John Kosner Spoke to Ben Thompson of Stratechery About the Past and Future of Sports in an Age of Abundance

Original Article: Stratechery, by Ben Thompson, Thursday, March 2, 2023

An Interview with John Kosner About the Past and Future of Sports in an Age of Abundance

Good morning,

I am pleased to welcome John Kosner for a Stratechery Interview. Kosner was a long-time NBA and ESPN executive who oversaw the growth of ESPN.com, the ESPN app, fantasy sports, streaming, and podcasting. Since leaving ESPN in 2017 Kosner has been a venture capitalist, advisor, and consultant, and writes a regular column for Sports Business Journal.

We discussed Kosner’s career both at and after ESPN, how he always dreamed of building ESPN.com and how reality differed from his expectations, why Bill Simmons had such an impact on ESPN and the sports ecosystem, and why Twitter sent a chill down his spine. We also touched on the same topics I wrote about this week, including how to fix the NBA and whether sports will appeal to the next generation of fans (this interview was recorded before I published What the NBA Can Learn From Formula 1, and helped influence it).

To listen to this interview as a podcast, click the link at the top of this email to add Stratechery to your podcast player. On to the interview:

An Interview with John Kosner About the Past and Future of Sports in an Age of Abundance

This interview is lightly edited for clarity

Background

John Kosner, welcome to Stratechery.

JK: Thank you Ben. I used to listen to Mike and the Mad Dog on WFAN here in New York City, and the callers used to say things like “Longtime listener, first time caller”. So I’m a longtime reader, but first time caller.

Well, I appreciate it. You are one of my regular correspondents, which I’ve always appreciated, and it’s a very timely time to talk to you. I’ve been thinking a lot about sports and sports rights, and not just because I’m a sports fan. On Dithering we like to get into sports and some people get grumpy about it because they’re like, “Oh, I want to talk about tech.”

JK: Not me!

Well, yeah, but right now in particular, one of the first topics I ever wrote about on Stratechery was the cable bundle and entertainment and this period we are going through where it’s been one of those things where people have seen this coming for literally twenty or thirty years — and this kind of goes back to your time at ESPN, which we’ll get into — but right now it’s all happening.

Things are changing in a major way and so I want to get the chance to talk to you because you were there, as I just alluded to in the early days, working at ESPN, helping launch ESPN.com, ushering it through not just the initial launch, but the shift to mobile. I’d love to dive into that history and also get some of your takes on what’s happening now and where we’re going. So if that sounds good to you, we can dive in.

JK: Sounds great, Ben. Thank you.

So let’s start with your background. I think people in sports media obviously know who you are, probably far fewer people in tech. So what’s your background? How’d you get into sports? What’d you do at ESPN and what are you doing now? Let’s go through the whole thing.

JK: Great. So I’m one of the few people you’ll ever meet who has had the privilege of doing the jobs he dreamed of doing as a kid. I grew up in New York City, which is where I live now, and I grew up during the 1960s and 1970s and I was obsessed with sports on television. My idol was Roone Arledge, the famous executive producer of ABC Sports who invented up-close-and-personal style of journalism. He pioneered the Olympic TV coverage that we still see to this day in ABC’s Wide World of Sports. Anybody who loves Drive to Survive would appreciate Roone Arledge.

I learned about geography, math, storytelling, and character all through watching sports on TV. It was mesmerizing to me. It was worth noting too, when I was growing up, that three of the biggest sports were Major League Baseball, boxing and horse racing. As much as I loved sports television, I always dreamed of something that was even more. I wanted a product that could combine live sports telecasts with sports writing of the caliber of Sports Illustrated magazine, which I read every week, which would include video highlights, photography, audio, and realtime scores and stats. Essentially, I dreamed about ESPN.com about 20 years before the Starwave crew created it and it’s probably not coincidental that ESPN.com is the product with which I am most associated with decades later.

I grew up in an era of media scarcity. There were three broadcast networks, there were a handful of gatekeepers and limited bandwidth. Today’s landscape and media is the opposite of my childhood and to use a Stratechery theme, there’s now unlimited supply and so the world that I observe later is totally different. My career, I had the good fortune to intern at NBC Sports when I was in college.

When I graduated from college, I got started at CBS Sports where I worked in TV programming. That’s TV programming, not computer programming. I moved on from there to be head of broadcasting in the US for the National Basketball Association. This is truly a dream job for me, I’m sure you relate, as always, an NBA fan growing up, my favorite teams are the New York Knicks and the Phoenix Suns, and in your case the Milwaukee Bucks.

One of the topics of our conversation is Bucks versus Suns, which have a nice little burgeoning rivalry over the last few years.

JK: Interestingly, when I was at the NBA, one of the stars in the sports media business was Bob Iger. Bob Iger really came to prominence during the 1988 Calgary Olympics and then he was passed over to be president of ESPN, to his chagrin. He got over that because shortly thereafter they named him president of ABC Entertainment, which in those days was a much, much bigger job.

And he managed to get control of ESPN in the end. So I guess it all worked out for Bob.

JK: Yeah. I worked at the NBA for eight seasons, then I went to Sports Illustrated Magazine and then for over twenty years I was at ESPN, the last fifteen of which I ran digital media, so that’s ESPN.com, the app, streaming, fantasy games, podcasting and I got to oversee editorial, product development, I ran the P&L. It was truly a dream job. There was another sort of dream team of people that I got to work with, many of whom are still at the company. I left ESPN in June of 2017, and the first person to call me after my news was public was David Stern, the late NBA commissioner. And after — if you know David — after several insults, he suggested to me that we should combine to be investors and advisors to sports tech startups. He had retired from basketball in, I think in 2014.

Yeah, I was going to say 2014, somewhere around then.

JK: Yeah, and he had become a VC. So we got together and we created a little unit called Micromanagement Ventures, and if you know David, you’d appreciate the humor of that.

Yup.

JK: We invested in fifteen different sports tech startups, some of which proven very successful. WHOOP, WSC Sports, which does video highlights, Overtime, which now has a basketball league.   Two of the companies got acquired, another one, fuboTV went public. Sadly, David suffered a   cerebral hemorrhage in the fall of 2019 and he died on New Year’s Day 2020, and that was just a tremendously sad time. Like so many who know David, I miss him, I think about him all the time, I feel fortunate to have had really two experiences working with him. But in any case, I decided to stay in with the little companies. I have added a couple of other investment advisor positions with  companies that are sort of the profile that David and I were looking at. I also consult for a couple of different companies. I consult for Apple, I’ve done projects for the LA ’28 Olympics, done projects    for a cloud database company called Snowflake, I do expert witness work, and my friend Ed Desser from the NBA, he and I write articles for the Sports Business Journal.

That’s an excellent framing because I want to get to a couple of your articles. I do have a David Stern question. But there is a couple things you said in your introduction that were really interesting to me. Number one is I love the bit about how you weren’t obsessed with sports, you were obsessed with sports broadcasting or media.

JK: Right, exactly.

Because I’ve always felt like a weirdo because from day one I was fascinated with tech business   and I had no business background. It was just that the implications of it seemed super interesting  to me and I was interested in the tech part of it, but the products were less interesting than the business bit. And so I feel like you, I got to do the job that I wanted to do. But the second bit is you talk about how you witnessed this shift from scarcity to abundance, which is the dominant shift in everything, right? That’s what is undergirding what’s happening now. When you talk about envisioning ESPN.com basically 20 years before it happened, was that abundance bit in your worldview then? Or was it more like, “Oh, this is going to be a magazine online,” and then you  came to appreciate that abundance over time?

JK: I had no idea that the abundance was coming, it just shows you how things changed. I remember when ESPN got started, I was a college freshman, I thought it was one of the stupidest things ever. They were showing reruns of college football games. I remember Nickelodeon got started, “Well who wants to watch that all day”? So I was on the total opposite side, but I’ve always been focused on the creation of great products, the surprise and delight, and I just thought if you could combine these things, wow, that would be something you would have. I remember when CNN Headline News    started running scores on the ticker below their headlines, that was a big cultural moment in my life. There used to be a phone service in New York City called Sports Phone, 212-976-1313, and my parents used to strangle me because the phone bills would have incessant calls looking for Suns scores.

That’s amazing.

JK: So like a lot of things this was kind of self-serving, but it struck me that there was beauty to what was done in sports television. There was artistry to Sports Illustrated, and it made so much sense to be able to put those things together. One of the things that you talk about in your columns is what really connects isn’t a revamp of something you’ve already seen, it’s something that’s brand new. And when I got to ESPN and ESPN.com was two years old, I really felt like Nirvana.

ESPN.com

When you look back at the evolution of ESPN.com, there are a couple things I want to get to in that regard. To what extent do you think, just big picture, looking back over what has it been — twenty, thirty years now? — is ESPN.com a triumph for the company versus a, “In the long run, actually all that matters is sports on TV”? To the extent it’s a triumph, why? And to the extent it’s just something off to the side, were there opportunities that were missed or is it just that because of this abundant/scarcity thing, it’s just a completely different product than linear television?

JK: If I’m honest with myself, I think it’s somewhere in between how you describe it. I remember early research among young sports fans saying they really liked the offline version of ESPN, which always cracked me up. The offline version was the television. ESPN has always seen itself as a TV company first, that really hasn’t changed. But ESPN.com established itself as a truly unique service for fans and I think part of it was that it was created outside of ESPN, it was originally a joint venture between Paul Allen’s company, Starwave, and Disney. So it wasn’t started in the core ESPN, and you had some really brilliant people, Mike Slade, Tom Phillips, Geoff Reiss, Aaron LaBerge, who were pioneers with this experience before ESPN was truly integrated into it and it benefited from the point that many in ESPN management really just didn’t focus on it at the time, so we had a chance to experiment.

Right, which was a good thing.

JK: We had the chance to take chances and create something new. We also had, because of the Starwave heritage, a bunch of engineers who were big sports fans, which is really, really unusual and really benefited us during that time. It’s like you’re outside and it’s really foggy and then progressively over time it just gets clearer and clearer and you just begin to understand what to do. When I got started, it was probably the way people feel about blockchain and crypto today, that’s what the early days were like.

I’ll give you one story back there, which I think is kind of telling for how things went. In 2009, Apple was up in Bristol and Eddy Cue, who’s the head of Apple TV Plus and Services now, was in the meeting and he found out who I was and what I did and he came up to me and he said, “Hi, I’m Eddy from Apple and your scores, they suck.” And he took out his second generation iPhone and top left on iPhone was Yahoo Sports. So I said, “Okay, duly noted, you have my attention.”

I get back from the meeting to my desk in Bristol and I called up a fellow named Ed Macedo, who was the head of Stats and Information for ESPN. So I said, “Ed, I just met Eddy from Apple and he says our scores suck” and so Ed Macedo says to me, “Well, I use SportsLine for scores.”

Oof. 

JK: So, this is like a Dave Portnoy moment, I called an emergency staff meeting and I said, “Ladies and gentlemen, we have a new priority — scores,” and people looked at me like I was a Luddite and they said, “Well, we do scores.” And I said, “Yeah, but Eddy says our scores suck,” and this is part of the beauty of the ESPN opportunity, is we had tons of bright people, we had a lot of money and resources, at least compared to others, and the fun part about being a leader is occasionally you can change the roadmap.

So we really dug into this challenge around scores, and the reason was, and I told the group, not trying to be flippant, “Here’s my theory, scores are a reason to come to the site every day and come multiple times and if we do a really good job of that, we can get people to read our recaps, we can get people to watch our video highlights, it becomes a sort of virtuous cycle”. And we invested, we ran high speed lines to every pro and college stadium and arena. We pioneered technology that had a score reveal itself, countdown reveal itself right in a webpage and within fifteen months, we had scores that were qualitatively and quantitatively better than anybody else, at least among our competitive set. The cheeky part of this is I sent the internal reports to Eddy at Apple, and the internal reports were really funny. “Holy smokes, Eddy’s right, we’re seventeen seconds behind Yahoo on this” and whatever, and I don’t know if you remember, but Apple used to take out these full page ads in the New York Times and Wall Street Journal and USA Today, and it’d be like the homepage of an iPhone and you’d have OpenTable and Facebook and New York Times.

“There’s an app for that” — they want to sweep that campaign under the carpet when they’re in court and saying they deserve all the App Store money, but anyhow, continue, that’s a side note.

JK: But fifteen months after Eddy’s visit, the ad came out and top left was ScoreCenter, the new scores app from ESPN, and it was like an inside joke between the two of us, and we’ve become friends since then. By the way, for the record, Eddy was absolutely right, because the site traffic really took off once we really embraced scores and real-time information, and it became a reason to come. Also, unlike ESPN in general, I insisted that we cover everything important in sports. It was like a pyramid. What’s the most important thing happening?

I’ll never forget before the Arizona/Pittsburgh Super Bowl, I forgot what year that was, I got a call, it was a Thursday night, and there was a big front page story on Troy Polamalu, who was the terrific cornerback for the Pittsburgh Steelers, a big profile, beautiful art, and the editor calls me up and is really excited and says, “What do you think?” So I said, “Not much.” And he said, “What do you mean?” And I said, “Well, the Lakers and Celtics…” and this was the team with Kevin Garnett and Ray Allen and Paul Pierce, “…the Lakers and Celtics are playing tonight and it’s a war, and where’s that game?” So the editor says to me, “Oh, the game’s on TNT.” I said, “I don’t care that it’s on TNT, it’s the most important thing going.” And so the editor says to me, “Well, I guess that means you expect me to put the Dallas/Utah game up next.” And I said, “If that’s the most important thing happening, absolutely.” I said, “We have all day long when games aren’t taking place to do features.”

The other super important thing, which is a differentiator here, was Bill Simmons.

I wanted to get to that because this is what’s really interesting about your focus on this scores bit. It’s fascinating in all sorts of respects, on one hand, kudos to you and ESPN for leaning into this because there’s an aspect, you mentioned the Olympics earlier, where real-time results kind of really fundamentally damaged the Olympics product to a certain extent, right?

JK: Right.

Bill Simmons

But, then in the complete opposite direction, in the feature direction, you were involved with two of the more incredible web properties in my estimation, which were number one, Page 2, where you sort of brought Bill Simmons in and you also had Hunter S. Thompson. I’d love to hear the story behind that, and then we can get to Grantland down the road, but tell me about Page 2 because this was something that was so unexpected from ESPN. You tell me about it for our  young readers that don’t remember what that was.

JK: Page 2, I would say I didn’t mess it up, but the key architects in my memory were John Walsh,   who was executive editor of ESPN, who moved over to the website when John Skipper took over as the head of ESPN Digital, and John Skipper moved on to bigger jobs, and so by 2003, I was running the website and John Walsh was there, but John had an idea that we were going to bring a bunch of the best writers to bear. So, there was also Ralph Wiley, who was a terrific writer who passed away.  He had Norman Chad in there, he had had Hunter S. Thompson, and I couldn’t really follow a lot of what Hunter was writing, but the idea that Hunter was writing on ESPN.com was stupendous.

And again, there was just a level of surprise, but the breakthrough star in this, and I believe was also discovered by John Walsh, was Bill Simmons, and Bill Simmons to me was the defining sportswriter of our generation, and somebody who really changed the industry, really enhanced what we were doing at ESPN.com, both in terms of his writing and of course in terms of the development of his podcast.

I’d go further, I think he’s one of the defining writers period. The funny thing is everyone  universally sort of agrees that Bill Simmons is the father of blogging, even though he never technically blogged, but what people are tapping into is he pioneered the voice of blogging that ultimately manifested through the blog format, but you started with obviously his newsletter and AOL and then coming to ESPN, and it was just such a completely different approach to sports writing and writing in general, where you are going to lean in and own the subjectivity, the first- person approach, to ignore any column limits, or word limits, or whatever it might be. It was abundance, it was abundant writing as opposed to scarcity writing. It’s hard to appreciate now when he’s such a fixture how transformative and incredible it was when he popped on ESPN, what is it, 2000, 1999, somewhere around there.

JK: Somewhere around there, and he pioneered this approach of sports and popular culture. He wrote unabashedly as a fan. The thing that I really appreciated was he worked really, really hard. He spent a lot of time agonizing and preparing for the columns, they were well-researched both in terms of the calls that he place on different things and the stats that he put into it. He was truly obsessed, and it was kind of similar to Howard Stern in a way. He was his audience, he understood what his audience was looking for, so he was really tremendous.

It became kind of obvious to me over time, because he was so popular, that you weren’t really going   to have Page 2 with Bill Simmons, you were going to have something big with Bill Simmons, and that’s sort of what Grantland became. And, I remember John Skipper called me up, he and Bill had been laying out what Grantland could be, and John was almost kind of sheepish on the phone because I think he thought, “Well, Kosner is not going to like this. We already have a plan for this. It’s going to change everything,” but to me, it was like an IQ test, and Grantland took what Bill had done, he added  a bunch of terrific contributors, he expanded what he was doing. It was very, very popular, and the truth is, there were other interesting voices in Page 2, but nobody who really broke through, in my opinion, the way Bill did.

So, this is really interesting because I think the Bill Simmons ESPN experience, particularly in the context of ESPN, is really interesting to me almost from a labor relations perspective, because what’s interesting is one thing that makes the web different is the ability to measure. Say you’re at CBS, and everyone’s going on and on about Tony Romo being the best thing since sliced bread.

JK: Mediocre today.

Exactly, but how do you tease apart audience interest in a game because it’s a football game, and football’s very popular, and the quality of the game, versus the play-by-play guy or the announcer, whatever it might be? Whereas on the web, you can measure exactly who’s getting how many clicks, who’s getting read, and if it feels like that sort of gets at one of the challenges of digital for broad-based media companies generally, because the talent, the people that actually drive it, it’s much more apparent to them and to you who’s actually driving value, it shifts a huge amount of bargaining power to the talent to the detriment of the overall company. Whereas in the analog world they sort of got to ride on the backs of super popular talent who didn’t necessarily know how much value they were contributing, and it was more of a socialistic enterprise broadly speaking. Is that something that resonates with you?

