sports

Simon Trudelle, NAGRA senior director, product marketing: “The solution is driven by a combination of technology, collaboration, and innovation to fight pirate services across all distribution networks. Sports leagues must partner with vendors and service providers, as well as providing their own OTT services if not already the case, to ensure all fans get the best experience possible, anywhere.”

Amazon’s streaming simulcast of NFL Thursday Night Football games may not be drawing TV-like numbers, but the tech giant appears encouraged by results to date. For the seven games Amazon has streamed so far this season, total combined viewership is up 22% to 14.7 million viewers, compared to the same number of games last season, while the average minute audience is up 36% to 455,000.

Three of the league’s television partners have shown increases after the first nine week of the season while one remains flat. That is welcome news after ratings decreased 9.7 percent last season and 8 percent in 2016.

The front-runner to buy 22 regional sports TV networks from Disney is the same company that sold them in the first place. “New Fox,” the company that will remain after Rupert Murdoch sells $71.3 billion worth of 21st Century Fox assets to Disney, is the leading contender to buy back the RSNs it “sold” to Disney as part of the larger transaction, according to people familiar with the matter.

Fox and YouTube TV, the presenting sponsor of the World Series, are putting a number of innovative commercial executions into their advertising batting order. Many of the executions will play off of the situation on the field and will use YouTube TV’s new slogan “Watch Like a Fan.”

Legal sports betting stands to generate an extra $4.2 billion a year for America’s four main professional sports leagues, according to a new study. The study by Nielsen Sports allocates $2.3 billion of the windfall to the NFL, followed by $1.1 billion to MLB, $585 million to the NBA and $216 million to the NHL.

The three networks carrying post-season baseball have an enhanced technological playbook that includes ubiquitous on-field audio, high-quality slo-mo from new perspectives, data-enhanced graphics, some 4K UHD and, possibly, player- and coach-mounted cameras.

Much like the NBA does on Thursdays, the NHL has tried to make Wednesday its night for must-see TV. Steve Mayer, the NHL’s chief content officer, said Wednesday Night Rivalries proved how special that night can be for the league.

The sport is a total mess, and the league has never made more money. Ratings for regular-season games fell 17% over the past two years, according to Nielsen, and after one week of play in the new season, viewership has been flat. This is a guide to how the NFL reached its remarkable moment of contradiction.

CBS, NBC, Fox and ESPN have sold some $2.1 billion in advanced advertising for their NFL broadcasts this season, down only slightly from $2.2 billion last season, despite players controversial anthem protests and declining ratings. “On a week-to-week basis, there is nothing as consistent as the NFL for advertisers,” says buyer Adam Schwartz of Horizon Media. “Nothing else on TV compares to it.”

The Wall Street Journal reports that 21st Century Fox has struck a four-year agreement with Premier Boxing Champions for the rights to carry fights on the Fox broadcast network, Fox Sports 1 cable channel and pay-per-view, starting in December. The media giant is stockpiling programming in preparation for life after it completes the sale of the majority of its entertainment assets to Walt Disney Co. , a deal that will leave behind a “New Fox” focused heavily on sports and its Fox News Channel. Journal subscribers can read the full story here.

Kaepernick already had a deal with Nike that was set to expire, but it was renegotiated into a multi-year deal to make him one of the faces of Nike’s 30th anniversary “Just Do It” campaign, according to a person familiar with the contract.

The new Thursday night tie-up between the National Football League and Fox will apparently lead to some more football-themed programming on the network on Sundays. Fox will this season offer NFL GameDay Prime Sundays at 11:30 p.m. to its affiliates, according to two people familiar with the situation. In an unusual twist, the NFL will sell the national advertising surrounding the program.

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.

Costas, his representatives and NBC have held discussions that could result in the longtime face of NBC Sports being let out of a contract that currently runs through 2021, a person with knowledge of the conversations says. Costas, 66, has worked at NBC since 1979 in starring roles as lead announcer on the Olympics, World Series and Super Bowls. More recently, he took on a sort of emeritus role at NBC Sports.

League schools are working on production and broadcast space for the ACC Network’s launch in August 2019 . The conference is mulling football and basketball scheduling that adds extra zip to first-year programming for the ESPN-partnered channel.

The Cubs will pull away from their partnership with NBC Sports Chicago — as well as the White Sox, Bulls and Blackhawks — and start their own television venture in October 2019, according to industry sources.  The Cubs have hired Mike McCarthy to lead the television venture moving forward, sources said. McCarthy was previously the president of the MSG Network and the CEO of the St. Louis Blues.