But because the shoes were modified Nikes, Nike filed a trademark claim against MSCHF and the company agreed to voluntarily recall the shoes as part of a settlement. And the combination of the Satan theme and the blood triggered some. South Dakota governor Kristi Noem was among those who tweeted angrily against the Lil Nas X Satan shoes.

Some who saw the Tony Hawk skateboard wondered if he’d receive the same backlash as Lil Nas X did.

“So lil nas x can make custom sneakers with blood in them and there’s outrage, but tony hawk can make skateboards with HIS OWN blood in the paint and somehow it’s less of an issue???” wrote one Twitter user.

Fans of the band KISS will remember that back in 1977, band members also had their blood drawn and mixed with the red ink used to print a Marvel Comics KISS comic book.

Final Fantasy, Dragon Quest, Sonic the Hedgehog and heaps of other classic game tunes kicked off the sporting extravaganza in Japan.

Final Fantasy music played during Friday’s Tokyo Olympics opening ceremony.

Survivor Series is live right now.

But of course, it woudln’t be Survivor Series without 5-on-5 elimination matches. We’ll have two such eliminator matches, one that pits Raw men against SmackDown men and another featuring Raw women facing a team of women from SmackDown. True, the whole “brand versus brand” thing is a bit contrived and definitely lacks stakes. But in spite of that, the wrestling in these champion versus champion matches is usually a bunch of fun.

The show also marks 25 years since The Rock’s debut, and to celebrate there’s a 25-man battle royale — one person for every year of Rock, I suppose. Who knows, maybe we’ll even catch a glimpse of The Great One on Sunday.

As you probably know by now, Peacock is the new home of WWE’s pay-per-views. The WWE Network has in essence migrated to NBC’s Peacock streaming service and that’s where you’ll go to watch Survivor Series 2021. Peacock has three tiers: Free, Premium and Premium Plus. To watch WWE content, you’ll need a Premium subscription. The good news is that’ll set you back $5 a month, less than the $10 for WWE Network.

If you’re outside of the US, you’ll watch Survivor Series 2021 on the WWE Network as usual.

Survivor Series 2021 takes place at New York’s, Barclay’s Arena on Nov. 21. For those without a live ticket, it starts at 5 p.m. PT/8 p.m ET. Grappling fans across the pond will have to stay up late, as the show starts at 1 a.m. UK time. In Australia, Survivor Series begins at 12 a.m. AEDT on Monday.

Rising COVID-19 cases in Japan’s capital have led to a third state of emergency for the city, one that will last throughout the Olympic Games.

The Olympics were postponed from 2020 due to the coronavirus pandemic.

“New cases in the greater Tokyo metropolitan area have been rising since June,” Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga was reported as saying in the Japan Times. “Stronger measures have become necessary in those areas, but could be lifted early if we see evidence of the positive impact of the vaccine rollout.”

Tokyo’s COVID-19 cases peaked with the new year, with over 2,392 new cases on Jan. 8. Numbers have fallen since, but they’ve been rising since the middle of June. Tokyo recorded 337 new COVID-19 cases on June 15, but July has seen new cases fluctuate between 500 and 920. It’s the third state of emergency the city has endured since the pandemic’s onset, following similar precautions in April and January.

Around 15% of Japan’s 126 million citizens have been fully vaccinated against COVID-19.

A worldwide death toll from the virus had risen to more than 4 million as of Thursday, according to data from Johns Hopkins University. In Japan, nearly 15,000 people have died of the virus.

After being postponed more than a year due to the coronavirus pandemic, the Olympics are scheduled to begin July 23 in Tokyo. They’ll run through to Aug. 8. Though many experts cautioned against holding the games, Japan’s government has pressed on — albeit with increasing restrictions as the games approached.

Officials last month said local fans would be allowed to physically attend the games, but with venues limited to 50% capacity or up to 10,000 spectators max. In March, officials banned overseas spectators from the Olympics.

When it comes to following the NBA season, you’ll need a TV service with at least ABC, ESPN, TNT and NBA TV. We compare AT&T TV, YouTube TV, FuboTV and more to find out which service is the best for basketball fans.

Kevin Durant, left, and Kyrie Irving of the Brooklyn Nets high five during a game against the New Orleans Pelicans.

While it’s not as simple as it should be, we’re going to try and make it a bit easier. Here are our recommendations for the best ways to watch the rest of the NBA season, as well as the play-in and playoffs, without cable.