JK: It does. I kind of feel that it’s complicated, and the best managers, I think can figure that out. Meaning, I always thought in my job, we were lucky to have that problem. We were lucky to have somebody who’s becoming so popular that you’re going to pay him a lot of money, and sometimes people would ask me about Bill’s relative stature to other people, and I’d say, “Well, if other people were doing what Bill was doing, then we’d have another conversation.” It was more a challenge, I think, in those years of the fact that there wasn’t really a good sort of commercial strategy around the website. John Skipper loved the idea that we had sort of boxcar numbers of traffic and he loved trumpeting that, but we probably could and should have charged for some of what we did earlier.

There wasn’t a good ad model. It was all sponsorship. Everything that we did was a sponsorship because that was the way ESPN sold, and it was a big business. So, if you went to the homepage and you saw AT&T on the homepage, it was probably because AT&T had bought a huge package from ESPN that included, say the college football playoffs, and as part of that, they got a certain number of ESPN.com homepages. We weren’t really selling the medium for the medium, we weren’t really selling Bill for Bill.

When Bill became a really popular podcaster, I remember he was talking about the podcast network that Adam Carolla had built, “Why couldn’t we do it?” And the reason was I couldn’t really get people’s attention around it. In these big successful companies, you get the tyranny of big numbers. “Yeah, that’s great, but it’s small, I’ve got to focus on something else”, and I suspect Bill probably had more frustration based upon that, the inability to commercially take advantage of what he was doing than some of the other stuff that happened.

Competing With the Internet

That’s my impression too, is it was really aside from of this drama stuff, it was like, “Why can’t you make money on this podcast or why don’t you even try to make money?” This ties back to my question earlier, and it’s very interesting to me, I’ve thought about in the context of tech companies in general. We talk about this even now in terms of the ChatGPT and search and all this sort of thing, there is sort of a bias amongst observers that these big companies ought to dominate every sort of space around them, every sort of adjacent space. It goes back to ESPN.com, what did it actually do for ESPN in the long run? Is this a sort of thing where — look, ESPN at the end of the day, it’s a cable channel, that’s what it is, and it’s inevitable you’re going to be constrained in exploring these opportunities, and it’s easy for Bill to say, “Oh, you guys messed this up,” or sit the outside and say, “Why didn’t Grantland become a bigger success or a subscription product?” And in reality, that’s actually the way the world works like new models of new companies.

JK: I don’t know, Ben. I think it’s all about decisions that get made one way or another and what gets prioritized. The last year that I was at ESPN, I remember November 2016, we had 141 million global uniques. We were number one in the world for the first time in a metric that I really care about. We were the number five daily digital property for millennial males 18 to 34 using their smartphone. I thought the wind was at our back, and had I stayed and maybe had more authority, I certainly would’ve prioritized more what we were doing. Would that have made a difference in the long run? I don’t know. We can only judge by what happened.

I’ll tell you that when Twitter got started, it sent a shudder through me, even in the early days of the fail whale and everything, because Twitter was about real-time information and the most valuable real-time information I was convinced they were going to have in time was sports. Even with all the challenges around that company today, I would say Twitter is an indispensable service to most sports fans, and it has taken up some real estate that ESPN could have or should have wanted to have. And so you can only judge by results. So, ESPN.com and the app remains very popular, it’s probably in that competitive set it’s probably still the number one service.

I still check it every day.

JK: As do I as well, but it also operates in a much more competitive environment.

It operates in a world of abundance, that’s sort of the problem.

JK: But also, if you’re a young sports fan, are you looking to ESPN and SportsCenter for sports video highlights, or are you looking to YouTube and Instagram?

Yeah, House of Highlights.

JK: I mentioned Twitter. On the television side, I remember, and Bill was one of the key people worked on this, the 30 for 30 documentary series really sort of supplanted HBO in sports documentaries. But if you look around today, it looks to me more like Netflix has taken the mantle. By the way, there’s a nice sort of through line here from Roone Arledge to what they’re doing at Netflix. But the big documentaries people are talking about, those series, are the F1, PGA Tour, and now the pro tennis one.

Well, actually, the Twitter point is a really interesting point, because I have two questions about ESPN at this point in time. So number one, to your bit about Twitter appropriately sending a shudder through your spine, I think one of the most remarkable things about the Big Ten story last summer, or them basically leaving ESPN, on one hand, there’s the ESPN angle which is like, “Well, I guess we’re going to finally find budget discipline”. But on the other hand, it used to be that it was insane to leave ESPN because ESPN basically had a pricing advantage, relatively speaking, because you needed to be on SportsCenter, and you needed to have ESPN talking to you. To the extent that that gets stripped away because all the talk is somewhere else, it’s interesting how that actually circles around to impact the core business. That’s where ESPN made a lot of money was on SportsCenter, that gave them a bargaining advantage when it came to rights and now it’s a much more direct sort of relationship, which increases the bargaining power of whoever you’re bargaining with because you don’t have these extra points of leverage.

JK: Right. And the decision to split the previous Big Ten package with Fox and Fox’s investment in the Big Ten Network, over time that became really, really significant and the Big Ten determined that it didn’t need, as you said, to be on ESPN, and that’s a big event in the industry. Now, I also think that ESPN’s acquisition of CBS’ SEC football package and the strengthening of that, Texas and Oklahoma coming in, may have convinced them that the Big Ten, as great as it is, is kind of a nice-to-have if you weren’t going to get the kind of games and rights that they wanted.

Right. They have inventory. You only have so many slots on a Saturday.

JK: Right, exactly. One of the reasons that I think there still will be a Pac-12 deal is the value of the late West Coast windows that the Pac-12 offers. Some of their fans hate it, but to me, live games really matter and that’s the window that — you could fill a Big Ten window with ACC, or SEC, or Big 12, perhaps not as well, but you could fill that window. But at 10:30 Eastern time, there are relatively few places that you can play, Pac-12 has most of them.

Another connection to this, do you think, and you’ve been out of it for six or seven years so I think it probably really does more apply to ESPN in recent days — do you think that they are, in some respects, too online? There’s an aspect where ESPN is the way to reach casual fans, but when you’re online, and I’ve noticed this mostly in the NBA because that’s what I pay the most attention to, but it feels like it’s trying to have a conversation with Twitter, or show how hip they are to the current takes or whatever it might be. And at the end of the day, the money comes from a broader audience tuning into these games, not the lunatics, like me, that are online tweeting about stuff. Is there an aspect where ESPN, it almost would be good to step back from real-time in the sense of what’s happening online right now, and refocus on real-time as in, “Hey, what game is actually on our channels”?

JK: I believe that less getting into the hot takes of things would be a better, that would be a content approach that I would favor. It’s not just ESPN, I think if you look across most websites, if you look across most TV news shows, they’re increasingly programmed by Twitter, either reflecting what’s on Twitter, or the breaking news that’s happening on Twitter, or trying to gin up more heated discussion that takes place on Twitter. It’s very popular. I find it to be a trap.

Yeah. I love your point about Drive to Survive. The documentary angle, that’s where ESPN — that was the missed opportunity. ESPN is actually benefiting from Drive to Survive actually more than anybody, more than even Netflix, right? The ratings are way higher, and if they had Drive to Survive, that’s great inventory. They learned this with 30 for 30, you have this inventory sitting on the shelf, you can drop in at any time. The game ends early, gets canceled, put a documentary on. They have all these daytime hours and what’s interesting about that is it’s anti-Twitter in a way, right?

Drive to Survive just came out this weekend about events that happened a year ago, but it’s something that Twitter could never do. It’s the production, it’s the cutting it all together, that seems to be a much more productive use of resources. One of the things I get so mad about is I feel the NBA and ESPN both do a very poor job of building stars, of building history. You contrast this with the NFL, and NFL Films, which I think is just an unbelievable product and has been for decades, where you have to build up tradition, you build new things, so that people feel invested and that’s a production of decades of investment.

JK: Well, one thing I will say is I believe that one of the unique aspects of the NBA is that its players are like Marvel superheroes for lots of kids and young people. So they may have gotten to it a different way, but the confluence of sports and music and fashion and popular culture is really centered around the NBA. Personally, I’m much more interested in the stories of the players. A friend of mine said, “Every NBA player is an amazing story, but we rarely hear the stories.” In addition, as a big fan, there’s a whole background about the strategy and the way the game is played, and how defenses work.

Why is that not there? ESPN does so much on the strategy and stuff of the NFL, and it feels like the NBA, it’s just Twitter televised.

JK: I feel in general that the national broadcast of the NBA, whether they’re on ESPN or Turner in the US, are substantially similar to the national broadcast when I worked at the NBA. The picture quality is fantastic, the replays have really come a long ways. However, it’s still basically two people in a booth, someone on the sideline, it’s still kind of keys to the game. The whole dialogue around basketball that exists online and specifically on Twitter and on YouTube, et cetera, is not reflected at all on these shows.

To me, that’s a tremendous missed opportunity and something that I believe is inevitably coming. And I would just say, as a Phoenix Suns fan, you appreciate that if you look at the coverage of the team, it’s mostly done by people who aren’t journalists, they’re super fans and they’re bloggers, they’re on Twitter, they do podcasts, they’re on YouTube, they’re heavily influenced by the whole analytics movement around basketball. There’s a whole reality, I’m sure this exists for Bucks fans too, but there’s a whole reality in terms of how the game is analyzed, the best of these people will rewatch a game afterwards, it’s a smorgasbord that is not at all reflected. My point of view is not that there’s anything wrong with a core broadcast, it’s just that so much choice could be added and would be really valuable because no one necessarily wants a one-size-fits-all.

It’s a great point. There’s an opportunity for a whole host of sports fans that know ESPN, where this is basically user-generated content, you’re getting content for free and the experience of finding that content on Twitter is terrible. There’s an opportunity to pull this all in into one place and be like a portal where you could get all this sort of stuff, but whenever any of these big companies try to dip into UGC, they’re scared. They don’t want to have the controversial opinion, is that just sort of the limiter there, it’s too risky?

JK: It’s a real limiter. We did a lot of work on trying to set up sort of community features on ESPN, and each of them were disastrous in their own ways.

(laughing) Everyone who tries to do community online realizes how hard it is very quickly.

JK: We had comments on Bill’s page and I could still pick out the email he sent me, he was so mad about it, there’d be all this racist terrible stuff. I used to be relieved that no senior managers ever looked at that section of the website because I just thought it would be the end. Nonetheless, the way things have evolved on Twitter or on all the different group message features that fans use is such a part of the fan experience, and ESPN doesn’t really participate in that at all.

You know what? My take is that’s actually probably fine, I go back on my recommendation. I think you got to do what only you can do. This goes back to things like documentaries, things like leaning into your production capabilities, the stuff that fans can’t do, I think is more compelling.

Fixing the NBA

One quick question on the NBA. There’s a lot of angst that you sort of hit on. The All-Star ratings were way down, the rights negotiations are coming up again, players asked for trade demands, et cetera, et cetera. You knew David Stern better than almost anyone. What would David Stern do today? I’m in some NBA group chats, and they would kill me if I didn’t ask you this question, so here it is.

JK: Well, I mean, David would be very, very unhappy about the All-Star game. I was at the All-Star game, and it was a low point in a lot of ways, just in terms of the apparent effort from the players, and it was a desultory exhibition. Now, Adam isn’t frequently as public in whatever his point of view is as David is, but that doesn’t mean that he doesn’t feel similarly or hasn’t had some communication behind the scenes.

I think it comes down to the incentives that are out there, and what it takes to motivate people to do different things. The fact is the All-Star game has this rich history and tradition. Even when the ratings are down, it still gets a very significant audience, it’s a very profitable game for TNT. I’ll also say, the reality is this is a game that’s exclusively on TNT now, so how much of the country is that still really attracting? So the ratings are down. Well, okay, but you’re putting it on a platform now where you’re only reaching a certain set of sports fans. You’re not necessarily reaching young fans who just getting into the NBA. I just felt that there’s a certain expectation that fans have, there’s a certain expectation that people who paid to be in the arena have, as to what they’re going to get at the All- Star game and I think almost everybody would agree that that’s not what was delivered. All that said, I’m bullish on the NBA and what’s possible, and where I think their media rights are going to go up. I think I’m more bullish than you are.

Well, I mean the number one thing the NBA has going for it is they are good inventory for a relatively dead time of year. If the NBA season was in the fall, that would be big problem.

JK: Yes, totally. Think about it: in a subscription world, which is I think where we’re headed to, months matter. So you have an NBA regular season, that’s October through March, let’s say. You get into April, you have the Play-In Tournament, you have the playoffs and Finals and the Draft takes you through June. You have Summer League ball now, which is a more popular feature, in July you have international competitions.

And from the network perspective, you carried us to the NFL. Thank you, we appreciate it.

JK: Correct. So I think the real delivery of value or increased value for the NBA is about the regular season. What’s the biggest difference between the NFL and the NBA? It’s the fact in the NFL the regular season matters, and there are far fewer games. But to me, this is also a model, and what I mean by that is in the playoffs, every game matters, every game is nationally televised. There’s something amazing that happens in almost every game. Not all the games are great, but there’s always something at stake.

In the regular season. I would make an argument that something amazing happens almost every night, we just don’t know where that’s going to be. Okay. Last night, Damian Lillard hits 13 three pointers, scores 71 points in a game against the Rockets. I can guarantee you there’s no scenario on Earth where TNT or ESPN in their summer NBA schedule would’ve selected that game. So what I think is coming is going to be more like an NBA nightly approach.

Think about it, think about just the commoditization — you write about this all the time — the commoditization of subscription, VOD, and free ad-supported VOD. Everything now has been reduced to a series of horizontal tiles that you scroll through and on those horizontal tiles, you can have The Godfather and you can have Cocaine Bear and everything is available anytime you want to watch it. Whereas I believe a real alternative is, “Let’s watch the NBA tonight”, but let’s watch it in a way that you have a bunch of choice and there’ll be a curation function that will make sure you see something that’s really unique. I mean, the cool thing about the NBA is just this ongoing soap opera. You talked before about programming by Twitter and the limitations of that. This combined effect of modern media is you have a nightly soap opera. So who knew that Kyrie and Luka Doncic were going to be teammates, but I want to watch them play.

Right. But the schedule is already made so they can’t come back and remake it. That’s interesting. So you’re basically saying they need to shift to instead of, “I’m going to tune into X, Y, Z game.” Maybe that happens once a week because it’s clearly a big game, but the rest of the time it’s like the nightly NBA show and it’s like Red Zone or something and there’s commentators bouncing around.

JK: And my point is that today, I would argue sports is linear television.

Yeah.

JK: Sports is, specifically the NFL, and I believe when the NFL is not playing, the leading product for those sets of months, I think is the NBA and has room to grow, and that’s an alternative. I remember Must See TV and we had to watch 60 Minutes at seven o’clock on Sunday, but that’s largely gone now. The only thing that generates tune-in at a specific time are big sporting events.

Is this an area where the RSN collapse could be a benefit going forward? One of the limitations on just bouncing any game into the national TV slot or dipping in for ten minutes or fifteen minutes is RSNs have these exclusive rights, and if that goes away, on one hand, it’s going to be very painful for a lot of teams because that’s a third of the NBA’s television revenue, on the other hand, it does give much more latitude and freedom of movement to make it a destination. This is the sort of thing — I meant to have an article out before we talked to you, so I’m previewing it now — but the big shift you’re seeing generally in sports as an example of this is it used to be you just had to be there and get space, like the old model. If you were just in the cable bundle, you made money.

Now customers have to actively choose you and that’s a much harder business, but maybe the NBA because of the RSN collapse is coming along just in time so they can at least start building that.

JK: There’s an important distinction too, which is that this RSN collapse affects NBA baseball and hockey, but baseball and hockey have already made their national TV agreements, and those are in place through 2028. The NBA is still to negotiate theirs, which will start in ’25, ’26 so they have more flexibility as to what they might do than those other two leagues now. It feels a little to me, Ben, and I’ve read your coverage, it feels to me a little bit like what happened in the music industry is now going to be visited into sports media. What I mean by that is we come out of an era with the best of all possible models.

Everybody’s paying for the games, even if they’re not watching the games.

JK: Everyone’s paying for the games, that gives birth to a robust ad business around it. I’m very optimistic about what will come in time, but that has to be built and it’s not built now. Even when new things are built, there’s a period of time it takes for sports fans to adopt to that. Young sports fans are much different than when I was growing up. One of the conundrums, I think, with the RSNs is the product itself —

Is terrible.

JK: Is mediocre.

No, it’s terrible. I’ll say it.

JK: But it hasn’t changed in 20 years. Now maybe YES Network or the Dodgers or the Cubs, the big market teams, maybe they’re investing, nobody else is investing. And how do you take a product like that and make it interesting and relevant to young fans? It’s not compelling.

The Next Generation

You wrote an article about Amazon streaming the NFL. You called it We’ve officially crossed the sports media Rubicon, and that was after the initial broadcast where the numbers were phenomenal. I think those numbers did come down a bit over the season. On net, the Thursday Night football was less watched than last year. But on the flip side, there were more young people watching it. Do you still feel the Rubicon was crossed, and why was that so important?

JK: One interesting note is that Amazon submitted to having Nielsen rate their games, I think, in part to generate ad sales. But you had that odd modern moment of comparing the Nielsen sample, which has been a staple of sports TV since I’ve been in, with the actuals that Amazon was purporting to share. When you talked about Bill Simmons before, you could see the actuals.

Right.

JK: So I thought for one thing it was interesting, somebody’s wrong. I figured that the Amazon rating this year was going to be considerably lower because it was new, because there was some subset of fans for whom Prime Video, “What’s that?”

They’re just not going to watch it, it’s too much work.

