September 14, 2024

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Good morning. It’s truly fall now, the best time of year. Enjoy the pumpkin spice, the leaves, the football. Now, how will you be watching your football? Probably some combination of linear television and digital. But in 10–15 years, could it be all digital?

I asked NBCUniversal chairman Mark Lazarus about TV networks vs. tech streamers onstage at our Tuned In media summit in New York, and I’m still thinking about whether I fully buy his answer. Read on for my take. And scroll all the way down for more news that came out of our Tuned In summit, where we grilled executives from ESPN, Scripps Sports, Roku, YouTube, and more.

—Dan Roberts, FOS EIC

The Streamers Are Coming. NBC Isn’t Scared Yet

Mason Burgin/Front Office Sports

The media-rights deals for the big four men’s pro sports leagues are basically locked in for the next handful of years. And when you look at the broadcast partners, you see all the familiar television names: Disney-owned ABC and ESPN (NBA, NFL, NHL, MLB); NBC (NFL, NBA); CBS (NFL); Fox (NFL, MLB); and WBD-owned TNT Sports (NHL, MLB).

But you also see a growing sliver of rights going to streamers. The NBA chose Amazon over TNT Sports for its next 11 years. In the NFL world, Amazon now has Thursday Night Football, Peacock has an exclusive regular-season game, Netflix has two Christmas Day NFL games, and Google-owned YouTube TV grabbed NFL Sunday Ticket from DirecTV in 2022. The NHL’s new deal that started in 2021 includes a healthy number of games streaming on ESPN+ and Hulu.

TV giants can see it: The streamers are crowding in.

But when I asked NBCUniversal Media Group chairman Mark Lazarus about it onstage at our inaugural Tuned In summit in New York, he said NBC still has an advantage over tech giants thanks to broadcast. (By that logic, so does Disney, the closest counterpart to NBC in terms of having broadcast, cable, and a stand-alone streaming offering.)

“They don’t have the combined reach that we have with broadcast and streaming. And I think that that, again, is one of our advantages,” Lazarus told me. “Collectively, streaming has earned credibility. It’s now a matter of which ones are gonna be involved in the discussion and what’s their plan and how can they convince the leagues and rights holders that they can help them grow their fan bases and reach big audiences.”

Laz raised a key question there: Can tech streamers convince the leagues to sell them larger rights packages? I’ll put a finer point on it: Might there come a time when a major sports league sells a whole season, or at least a much larger portion of its season, to a tech streamer that has no broadcast arm—rather than the scraps streamers have been getting?

MLS doesn’t boast nearly the audience of the big four, but it signed a 10-year deal making Apple TV its primary rights holder in a major hint of the future.

Amazon’s NBA package is the most significant sign yet of what’s to come. Beginning in 2025, Amazon will have 66 regular-season NBA games, plus it will be the exclusive home of the WNBA Finals in four years.

The numbers on broadcast still dwarf streaming, as Lazarus was proud to cite. Referring to NFL viewership on NBC, he said, “We’re doing 25 million these first couple games and we’ll average over 20 million viewers per game, and Fox will average with their four o’clock window somewhere thereabout, and so will CBS. On streaming, no one’s really getting to that number.”

But the future is coming up fast. NBC’s Peacock app got 23 million viewers for a Chief-Dolphins wild-card game it streamed last January, the most-watched livestreamed event in U.S. history at the time. (That number does incorporate local-market TV viewers, too.)

It’s not hard to envision a time—years away, but not decades—when an entire season of a major league goes to a streaming giant, with no NBC, ABC, CBS, or Fox in the mix.

“We think streaming and broadcast TV work hand in glove,” Lazarus reiterated. “The linear viewers are still over 90% of the viewers.”

Sure. But when the next NFL and MLB rights deals are announced in 2029, and the next NBA deal in 2037, it’s an easy bet they’ll involve more games exclusive to streamers than ever before.

NBC has Peacock (33 million subscribers at last count, and that was before the Paris Olympics; Laz says “we added a lot of subs”). Disney has ESPN+ (25 million subs as of July), and soon ESPN “Flagship” (and Venu?) as well. For now, those are great weapons to enhance their broadcast presence.

But Amazon and Apple are breathing down their necks. With trillion-dollar market caps.