Read more: YouTube TV vs. Hulu vs. Sling TV vs. Philo vs. FuboTV: 100 channels compared

When it comes to streaming all your local basketball games, the $85-a-month Choice package on AT&T TV is the best option for most people. It has all of the national channels — ABC, ESPN, NBA TV and TNT — and it’s the streaming service with the most regional sports networks.

Unlike the NFL, which largely broadcasts its local games on Fox or CBS (with primetime games on NBC, ESPN and the NFL Network) most NBA games air on a local sports network. For the Knicks in New York it’s MSG, for the Lakers in Los Angeles it’s Spectrum SportsNet and for the Bucks in Milwaukee it’s Bally Sports Wisconsin (formerly Fox Sports). The problem is that your local RSN probably isn’t carried by every live TV streaming service.

At $85 a month for the Choice package, AT&T TV is far from cheap, and for some it could be pricier than getting a traditional cable package bundled in with your home internet — especially since, as with every such service, you’ll need home internet to watch it anyway.

That said, it is another alternative that gives you a way to watch your home team’s RSN. In the New York area it’s the only provider that carries both MSG (Knicks) and the YES Network (Brooklyn Nets); in Los Angeles it has Spectrum Sportsnet for the Lakers and Bally Sports SoCal (formerly Fox Sports Prime Ticket) for the Clippers; and in Milwaukee it offers Bally Sports Wisconsin (Bucks).

AT&T TV also has some of the Comcast-owned RSNs, including (Celtics) and Bay Area (Warriors). You can check if your sports network is available in your ZIP code here.

Like with YouTube TV, FuboTV and others there is no contract required for AT&T TV, and you no longer need any special boxes or equipment. You can have streams running on up to three devices at once, with AT&T TV apps available on iOS, iPad OS and Android phones and tablets as well as Roku, Chromecast, Apple TV, Amazon Fire TV and Samsung Smart TVs. The telecom giant also sells an Android TV-powered streaming box.

AT&T includes 20 hours of DVR and bundles in a year of HBO Max with the purchase of the AT&T TV Choice package, the latter of which is normally $15 a month. As part of a promotion, the carrier is also currently throwing in a subscription to NBA League Pass Premium, the league’s service that lets you watch all out-of-market games, for the remainder of the season as an added perk for those who sign up for its Choice or Ultimate packages.

If you want the free League Pass for the remainder of the season, you’ll need to sign up before May 2.

YouTube TV is the pick for those willing to sacrifice their local sports network.

The second-best option for NBA fans is YouTube TV. At $65 a month, a regular YouTube TV subscription checks many of the NBA channel boxes including having all of the major stations — ABC, ESPN and TNT — as well as NBA TV. The problem? It lacks most RSNs, though it does have the NBC Sports-owned ones in some areas.

The play-in games will air on TNT and ESPN while the NBA playoffs will air on those channels plus ABC.

YouTube TV allows three simultaneous streams, with YouTube offering unlimited cloud DVR. It’s widely available, too, with apps on iOS and Android, the web and on TVs through Roku, Chromecast, Android TV, Apple TV and Fire TV.

Other options like FuboTV’s Family plan or Hulu with Live TV are fine, but they involve compromises. Fubo has some regional networks like MSG in New York, but it lacks TNT and requires an $11-a-month Extra add-on to get NBA TV, making the total price $76 a month.

Hulu with Live TV, which now also costs $65 a month, similarly has some regional channels, particularly the NBC Sports-owned ones, as well as TNT, ESPN and ABC. But it lacks NBA TV and the regional sports channels owned by Charter (Spectrum Sportsnet) and Sinclair (the Bally Sports networks and YES Network).

Sling TV’s Orange plan for $35 a month gets you ESPN and TNT, but you lose out on ABC and RSNs, and you’ll need to pay an extra $15 a month to get NBA TV as part of its Sports Extra add-on. You do get 50 hours of DVR but can only stream on one device at a time.

The chart below sums it all up. The base price is listed after the service name, while a dollar sign indicates that the channel is available for an additional fee. For simplicity, we did not include the RSNs as those will vary by ZIP code.

NBA League Pass offers the entire NBA slate for $199 for the season, with commercials and one device, or $249 for the season with in-arena feeds instead of commercials, and the ability to watch on two devices at once. Those interested in following only a single team can buy a Team Pass for $119 for the season.