JK: So the audience was lower. One of the points in that piece is that Amazon, unlike the sports media networks that I worked at, Amazon knows who the viewers are. There’s a connection between the viewers and the program that never existed before, Amazon did this on a scale in terms of their production values, not matched in a normal regular season context.

It basically showed that, look, big sporting events can be streamed. That was basically an open question before, and that’s the most important takeaway.

JK: It was an open question certainly of that size and scale. I believe that if you had asked NFL people, people in the league office before they made that deal with Amazon, I think they would’ve expressed a bunch of skepticism that it would’ve happened. I also feel like Marie Donoghue, who’s a former ESPN colleague and now the person who runs Prime Video Sports, I thought it was shrewd for her to make the deal with Al Michaels — as unhappy as he seemed to be at some of those games — just because they got off to a really — and they had Fred Gaudelli in the truck — they got off to a really good professional start.

There was a level of familiarity. If you’re already changing so many other things, let it at least feel like a normal game.

JK: Right. Everyone would’ve been wait to criticize them if they didn’t do that, so I thought that that was a success. I’ll make two points, and I’ll make them in reverse. The important thing about Amazon and YouTube and Apple is that while they all want into sports, they don’t have to be in sports the way companies like ESPN and others that I worked at. It’s this a symbiotic relationship.

Right. It’s like Turner, no one believes David Zaslav when he says, “Maybe we won’t get the NBA.” It’s like we see your debt load, you need the cash flow, you’re going to be buying the NBA. That’s the big question and people in tech are certainly looking at this. I mean, you see everyone’s like, “Oh, look at Apple and MLS.” Well, it’s like, “Well, no one watched MLS, so Apple’s not really paying anything”. They get to prove out their model X, Y, Z that’s not necessarily applicable to these big sports.

On the other hand, you clearly have someone like Adam Silver hoping and praying that the tech companies will come in to bid up the rights. At the end of the day, because of that, when it comes to the biggest sports, given the fact that the tech companies don’t need it, does that mean that we’re probably not going to get many more deals? On the other hand, how much do sports executives need to be worried about the next generation of fans? I mean, that’s why the Amazon young people numbers are interesting. The scale of these streaming services, Netflix has way more US subscribers than cable generally does, right?

JK: Yeah. Right, and Amazon Prime video, its reach will exceed broadcast within this NFL deal. Keep in mind, one big factor with the NBA that will play to their benefit is it’s truly a global sport. That actually matters a lot more to tech companies than it does to US sports media companies.

Yeah, we’ll see. I feel like that’s been the pot of gold at the end the rainbow for the NBA for a long time and it’s worth remembering, they still make all their money in the US and it’s an important point.

One final question that has nothing to do with sports, but it’s a fascinating story. You have to tell me the story of your son becoming the most unexpected rockstar in the world. How does that work?

JK: So thanks for asking. My son Walter has a band and they’re called The Walters and in 2014 in Chicago, they wrote a song called I Love You So and they posted it on Reddit and it developed a following. The band got to tour, the band got to play Lollapalooza, and then they broke up. My son was driving an Uber in the summer of 2021, out of nowhere, high school girls started doing covers of I Love You So on TikTok and everything for them exploded.

So they reformed the band.

JK: Yeah, the band got back together. I Love You So is a platinum song. They got a record deal with Warner. Last year, last summer they played before 34,000 people in Jakarta. I sent you stats before, they have a bigger following on your side of the world than they do here and I bring it up only because it’s something that’s only possible —

Well, you bring up number one because you are an appropriately a proud father. But sorry, tell me number two.

JK: But number two is it’s something that only the Internet makes possible. You talk about your career and that you live online, only the Internet would make that possible. Lots of fantastic musicians all over the world, but this specific thing cracked for them. One of the funniest things is that the band members are all late twenties, early thirties and it was my son, Luke, who’s now 15, who actually found it on TikTok.

None of them are on TikTok. Yeah, that’s amazing, it’s an incredible story. It almost brings your story full circle in a way. You’re starting out wanting to create this polished product and then realizing actually we have to have live sports or live sports scores and then dealing with the issues of abundance and talent and all these sort of things. Then you circle all the way around to your son where it was because of abundance that he was even out there and then talent can really come from anywhere. That has implications for competition, for what resonates, for what things that are out there.

I mean, I guess the big existential question, just to wrap it up here, is sports has been such a defining feature of your and my life, and I think anyone of GenX or early millennials, there was nothing else to do, so you watched a lot of sports. Today, I love watching sports because there’s the inherent drama in it, you don’t know what’s going to happen. You might sit down to a big game and it might stink, but that’s because it also might be incredible. But in fifty years, is that still going to resonate or is the media environment going to be so fractured and people are going to all be in their little AI bubbles or whatever it might be that it just won’t mean anything anymore? Or will that make it even stronger? Which arguably has happened with the NFL.

JK: My answer is the parade in Argentina after the World Cup where everybody was in the streets, that sports is the only thing that unites people for all the reasons that you mentioned. I just feel, and this is a passion of my career and a bunch of the brilliant people I got to work with, is you have to create better, more compelling products. I believe everything is now aligned to get the sports leagues, the networks, the tech companies to combine to do that. That’s what I believe. I’m optimistic about technology. I’ve had ups and downs and I’ve experienced different things, but I’m optimistic about what’s possible. I believe that sports is going to be a huge beneficiary of all this. Even if the progression is not necessarily linear, we have ups and downs.

It’s clear where it needs to go, the question is how do we get from here to there? But that bit about products, I completely agree. It’s about this shift in customers have to choose you, you don’t get stuff for free anymore. The sooner that leagues and networks figure that out, the better off they’ll be.

JK: But the sports algorithm is coming and there’s now real reason to build it and if we have a chance to do another one of these in another couple years, I think we will be impressed at some of the new services that we see.

Well, we will have to do that. I look forward to it. John Kosner, thank you for coming on. As demonstrated, I could dive into the history of ESPN for easily hours, but I appreciate you putting up with all the questions. Yeah, we should definitely talk again soon.

JK: Thank you, Ben.

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Sports Media 2025: A Rights Buyer’s Guide: John Kosner’s Latest SBJ Column with Ed Desser

Original Article: Sports Business Journal, by John Kosner and Ed Desser, October 28th, 2024

What to do today if you’re a sports rights owner who is considering media partners, but you’re not the very biggest and most popular? Each option has benefits and drawbacks — it is all important to understand how to map out your best strategy.

For most of the last four decades, sports media options were broadcast and cable TV, period. These delivered maximum audiences, and usually, the largest potential revenue. National rights were placed on big broadcast and cable networks; local/regional rights on broadcast stations and RSNs. With competition and some luck, you’d generate fair market value. Easy-peasy!

You made those decisions based upon available shelf space, relationships and ability to commercialize. Originally, broadcast was preferred over cable because it maximized exposure. As cable networks grew their “dual revenue streams” (subscriber fees and ad sales), the tide shifted, and cable started to outbid broadcasters. Elite programming migrated to ESPN, FS1, TNT/TBS and NBCSN (RIP). When the internet intervened, sports media crossed the Rubicon with Amazon’s exclusive streaming deal for NFL “Thursday Night Football” two years ago.

Today, choosing a platform is not simple at all:

• To maximize potential audiences, once again look to broadcast networks (as the NBA just did by adding NBC), and/or streamers such as (176 million-plus U.S. subs) Amazon Prime (another recent NBA deal), or (70 million-plus U.S. subs) Netflix (NFL Christmas Day). No cable network by itself, including ESPN, can reach that potential audience size anymore. As they harness their unique and impressive promotional arsenals, Prime Video and Netflix may soon exceed the audience delivery of broadcast networks. Like Apple for MLS, they also offer a one-stop shop for global distribution. However, the biggest broadcasters and streamers remain focused primarily on the major leagues, which are now spread across more smaller packages, while paradoxically, the key techs want to own something.

• If you’re not one of those, but want to generate the most revenue, traditional pay-TV networks are still (and forecast to remain this decade) the biggest spenders on sports rights. They have to be, to defend their affiliate distribution business. Thus, the French Open was worth multiples more to WBD than to incumbent NBC. Revenue is revenue; it can come in cash but also ad inventory, or in-kind (production support, travel services, marketing, etc.).

• If you’re looking to reach younger audiences (see our Sept. 16, 2024, column) for live content, you must start with entertainment networks (formerly known as social media), YouTube and perhaps Twitch and consider Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, Snap and X for clips. These are strictly ad sales/revenue share opportunities. So too are the growing, free ad-supported streaming TV (FAST) channels Tubi, Pluto TV and Roku Channel.

• Since it is no longer possible to reach all fans simultaneously on a single platform, you must redefine your property’s form of “exclusivity.” Discovery of sports content is a major industry challenge. Your app, website and social platforms all require video content to grab attention and serve your fans well. You must be singularly focused on your own community-building. Much of this distribution can be advertiser-supported, but little of it will generate subscriber fees. Together, with multiple feeds, this is the new normal.

• Younger fans favor streaming, and there are many premium options including ESPN+, Peacock, Paramount+, Max, AppleTV+, DAZN, FloSports, and betting platforms such as DraftKings and FanDuel. Digital league packages such as NFL+, NBA TV and MLB.TV are expanding. As RSNs shrink, look for MLB to offer near-comprehensive local offerings. All may also explore third-party content acquisition.

• Locally, everything old is new again. Fewer teams have games exclusively on challenged RSNs; more are shifting to local TV station groups complemented by streaming services. These deals may not ever return the same guaranteed rights revenue, but broader total exposure is possible, with incremental ad revenue plus shares of retransmission consent fees, and other business development as partial compensation for lost rights money.

Indeed, choosing between these myriad options is complicated. If your property is small but has a passionate following, it may be a better fit for VOD streamers that value subscription lift. Not so if you will benefit more from broader free exposure, through ticket sales, event sponsorships and commerce. It’s also critical to understand the strengths and weaknesses of your potential partner(s). Do they have news and entertainment programs that can spotlight your sport beyond games? Can you enlist their ad sales group? If your partner is a tech company, is it committed to sports? What traditional capabilities does it have or lack? Linear networks such as ESPN, TNT and Fox have sports in their respective DNA. That matters, too.

Today, most successful sports properties have transitioned from being just rights sellers to becoming their own executive producers. Remember, more fans will experience your property via media than will ever attend an event. This means not just relying on intermediary licensees to present your product to your fans. Execution in this age of video content abundance is a lot tougher … and … we’re not going back. But this new era allows the most aggressive, creative and able to use emerging technologies to supercharge growth. Lamenting that your media partner does not understand your product or fans never worked, much less now. Recently we’ve seen expanded — and deserved — interest in NCAA women’s basketball, the WNBA and the NWSL, among others. Ten years ago, there was no bidding war for UFC; next year there will be. You must have a plan. As much as things change, some stay the same.

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Ed Desser is an expert witness and president of consultancy Desser Sports Media Inc. (www.desser.tv). John Kosner is an investor in digital startups and president of consultancy Kosner Media (www.kosnermedia.com). Together they developed league TV strategy and ran the NBA’s media operations in the ’80s and ’90s. 

John Kosner Spoke with The New York Times DealBook About The World Series

Original Article: DealBook, by Andrew Ross Sorkin, October 26h, 2024

Good morning. DealBook’s Lauren Hirsch digs into a new business on Wall Street: defending companies against D.E.I. backlash. Plus, the holy grail of World Series matchups and why the Halloween business is booming. (Was this newsletter forwarded to you? Sign up here.)

Playing defense

Someone you probably have never heard of has managed to scare virtually all of corporate America — and Wall Street is creating a new cottage industry around the fear.

Robby Starbuck, a former music television director, has turned his social media account into a weapon against corporate D.E.I. efforts, whipping up frenzy, threatening boycotts and flooding companies with negative media mentions over their diversity, equity and inclusion efforts. Tractor Supply pared back from its D.E.I. initiative in June after Starbuck tweeted that it was “time to expose” the home improvement chain. John Deere followed suit in July and Harley Davidson in August, both times following public pressure from Starbuck.

Now, Wall Street law firms and communications outfits are building businesses around preparing companies for a Starbuck offense. The methods mirror how they would prepare for a cybersecurity attack: conducting vulnerability assessments, compiling research reports and writing plans for what to do if Starbuck comes calling.

The furious scrutiny gets at the heart of a question facing corporate America: After many companies adopted and heralded their efforts to improve diversity, equity and inclusion — often citing studies showing benefits for business — they’re now grappling with how to handle a backlash when both customers and executives are split over the policies.

Their investors are not in agreement either: The New York City comptroller’s office, which oversees the powerful New York State employees’ pension fund, is already threatening lawsuits if executives concede too much.

“As a company, you might be between a rock and a hard place,” said Kai Liekefett, who co-chairs the corporate defense practice at the law firm Sidley Austin. “You have an anti-D.E.I. activist clashing with a D.E.I. activist. And you are just basically just a battleground for the culture wars that are playing out in corporate America.”

Corporate America’s break-the-glass planning for a Starbuck attack comes as it faces a surging blowback to the D.E.I. practices it rushed to implement in 2020. The Supreme Court ruling ending affirmative action in U.S. schools last year opened up companies to litigation over D.E.I. programs. Customer revolts over diversity issues, like the boycott of Anheuser-Busch InBev over an ad campaign featuring a transgender influencer, lost the company a billion in sales. And a tense, deadlocked presidential election has further politicized the matter across the country.

Starbuck is “in a position where he can ride that wave,” Jason Schwarz, an employment lawyer at the law firm Gibson Dunn, said. He added that he’s had conversations with about 50 major companies about restructuring their diversity programs or communicating about them differently in order to avoid lawsuits, but few clients have aimed to scrap these efforts entirely.

The Starbuck defense playbook starts with stealth mode. Executives are telling employees not to look at Starbuck’s profile on LinkedIn, which could attract his attention. (Starbuck told DealBook an “onslaught” of Lowe’s employees looking at his profile initially drew his attention to the home goods retailer; it later became one of his targets.)

Communications and consulting firms trawl through any content that companies have on their website, annual report or elsewhere that might expose them to a potential attack from Starbuck. (Words like “diversity” and any public association with the Human Rights Campaign, an L.G.B.T.Q. advocacy group, are a particular red flag.)

Those considering dialing back some D.E.I. initiatives are also talking with unions, suppliers and others to understand the extent of potential financial repercussions. Will their liberal customers or suppliers boycott? Will their employees revolt? For many, these conversations started prior to Starbuck’s campaigns.

Starbuck himself seems amused at the effort. “If these companies really want to know how to be in a position where they can be sort of corporately neutral and stay away from the ire of conservative consumers, feel free to just drop me a line,” he told DealBook. “You don’t pay $1 million to a terrible consulting firm.”

He says many attempts to escape his attention, like deleting language from websites, are fruitless. “We have enough material to honestly go for years if necessary,” he said.

However companies ultimately handle their response to the pushback over D.E.I., it is causing a moment of reckoning within corporate offices. An examination of D.E.I. efforts forces executives to consider whether they have followed through on promises they may have made several years ago. The next question is whether they still want to.

If executives are “learning for the first time about some various initiatives somewhere within the company,” that’s the first issue, said Brian Bartlett, a strategist at the communications firm Kekst CNC. The second is if those initiatives are not in line with company priorities. “That is problematic,” he said.

Some executives say that changing how they talk or write about their D.E.I. efforts — the most common remedy — does not change the work that is going on behind the scenes. But for diversity experts, that maneuver naturally gives rise to different concerns: How do you hold your leadership accountable to something that is not written? And are companies at risk of simply listening to the whims of those provoking the day’s online outrage?

Starbuck’s audience is particular. Communications firm FGS Global found in its internal research that 17 percent of the “news-attentive” Americans it polled over age 45 have heard of him, while 38 percent of those under 45 have. It is also not clear how many of his 670,000 followers on X, and 350,000 Instagram followers, are actually bots.

“This very small minority of individuals have this outsized voice,” Porter Braswell, the founder of 2045 Studio, a membership network for professionals of color, told DealBook. “It’s forced all of us in the industry to start to have way more of a conviction around the importance of working together, so that we talk more about what’s actually happening on the front lines.”

For the cottage industry advising companies, any swing back in the pendulum may simply mean more fees and PowerPoint presentations. What that means for executives behind the scenes is up to them.

“The forces in this country politicized the issue,” Liekefett said. “Well, don’t talk about it, but still do it right.”

— Lauren Hirsch

Baseball is set up to score a commercial home run

Major League Baseball and its broadcast partner Fox Sports couldn’t be set up better for this year’s World Series. The New York Yankees play in the largest television market and the Los Angeles Dodgers play in the second largest. And the teams include some of baseball’s biggest stars, like the Dodgers’ Shohei Ohtani and the Yankees’ Aaron Judge.

“If I’m Rob Manfred, this is my dream scenario,” said Rich Greenfield, a co-founder and media analyst at the research firm LightShed Partners, referring to the league’s commissioner.

Ticket prices for the games are already among the most expensive ever. Now, the question is what the best possible commercial success for the World Series looks like in the new world of media.

Expectations for viewership aren’t what they used to be. Dodgers and Yankees matchups in the past have delivered enormous television audiences, including the first and third largest.

But that was before the rise of streaming and the fragmentation of media. The most viewed World Series, in 1978, delivered more than 44 million viewers on average. “There was nothing else to watch,” said Greenfield, noting that if this year’s World Series clocks 15 million viewers in a game, it would be “a grand slam.”

But today’s smaller audiences aren’t necessarily less valuable. “It’s still watched more than almost anything else,” said Patrick Crakes, a former Fox Sports executive who now works as an independent consultant. Broadcasters make about a third of their money from ads and the rest on fees they charge distributors.

Last year, the league changed some rules, like adding a pitch clock to make the game move along quicker and be more competitive with other programming.

This World Series may be the most lucrative in the modern era of media. Even in 2016, when the Cubs captured their first World Series win since 1908 and drew an average of 23 million viewers in the process, “the media environment was not as crowded as it is today,” said John Kosner, a former ESPN executive who is now an independent consultant.

