With Turner Sports and ESPN picking up the playoffs after 16 years, Turner hopes to continue the momentum from a successful regular season in the playoffs. Its games, mainly on Wednesday nights and Sunday afternoons, averaged 361,000 viewers. That’s an increase of 29% over last year on NBCSN (280,000) and 24% compared with 2019-20 (292,000). Above: Wayne Gretzky takes a break during the pregame show on Oct. 13, 2021, in Atlanta. TNT and TBS are in their first season broadcasting the NHL and the Stanley Cup Playoffs. (Jeremy Freeman/Turner Sports via AP)
Advertisers Go Mad For March Madness
Advertisers and their buying agencies have come to see the NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament as a viable alternative and better value than the Super Bowl, getting multiple spots for the same major payout. Agency executives are already planning negotiations for next year’s tournament at the spring upfronts.
The National Hockey League has completed its next TV rights package — and for the first time in 16 years, NBC Sports won’t be a part of it. NBC pulled out of negotiations for the partial rights for the league’s next TV deal. WarnerMedia’s Turner Sports will pick up the remainder of the package, sharing rights with ESPN for seven seasons beginning with the 2021-22 seasonth.
The seven-year agreement will take effect in 2022 and includes a Tuesday night game as well as additional postseason games. It also includes expanded digital rights for Bleacher Report and other WarnerMedia platforms. Turner will pay an average of $470 million per season.
Shaquille O’Neal won’t be leaving “Inside the NBA” anytime soon. In fact, viewers are going to be seeing more of him across Turner’s many platforms. Turner Sports and WarnerMedia announced […]
Exclusives
Major League Baseball has agreed to broad terms on a new rights deal with Turner Sports at around a 40% average annual increase, sources said. Nothing has been signed formally, but this new deal will see Turner pay an average of around $470 million per year from 2022 through 2028 for a rough total of $3.29 billion. Its expiration will sync with a Fox deal signed in November 2018. Turner now pays an average of $325 million a year under an eight-year deal that expires after the 2021 season.
Turner Sports said the Sunday telecast of The Match: Champions for Charity attracted an average of 5.8 million viewers across four of its networks. Turner says it was the most-watched golf telecast in cable TV history.
TVN Focus On Advertising | March Madness A Costly Cancellation
The fallout from Thursday’s coronavirus-driven cancellation of the NCAA Division 1 Men’s Tournament will be over $1 billion in ad revenue for CBS and Turner Sports. “There’s no bad guy here,” said one expert, but remedies will almost certainly have to be created.
Ratings may be down for the NBA this season, but ad sales for the league’s All-Star Game remain strong. According to Jon Diament, executive VP and chief revenue officer at Turner Sports, commercials for this year’s All-Star Weekend in Chicago sold out faster than ever before at prices that were “significantly higher” than in past years.
March Madness continued to be a full-court moneymaker with CBS and Turner Sports generating $655.1 million in ad revenue during the NCAA Men’s College Basketball Tournament, according to new data from Standard Media Index.
Among all sporting events, the March Madness NCAA basketball tournament may be the most tailor-made for streaming video. According to CBS and Turner Sports, which have TV rights to the games and operate the streaming offerings, March Madness Live is setting new records for streams and streaming hours so far, with both categories up by more than 25% compared to last year.
Jeff Zucker, the leader of cable-news outlet CNN, is about to add sports to his portfolio, giving him expanded oversight of more of the most valuable content in today’s media landscape — live programming. Zucker is expected to head AT&T’s Turner Sports, according to three people familiar with the matter, broadening his influence at the telecom giant as it moves quickly to re-organize WarnerMedia.
WarnerMedia’s Turner Sports inked a pact with Caesars Entertainment to develop sports gambling content. Under the agreement, Turner’s Bleacher Report will establish a studio inside the sports book at the Caesars Palace Las Vegas hotel and casino.
NEW YORK (AP) — Quarter-by-quarter pricing has launched on NBA League Pass, allowing fans to purchase games at reduced costs after each period. Single games are $6.99, and that price […]
ATLANTA (AP) — Candace Parker has been hired by Turner Sports as an analyst and commentator for NBA games this season on TNT and NBA TV. Turner announced Wednesday that […]
Turner Sports has partnered with Intel to broadcast weekly NBA on TNT games in virtual reality beginning with the 2018 NBA All-Star Weekend, which will be held Feb. 16-18, 2018. In the multi-year deal, Intel will become the exclusive provider of VR for the NBA on TNT and deliver live content for weekly matchups via its Intel True VR technology.
The legal chaos that imperils the daily fantasy sports (DFS) industry now officially threatens the professional sports leagues, media companies and financial institutions that have become partners with the two leading DFS companies, DraftKings and FanDuel. Two Florida-based DFS customers e-filed a class action lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida against approximately 50 companies and individuals that have either invested in DFS companies or facilitated DFS gaming. Among those named are Turner Sports, Time Warner, NBC Sports Comcast Ventures, 21st Century Fox and Fox Sports Interactive Media.
WASHINGTON (AP) — Basketball analyst and former NBA player Greg Anthony was suspended indefinitely by CBS on Saturday after he was arrested on a charge of soliciting a prostitute in […]
The NBA and its network partners expect to reach an agreement in principle on new long-term media deals by the start of the regular season, according to sources on all sides of the discussions. Talks have progressed so rapidly that details are emerging on a massive agreement that would see the league’s annual rights fee more than double, with ESPN and Turner combining to pay more than $2 billion per year on average.
Next week, CBS and Turner Sports will unveil a new way to watch the NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament, using two companies, two production teams, two sales forces, and four networks to air every game in the 68-team tournament. Although a plan may be in place, the playbook is by no means carved in stone, as even the top executives at CBS and Turner are not sure how quickly viewers will grasp the new broadcast schedule.
Commercial time during the NCAA men’s college basketball tournament is virtually gone, despite the complications introduced by showing games on four channels instead of one. March Madness, as the NCAA tournament is more commonly known, is nearly sold out of TV and digital inventory on CBS and Turner’s TNT, TBS and TruTV. That’s the earliest the event has sold so much inventory in recent memory.
CBS Sports and Turner Sports have teamed up with automaker Infiniti in a pact that extends well beyond the margins of March Madness. Having signed on as an official NCAA corporate partner, Nissan’s Infiniti marque will run a multiplatform campaign on CBS, CBSSports.com and NCAA.com throughout the regular season. Once the the newly expanded 68-team tourney tips off on Turner’s truTV, Infiniti will begin running its spots in each March Madness broadcast.
Advertisers in the NCAA men’s basketball tournament will be able to buy one unit that stretches across four nationally televised games in a specific time window, based on the sales approach Turner Sports and CBS have taken to the marketplace.