While this is an enticing option for fans who want to watch-out-of-market games for the 2020-21 season, it doesn’t help with rooting for your home team. Local games as well as those broadcast nationally are blacked out, so if you’re in New York and want to watch Kevin Durant and the Nets take on the Warriors on ABC it won’t be accessible on League Pass.

With the 72-game regular season nearing its end, the league has dropped the price for the remainder of the season to $29 for the base package or $40 for the Premium service that allows for watching on two devices at once with the in-arena feeds. The Team Pass pricing has been reduced to $18. There are also new three-day free trials for the base League Pass package as well as the Team Pass option.

NBA TV remains a separate add-on but now runs an extra $20 (down from $60 at the start of the season) if you want to be able to watch games on that network.

With one weekend left in the regular season and playoff games on national television, you’re likely best skipping this route and going with one of the above providers instead.

Read more: Best soundbars for 2021

The global soccer tournament is still more than a year away, but cybercriminals are already using it to try to grab your personal data.

The FIFA World Cup is set to kick off late next year in Qatar.

Other emails claimed that the recipient had been chosen to take part in a giveaway. In the cases of both these and the contract scams, the recipients were asked to pay a commission to participate but received nothing in return.

Some of the other phishing emails carried malicious attachments. The researchers also found malicious files that had been downloaded from the internet. In all, Kaspersky said it spotted 625 attempts to infect users with files named after the World Cup in 2021.

The vast majority of those involved Word documents asking users to share their personal information. Other threats included AdWare and trojans designed to collect login credentials and other data.

To avoid falling for phishing scams, Kaspersky says people should be wary of unsolicited email offers, especially those that push recipients to act quickly. If an offer looks too good to be true, it probably is. Long email addresses that contain garble can be a red flag, as can grammar and spelling errors.

In addition, legitimate companies will never contact you out of the blue and ask for personal information like credit card details or your Social Security number.

The FIFA World Cup is set to kick off in November 2022 in Qatar.

Crypto continues to elbow its way into major-league sponsorships.

With just 16% of the US population using or investing in cryptocurrency, the name change may come as a shock to many sports fans — and players. When Clippers point guard Reggie Jackson was told of the change, he responded, “What?”

But this name change is only the most recent example of a cryptocurrency exchange launching the type of high-profile promotional effort previously undertaken by traditional financial services and Fortune 500 corporations. The Miami Heat now play in FTX Arena, named for another crypto exchange (that is also the official cryptocurrency exchange of Major League Baseball). And FTX has purchased ad time during the upcoming Super Bowl.

The new logo for the Crypto.com Arena will debut on Christmas Day this year, when the Lakers face off against the Brooklyn Nets. The arena’s signage is scheduled to be completely replaced with the new name by June 2022.

If you want to play a sports game on your Xbox, Game Pass is increasingly looking like the way to go.

FIFA 21 is hitting Game Pass Ultimate on Thursday.

FIFA 21, which is part of EA Play, which Microsoft bundled into its Game Pass Ultimate service last year, will follow the lead of titles like Madden 21 and MLB The Show 21 with versions available for the Xbox One as well as next-gen optimized editions for those with an Xbox Series X or Series S.

The inclusion of a next-gen version of FIFA 21 is a nice win for owners of Microsoft’s latest consoles, something not all publishers have done. 2K’s NBA 2K21, for example, has made the Xbox One version of its basketball game available as part of Game Pass but not the next-gen upgrade. Instead, those looking for that edition will still need to buy their own copy (currently $40 at a host of retailers after being $70 at launch).

And while the addition of more major titles is always welcome, to be truly perfect Microsoft still has work to do in adding games closer to their release dates. The company was surprisingly able to get Sony’s MLB The Show on its service in time for its launch in April, but FIFA’s arrival comes seven months after the title was first made available last October.

It makes sense that publishers will want to keep titles available for purchase at launch to get money from diehard fans, using services like Game Pass as a way to boost the tail end of a life cycle and hold interest until the next iteration. The good news for sports gamers who aren’t in a rush to play the latest season, however, is that Game Pass is increasingly becoming a better option for getting all the action.

They built it and Costner came out of the corn for real at this memorable MLB baseball game between the New York Yankees and Chicago White Sox.

Kevin Costner on the Field of Dreams at the first MLB game in Iowa, August 2021.

Inspired by the 1989 movie, Major League Baseball built a temporary 8,000-seat ballpark at the farm in Dyersville, Iowa, where the movie was filmed. The New York Yankees and Chicago White Sox played a real professional MLB game Thursday.