The World Series has been in a ratings slump, with the last four years sinking to historic lows. Defining the best-case scenario for the World Series could factor into future media deals, which typically come with a five- to 10-year commitment and take into account the spread of potential outcomes.

Even for deals that don’t include the World Series, the potential excitement and star power of a hit championship matchup would be a boon for the M.L.B. The next big factor for its media deals is ESPN’s option to get out of its contract, which it could use by the end of next season.

How Halloween became a major shopping season

The Halloween business has boomed, with expectations for spending growing to $11.6 billion this year from about $5.2 billion in inflation-adjusted terms in 2005, according to a survey by the National Retail Federation. Retailers are taking note, broadening their holiday themed product lines and putting them on shelves earlier.

Bill Boltz, the head of merchandising at Lowes, called the Halloween season “bigger than ever before” on the company’s second-quarter earnings call.

Why is spooky spending on the rise?

Halloween isn’t just for kids anymore. The holiday was once focused mostly on taking children trick-or-treating. Now, more adults have gotten involved as sharing images of costumes and decorations on social media has taken off, Katherine Cullen, who leads research at the N.R.F., told DealBook.

Spending on decorations ticked up during the pandemic, as people sought a way to celebrate when precautions shut down many Halloween parties and trick-or-treating. Consumers have kept up the trend, and decoration spending remains elevated.

Customers are shopping earlier than ever. About half of consumers in the N.R.F. survey said they started shopping for Halloween before October, compared with about 30 percent in 2014. Amy Sullivan, the C.E.O. of Kirkland’s Home, said on a recent earnings call about Halloween products: “We definitely brought it in about a week early this year. I would say there’s opportunity to maybe even accelerate that further as we move into future years.”

Gifting holidays are still bigger. Halloween is now the ninth biggest spending season for retailers, trailing holidays including Easter and Mother’s Day. “Considering that Halloween doesn’t involve gift-giving,” Cullen said, “it is very impressive.”

John Kosner Spoke with The New York Times DealBook About TV Matchups for The World Series

Original Article: DealBook, by Andrew Ross Sorkin, October 19th, 2024

Good morning. Donald Trump has laid the groundwork to challenge the results of the presidential election if he is defeated. DealBook’s Lauren Hirsch digs into why companies may not be as eager to publicly defend “fair and free” elections as they were in 2020. Plus, the matchup that sports executives most want to see in the World Series and your thoughts on hybrid work.

‘Kind of loaded’

Republicans have spent months laying the groundwork to challenge a defeat of Donald Trump in the presidential election. During a fund-raising call organized by corporate lawyers in September, Douglas Emhoff, the husband of Vice President Kamala Harris, asked for help if those efforts veer outside legal grounds.

According to two people on the call, Emhoff asked the lawyers to reiterate to their corporate clients the risks posed by efforts to undermine the integrity of the election.

The request underlines the pressure some executives are feeling to repeat public calls they made four year ago, urging politicians to respect the results of the 2020 presidential election.

But making those kinds of public statements may have gotten more complicated. Executives, who were outspoken during the pandemic, have resumed their efforts to stay out of politics. And seemingly anodyne sentiments are now politically charged: Only one of two candidates has refused to commit to a peaceful transfer of power. That candidate has support of roughly half the country. And he has made it clear that if he takes power, he’s willing to go after his enemies.

Democracy, as a term, “has become kind of loaded” for executives, Charles Elson, the founding director of the John L. Weinberg Center for Corporate Governance, told DealBook.

“I think that’s why you haven’t heard anything from them. But you got two weeks to go.”

The landscape has changed. The Blackstone C.E.O. Stephen Schwarzman and the hedge fund boss Nelson Peltz, two billionaires who condemned Trump after the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, have since offered him their support. And one of his most high-profile supporters, Tesla C.E.O. Elon Musk, has questioned the accuracy of elections themselves: “When you have mail-in ballots and no proof of citizenship, it’s almost impossible to prove cheating,” Musk said at a rally in Pennsylvania this week.

Some corporate chiefs may have shifted because they prefer Trump’s deregulatory agenda or they share concerns over immigration policy.

Several of Harris’s influential supporters, who include the LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman and the entrepreneur Mark Cuban, have taken a starkly different view of the election stakes. They point to preservation of democracy as one reason for their support. And they argue there is no functioning business without a working democracy.

Many executives are waiting. The Business Roundtable, a lobbying group that represents large companies, this week issued a statement underlining that “the stability of America’s economy depends on free and fair elections.” Several hundred small businesses have also signed a letter supporting “the fundamental principles of American democracy.”

But individual executives speaking out now risk alienating employees and customers, Kathryn Wylde, the president of the Partnership for New York City, a business advocacy group that represents some of the biggest companies in finance, told DealBook. She believes more executives are likely to speak out should any potential threat to the country become a reality.

“If it appears that it’s going to be disruptive to the functioning of government, or threatening to constitutional democracy, it will call for a response from business leaders and leaders throughout society,” she said.

They may not be willing to pull their pocketbooks. The weeks following the Jan. 6 attack saw a pause in giving to Republicans who did not vote to certify the election. But that faded quickly. By 2022, overall donations from Fortune 500 companies and about 700 trade associations to election objectors in Congress had fallen by about 10 percent compared to 2020, according to the political watchdog Accountable.US. And more than 250 companies and industry groups increased donations to those lawmakers.

“I don’t know of anybody who paused, who is continuing to pause,” Kenneth Gross, a lawyer advising on corporate giving at Akin Gump, told DealBook. Gross said he had no recent conversations with clients about a similar tact this year.

The pressure is rising. In a letter to business leaders released Friday, a number of business associations, including Main Street Alliance and Black Economic Alliance, urged business leaders to vocalize their support of free and fair elections. “We know first-hand that a vibrant and stable economy relies on a strong democracy,” they wrote.

“They’re asking, should we start talking?” Jeffrey Sonnenfeld, a Yale professor who worked with many major companies in their response to the 2020 election, told DealBook. “They’re starting to talk about getting prepared for what they would say and how they say it.”

— Lauren Hirsch

IN CASE YOU MISSED IT

Banks reported better-than-expected earnings. Bank of America, Citigroup, Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan Chase reported a combined $6.5 billion in investment banking fees for last quarter, up 27 percent from a year earlier. Smaller players like PNC and Charles Schwab also had a strong showing, appearing to have moved on from last year’s regional banking crisis.

Big tech went nuclear. Google and Amazon struck deals with nuclear power plants to fuel their data centers as the artificial intelligence boom demands more energy. The tech industry’s backing of nuclear projects could help reinvigorate a power source that has struggled.

Elliott Investment Management took another step to replace Southwest’s board. The activist hedge fund made its first demand for a special meeting of the airline’s shareholders, where it hopes to install its eight candidates for the company’s board. Southwest pushed back, saying that it had sought to reach a settlement.

A group of big election bettors kept internet sleuths busy. Four accounts on the prediction market Polymarket have together wagered about $30 million on a Trump win. It’s not clear who the accounts belong to or what their motives are: Are they convinced Trump will win, or are they trying to influence the election by making a Trump victory look more likely?

Who the business of baseball is rooting for

No matter which Major League Baseball teams end up facing off for the World Series starting next week, the business of baseball is set up for a win. Three of the four remaining contenders — the Los Angeles Dodgers, the New York Yankees and the New York Mets — are home teams to the country’s two biggest TV markets; and the fourth, the Cleveland Guardians, hasn’t won a World Series since 1948.

Big fan bases and exciting story lines are welcome news after last year’s matchup between the Texas Rangers and Arizona Diamondbacks earned the lowest ratings for a World Series ever. But which matchup sports executives are rooting for may depend on their particular business interests.

Television: Yankees vs. Dodgers. New York and Los Angeles are the first- and second-largest TV markets in the country. And the series would feature two of the biggest stars in baseball, the Dodgers’ Shohei Ohtani and Yankees’ Aaron Judge.

Fox owns the U.S. broadcast rights to the World Series. Patrick Crakes, a former Fox Sports executive, told DealBook that a matchup between these two teams could push prices for a 30-second spot in Game 7 up to $700,000. He estimated ads for other matchups would be priced about 10 percent to 15 percent lower.

John Kosner, a former ESPN executive and the president of Kosner Media, told DealBook his second choice for maximizing ratings would be a Yankees vs. Mets matchup. “N.Y.C. is the biggest media market and still the center for advertising, and this series would generate a lot of attention,” he told DealBook.

Merch: Yankees vs. Mets. DealBook hears that the sports apparel company Fanatics is rooting for a subway series. Why? Because a big portion of merchandise sales associated with the World Series will be in championship gear.

New York’s teams both have huge fan bases, and if one of them wins, it’ll theoretically create the biggest opportunity to sell that celebratory gear. Another factor at play: Fans who have withstood long World Series droughts typically buy more souvenirs.

Tickets: Whoever plays the most games. The ticket seller SeatGeek’s C.E.O. and founder, Jack Groetzinger, said that a Yankees vs. Dodgers matchup would be his first choice, because the teams “have massive followings that attract not just die-hard fans but also casual viewers,” but that “what really matters for ticketers is having a competitive, extended series.” More games means more tickets.

Your thoughts on the remote work debate

Last weekend, we wrote about why C.E.O.s like Amazon’s Andy Jassy and Goldman Sachs’s David Solomon have forced employees to return to the office full-time despite research suggesting that hybrid work can benefit employers. Many of you wrote to us with your own thoughts on why executives and researchers disagree. Here are a few:

• Margaret Campbell, a professor of marketing at the University of California, Riverside, wrote that it is important to consider what each group is focusing on: “When I talk to executives, they are concerned about the effect of remote work on productivity and, critically, creativity and problem-solving,” she wrote. “While they are happy to have employees who are satisfied with their work, they are trying to optimize the extent to which the firm is providing value to their customers.”

• Cassia Bandeau, an architect in Los Angeles, pointed to a proposed class-action lawsuit that an Amazon employee brought against the company seeking compensation for office expenses while working from home (the lawsuit failed). Companies are “already paying for large offices, so the idea of compensating for home office expenses as well is likely seen as a huge unneeded expense,” she wrote.

• Leslie Graves, the founder of the politics website Ballotpedia, wishes that more research looked into the specific work habits and managerial practices that make remote work succeed. “Because it has always been remote, our managers have created many tactics and strategies that cause our fully remote workplace to work, and to have a strong culture,” she wrote.

John Kosner Spoke with Mike McCarthy of Front Office Sports About NFL International Expansion

Original Article: Front Office Sports, by Mike McCarthy, October 16th, 2024

Sources: NFL Eyes Multibillion-Dollar International Rights Package

• As the NFL expands its international schedule, it’s interested in building a rights package around those early games.

• This would likely add more than $1 billion in yearly rights revenue while extending the Sunday schedule.

There’s no league better at conjuring new, lucrative media rights out of thin air than the NFL. The league is once again playing the long game, eyeing the eventual sale of a separate international package that could fetch more than $1 billion in rights fees, sources tell Front Office Sports.

The NFL declined to comment on potentially adding to its current rights deals, valued at $111 billion over 11 years. But piece by piece, the building blocks are sliding into place. Consider:

NFL commissioner Roger Goodell just speculated his league will eventually expand its International Series to 16 games in foreign cities—up from five this year and eight next season. If Goodell gets his wish for an 18-game regular season, he will have more inventory of the most valuable property in entertainment: live NFL games. Goodell’s also not ruling out playing an international Super Bowl overseas in London. That could be the potential cherry on top of a lucrative international game package.

One source familiar with the league’s expansion strategy confirmed that selling a separate package of international games is a definite possibility. However, he said the NFL has not made a decision—or kicked off the process. 

“That’s really all to be determined,” Brian Rolapp, the NFL’s chief media and business officer, told Front Office Sports newsletter writer Eric Fisher at the league’s fall meetings in Atlanta. “But there’s clearly been a focus on international, how we grow the game there, grow our commercial operations, grow the fan base. That certainly has a lot to do with how we do our game packages, both here and abroad. But we haven’t made any decisions yet.”

Patrick Crakes, the former Fox Sports executive turned media consultant, tells me selling a separate international package “makes a lot of sense” for the country’s richest, most powerful league. 

“I think they’ll move fast. Maybe in a year or so?” Crakes told me. “Think they’d ask for at least $1 billion to $1.5 billion for 11 to 13 international games.”

John Kosner, the former ESPN and NBA executive, predicted to me back in December 2023 that the league would create a Sunday morning package of international games. That would effectively create a fourth window on Sunday, with games airing from early in the morning to almost midnight ET. It would be the league’s sixth overall TV/streaming package, counting Monday Night Football and Thursday Night Football.

“By creating a weekly international package of games, 9:30 a.m. to 1 p.m. ET, the NFL would create a brand-new, sixth regular-season games package—ideal for a global streamer like … Netflix. How valuable would that be?” asked Kosner. “Well, an international Super Bowl could become a potential carrot for bidders.” 

Who Could Air the Games?

As previously noted by Kosner and ProFootballTalk, dangling a juicy new international package could attract global streamers like Amazon Prime Video, Netflix, or Apple—not to mention legacy media partners such as Disney, NBC, CBS, and Fox, which currently pay more than $2 billion a year each to televise games.

The NFL is playing five international games in the United Kingdom, Germany, and Brazil this season. Since launching the International Series in 2007, the NFL has played games in Mexico, the U.K., Germany, and Brazil.

Considering the NBA’s eye-popping haul of $77 billion over 11 years for its media rights, the NFL is expected to opt out of its current media deals (with the exception of Disney) after the 2028 season, per CNBC.

The additional revenue could also help Goodell reach his stated target of $25 billion in annual revenue by 2027. Goodell recently pushed through a proposal allowing owners to sell 10% of their clubs to private equity groups. The NFL’s current collective bargaining agreement runs through March 2030. Both an 18-game season and a 16-game international slate would be major negotiating points for a new CBA—and are likely joined at the hip. But the NFL usually gets its way, noted Kosner. Just ask the previous defenders of 14-game and 16-game regular seasons.

“All of the major leagues are looking for growth overseas; a weekly NFL game that counts would raise the ante considerably,” he says. “These moves would all require owner and player approval—but the NFL has shown itself to be deft in getting its constituents aboard to make the game bigger and even more profitable. I believe it will happen.”

Reason to Believe in Blockchain and Sports: John Kosner’s Guest Column in Sporting Crypto

Original Article: Sporting Crypto, by John Kosner, September 23rd, 2024

Sports Business - Braced for Change? ⚖️

In person, I pay almost every expense using my Apple Watch. A wireless technology called Near-field communication (NFC) allows devices to communicate when they are within a few centimeters of each other. I do so even though my physical wallet is itself only a few centimeters away. That’s how emerging technologies take root – they enable something better by being fast and easy; we use them and don’t even know their names. The sports business is always in pursuit of incremental revenue. In the U.S., the NFL and NBA’s most recent media agreements are worth $111 billion and $76 billion respectively both over 11 seasons. Streaming has begun to usurp traditional pay TV. Yet the Leagues’ respective revenue sources still look pretty familiar: it’s Media (TV and now Streaming) plus Advertising and Sponsorships, Consumer Products, Data & Betting, and of course, Ticket Sales.

Despite decades of work to gather certain fan information and create better fan data platforms, pro and college leagues, Teams and events still know relatively little about their fan bases. It has been less than a decade since bar codes and scans first replaced paper tickets. Personalization in the industry remains rudimentary. Meanwhile, MLB, NBA and NHL Teams face significant financial challenges as the once-bountiful local and regional U.S. sports pay TV business continues to melt. Across the Atlantic, many key football media deals are stagnating and some, like France’s Ligue 1, have actually decreased from 2016-2020 highs.

Source: L’Equipe Via SportPro Media

Nonetheless:

1. Sports leagues, Teams and events own extremely valuable IP;

2. The opportunity to reward fans with – and benefit from – their intimate relationships with the Teams, players and events they love is there;

3. Younger fans are digital-first and value ownership of virtual goods from video games

   and

4. Sports tends to be a copycat business (one solution can populate throughout).

This helps explain why Blockchain technology has long been suggested as a next big thing for Sports. Is ‘next’ coming now or soon? I think so. If you are a decision-maker, it’s probably time to take a fresh look. If you’re building new products, it’s worth thinking bigger. The sports industry needs a breakthrough.

For the past several years, Blockchain technology has largely failed to do that in Sports. Yes, there have been several significant sponsorships (the L.A. Lakers play at the Crypto.com Arena; Coinbase is a big NBA and WNBA Partner), Dapper Labs’ NBA Top Shot was a COVID comet but largely forgotten since; Sorare excited Soccer, MLB and NBA fantasy players, generating an industry-leading valuation yet it has consolidated to just a hardcore active customer base, while growing its free-to-play product. Globally, Teams have launched multiple “Fan Token” programs utilizing the Blockchain, but fans have gotten relatively little in return (e.g. choosing pre-game music). And, of course, the entire industry has labored under the accompanying, self-inflicted fraud, corruption and speculation of Cryptocurrency companies and bad actors.

Today, many Sports decision-makers remain confused or ignorant about the merits of Blockchain ... “How is it different from just a database?” ... and view it as an unnecessarily risky proposition. If phase one of Blockchain was about cryptocurrencies and speculation and phase two, NFTs and Tokens that ultimately meant little to nothing, what’s next is about data – and that’s potentially quite compelling. In the shadows of scandal, important infrastructure work is improving the technology’s speed and capabilities. It is beginning to come of age. Blockchain’s "immutability" is critical in finance where transactions need "finality" and tamper-proof security, but the nature of its decentralization is a more important factor for sports because that's the aspect that allows for our industry’s rightsholders (leagues, Teams, events) to set the rules, allowing their many providers to work better together on their behalf -- in real-time. Best of all, this data phase requires no new action by fans – nothing to buy, download or a new website to visit; the technology lives in the background.

