Fox has been broadcasting the World Series since Derek Jeter was a rookie in 1996 — and there is momentum for that to continue. Major League Baseball and Fox are moving toward a new multibillion-dollar deal to extend the network’s longtime hold on the World Series for the foreseeable future.
CBS Will Aggressively Pursue NFL Rights Deal
The network plans to go all out to renew its current NFL deal that is up for renegotiation in 2022, says CBS Sports Chairman Sean McManus (r) with TVN’s Harry Jessell. He called live NFL games “the most valuable programming on television” and said CBS “will defend its territory and defend the AFC package.” McManus confirmed that CBS is getting $5 million-plus per Super Bowl 30-second ad unit, and said Super Bowl ad sales are “very strong.” (Photo: Wendy Moger-Bross)
The networks will combine to deliver 175 hours of coverage across broadcast, cable and digital platforms. Financial terms of the deal announced Wednesday were not disclosed, though it was clear the PGA Championship is more attractive held in May than in August. The agreement gives CBS and ESPN, which broadcast the Masters, the first two majors of the year.
Jessell | NFL Ratings Gain Isn’t Antidote For NFL Anxiety
After two seasons of steep ratings declines, the NFL is up 3% so far this season. But broadcasters should still worry about their most important programming. Renewal negotiations with the NFL loom and broadcasters may face competition for the rights from streaming companies and wireless carriers that may drive up the prices.
Brian Rolapp, the NFL’s chief business and media officer, called the runup to 2022 an “inflection point” for the league’s lucrative TV rights, with the current broadcast deals expiring and tech giants likely to flex their financial might. Even so, he said the NFL is taking a wait-and-see approach to dealmaking with Silicon Valley, primarily because of streaming capacity concerns.
WASHINGTON (AP) — The long-running dispute between the Washington Nationals and Baltimore Orioles over television rights fees likely will be reheard by a committee of baseball executives this fall. A New York […]
Exclusives
Can Retrans Keep Up With Rising NFL Costs?
To come even close to covering the $3.3 billion it agreed to pay the NFL for its Thursday primetime package, Fox is going to have to generate more money from retrans and reverse comp. It can do that by acquiring more stations and putting a tighter squeeze on mVPDs and affiliates. But in doing so, it may eventually test the economic and regulatory limits of retrans.
On Wednesday, two significant streaming live sports deals were announced. One represented a major extension of the status quo, while the other painted a picture of what the future could hold.
Securities analysts Michael Nathanson says the $3.3 billion deal for Thursday Night Football “is both offensive and defensive. It is no secret that Fox network has struggled outside of sports. Devoting Thursday nights in the fall to football means one less night of original programming to worry about.”
$60 million per game for the worst game of the week? Here’s why huge bid could be worth it
The Thursday Night Football games previously were televised by CBS and NBC, two of the league’s other network partners. But Fox announced Wednesday that it will televise 11 games between Weeks 4 and 15, with simulcasts on NFL Network and Fox Deportes. Fox, is reported to be paying around $550 million per year, up from the $450 million CBS and NBC paid for 10 games.
After a down 2016, NFL ratings fell again in 2017, and that could negatively impact how much broadcasters and digital media companies are willing to pay for rights packages. According to MoffettNathanson analyst Michael Nathanson, regular season ratings were down 13% and the playoffs are down between 12% and 20%. He said that the NFL is experiencing a structural decline.
Surprisingly, only three TV networks — CBS, Fox and NBC — submitted formal bids for the NFL’s Thursday Night Football package, suggesting that the TV home for the much-criticized package could change next season.
ESPN and NBCUniversal have extended their media rights deals with the NFL to include live-streaming games on mobile devices — deals that come after Verizon struck a new digital pact with the league relinquishing its status as the exclusive mobile home for NFL games in the U.S. No word yet from CBS and Fox, the NFL’s two other U.S. broadcast partners, about whether they’ve also landed mobile rights.
PwC says North American media rights from TV, radio and internet platforms will climb 5.6% to $20.1 billion in 2018 from $19.08 billion at the end of this year. The company estimates media rights will climb — on a compounded annual growth rate — 4.3% to $22.7 billion through 2021.
The record bidding amount beat Sony Entertainment Television, which had held the Indian Premier League broadcast rights for 10 years since the popular cricket property was launched.