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Breaking Barriers to Unlock Unlimited Possibilities

Breaking Barriers goes beyond simply climbing the leaderboard; it’s about stepping out of your comfort zone and pushing your limits to unlock unlimited possibilities, both on the course and beyond.

For LPGA golfer Andrea Lee, maintaining focus and composure during intense training means finding time throughout the day to recharge away from the greens. Whether she’s indulging in shopping or enjoying lunch with friends, it’s these daily moments of joy that fuel her drive to dominate the competition.

Watch Breaking Barriers: Unlimited Possibilities to learn more about Andrea’s story as she realizes her dreams, competing in the highest-stakes tournaments on the LPGA Tour.

Good Week / Bad Week

Pac-12 Lives, Browns’ Watson Dilemma

James Snook-Imagn Sports

Good week for:

Pac-12 ⬆ A year ago, it looked like the conference was dead. Ten teams ditched the Pac-12 for other conferences, leaving Oregon State and Washington State floating. But on Thursday, the conference announced the addition of four schools from the Mountain West: Boise State, San Diego State, Colorado State, and Fresno State.

The Pac-12 still needs two more schools to join over the next two years to keep its FBS eligibility. But after months of the conference and its remaining two schools fighting to secure a media-rights deal and revenue from the departed schools, the Pac-12 is almost back on its feet.

NFL ⬆ The 2024 season started strong for America’s most popular league, as the opening weekend averaged a record 21 million viewers across all platforms. That number is also up 12% versus a year ago, though it excludes the Friday game between the Eagles and Packers in Brazil, which drew 14 million viewers on Peacock.

Bad week for:

Browns ⬇ A Week 1 shellacking from the Cowboys put the spotlight firmly on the struggles of Cleveland quarterback Deshaun Watson—and things got even worse the following day when a lawsuit was filed against him for alleged sexual assault. In 2022, Watson settled with dozens of women who accused him of sexual harassment and sexual assault.

Amid the lawsuits, the Browns handed Watson a $230 million fully guaranteed contract in 2022, and they are now faced with a nuisance on and off the field. They could choose to cut Watson, but the enormity of that impact on their cap flexibility could depend on when they do so.

Cathy Engelbert ⬇ The WNBA had a strong week, with a Friday game on Ion between the Indiana Fever and Minnesota Lynx still able to generate more than one million viewers despite the NFL playing, albeit on Peacock. ESPN also announced it set a regular-season record of 1.2 million average viewers, up 170% from last year.

However, the commissioner did not have a great week. Engelbert was called out by several WNBA players following a lackluster response to a question about race-related issues that have seeped into the discussions about Caitlin Clark and Angel Reese during a Monday appearance on CNBC’s Power Lunch. On Tuesday, Engelbert tweeted that “there is absolutely no place for hate or racism of any kind in the WNBA or anywhere else.”

You Might Have Missed

Chiefs’ Election Impact, a Tiny Pro Baseball Team Gets Creative

Mike Frey-Imagn Images

November’s presidential election may not be decided in Kansas City, but, as FOS’s Eric Fisher writes, the Chiefs still found themselves at the center of the discourse this week. In an Instagram post with more than 10 million likes, Taylor Swift, the girlfriend of Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce, endorsed Kamala Harris. The next day, attention turned to quarterback Patrick Mahomes, who said, “I don’t want my place and my platform to be used to endorse a candidate.” But his wife, Brittany, has liked several pro–Donald Trump comments on social media. Trump previously told Fox News, “I actually like Mrs. Mahomes much better [than Swift].”
Private equity has a reputation for ruthless job cuts and takeovers, but PE’s entrance in the NFL won’t be the bloodbath you think. Several experts told FOS’s David Rumsey there’s no cause for concern just yet. “I would be very surprised, during phase one, if there are any negatives,” says Dan Malone, who chairs the private equity group at law firm Haynes Boone. “Because if this is not going to work, and we don’t get to phase two and beyond, they’ll be dead in the water before this initiative even starts.”
Beneath the sprawling web of Minor League Baseball—and well off the radar of big league fans—there are seven independent leagues peppering North America. FOS’s Meredith Turits spoke to the Frontier League’s Boulders based in Rockland County, N.Y. The tiny team is using social media to try to create stars out of unknown players whose salaries average $1,500 per month.