Is Blockchain Ready for Prime Time? 🤔

Six years ago, the entrepreneur Sandy Khaund sold his Blockchain ticketing firm, UPGRADED, to Ticketmaster. Sandy then spent two years at Ticketmaster and now has a new startup, Credenza, a modern customer data platform focused on sports and media built atop the Blockchain. The NHL’s St. Louis Blues are an early client. For the Blues, Credenza is assigning Blockchain wallets to fans, gathering data from various touchpoints, and using that data to deliver fans real-time, hyper-personalized experiences beginning this season. The Blues’ product is aptly called "Passport."

With his background both at Blockchain startups and at Ticketmaster, an established Sports U.S. ticketing giant, Sandy offers three key reasons why the technology is getting ready for prime time:

1. Blockchain enables a synchronization of our identity that is not owned by digital goliaths like Google/Facebook/Amazon and contains no personally-identifiable information. I can be John Kosner with an unrecognized, consistent digital identity on ESPN, the Knicks, Ticketmaster, Fanatics, etc. To date, sports leagues have avoided integrating their fan identity services with Google, Apple, et al. We rarely see “Sign in with Google” as an option. Instead, most leagues have built complex identity infrastructures, such as NBA ID. Blockchain has the potential to make fan identity more interoperable between the major leagues (NFL/MLB/NBA/NHL/MLS, etc.) should that become a goal of one or more Leagues. Additionally, Teams in the same city or part of the same ownership group across multiple sports might want to share fan data. Fans could be OK with that because they can be far better served without their actual identity being known thanks to the privacy protections afforded by the technology. On a more prosaic level, the tech could shorten League ID development cycles and connect currently siloed data points.

2. The newest generation of Blockchain “smart contracts” are more sophisticated and effective. Now, a rightsholder like the Blues can set different rules for sharing data with its various licensees – with the biggest, or most strategic, getting a certain level of access to the smallest getting less.

3. The combination of “1” and “2” is that Blockchain allows authorized partners/vendors/sponsors to “listen for” data updates, making possible real-time offers that create a more personalized experience for fans. Imagine you’ve purchased tickets to take your son to the Warriors opener on Oct. 27 and that morning you get a message from the in-venue merchant that says, "Hey, can't wait to see you at Chase Center for the Warriors. Can we set you up with a new Steph Curry jersey for your son? His old Klay Thompson jersey isn't the same now that he's in Dallas. Does he still wear a medium?" That example takes the trigger of a ticket purchase, reviews what is knowable about the fan, and lets the merchant responsible for the sale create a relevant message – almost immediately after the fan bought the ticket and while basketball is still on his or her mind. Too frequently, the current practice is either a generic game-day offer or a follow-up email the morning after the game, when the urgency of being there has passed. Making possible the right offer to the right person at the right time creates more value—that thing that sports organizations need.

If this all sounds familiar, it is: that’s how video games operate today. But those games are closed systems. Considering the ever-escalating cost of sports rights, the Sports media giants of the future will likely offer a combination of live rights (to generate and sustain subscription, ad and sponsorship revenue) and entice this funnel of customers into sports betting, tickets, merchandise, collectibles and video games. Being able to better understand and then instantly serve fans will become more and more crucial.

As mentioned, NBA Top Shot got off to a breathtaking start in 2021 as hundreds of thousands of fans collected unique digital video highlights. Alas, demand collapsed, disappointing speculators. Meanwhile, mere collectors found relatively little to do with their digital highlights. But this idea – the modern virtual trading card – will rise again; likely, with digital and physical capabilities and experiences built in.

The Opportunity 🔮

The biggest opportunity for Blockchain might be in identity. For the past two years, Reddit has seen great success with its successful Avatar Collectible program and OneFootball has just launched OneFootball Club. Today, none of the major league registration programs, such as “NBA ID,” are built on the Blockchain but in time they might migrate there. Fans want the ability to signal their fandom and document it; and then, in return, get various rewards and access from the League and Teams and potentially players. In time, that could be a big business. Apple created a global network of iPhone users and then built a massive services business around it. To create a similar (albeit much, much smaller) model, Sports Leagues, Teams and Events will have to take the fan benefits much more seriously, correcting the failure of the multiple recent “Fan Token” programs. NBA Commissioner Adam Silver has made the point that 99% of the League’s fans will never attend an NBA game in person. But these emerging technologies enable the NBA and others to engage much more closely and derive a lot more value from that 99% of their fandom.

Indeed, there’s reason to believe.

Think about what’s happening in digital identity outside Sports. According to a Reuters report, California's Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) has digitized 42 million car titles using Blockchain in a bid to better detect fraud and improve the title transfer process. The DMV worked with Oxhead Alpha on Ava Labs' Avalanche Blockchain. It is anticipated that in the first quarter, 2025, California's more than 39 million residents will be able to claim their vehicle titles through a mobile app, the first such move in the U.S. Digitizing car titles is a potential win/win – reducing the need for in-person DMV visits and serving as a deterrent against lien fraud because Blockchain creates a transparent and unalterable record of property ownership. Important to note: the California DMV will use a private, “permissioned” Blockchain providing its required security and controls.

Even more significant, with the DMV, in addition to titles, we can move to licenses. One of the most valuable reasons to do that is that a driver's license not only allows you to drive on the roads in California but also to drive in 49 other states and elsewhere. It serves as identification with TSA at the airport, it notifies medical personnel if you are a donor in case of an accident.

Shift that to Sports: the ubiquity of a license is similar to this concept of synchronous, anonymous fan identity across ticketing, sponsorship, concessions, merch, content, betting, etc. It’s a potential, “Hello, World!” moment for the technology, according to Khaund. “It’s where Blockchain shines.”

Since Sports is global and connected, when that “Hello, World” moment comes for our industry, it will be game-changing. In tech and life, you can have the right idea, but timing is everything. Earlier brilliant plans for online food delivery, personalized short-form video and live event streaming came too early and collapsed in red ink. New technologies tend to break through when you don’t even know you’re using them, you just appreciate brand-new functionality. You don’t know or care what they’re called or how they work.

Pay attention to Blockchain for Sports. Mainstream moments are closer than you think.

John Kosner Spoke with Jon Wilner of Wilner Hotline About Fox’s Friday Night College Football Strategy

Original Article: Sports360AZ, by Jon Wilner, September 18th, 2024

It didn’t take long for the audience metrics to justify Fox’s strategy of stocking its Friday night shelf with college football.

It took one night, in fact.

Kansas State’s lopsided victory over Arizona last week averaged 2.58 million viewers on Fox and easily surpassed the typical audience for the WWE’s Friday Night SmackDown, which previously occupied the network’s primetime window on Fridays.

That’s 330,000 more viewers than SmackDown averaged in its most recent season, according to Sportico.

And there’s more football to come.

The Big 12 matchup from last week will give way to nine consecutive Friday night games featuring Big Ten conference games, followed by a return to the Big 12 for a Black Friday broadcast between longtime rivals Utah and UCF.

In all, the former Pac-12 teams now in the Big Ten and Big 12 will fill nine of the 22 slots on Fox College Football Friday broadcasts carved out of 11 weeks this season. Oregon, Washington and UCLA will make two appearances on Friday night. USC, Arizona and Utah will make one.

Fox and ESPN have broadcast college football on Friday in the past, with Pac-12 games taking a leading role. But Fox took the commitment to a new level this year after concluding that SmackDown wasn’t generating the desired audience or advertising dollars.

“In one move, they save money on WWE rights and simultaneously leverage their existing college football portfolio into a new primetime night that will be better received by advertisers (college sports vs. pro wrestling),” media industry analysts John Kosner and Ed Desser, who work together, explained in a joint email to the Hotline.

The Friday night broadcasts also provide Fox with an ideal lead-in to its premier college football matchup of the week the following morning with the Saturday ‘Big Noon’ game.

This week’s broadcast of No. 22 Illinois at No. 24 Nebraska on Friday, for example, will allow Fox to promote the Saturday matchup featuring Marshall and No. 3 Ohio State, one of the biggest ratings drivers in college football.

And as an added benefit, the Friday broadcasts are free.

“They would have produced these games anyway, and the (media) rights are already paid for,” Kosner and Desser wrote.

Shifting landscape

The push to broadcast college football on Friday night is part of a larger shift as live sports slowly take over the weeknight television windows long reserved for scripted comedies and dramas.

For example, the NBA’s new media contract, which begins in 2025-26, will feature Tuesday night games on NBC.

“This is part of a broader move in sports broadcasting,” Kosner and Desser explained. “Fans are going to see sports on network prime time virtually every night of the week.”

And don’t be surprised to see the networks eventually broadcast sports during weekday afternoons.

The eyeballs are available, especially with more people working remotely in the post-COVID era. And the success of the Olympics — not only in primetime but also during the work day — is evidence.

Kosner and Desser believe there will be “more and more live events in the afternoon.”

And ominously, they expect the NFL “to at least explore” the possibility of broadcasting a weekly Friday night game when the next broadcast contract cycle begins in the early 2030s.

The Sports Broadcasting Act of 1961, which shields high school football on Friday and college football on Saturday from the NFL behemoth, could be challenged.

The ratings game, show locations, etc.

— Colorado’s victory over Colorado State last weekend drew 3.25 million viewers on CBS — a long way from the 9.3 million who tuned in for CU’s overtime escape from the Rams last year on ESPN. It was “the least-watched Buffaloes game on broadcast television in the Deion Sanders era,” according to SportsMediaWatch, which tracks audience data.

— UCLA’s first Big Ten game was a dud on the field — the Bruins were blown out by Indiana — and didn’t fare much better with viewers. It drew a meager 1.29 million viewers in NBC’s 4:30 p.m. window.

— The Civil War duel basically doubled that viewership with 2.82 million viewers on Fox (in the 12:30 p.m. window) despite Oregon’s blowout win over Oregon State.

— This week, ESPN’s ‘College GameDay’ will air live from Norman, where Oklahoma hosts Tennessee. If you’re scoring at home, this marks the show’s third broadcast from an SEC campus in four weeks.

— Fox’s ‘Big Noon Kickoff’ will set up shop in Columbus for Ohio State’s matchup with Marshall. It’s the show’s third broadcast from a Big Ten campus in four weeks.

Viewer’s guide to Week 4

Not an ideal weekend for marquee matchups with a number of ranked teams idle (Georgia, Alabama and Oregon, to name three) and with so many teams from the ACC and SEC facing non-conference opponents.

Here are the best bets for your viewing pleasure.

(Listed chronologically. All times Pacific.)

1. USC at Michigan (12:30 p.m. on CBS): The top matchup in the Big Ten — and USC’s first trip to the Big House since 1958 — is a playoff elimination game for the Wolverines and a statement opportunity for the Trojans. The expected coast-to-coast audience is exactly what Fox envisioned when it approved the Big Ten’s raid of the Los Angeles schools.

2. Utah at Oklahoma State (1 p.m. on Fox): Cam Rising should be in the lineup for the Utes in what could be the game of the day. How will it fare head-to-head against the Trojans and Wolverines?

3. Cal at Florida State (4 p.m. on ESPN2): One team is undefeated and the other is winless and the fact that the Bears are the former and the Noles are the latter just might be a sign of the apocalypse.

4. Tennessee at Oklahoma (4:30 p.m. on ABC): What would have been a major intersectional matchup in past years is the SEC opener for both — and the back end of an ABC doubleheader that starts with UCLA at LSU (12:30 p.m.).

Reaching Young Audiences: John Kosner’s Latest SBJ Column with Ed Desser

Original Article: Sports Business Journal, by John Kosner and Ed Desser, September 16th, 2024

What keeps you up at night?

If you’re a sports media, league or club decision-maker, No. 1 is probably the alarming, unprecedented decline/change of the traditional pay-TV ecosystem, the industry’s financial growth driver and exposure linchpin for the past four decades.

No. 1-A is how to reach and engage young fans.

This summer, Comcast/NBC’s coverage of the Paris Olympics and Fox Sports’ “Summer of Soccer” provided breakthrough ideas and execution. As we consider this challenge, thoughts turn to:

1. The Experience and Interface

2. Community Building

3. Character and Integrity 

First, winning in today’s era of media content abundance requires developing a plan for new audiences. In contrast to prior generations introduced to and captivated by sports through communal couch TV viewing and actually playing sports outside, today’s youth grew up with smartphones, social media, video games, fantasy and betting. Now, experiences and interfaces must take advantage of technology’s capabilities to get fans more actively involved. That doesn’t mean totally novel approaches — with TV Everywhere, we put the same content on every device. Then, mimicking the games business, we program differentiated content of an event designed for particular platforms on different services.

Since 2009, “ NFL RedZone” has revolutionized coverage of the nation’s favorite sport. Not surprisingly, Peacock medaled with its own “GoldZone” whip-around, which teed up climactic events and reminded viewers how many (and how varied) there were. Same for “Multiview” — (up to) quad boxes of different sports airing simultaneously that more than 25% of Peacock’s Olympic viewers used to create their own customized GoldZone. Both reached average audiences 10-15 years younger than linear NBC. Comcast’s embrace of tech enabled a never-before-available range of consumer choice and discovery. Fans could watch the Games live (“Paris prime time”); as a curated movie (“U.S. prime time” — an elegantly crafted presentation interwoven with backstories and contextual replays — like the Olympics of our youth!); sport by sport; and via widely distributed highlights on multiple platforms. On Peacock, fans had access to up to 60 simultaneous “world feed” livestreams, plus replays with no spoilers, and could search and locate content by sport, athlete, medal round or date. It was always on … and it all worked! Considering the popularity of TikTok and YouTube, it’s not a coincidence that short duration viewing of swimming and track and field events proved popular, or that the men’s Dream Team seemed even better playing four 10-minute quarters. And everything started on time, as scheduled.

A Summer Games breakthrough: Viewers were able to customize Peacock’s “GoldZone” to include simultaneous events.

Second, the only way to battle today’s extensive fragmentation is to aggregate your audience. That means putting communities of followers together. Inspired by social media, fantasy and now betting, fans increasingly root for players more than teams. NBA players such as Steph Curry are like Marvel superheroes for kids. So, the International Olympic Committee and NBC liberalized their historically restrictive social media policies and used the athletes’ own channels to help drive discovery and tune-in, leveraging direct deals to create digital hubs — such as TikTok’s use of the French mascot Phryge as top-of-screen content navigation. For upcoming Games, look for customized athlete highlights distributed immediately after a performance to tease follow-up event tune-in, which the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee and NBC experimented with during some of this year’s U.S. Olympic trials. Additionally, taking a page from entertainment, celebs such as Snoop Dogg, Sabrina Carpenter, Megan Thee Stallion and Lily Collins made it cool for their fans to co-watch the Games with their idols. According to Wired, nearly a third of new Olympic viewers say that clips on social media drove them to tune in. 

Earlier this summer, for its coverage of the Euro and Copa soccer tournaments, Fox simulcast the first five minutes of every match live on YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, Facebook and X. Ratings exceeded expectations — not only because these social media networks are where young fans are, but also because these platforms up-rank live content versus video-on-demand. No surprise: Fox has now extended its “free preview” to college football. The first drive of every major CFB game on Fox/FS1 is being offered live/free across social, followed by promos and deep links to watch authenticated in the Fox Sports app. Similarly, NBC is bringing Multiview to Premier League. That’s a way to bring back “cord cutters” and attract “cord-nevers” to linear TV and streaming.

Third, in a polarized world, the beauty of sports is that it brings people together, at scale, at the same time. It also has winners and losers; and, in general, those are not in dispute. We love sports because the games and individual performances thrill us, and we trust the outcomes. We see character and root for it.

That extends to those who broadcast the games. Audiences had to appreciate the hard work of Mike Tirico in Paris, who served as a smooth host/traffic cop for 17 consecutive days of afternoon live action, while also anchoring the nightly prime-time shows. For NBC, which in its previous Olympic presentations had famously embargoed all live action for U.S. prime time (Hey, it’s “plausibly live!”), executive producer Molly Solomon led a bold, gigantic move out of the network’s historic comfort zone.

Conventional wisdom when the Games opened was not for daily average audiences of 30 million-plus. By using today’s technologies and platforms, and abandoning some of the caution of their past practices, Comcast/NBC revealed a new playbook for reaching young audiences. We have taken note, and expect others to do so, too. This is just the beginning.

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Ed Desser is an expert witness and president of consultancy Desser Sports Media Inc. (www.desser.tv). John Kosner is an investor in digital startups and president of consultancy Kosner Media (www.kosnermedia.com). Together they developed league TV strategy and ran the NBA’s media operations in the ’80s and ’90s. 

John Kosner Spoke with Chris Bumbaca of USA Today about The NFL’s Streaming Opener on Peacock

Original Article: USA Today, by Chris Bumbaca, September 6th, 2024

NFL ramps up streaming arms race with Peacock exclusive game – but who's really winning?

The power of the peacock logo goes from Paris to São Paulo.  

NBCUniversal’s grip on the American sports viewer will be tightened during the first weekend of the 2024 NFL regular season with three games in four nights on their properties, including its streaming arm, Peacock.

“They’re using sports as a key part of their identity for Peacock,” media analyst John Kosner told USA TODAY Sports. 

Following the season opener between the Kansas City Chiefs and Baltimore Ravens on NBC, the Brazilian matchup between the Green Bay Packers and Philadelphia Eagles will air exclusively on Peacock. The weekend ends with the Los Angeles Rams facing the Detroit Lions on NBC for “Sunday Night Football.” 

“So I think they can maintain the momentum,” Kosner said, “and it’s probably part of the plan for the NFL.”

What the return of investment is for Peacock and other streamers remains unclear, according to fellow streaming analyst Dan Rayburn, who contended that the NFL’s motivations hurt the average fan who wants to enjoy games with ease. 

“The NFL is more fragmented than anybody else out there from a sports league standpoint, and obviously the reason for that is money,” Rayburn told USA TODAY Sports. “That’s all it is.”

