sports

The league seeks to boost fees by luring streamers, from Amazon to Apple, and offering games in local markets.

The premium sports brand specialized in boxing and sports docs, but following Showtime’s merger with Paramount+, the company decided to move in another direction.

Comcast NBCUniversal said 2024 Olympics and Paralympics advertising sales are pacing ahead of the $1.8 billion generated by the  previous summer Olympics in Tokyo, which were moved to 2021 from 2020 because of the COVID-19 pandemic. All of the advertising inventory in the live coverage of the Paris opening ceremony is already sold out. Also sold out are all of the planned halftime sponsorships for team events, such as basketball and soccer, across NBCU’s platforms,

Numerous franchises are expected to overhaul their local media deals, returning games to free networks. The transition is underway in Arizona.

Longtime ESPN communications chief Chris LaPlaca will retire at the end of the year after spending more than 43 years at the company. ESPN Chair Jimmy Pitaro announced the news of LaPlaca’s impending departure earlier today in a memo sent to ESPN’s staff. LaPlaca, the company’s SVP/corporate communications, is the longest tenured behind-the-scenes employee currently at ESPN, having started there in July 1980 — only nine months after the channel first went on the air.

NBC is betting that the next big thing in streaming might be your local high school football game. The media giant is launching a new streaming service that’s part ESPN+, part YouTube, and part MasterClass, meant to appeal to families, schools and communities with amateur sports teams. The service, SportsEngine Play, will stream live matches from amateur teams, (think high schools, etc).

Streaming viewership fell for the second-straight month in September as football season gave broadcast a big boost, according to Nielsen’s monthly summary. Netflix viewing was down 5%. Paramount Plus and Peacock showed similar declines. In contrast, broadcast gained viewing for the second consecutive month. Volume was up 13%, raising over-the-air TV’s share of total viewing to 23%, up from 20.4% in August.

The Pac-12 has had to allocate $72 million among its member universities to offset an overpayment made to it by Comcast, not $50 million, as originally reported. The revelation was divulged by George Kliavkoff, commissioner of the doomed collegiate athletic conference, amid a suit filed against his organization by two former executives.

As Spoon Daftary and executive producer Mike Muriano started building the TNF studio team, they were aware of the natural constraints all pregame, halftime and postgame shows have structurally. But as Amazon became the league’s first new media partner in nearly 30 years, the company also saw the opportunity of a blank canvas.

As Major League Baseball‘s post-season continues, Warner Bros. Discovery wants to talk baseball or beisbol. Starting Oct. 16, the company’s sports division will launch “Postseason ALTcast: Peloteros,” a so-called “alterna-cast” that will feature cultural conversations centered on the NLCS and the game of baseball as told through diverse voices and representation within the Hispanic community. The broadcast will appear on the TruTV cable network and the Max streaming hub while the traditional game broadcast appears on TBS and Max.

Diamond Sports yesterday filed a motion in bankruptcy court to compel DirecTV to pay for past carriage fees that Diamond says DirecTV owes it for carrying San Diego Padres and Arizona Diamondbacks games. The company, which owns the Bally Sports regional sports networks, and declared bankruptcy last March, alleges that DirecTV stopped paying the fees after Diamond over the summer ended its agreements to broadcast the Padres and Diamondbacks games.

Monumental Sports Network, owned by Ted Leonsis, said it launched a direct-to-consumer subscription service that will let fans who aren’t pay TV subscribers watch the games of Washington, D.C.’s basketball and hockey teams for $19.99 a month. Viewers can also pay $199.99 a year to watch the Capitals, Wizards and Mystics play via the Monumental Sports Network app, which is available on iOS, Android, Apple TV and Roku. Subscribers can also use the app on Amazon Fire TV, Monumental said.

E.W. Scripps has agreements to place in several markets to broadcast games where teams are worried that their games will no longer be telecast by Bally Sports regional networks. The local sports market is entering a potentially chaotic phase, with the Major League Baseball season ending and the NBA and NHL about to start play for 2023-24. Scripps Sports President Brian Lawlor said: “Every team associated with Bally is concerned about the future. As a result they are all doing contingency planning for the short term and the longer term.”

John Voita: “After absorbing our first game on AZ Family, you can see and feel what it’s like to have a local company focused on presenting local sports. From the moment the broadcast began, we were provided with beautiful cutaways of the desert and a score bug that is not overwhelming on the bottom of the screen. What we witnessed was masterfully nostalgic.”

Streaming platforms are chasing live sports rights to grow their audiences. Increasingly, those audiences are watching in Spanish. Media companies like TelevisaUnivision, Canela Media, NBCUniversal’s Telemundo and Peacock, Disney’s ESPN+ and Amazon’s Prime Video are all bulking up on Spanish-language sports content. Hispanic viewers have been at the “forefront of cord-cutting,” making them a key demographic in streaming growth.

With live sports TV programming taking on more importance with TV advertisers, Walt Disney says its upcoming NHL season on all its TV networks and streaming platforms is “nearly sold out,” inking 26 deals for presenting sponsorships. Disney Advertising was to get five new sponsorships: Chewy, GoDaddy, Kohl’s, Procter & Gamble and T. Rowe Price. This adds to the list of 21 presenting sponsorship brands from American Express, Apple, Mercedes-Benz USA, Taco Bell, Verizon, Fidelity and Kohl’s among others.

Peachtree Sports launched out of Gray Television’s WANF and WPCH Atlanta in early October with a programming slate of eclectic Georgia sports and a trajectory aimed at statewide distribution. Erik Schrader, the stations’ VP and GM, explains why he sees a viable market there. A full transcript of the conversation is included.

Scripps will televise all locally broadcast Coyotes games over the air to residents of Arizona and surrounding states within the team’s broadcast territory.

The USFL and the XFL, two football leagues that were revived in recent years in a bid to bolster the sport during the NFL’s off-season, have decided to merge. The new entity will “establish best-in-class operations based on the most recent seasons of both league,” the two sports groups said in a terse statement Thursday, noting that more details about the new organization would be released at a later date.

Sean McManus, chairman of CBS Sports and the division’s 27-year leader (left), will retire next April and hand the reins to David Berson (right), who has been president of CBS Sports for more than 10 years. The leadership change was announced today by George Cheeks, president and CEO of CBS, and chief content officer of news and sports at Paramount+.

NBCUniversal has promoted veteran executive Rick Cordella to president of NBC Sports, reporting to Mark Lazarus, chairman of NBCUniversal Media Group. Cordella, who has served in a number of leadership roles at NBCU, will now lead all aspects of NBC Sports’ brands and platforms including NBC Sports, NBC Olympics, Golf Channel, NBC Sports Digital and transactional businesses GolfNow and SportsEngine. He’ll work with NBC Local on regional sports network strategy and continue to oversee sports on streamer Peacock.

The company is launching the CBS Sports Creator Studio, hoping to pair influencers with talent, or give them behind-the-scenes access in support of deals.