So who won? Under the beautiful Iowa night sky, Tim Anderson capped the ninth inning by smashing one of the game’s several home runs into the cornfield, winning the game 9-8 for the White Sox.

The game was postponed from 2020 due to the coronavirus pandemic, so the event and its opening ceremony had an extra poignancy as an opportunity for 7,832 people to gather and enjoy the simple pleasure of a ballgame.

The New York Yankees and Chicago White Sox emerge from the corn onto the Field of Dreams.

Written and directed by Phil Alden Robinson and based on the novel Shoeless Joe by W. P. Kinsella, the Oscar-nominated Field of Dreams starred Costner as a farmer who hears voices in his head telling him to plow his cornfield into a baseball diamond. The cornfield-ballfield attracts the spirits of baseball players involved in World Series match-fixing in the infamous 1919 Black Sox scandal.

The MLB has promised a return to Iowa in 2022, although the current disruption caused by the delta variant is a stark warning that the pandemic is far from over.

The final showdown in the NCAA’s men’s March Madness tournament takes place tonight.

The biggest game of the Big Dance airs tonight on CBS at 9:20 p.m. ET (6:20 p.m. PT). Here’s what you need to know about the 2021 men’s tournament.

Jalen Suggs, No. 1, celebrates with his Gonzaga teammates after making a game-winning three-pointer in overtime during the 2021 NCAA Final Four semifinal.

Tip-off for tonight’s contest is set for 9:20 p.m. ET (6:20 p.m. PT) on CBS.

Gonzaga, Baylor, Michigan and Illinois were the top teams in the tournament, each a No. 1 seed in their respective regions. After Illinois was knocked out early in the tourney, Michigan lost to UCLA in the Elite Eight, leaving just Gonzaga and Baylor as the only top seeds standing heading into the Final Four.

Those two teams will play for the title Monday night, but those looking to relive the tourney can find the full bracket on the NCAA’s website.

Yes, you can.

Live TV streaming services YouTube TV, Hulu Plus Live TV, FuboTV and AT&T TV all offer CBS, which is what you’ll need to catch the final game. They start at $65 per month ($70 per month for AT&T). Cheaper streaming services like Sling TV’s $35 per month Orange and Blue packages do not have CBS.

You can also get CBS with an antenna or with Paramount Plus, the new name for CBS All Access, a streaming service that runs $6 per month.

The game will be available to stream on the NCAA’s March Madness Live website and app, with the tournament’s CBS-broadcasted games — including tonight’s championship decider — available for free without needing to first authenticate with a cable provider.

YouTube TV costs $65 a month and includes CBS. Plug in your ZIP code on its welcome page to see what live, local networks are available where you live.

Hulu With Live TV costs $65 a month and includes CBS. Click the “View all channels in your area” link on its welcome page to see which local channels are offered in your ZIP code.

AT&T TV’s basic, $70-a-month package includes CBS. You can use its channel lookup tool to see if you get a live feed of CBS and the other local networks in your ZIP code.

You can watch the CBS games on Paramount Plus (formerly known as CBS All Access), if you live in one of these 206 markets where the service offers live TV. Paramount Plus costs $6 a month or $10 a month for no commercials.

FuboTV costs $60 a month and includes CBS. Click here to see which local channels you get.

Outside the US? Consider using a VPN: CNET editors choose the best VPN

The NCAA took a number of precautions to protect players, coaches and fans and to reduce the potential for COVID-19 to disrupt play. Usually, the tournament is spread all across the country in various venues, but this year, to reduce travel, all 67 men’s games are taking place in Indiana with the bulk of the action happening in Indianapolis. Teams were also required to quarantine upon arrival, and in-person attendance by fans is limited to 25% capacity to allow physical distancing.

COVID-19 also has impacted some games, with Oregon advancing past VCU in the first round due to the Rams’ having multiple positive tests.

Per the NCAA, this year’s tournament was played on two courts inside Lucas Oil Stadium (home of the NFL’s Indianapolis Colts) plus Bankers Life Fieldhouse (home of the NBA’s Indiana Pacers), Hinkle Fieldhouse (Butler’s stadium), Indiana Farmers Coliseum (home of the IUPUI Jaguars), Mackey Arena in West Lafayette (Purdue’s arena) and Simon Skjodt Assembly Hall in Bloomington (home of the Indiana Hoosiers).

The National Championship will take place at Lucas Oil Stadium.

On March 18, the NCAA tweeted out more images of this year’s floor layout for the courts at Lucas Oil Stadium.