Peacock paid a reported $110 million for last season's wild-card playoff game between the Kansas City Chiefs and Miami Dolphins. This year, that exclusive postseason streaming slot was awarded to Prime Video for $120 million. Netflix paid a reported $150 million for a pair of Christmas Day games, which this year will land on a Wednesday.

“The NFL is the most popular content on television in our country, so it’s clearly worth the investment,” Kosner said.

The NFL accounted for 93 of the top 100 broadcasts in the United States last year in terms of ratings, according to Nielsen. Of the major streaming companies in the U.S., only Apple currently does not have NFL rights; Netflix and Amazon are bought in, while Disney, Paramount and NBCUniversal have streaming services as part of their conglomerates.

A popular talking point for the NFL in the streaming shift is that the medium appeals to a younger audience. Other than Amazon and Nielsen for “Thursday Night Football,” companies rarely publish stats regarding demographic data.

“Fifteen-year-olds have no money,” Rayburn said. 

Another argument the league makes for putting games exclusively on streaming is that the matchups are available in the local market on traditional network TV. That strategy ignores the fan who grew up rooting for one team and moved to a different market but doesn’t want to have to pay to watch his or her team. 

“The NFL doesn’t care about fans. The NFL cares about making the most money possible,” Rayburn said. “And hey, there’s nothing wrong with that, because you’re a sports league and your job is to get paid for your content. But at some point, you have to realize fans are only willing to jump through so many hoops to get what they want from a sports standpoint.”

Beware the churn? 

During the Olympics, every event was available to be streamed live on Peacock. NBC created “Gold Zone,” a play on the NFL’s famous “RedZone” setup, for events occurring simultaneously and even hired Scott Hanson to anchor the program. 

Peacock reported a loss of 500,000 subscribers in the second business quarter of 2024 and any gains during the Olympics. Matt Strauss, NBCU’s chairman of direct-to-consumer who oversees Peacock, told Rayburn the company doesn’t see its streamer as a quarter-to-quarter business.

“This is a long-term strategy, where Peacock is part of a larger video strategy for them,” Rayburn said. 

“If they lose half of them next quarter, who cares?” he added.

Churn is nonetheless a concern, which is why entities like Peacock crave year-round content, Kosner said. That’s why NBCU invested in the latest NBA media rights deal. People need reasons to keep their subscriptions. Sports interests are typically long-lasting.

Although companies such as Antenna claim to accurately track streaming service sign-ups and other consumer data, Rayburn says there is no proof of long-term, sign-up success. Antenna claimed that Peacock picked up 3 million sign-ups leading up to and including the day of the wild-card game – more than the first week of the Olympics, according to IndieWire. 

Companies rarely publish data referring to streaming data aside from how it added to the overall number. Mobile viewership is rarely revealed. Average viewing time is never included in viewership press releases, and there is no distinction of unique viewership. Tech issues are also cast aside.

“We have absolutely zero business metrics to measure what the impact is to these streaming services from licensing NFL content,” Rayburn said. “We get the impact on the NFL. They’re making a boatload of money.”

Executives say things like they are “highly pleased” or that viewership “exceeded expectations,” Rayburn said. Kosner noted Peacock personnel talks up the number of subscribers the company has and the viewership number from the playoff game last year. More advertising will come to streaming in the near future, Kosner added.

That’s not good enough for Rayburn.

“Give me numbers,” he said.

Ratings reminders 

Thanks to some Taylor Swift mania, the Chiefs-Dolphins playoff game averaged 23 million viewers to become the most live-streamed event in U.S. history. 

Don’t expect any record-setting marks this time.

For one, this is Week 1 and not the postseason. Kosner said the Packers and Eagles are both top-10 ratings earners for the league, but he didn’t want to speculate on a potential viewership number given the number of external factors that may impact the ability to watch this matchup. 

The Friday after Labor Day still technically qualifies as a “summer Friday.” There is high school football in many parts of the country. And much of Europe will be asleep with the 8:15 p.m. ET kickoff. 

John Kosner Spoke with Eric Prisbell of On3 About Potential College Football Viewership

Original Article: On3, by Eric Prisbell, August 30th, 2024

How will realignment and an expanded CFP affect college football viewership?

From the expansion of power conferences and the College Football Playoff to the virtual vanishing of one power league altogether, you’re not the only one who may feel a little disoriented with the radically new terrain of the college football world.

But fresh off the most-watched season across all networks, it’s an open question how realignment and CFP expansion will affect viewership?

Last season served as a perfect storm to maximize eyeballs.

The phenomenon of Coach Prime was ratings gold during the first half of the season. The sign-stealing Michigan scandal and incessant speculation surrounding Jim Harbaugh created a level of intrigue, in his lingo, unknown to mankind. And the now virtually defunct Pac-12 was appointment viewing, with stars galore along the West Coast.

“College Football is the No. 2 sport in our country, but I expect ratings to be slightly down this season heading into the CFP,” John Kosner, who led digital media at ESPN from 2003-2017 and is president of media consulting firm Kosner Media, told On3.

His rationale? Pac-12 audiences could feel somewhat diminished even as the biggest West Coast brands compete in new leagues. The buzz around Deion Sanders’ Colorado team isn’t quite the same. And it’s hard to rival Michigan’s drama-rich journey to the national championship.

Michigan played in four of the eight games last season that averaged at least ten million viewers, more than any other team, according to Sports Media Watch.

Also, while there will be more games than ever on streaming platforms, including ESPN+ and Peacock, “that’s great for fan choice but likely will impact ratings for games in the same windows,” Kosner said.

Will expanded College Football Playoff enhance season?

The expanded 12-team CFP will undoubtedly affect regular-season viewership as well, but precisely how is subject to debate. 

It is possible that the addition of eight more teams in the college football tournament field will dilute some interest in the regular season, at least early on. That said, marque games like Ohio State-Michigan will always attract enormous interest — and could have first-round bye implications – even if it is not a quasi-playoff game, as it has been in the past.

More to that point, some 15-20 teams could still harbor hopes for a playoff berth in the regular season’s final weeks, stirring interest in more markets much like what occurs toward the end of the parity-laden NFL season.

This season, we’ll also see Fox Sports broadcasting Friday night games from the Big Ten, Big 12 and Mountain West. Fox will televise nine Friday night Big Ten games in particular, with highly ranked Oregon making two appearances. 

“That used to be sacrosanct,” Neal Pilson, who served two stints as CBS Sports president, told On3. “When we had college football [at CBS], you couldn’t play on Friday nights because it screwed the high schools.”

Times are indeed changing. And then there is this element, which is not insignificant: 

“On the plus side, the EA College Football game is back and that will certainly aid interest among younger fans,” Kosner said.

John Kosner Spoke with Rishad Tobaccowala About The Future of Sports Media

Original Article: What Next? by Rishad Tobaccowala, January 6th, 2024

John Kosner on the Future of Sports

John Kosner is the President of Kosner Media, a digital media and sports consultancy and an investment advisor to sports tech startups on the future of sports.

His four decades of expertise include building ESPN into the world's leading digital sports destination; he also struck ESPN's original streaming deal with Bamtech, which led to Disney's acquisition of Major League baseball's technology firm in 2016.

In a world where sports is dominating media and fusing with gaming anybody interested in business should listen to it (even if you are the rare bird who does not follow sports.)

John argues that sports will follow gaming into the interactive world building communities around sports players online and offline as younger fans look for new ways to engage.

He advises us to follow his old Disney colleague, Steve Jobs’ mantra: “beware the status quo” in a world where everything including sports is being re-imagined.

John explains why integrity and trust will be key in a world of sports as AI and sports betting scale.

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John Kosner Appeared on the “Fueling the Future of Fan Engagement” Panel at Sportradar’s Connec+ Event in NYC

Listen in on this great panel discussion that covers opportunities in fan engagement with the use of #AI

Moderated by Mike McCarthy of Front Office Sports, the panel featured John Kosner of Kosner Media, Matthew Graham of Tennis Channel, and Ty Barnes of Sportradar.

John Kosner Spoke with Mike McCarthy of Front Office Sports About NBC’s Innovations at the 2024 Paris Summer Olympics

Original Article: Front Office Sports, by Mike McCarthy, August 3rd, 2024

Only three years after the Tokyo Games’ poor showing as the least-watched prime-time Olympics on record, NBCUniversal’s coverage of the 2024 Paris Games is posting high marks.

The opening Sunday of competition drew NFL-like TV numbers, averaging 41.5 million viewers across various NBC platforms. (That nearly equaled the 42 million viewers who tuned in to watch the NFL’s most-watched regular-season game last year—the Cowboys vs. Commanders—on Thanksgiving weekend.) Through Thursday, NBC’s prime-time coverage was averaging 34 million viewers across all platforms, up 79% from Tokyo. 

Mark Lazarus, chairman of NBCUniversal, hasn’t seen so much enthusiasm from Olympic viewers and spectators since London in 2012. “Clearly, the Olympics are back,” he said on a conference call Thursday.

The rebound in Olympic viewership vindicates NBCUniversal’s decision in 2014 to fork over $7.75 billion to the International Olympic Committee for U.S. media rights to six Games through 2032. It’s sweet satisfaction for Olympic sponsors and marketers, who’ve committed a record $1.25 billion to advertise during the Paris Games. More than 70% of NBC’s Paris advertisers are new, according to the network, with a half-billion dollars in revenue coming from first-time sponsors.

NBC’s arresting visuals of the City of Light and the medal-winning heroics of U.S. athletes are just two of the factors driving NBC’s Olympic rebound. This week, Front Office Sports asked business experts and NBC insiders why the Olympic rings are posting gold-plated ratings again.

Dream Setting

The picturesque TV appeal of Paris can’t be overstated. As Gertrude Stein said, “America is my country, and Paris is my hometown.” U.S. viewers are captivated by the famous sights of the Palace of Versailles, Eiffel Tower, Seine river, and Arc de Triomphe. Event sites including the Eiffel Tower Stadium, hosting beach volleyball, may perhaps be the coolest venues ever.

“Undoubtedly, Paris provides a stunning backdrop for the Games on television,” sports media consultant Jim Williams tells FOS. “The decision to host events at historic sites rather than traditional venues adds significant allure.” 

As one NBC executive noted to FOS, Paris and 2012 host London are two of the world’s most popular tourist destinations. Americans who’ve never been to those cities want to go; those who have been want to return. It’s no accident that these host cities have drawn two of the largest U.S. TV audiences. Paris’s six-hour time-zone difference to Eastern time is also much more convenient for U.S. viewers than Beijing’s (12 hours) and Tokyo’s (13 hours).

“Lost in the fog of three consecutive Asian Olympics, two impacted by COVID-19, these Olympics are in Paris with its glorious locations and excited live crowds. It looks and feels Olympian,” says John Kosner, former ESPN executive turned founder of Kosner Media.

Coverage Like Never Before

NBC has taken a more “innovative” approach this year, according to Kosner. 

Peacock’s whip-around highlight show, Gold Zone, is the breakout star of early Olympics coverage. NBC wisely hired the master of the format—NFL RedZone host Scott Hanson—to lead the coverage. The streaming hit is fast-moving, funny, and compelling, focusing on the highest-stakes moments. As Hanson told FOS this week: “We will trim the fat off everything and bring you the best of the best in a one-stop [shop] on Peacock for Gold Zone. That will lend itself to a very fun viewing experience.”

Hanson and fellow hosts Andrew Siciliano, Jac Collinsworth, and Matt Iseman whip viewers in and out of “gold medal alerts” 10 hours a day. The boisterous Hanson got so excited over one event, he cut his hand banging it on his TV desk. 

Its appeal is only spreading. The number of accounts watching Gold Zone doubled between its Saturday debut and Tuesday’s coverage. As of Thursday, NBC had piled up eight billion streaming minutes and counting, with plenty of events still to go, Lazarus said.

“NBC has brought a slick, modern, high-gloss production to the 2024 Games in Paris,” says Kosner. “They’ve been genuinely innovative, launching Gold Zone and the [AI-generated] Al Michaels highlights as two examples. They have improved the discovery and viewing experience on Peacock.”

The IOC’s scheduling of high-profile events has also lined up perfectly with U.S. viewing windows, giving NBC big opportunities for their audiences. For example, the Team USA men’s basketball game versus Serbia with Nikola Jokić aired mid-Sunday.

Compelling Weekday Lineups

Alongside innovative coverage, there are simply lots more opportunities to watch live events on TV. 

Forget the old days when NBCUniversal used to hold back TV coverage of the biggest events for prime time. For the first time, virtually all events are being televised live in the afternoon, then replayed in prime time, noted Rick Cordella, president of NBC Sports on a conference call Thursday. This “Paris Prime” strategy is delivering a one-two punch, generating big numbers, Cordella said—and daytime broadcasts aren’t cannibalizing the prime-time audience.   

On Tuesday afternoon, a staggering 12.7 million live viewers watched Simone Biles (at top) lead the U.S. women’s gymnastic team to gold on NBC and Peacock, according to Sports Media Watch. The U.S. women’s basketball team’s opening win over Japan on Monday afternoon averaged 3 million viewers on USA Network and Peacock. That was more than any men’s or women’s basketball game in Tokyo, excluding the gold medal games.

As Kosner says: “They have taken the logic of the NFL’s late Sunday afternoon window, which is considered prime time by advertisers, and used that model every day to supplement actual prime time with late-afternoon live coverage. That’s a fairly ingenious way to tackle the Paris time-zone issues.”

Rival sports TV networks are taking note. As Fox programming guru Michael Mulvihill asked on X: “Is the door opening for more sports on weekday afternoons?” Plenty of workers covertly streaming big Olympic moments at their desks indicate maybe yes.

Abundance of Superstar Athletes

NBC executives tell FOS that the better Team USA performs, the better the ratings. Viewers are tuning in at all times of day for the big stars, including Biles, LeBron James, and Katie Ledecky. And many of them are snagging medals left and right.

But there are also the perennial viral breakouts, including rugby sensation Ilona Maher (above), and bespectacled pommel horse specialist Stephen Nedoroscik who factor in. As the U.S. continues to perform better than they did in Tokyo, great results are rocketing non-household names into meme dominance and turning their competitions into can’t-miss events for NBCUniversal.

“I believe the number-one reason [for the Olympic comeback] are the American Olympic stars,” says sports TV ratings expert Douglas Pucci of Awful Announcing. “There are many more to watch at these Olympics compared to Tokyo three years ago. The fact that this is the first normal Olympics post-COVID-19, with spectators filling the stands cheering on the athletes, and no disqualifications because of COVID, is a benefit.”

Yearlong Marketing Blitz

Olympic sports marketing expert Rob Prazmark, founder of 21 Sports & Entertainment Marketing Group, tells FOS his “number-one reason” for the rebound is NBCUniversal’s savvy decision to start marketing the Paris Games more than a year ago. 

Going back to CBS Sports’ coverage of the 1960 Rome Olympics—the first Games fully covered on TV—this has never happened, according to Prazmark. “Historically, the Olympic network in the U.S. and worldwide counted on sponsors to promote the Games a year in advance. That does not happen in today’s environment because of all of the clutter in sports marketing.” He says he doffs his cap to NBCUniversal chairman Mark Lazarus and NBC Olympics president Gary Zenkel in “bucking the historical trend.”

Meanwhile, NBC studded its programming and marketing efforts with famous faces, including Snoop Dogg, Peyton Manning, Emily in Paris star Lily Collins, Megan Thee Stallion, and Call Her Daddy podcast host Alex Cooper. The strategy has attracted new and younger viewers, according to NBC viewer research.  

Now, what does this gold-medal showing for NBCUniversal mean for the future? The Olympics are coming back to the U.S. with the 2028 Summer Games in Los Angeles and the 2034 Winter Games in Salt Lake City. Paris is setting the tone for future U.S. ratings success that could parallel this year’s numbers, or even exceed them. 

“We Americans love the Games on U.S. soil,” says Prazmark. “In 1984, everyone thought [the L.A. Summer Olympics] would be a ratings flop, but it was a blockbuster without the Soviet Union. I suspect that the Russians will be back in 2028—and it will be an amazing drama.”

The NBA’s New Media Deals — First of the Next: John Kosner’s Latest SBJ Column with Ed Desser

Original Article: Sports Business Journal, by John Kosner and Ed Desser, July 29th, 2024

We weren’t surprised that the NBA got “those deals!” — almost triple its current agreements — not when there’s:

1. Competition. This was the NBA’s first true competitive bidding since 2002, when ABC/ESPN grabbed NBC’s lead package. And, for the first time, there was bidding interest in streaming rights, too. This dynamic played out with the new entrants:

   • Comcast/NBC will offer the NBA much broader exposure by moving two weeknight games, and substantial playoffs, to NBC broadcast while also using the NBA to drive its Peacock streaming service; and, Comcast’s crucial mother lode, high-speed data business. For Comcast, more sports streaming equals more data demand, and higher-priced broadband packages. Look for additional 4K, sub-second latency, and real-time wagering — all for a price. Comcast can potentially help offset some of its new $2.5 billion annual NBA rights commitment with an adjustment in the subscriber fees it pays for an apparently NBA-less TNT, while making NBC and Peacock more valuable to both distributors and subscribers.

   • Amazon is mirroring NBC’s NFL/NBA calendar, and brings the league more subscribers today than cable. And it may also move to replace or complement Diamond Sports (and other RSNs) as the hub for local NBA team broadcasts, further enhancing Prime Video’s position as a sports destination.

2. More being sold. The NBA is adding a third partner for the first time in 40 years (the NFL now has seven) by selling Amazon or WBD one or two nights, In-Season and Play-In Tournaments, Digital League Pass, streaming, and international rights, provided the NBA can ultimately deliver the accepted deal, which may be legally contested by WBD.

3. The 11-year term. The 2.9x increase is massive, but remember, we’re talking about a total 20-year span from when the NBA’s current deals started and the new ones end. The 2025-26 season will be the NBA’s first major annual rights jump in nine years, and that adjustment was the first quantum increase since 1998, 26 years ago. Deal-over-deal, this fittingly represents about an 11% CAGR, partially a result of the need by challengers to overwhelm incumbent TNT’s matching rights.