What happens if the cable TV universe keeps shrinking and digital TV companies decide that they don’t need to invest in sports content? That’s a realistic scenario that threatens the huge amount of media rights fees that has made all sports much richer over the past decade. That’s not to suggest that there’s a media rights bubble that’s about to burst. But it could mean that the huge annual increases that the bigger leagues have enjoyed will flatten.
Whether through rank incompetence or sheer corruption, when FIFA awarded Qatar the rights to host the 2022 World Cup it effectively cost itself millions in future TV fees and all but guaranteed that Fox and Telemundo would both make a tidy profit on the 2026 tournament. In a document released today, international soccer’s governing body effectively owned up to the fact that it all but gave away the rights to the 2026 World Cup to avoid getting dragged into court by Fox.
New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft said the future of NFL broadcasts is in “over the top” deals like the live-streaming agreement the NFL signed with Amazon this spring. “There has been a dramatic shift,” Kraft said. “This year we’re with Amazon and for us the future is OTT.”
The league wants to sell more football rights than ever. The question is: Is there an audience for it?
In the future, traditional broadcasters and social platforms that are emerging as key video destinations could team up on bidding for sports rights. That was the vision that emerged at the NAB Show during a panel discussion featuring Craig Barry, chief content officer at Turner Sports; Chris Granger, president of the Sacramento Kings; Todd Goldstein, chief revenue officer at AEG; and Keith Wachtel, chief revenue officer for the NHL.
The current NFL broadcast rights package isn’t due to expire until 2022, but Les Moonves has already resigned himself to the idea that the next bidding war will pit the networks against the likes of Google and Facebook. Speaking yesterday at the Deutsche Bank 2017 Media & Telecom Conference, the CBS Corp. chairman, president and CEO said that while a battle with the cash-rich digital overlords is all but inevitable, the NFL will very much remain a TV staple.
Media rights are expected to surpass ticket gate revenues as the sports industry’s largest segment by 2018, according to PwC’s new “At the Gate and Beyond” report, which looks at the sports market in North America through 2020. Rights for broadcast, cable, internet and mobile properties are expected to reach $19.9 billion by 2018, surpassing revenue from live gate revenue ($19.8 billion) and revenue from sponsorship ($17.5 billion) that year.
Pac-12 Chief Moves Toward The Digital Future
As a young producer for the legendary ABC anthology show Wide World of Sports, Pac-12 Networks President Lydia Murphy-Stephans learned all about the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat. Today the onetime Olympic speed skater plays in a far more complex TV sports environment. She became the only woman to run a major national sports channel when she was elevated to her post in 2013. But she shattered the glass ceiling at a time when viewer habits are undergoing a sea change thanks to online streaming.
Amazon.com is pursuing video rights to a wide range of sports, including the French Open tennis championship and professional rugby, as the company looks for ways to draw new customers to its online TV service, people with knowledge of the matter said.
ESPN and Fox Sports believe that expansion with schools from outside the power five conferences will water down the Big 12 and make it less valuable, not more, sources say. But the Big 12 is financially motivated to add more teams. A clause in the conference’s media deals stipulate that if the Big 12 expands, it would receive pro rata increases in its rights fees.
No league better exemplifies the reality that big-time college sports are driven less by rivalries than by cable cords and subscriber fees. The Big 12 is staring at an economically driven, zero-sum landscape in which other conferences’ gains are frequently its losses, and expansion would put the division into new markets and potentially add millions of dollars to TV rights deals.
The next big-time sports package won’t be freed up until 2020, leaving pretenders to the ESPN throne to make do with their current rights.
KCBS Lands L.A. Rams Preseason Rights
The CBS O&O will air three preseason games plus a weekly half-hour show featuring Rams Head Coach Jeff Fisher and KCBS Sports Director Jim Hill.
The PGA Tour can opt out of its media deals with CBS and NBC in 2018, and tour executives already have reached out to several media companies to gauge their interest in bidding for a package of rights or, potentially, helping the tour launch its own channel.
Next season, the social media service will stream 10 Thursday night games, the same ones that CBS and NBC will be broadcasting. Sources say Twitter is paying $10 million for the privilege and will provide promotional opportunities to the league.
Evidently, the reason is that Facebook is chafing at the NFL’s traditional ad model, as it likes its streaming videos to be commercial-free. Verizon, Yahoo and Amazon are still in the bidding, though the smart money sure isn’t on Yahoo there.
CBS, unsatisfied with splitting the broadcast rights to Thursday night NFL games, is in talks to nail down the digital streaming licenses for its online subscription service CBS All Access, CEO Les Moonves said Tuesday.