4. The ascendancy of streaming. The NBA has what streamers want — unique, branded, exclusive, and popular programming for eight months of the year, with its biggest and most-watched prime-time, postseason games occurring outside football season. A true churn-buster! It’s crucial to Disney’s streaming platforms, Amazon, and Peacock. In a subscription world, months of content matter! Plus:

5. Advertising ... for all. The NBA is a major advertising business that attracts a consistently sizable, engaged audience that watches live on specific dates and times — increasingly, the only content advertisers will pay a premium for. This is important for ABC/ESPN, NBC, and TNT. Perfect timing for Amazon, too, which recently introduced ads for all Prime subscribers who don’t elect to pay more, plus there is no opt-out for live, in-game sports ads!

6. The young demos. The NBA is among the biggest social media sports — its stars are on a first-name basis with young audiences globally, on YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok, where streamers recruit viewers. The NBA is hip, culturally relevant, and skews young, unlike most all linear TV entertainment and news programming. The NBA’s regular-season ratings have maintained, while linear entertainment’s have collapsed. Indeed, the analyst Doug Shapiro makes the point: The most valuable sports rights are gaining at the expense of entertainment content spending.

The outlook

The NBA is the last in the current cycle to finally add an all-digital package. But we also see these NBA deals as the “first of the next” wave, as cable has now crested (e.g., no games for NBC’s USA Network or apparently TNT). Meanwhile, the regional sports business is also challenged:

• NBA regular-season games will now be featured in prime time every night on NBC/Peacock, ABC, ESPN, and Prime Video. This is both a massive exposure boost for the league and a management challenge for everyone. Fans complain today that the games are hard to find. For this to work well, the NBA and its players will have to make these games even more compelling, and the NBA must work with its partners to balance new inventory across (at least) three major sales organizations, while making the viewing experience more seamless. Can you say: “NBA App?” In the NBA’s regular season, amazing things happen every night, but it’s hard to predict in which games. Flexibility will be important, as is the broadcasters’ willingness to show the best games, not just the biggest markets. Going forward, Oklahoma City and San Antonio are rising.

• The NBA has established a 12-month content calendar with the rise of the WNBA and Summer League. USA Basketball might have snubbed Caitlin Clark (for now), but new partner NBC can be expected to spotlight the NBA and WNBA Dream Teams at the Paris, Los Angeles, and Brisbane Olympics.

• We expect that this lineup will soon come with a next-gen TV world feed, inspired by COVID “bubble” learnings.

• Our increasingly fragmented media world rewards strong, centrally managed enterprises. The NBA has long been a well-run originator of many of sports’ best practices. That track record matters, too. Relationships are critical, but it’s the people (think Ted Turner, Dick Ebersol, and Mark Lazarus), not just companies, that count.

• Finally, whither “Inside the NBA,” one of the best TV shows in sports history — also one of the most valuable non-live-game properties in sports media? Could it move? Might Charles Barkley unretire? Quoting Marv Albert on both: “Yes!”

Our former boss, the visionary David Stern, deserves credit for setting the league on this path decades ago, helping make today’s reset possible 4 1/2 years after his death. These new deals with Disney, Comcast/NBC, and Amazon firmly establish the NBA as the No. 2 U.S. sports media property, only behind the NFL. Is an NFL rights re-opener in five years now inevitable?

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Ed Desser is president of consultancy Desser Sports Media Inc. (www.desser.tv). John Kosner is president of consultancy Kosner Media (www.kosnermedia.com). Together they developed league TV strategy and ran the NBA’s media operations in the ’80s and ’90s. Ed negotiated every national TV deal during his tenure from 1982-2005. John participated in most of those negotiations, first at the NBA, and then at ESPN through the current deal.

John Kosner Spoke with Alex Silverman of The Sports Business Journal about The Dallas Stars New Free Streaming Service

Original Article: Sports Business Journal, by Mollie Cahillane, July 8th, 2024

SBJ Media: Sports will be ‘critical’ for Skydance-Paramount

Happy post-holiday weekend! If anyone expected any sort of summer slowdown in sports media, they would be mistaken. But that means it's a good night to roll out the first official SBJ Media with Mollie Cahillane -- and many more to come! I’ll be taking over SBJ’s media newsletter responsibilities full-time, and I can’t wait to bring news, analysis and insights to SBJ's incredible audience.

With Paramount and Skydance (finally) agreeing on a deal, let's get into it. ...

Sports likely to remain a 'cornerstone' of merged Paramount-Skydance

While there are a number of questions surrounding assets in a proposed Skydance-Paramount merger, the future of sports at the company won't be one of them.

Jeff Shell, the former NBCUniversal chair who is expected to be the new Paramount president, during a call with investors on Monday used words like "critical" and "cornerstone" when describing what sports will mean to the company's future. “When you look at the CBS Sports portfolio, it is really pretty formidable,” Shell said. “So while we’re going to be managing the cash flow of the business, sports is the foundation of our business."

Shell lauded the leadership of David Berson, who recently took over for Sean McManus as president of CBS Sports. He also alluded to CBS continuing to be a player for sports rights as those come up. "If there’s compelling rights in the future that we think can bolster us, we are a buyer, probably, rather than a seller.”

Some rights within Paramount's portfolio include a wide array of soccer assets, like the NWSL, UEFA Champions League, USL, Concacaf World Cup qualifiers and Serie A (for now). The company also has the Masters, PGA Tour golf, PGA Championship, Professional Bull Riders, Big Ten, Mountain West and Army-Navy game, among others.

But the biggest CBS property partner remains the NFL, whose rights may be coming up sooner than some expected. CBS and many other networks are in the middle of deals that originally were intended to go through 2033. However, many suspect the NFL will exercise an opt-out clause in its deals with Amazon, CBS, Fox and NBC after the 2029 season (as well as ESPN in 2030) in order to get more value out in the market.

Would Skydance balk at such an ask? Not likely. Skydance is now deeply intertwined with the NFL, part of a 2022 deal that also saw the league's 32 Equity investment fund make a sizeable investment into Skydance Sports, which began ideating on scripted TV, movies, game shows, cooking and travel shows, anime and other animation works and foreign-language productions for The Shield.

That has already bore fruit with various projects, including an upcoming Jerry Jones documentary that went to Netflix for $50 million and a Chiefs-branded feature film that will air on Hallmark this holiday season. David Ellison, CEO of Skydance, said that the merger will create an “incredibly compelling” offer for NFL fans and build a new “robust, interactive” vertical within Paramount.

Shell also expects to continue leaning heavily into the reach of broadcast TV. "We thought broadcast would decline along with cable five years ago. That just simply hasn't happened," he said. "Broadcast is declining much, much more slowly than cable is, making broadcast relatively a lot stronger.”

Another reason to be bullish on sports within a Skydance-run Paramount is Gerry Cardinale's RedBird Capital, which is a major financial backer for Skydance. Cardinale is deeply committed to sports, backing efforts like the UFL, SpringHill Entertainment and YES Network (along with his ownership of Serie A club AC Milan).

The Paramount-Skydance deal is expected to close in September 2025, pending regulatory approval, or if Paramount finds a better deal (in which case it would pay a $400 million breakup fee to Skydance).

Experts point to exposure, tech as concerns for Stars’ new local media plan

The Stars are taking their local broadcast rights into uncharted territory, creating a new ad-supported streaming platform called Victory+ that will be the primary home of all in-market telecasts. Today's news sparked discussion about whether the Stars' model makes sense -- and if other sports properties may follow suit.

The most notable element of the model is that, as of now, there is no linear TV distribution to complement the free streams. Stars President and CEO Brad Alberts said the team is exploring the possibility of bringing a “small package” of games to an over-the-air network, but that's not a sure thing.

Octagon EVP/Media Rights Advisory Dan Cohen, who advises teams and investors in the RSN space, called the Stars’ shift to ad-supported streaming a “bold move," but he expects growing pains associated with leaving linear TV altogether (except for nationally televised games). 

“I hesitate to say this will be a quick commercial success given sponsor visibility challenges with a growth platform vs. an established [albeit challenged] linear channel,” Cohen told SBJ. “I would strongly urge the Stars to carve out a package of local OTA [games] to help balance the reach and exposure concerns I have for this approach in the short term.”

That sort of model would be reflective of MLS, which has a primary media deal with AppleTV+, but also a simulcast deal carved out for Fox Sports.

Will the tech work? Will the money come?

Veteran media consultants John Kosner and Ed Desser each stressed the importance of ensuring that A Parent Media Co., the Stars’ tech partner on Victory+, is well-equipped to provide fans with a high-quality viewing experience (see the D.C. United-FloSports deal from 2019 as an example of what could go awry). “The technology is not trivial,” Desser said. “One has to really be sure that you put the necessary resources behind the app development, the infrastructure, quality control, testing load management. Don't assume this stuff is all so routine that it can't be a problem.” 

While APMC’s prior experience largely involves serving on-demand content, APMC President and CEO Neil Gruninger expressed confidence in the company’s ability to stream live games. “We don't have the problem that the Super Bowls of the world do, because that's 100 million people at once,” Gruninger said. “We're solving the local problem with 100,000 people watching at once. That is completely different.”

Perhaps the biggest question is whether ad revenue alone without a subscription fee can come close to generating the revenue the Stars earned under their previous deal with Diamond Sports Group that saw games air on its Bally Sports Southwest RSN. The Fort Worth Star-Telegram reported the team was being paid $25 million annually under that agreement, which had one year left before it was mutually terminated in bankruptcy court last week.  

“It's kind of hard to see, at least initially, how the numbers are going to add up if your source of revenue is advertising sales against these live streaming games,” Kosner said. 

Alberts said the financial modeling conducted by the team and APMC suggests the team won’t take a hit financially as a result of the move, but he acknowledged there’s risk associated with moving to a new model. “It'll be almost an experiment to see how this all goes,” Alberts said. “Do we meet expectations, do we exceed expectations, or do we miss those? And if we miss, we'll have to understand why and then come back in the second year, make improvements and see if we can improve on the business.”

NFL Media continues thinning the herd with latest podcast move

NFL Media continues to perform a significant offseason overhaul to its content and talent ranks. The latest move hit the popular “Around the NFL” podcast, which will cease to exist in its current form. Two of the pod’s three co-hosts -- Dan Hanzus and Marc Sessler -- are also no longer with the NFL. The third co-host, Gregg Rosenthal, will stick around to launch a new weekly podcast -- “NFL Daily" -- featuring appearances from well-known talent like ESPN’s Mina Kimes and The Athletic’s Jourdan Rodrigue.

That started back in early March when NFL Network’s flagship morning show, “Good Morning Football,” saw its production shipped from N.Y. to L.A. That move would go on to impact several members of the show. Jason McCourty is out, Kyle Brandt is staying on the East Coast for a hybrid role and Peter Schrager has yet to announce his plans (Jamie Erdahl is headed west to stay with the show). 

Then later in the spring, NFL Net axed “NFL Total Access” after 21 years, followed by high-profile exits/non-renewals for talent like Melissa Stark, Andrew Siciliano, Will Selva and James Palmer.

Sources tell SBJ that the latest moves were part of the league’s normal offseason planning process. Nevertheless, the moves are the latest in some high-profile belt-tightening for NFL Media -- moves that sources told my colleague Ben Fischer are simply being dictated by the need to cut costs (vs. getting NFL Media in better shape for a potential equity swap deal with someone like Disney). Those sources also told Fischer that the financial return of programming on NFL Net -- beyond live games -- is simply not justifying high production costs.

Fewer original shows. Less marquee talent. Even fewer games these days (hello Netflix package!).

As the future of cable TV continues to look less and less secure, NFL Network is certainly feeling that pinch. The league is putting internal efforts into platforms like NFL+ and also making external pushes on original content plays with the likes of “Quarterback” and “Receiver” for Netflix or “Bye Bye Barry” and “Kelce” for Prime Video (not to mention tie-ups with content outfits like Skydance and Omaha Productions).

Speed reads

• Messi-mania was bigger for Univision than Fox during the Copa America quarterfinals on July 4. Argentina's win over Ecuador in penalty kicks drew 2.7 million viewers on Univision/TUDN, while Fox drew 1.87 million for the match (which was the best Copa semifinal without the U.S. on record for English-language TV). Check out more on how Copa America is performing in tomorrow's SBJ Daily.

• "Banana Ball" got a prime-time ESPN slot on Friday night, with the Savannah Bananas and Firefighters drawing 259,000 viewers, notes my colleague Austin Karp. How does that compare to some recent Friday night ESPN programming in that slot? ESPN had the NHL Draft two Fridays ago, drawing 502,000 viewers. Three weeks ago, it was Pro Fighters League with 226,000. But the Bananas game also wasn't exclusive, as YouTube aired the game for free for fans.

• Threads, the Meta-owned text-based social network, just celebrated its first anniversary, and Threads chief Adam Mosseri said he would like to see the platform "make progress and go even deeper on key verticals." Mosseri: "I would like to gain on NBA Twitter. I would like to see more in the world of European football."

John Kosner Spoke with Eric Prisbell of On3 About NFL’s “Manifest Destiny” Strategy Impacting The College Football Playoff

Original Article: On3, by Eric Prisbell, June 26th, 2024

Still six months away, it’s time to circle Dec. 21 on your calendars.

With a College Football Playoff opening-round tripleheader on tap, you’ll have a front-row seat for the newly expanded 12-team event as well as another showdown that figures to be a lopsided affair: the emerging winter battle for eyeballs between the CFP and the NFL.

As thriving college football – fresh off its most-watched season across all networks – stages its inaugural expanded tournament, it carries the unenviable burden of trying to schedule against the NFL. And it comes at a time when Roger Goodell has shown no hesitation in flexing the league’s considerable muscle to demolish everything in its programming path.

“The NFL has a manifest destiny media strategy,” John Kosner, who led digital media at ESPN from 2003-2017 and is president of media consulting firm Kosner Media, told On3. The CFP’s task in scheduling against the NFL, he said, is “super challenging” but “this is the world going forward.”

Can College Football Playoffs compete against NFL?

As other leagues have learned, viewership battles with the NFL are almost always one-sided, with Goodell’s behemoth demonstrating it is the proverbial hammer while all other sports play the role of the nail. Last year, 93 of America’s top 100 most-watched broadcasts were NFL games.

“Everybody moves to get out of the way of the NFL,” Neal Pilson, who served two stints as CBS Sports president in the 1980s and ’90s, told On3. “The colleges made the choice to go to a larger playoff, and in so doing were well aware that they may end up competing with NFL football … 

“It is business [by the NFL]. It’s not a strategy to drive anyone out of business. ‘Oh, the NFL is walking all over us.’ No, they are just looking for dates. If you happen to be scheduled on that date, you either move or you compete.”

The NFL lobbied the CFP to avoid staging all three games on Saturday, Dec. 21, according to Puck, and instead play two games on Friday (Dec. 20) and two on Saturday. The CFP chose otherwise. 

So, there will be one opening-round CFP game that Friday and Saturday evening, both broadcast on ABC/ESPN. The two Saturday afternoon CFP games will be televised on TNT, going directly up against two marquee NFL games – the Houston Texans-Kansas City Chiefs and the Pittsburgh Steelers-Baltimore Ravens – on network TV, NBC and Fox, respectively.

Not a normal strategy

Jon Lewis, owner of SportsMedia Watch, told Pac-12 insider Jon Wilner, “The decision to put two games opposite the College Football Playoff on NBC and Fox – that’s not normal.”

The NFL’s strategy is certainly not unique to the CFP. It is sucking up more oxygen in the sporting world throughout the fall and winter – and it is doing so because of the nation’s enormous appetite for its product.

The NFL last year began playing on Black Friday, which opposes a traditional college football window on the Friday after Thanksgiving. 

It is increasingly encroaching into Christmas Day – even on a Wednesday this coming December – creating a threat for the NBA, which long considered the day its own. And if an 18-game NFL schedule is our destiny – it is widely viewed as an inevitability – the Super Bowl could eventually impact NBA All-Star Weekend and the Daytona 500.

This December, the curtain will rise on the expanded CFP with much fanfare. But the challenge of scheduling against the NFL, now and in the future, remains formidable.

College football could start the bulk of its season one week earlier with a full Week Zero slate but otherwise doesn’t have a ton of wiggle room. And the NFL will steamroll anything in its programming path in its quest for eyeballs – even if that means stepping on the sport that supplies its future employees.

“I think that the NFL has its own strategy, and it is moving forward with that,” Kosner said. “And everybody else is going to have to move.”

John Kosner Spoke with Lucia Moses of Business Insider About How Sports Rights Will Impact Entertainment Spending

Original Article: Business Insider, by Lucia Moses, June 18th, 2024

The cost of sports content is soaring — and it could mean big cuts in Hollywood budgets

• Media companies are vying for NBA rights that are crucial for audience retention despite high costs.

• Tech giants like Apple and Amazon have joined the sports rights tussle, escalating competition.

• Entertainment spending could decline by as much as 8% by 2023 to fund sports, per one estimate.

Sports has increasingly become the star of the show for big TV companies, and its ascent is sending a shiver down Hollywood's spine.

The TV giants have recently been battling for NBA broadcasting rights, a fight that has spotlighted how important sports content has become to keeping audiences despite its ever-soaring costs.

But the land grab for sports — with billions of dollars being spent — could have dire consequences for a shaky Hollywood ecosystem.

"The growing relative importance of sports is another looming problem for an already-struggling Hollywood," wrote Doug Shapiro, a senior advisor at BCG and former strategy head at Turner Broadcasting System.

Sports media rights have never been more expensive, but media companies keep paying up. Why? They need sports to keep their declining TV businesses afloat and grow their streaming services.

At the same time, tech companies like Apple, Google, and Amazon have been gobbling up media rights, expanding the market for sports content.

The NBA is close to sealing a $76 billion, 11-year rights contract that would be 2.5 times the amount of its last one, The Wall Street Journal reported. Comcast's NBC, Disney's ESPN, Amazon, and Warner Bros. Discovery are in contention. But the biggest contracts have gone to the NFL, whose $110 billion, 11-year media deal of 2021 was nearly double its previous deal. S&P estimated the value of US sports rights has doubled in 10 years. And as media companies, their businesses already wobbly — take Warner Bros. Discovery, with a staggering $43 billion in debt — consider how they're going to fund sports, they could look no further than their entertainment budgets, which encompass TV shows like dramas and comedies. Those budgets are four times as big as sports, according to Shapiro.

A shift of budgets from sports to entertainment is already playing out in some places.

NBC parent Comcast is expected to cut programming costs to help pay for NBA rights, the Journal reported. Viewers have since learned NBC's "Late Night With Seth Meyers" will lose its house band.

NetMix also seems to be thinking of its new NFL deal as a replacement for mid-budget movies. When asked about the cost of the deal at a MoffettNathanson conference in May, senior NetMix exec Spencer Wang said he would characterize each game as "roughly the size of one of our medium-sized original films." NetMix already has been releasing fewer shows, and its former film chief recently laid out a plan to make fewer original movies.

The number of TV shows across the industry has been declining since the 2022 end of the Peak TV era. The rise of sports could accelerate that downward trend.

How sports content became so valuable

It may seem counterintuitive that media companies have to pay more for sports media rights, given their traditional TV audiences are shrinking as more people cut the cord.

But sports programming continues to draw huge, live audiences on a predictable schedule. Ninety-three of the 100 most-watched programs in 2023 were sports. And 13 of the last Super Bowls got more than 100 million viewers, with this year's game attracting a record 123.7 million, according to Nielsen.

With sports betting now legal in most states, people's interest in live sports could continue to grow. A Variety report showed that sports gamblers watch sports more than usual when they're betting on them, especially NFL fans (67%).

The live nature of sports makes it a must-buy for advertisers with time-sensitive product launches like cars or movies they need to promote. It's why primetime ad rates for sports can be as much as 25% higher than entertainment, said David Levy, former Turner Networks president and now co-CEO of Horizon Sports & Experiences.

"No one records sports and watches it the next day — it's still appointment viewing," Levy said. "And advertisers find that very attractive."

'Who's paying for all this?'

As sports content has become a sure thing, TV shows and movies look increasingly risky.

Entertainment viewing has shifted to streaming on demand, where it's lost some of its watercooler effect. Streaming has created relatively few new franchises, which are valuable for their built-in audiences. Established ones like Disney's Marvel and Star Wars have been running dry lately.

"What these companies are trying to tap into is existing fandom," said Jonathan Miller, a veteran media executive and chief executive of Integrated Media Co., which invests in digital media. "As the Hollywood franchises have become fatigued, sports has not. The fans find you. So it's about fandom and franchises you can bet on."

It's not game over after the NBA, either. Media companies have been aggressively pursuing other secondary sports to maintain their value to distributors and advertisers, as Warner Bros. Discovery recently did by picking up some college football games.

Sports' prominence was noticeable in the parade of athletes at the Cannes Lions advertising conference, as well as at the recent upfronts, the annual TV ad showcase where sellers from Amazon to WBD made their pitches to advertisers.

All this has dire implications for entertainment budgets, which media companies have already been trimming after overspending to build streaming businesses.

"Who's paying for all this? The other side of the house," the ubiquitous media and ad industry consultant Michael Kassan said. "All you have to do is go to the upfront and it's sports and news, sports and news."

Shapiro predicted sports could increase to represent more than 40% of total industry content spend by 2030, double the 20% it represented in 2023, while entertainment spending could decline as much as 8% a year in that same period. Gen AI tools could reduce Hollywood production costs, freeing up more money for sports, he wrote.

"Sports spending is absolutely coming at the expense of film and TV," fretted a creative-side figure at an entertainment company who was granted anonymity to speak candidly about internal divisions.

Power is shifting to the sports side of the house

The rising importance of sports also portends a power shift at media companies, where sports has traditionally been treated dismissively, with primetime slots given to entertainment, news, and other shows. To some, the shift is overdue. Levy said that during his time at Turner, sports was under 4% of programming hours at TNT and TBS but contributed 20% of the revenue.

"Sports was punching above their weight," he said.

Relationships with the top people in sports will likely be a bigger factor in leadership at media companies moving forward. Mark Lazarus, NBCUniversal Media Group's recently named chairman, came out of a sports background. NBC, which is looking to take WBD's NBA rights, has done the most of the broadcasters to elevate sports like the Olympics and the Premier League, sports media consultants John Kosner and Ed Desser recently wrote.

Sports can't solve all media companies' problems, though. They can only rent sports rights, which limits their ability to monetize them. It's one reason NetMix has downplayed the idea of getting into live sports (though in addition to the NFL, it's doing deals for sports-adjacent entertainment like WWE as it looks to build its ads tier).

Sports doesn't get repeat viewing the way entertainment does. Viewers want a mix of content, not just sports. And media companies have to bear in mind that live sports is significantly less popular with Gen Z than the population overall.

WBD CEO David Zaslav took heat for saying in 2022 that "we don't have to have the NBA" in anticipation of upcoming contract talks. He later walked back the comment, but it raised a larger question all media companies face: How much sports do they actually need to keep audiences and advertisers hooked?

"At the end of the day, all these streamers and platforms have to keep putting new stuff on screens, and sports isn't going to solve the need for 75% of viewership," said Alex Iosilevich, cofounder of Alignment Growth, a media, entertainment, and gaming investment firm

With Streamers Circling & Reduced Cable Penetration, A New Sports Playbook for Broadcast Network TV: John Kosner’s Latest SBJ Column with Ed Desser

Original Article: Sports Business Journal, by John Kosner and Ed Desser, May 27th, 2024

We started our careers in the early 1980s, a time of “shelf space” scarcity, with just three national commercial broadcast networks. Each carried some major league sports, almost exclusively on weekend afternoons, with only occasional prime-time coverage of crown jewel events such as the World Series, Super Bowl and Olympics. The 1981 NBA Finals were shown late-night, on tape delay! Fox would launch in 1986. ESPN and cable TV were in their infancy, neither well-distributed nor considered a proper host for major events. John held a programming position at CBS, which was the broadcast home of the then-struggling NBA, where Ed worked as head of broadcasting.

Like today, sports content deals then revolved around TV dollars and exposure, but sports divisions were dismissively considered the toy department in their own shops — a less profitable, distant priority behind what mattered: prime-time entertainment, national and local news and daytime soap operas. Led by the NFL, sports ultimately forged such a strong connection with viewers that it dominated all other programming. In 2023, 96 of the top 100 TV programs were sports. This performance also has been aided by Nielsen’s inclusion of out-of-home viewing, which disproportionately favors live games. Exempting sports, network average prime-time adult 18-49 ratings are now down to under a half a ratings point each.

We are advocates for best practices, constantly searching for incremental sports media value. With streamers circling and reduced cable penetration, it’s time to rethink the playbook for network TV sports:

• With the exception of NFL (and some events on lesser-viewed Friday/Saturday nights), broadcast sports continues to air mostly noon-6 p.m. on weekend afternoons (9 a.m.-3 p.m. Pacific), still “protecting” local/network news, access shows like “Jeopardy,” and of course, prime-time entertainment programs, with few non-playoff sports on weeknights. Any financial analysis of sports in prime time requires consideration of entertainment programming’s “preemptive impact.”

• Sports properties are valued by viewership and must look to maximize that. On the second and third Sundays of the NBA Playoffs, ABC aired a spectacular 47-point performance from Jalen Brunson and then a Game 7 between Cleveland and Orlando at 1 p.m. ET (10 a.m. PT), just as spring weather beckoned everyone outside. Last Sunday’s Knicks-Pacers Game 7 finished around 6 p.m. ET, when we believe it should have started, providing no lead-in for TNT’s Wolves-Nuggets Game 7. Those games had the most national appeal of anything on ABC’s schedule and would have drawn 50%-100% larger audiences had they been at 5:30 or 8 p.m. ET.  NBA ratings were down 12% for the first two rounds.  Exposure matters — especially to showcase emerging teams and stars to larger audiences.  The 5:30 p.m. ET weekend time period has not been used since NBC lost NBA rights 22 years ago. Putting NBA Playoffs in that slot would have also given ABC’s “American Idol” an enormous lead-in.

• We made the same point recently about ABC airing Caitlin Clark’s record NCAA women’s basketball championship game at 3 p.m. ET, not in prime time. The men’s championship also misses an opportunity by starting on Thursday afternoon, and has no Sunday CBS prime-time windows, still “protecting” what was once the top prime-time show franchise in a bygone television era, “60 Minutes” (though still among CBS’s highest-rated). Meanwhile, ABC aired the NFL Draft on a Thursday night, helping it draw 12.1 million viewers.

• In 2019, when Fox sold its studio and announced a recasting of its broadcast network around sports and events — NFL (at the time) on Thursday, WWE on Friday, and college football on Saturday night — it nevertheless hired a new entertainment programming executive. Why, when Fox programmed just nine remaining weekly prime-time entertainment hours (versus 22 for the other networks)? Instead, it could have easily filled those hours with sports it owned, including MLB and college basketball. Most broadcast networks continue to operate on what we believe is ’80s-dated inertia, before widespread cable, VCRs or streaming, when they collectively held a 90% prime-time audience share!

To their credit (and sports’ benefit), NBC is more aggressive. Its use of the Olympic rings to brand the network has set the standard for sports/TV integration. The Kentucky Derby post time was traditionally 5:40 p.m. ET. Earlier this month, NBC aired the 150th running at 7:02 p.m. ET, drawing 20.1 million viewers. The originators of “Breakfast at Wimbledon,” NBC has established weekend morning network coverage of the Premier League, helping to elevate international football. Look for the NFL to program weekly Sunday games from Europe, 9:30 a.m.-1 p.m. ET, by the end of the decade. Should NBC reclaim the NBA from Warner Bros. Discovery, it would mark the first time a major cable package migrated back to broadcast. It won’t be the last.

It’s not that NBC faces any issues different from its competitors, but it does think differently, highly valuing the power of live sports. When NBC pioneered the early weekend evening 5:30-8 p.m. ET NBA window (home to many classic Michael Jordan and Kobe Bryant games), it helped address potential preemptions by offering its local stations a highly rated and sellable news insert at halftime (similar to what the NFL has done in its late Sunday afternoon window).

The alchemy of sports media deals always involves reach and revenue. As traditional pay-TV subscribers shrink, broadcast networks with theoretical 100% reach are even more in vogue for rights holders. Sports dominated the 2024 upfronts — even for Netflix. It’s perfect timing for new network thinking, delivering the best games to the biggest audiences.

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Ed Desser is president of consultancy Desser Sports Media Inc. (www.desser.tv). John Kosner is president of consultancy Kosner Media (www.kosnermedia.com). Together they developed league TV strategy and ran the NBA’s media operations in the ’80s and ’90s.

John Kosner Spoke with Mike McCarthy of Front Office Sports About Netflix’s NFL Deal

Original Article: Front Office Sports, by Mike McCarthy, May 15th, 2024

NFL-Netflix Deal Could Set Stage for Mother of All Cash Grabs

• The league could opt out early of current rights deals—and charge more money.

• The NFL can opt out of its current media deals after seven years.

The NFL’s landmark Netflix deal puts the chess pieces in place for what could be the league’s biggest business gambit of all: opting out early of its current media-rights deals that will pay a combined $110 billion through 2033. That would likely force desperate legacy media partners such as CBS, Fox, NBC, and Disney’s ESPN to pony up even more in rights fees to keep their only must-have programming from being gobbled up by giant streamers like Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, and Google’s YouTube. 

Here’s how the mother of all cash grabs could work. The NFL’s current cycle of media-rights deals, signed in 2021, runs from the ’23 season through the ’33 season. But ProFootballTalk reported that all of the deals—repeat, all of them—can be terminated by the NFL after seven years. That means the NFL could throw all of its TV/streaming rights up for grabs after the ’30 season.

With the NFL conjuring new rights deals for Netflix’s Christmas Day doubleheader and Amazon’s Black Friday game out of thin air, would anybody bet against the league exercising those opt-out clauses? Especially when virtually every TV network and streamer spent this week touting their NFL programming to ad buyers during upfront week. 

When it comes to media-rights deals, the NFL is “diabolical,” tweeted Andrew Brandt, the former Packers executive turned executive director of the Moorad Center for the Study of Sports Law at Villanova University. Brandt laid out how the league horned in on the NBA’s longstanding Christmas dominance and is now bringing in Netflix over current rights partners for at least four valuable Christmas Day games that arguably should have gone to one of them. 

“I have no doubt that the NFL will opt out,” Brandt told me Wednesday. “What seemed like home runs for the NFL a couple of years ago now seem like bargains for the networks.”

The opt-opt clauses in its media deals were designed to give the NFL flexibility as it aims for an 18-game regular season and possible game windows, PFT noted back in 2021. But they also give the NFL the contractual freedom to do what it does best: Set up a bidding war for its expensive media packages. With NFL games accounting for 93 of the top 100 most-watched TV shows in ’23, incumbent rights partners will either have to play ball or risk living in the wilderness without live NFL games.

“For the NFL, it is always about having more bidders than packages,” John Kosner, the former ESPN executive turned media consultant, told Front Office Sports in an email. “Should that be the reality in 2029—likely!—I would expect the NFL to opt out of its current media agreements.”

From a strategic standpoint, the NFL’s Netflix deal is a boon for both partners. The league has now assembled a virtual murderers’ row of deep-pocketed media partners that include the four biggest broadcast entities (ABC/ESPN, CBS, Fox, and NBC) and three biggest streamers (Netflix, Amazon, and YouTube). No wonder the league wants to sell off its NFL Media operations: It has seven media partners clamoring to produce its games and studio programming.

For Netflix, the world’s biggest, most successful streamer with 260 million customers, it’s the beginning of its long-awaited move into live sports rights. There’s no trophy more valuable than NFL game rights. This could open the door for Netflix to bid on other major sports leagues, as well as continue its move into sports documentaries via Peyton Manning’s Omaha Productions, which will follow up the Quarterback docuseries with Receiver this summer.

There are still questions about Netflix’s agreement to stream an NFL doubleheader this Christmas Day and at least one yuletide game in 2025 and ’26. How much will Netflix pay the NFL? They won’t say. But figure at least $50 million to $100 million per game. Who will produce and call the games? Netflix wouldn’t comment on that either on Wednesday. 

Whatever the answers, there’s little doubt the NFL-Netflix deal is another “crossing the Rubicon” moment, says Kosner. From now on, legacy media companies will have to look over their shoulders for Netflix, as well as Amazon and YouTube. Things might never be the same.

“For a reported $150M, Netflix materially helps its evolving ad sales business, gains a tentpole on a holiday when all Americans are home, and challenges Amazon, Peacock, and Disney/ESPN+ for NFL streaming supremacy,” Kosner says. “[Netflix] also gets to gauge the impact that premium sports has on its platform. The prediction here: a much better investment for Netflix than its movies. And [it] sets the stage for many more and bigger sports rights investments by Netflix in the years to come.”

As for football fans and viewers, the future will entail more streaming services if they want access to all the games. As NFL reporter Albert Breer noted Wednesday, NFL games will stream this year on Netflix, Amazon Prime, Peacock, and ESPN+.

“There was a time when having an NFL Sunday Ticket and a cable subscription would get you access to every game. That time is over,” Breer wrote.

John Kosner Spoke with Ira Boudway of Bloomberg About the Caitlin Clark Effect for the WNBA

Original Article: Bloomberg, by Ira Boudway, May 10th, 2024

Ticket sales are way up, new TV deals are coming—and the players might actually start getting paid like pros.

On a Monday at the end of April, Caitlin Clark is on the practice court at Gainbridge Fieldhouse in Indianapolis. It’s her second day of training camp as a rookie with the Indiana Fever. During a scrimmage against a squad of male players, she dribbles up the floor, crosses over from her right hand to her left, steps back, and sinks a deep three. It’s a signature shot for Clark, one she made hundreds of times in her career at the University of Iowa, seen on SportsCenter highlights and in State Farm ads. Now the Fever, whose season begins on May 14 when the team opens on the road against the Connecticut Sun, expect it to become a fixture in the WNBA.

Clark is already the biggest thing to happen to the Fever. At the end of February, when she declared her intention to enter this year’s WNBA draft, the phone lines at the team’s ticket office began ringing immediately and didn’t stop for days. “Everybody was here all weekend long just answering phones,” says Todd Taylor, president and chief commercial officer at Pacers Sports & Entertainment, the ownership group for the Fever and the Indiana Pacers, the team’s NBA counterpart.

The Fever, who finished at the bottom of the Eastern Conference last year with a record of 13-27, won the rights to the first pick through the WNBA’s draft lottery in December. It was a foregone conclusion that the team would take Clark, who, in her four years as a Hawkeye, had become the all-time leading scorer in college basketball (men’s or women’s) and a national star unlike any before her.

After averaging 4,067 fans at Gainbridge Fieldhouse last year, second to last in the league, the Fever expect to be at or near a capacity crowd of 17,254 for each of their 20 home games this season. “We used to play in a barn with six fans,” NaLyssa Smith, a third-year forward, says after practice, referring to a stretch in 2021 when the team played at Indiana Farmers Coliseum on the state fairgrounds while the fieldhouse was undergoing renovations. “Now we’re going to be playing in sold-out arenas.”

On draft night in mid-April, a sellout crowd of 1,000 raucous fans showed up to watch Clark and the league’s other top soon-to-be rookies cross the stage and shake hands with Commissioner Cathy Engelbert at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in New York. Another 6,000 showed up at Gainbridge to watch on the big screen, part of an audience of more than 2.4 million who viewed it on ESPN—four times the previous record for a WNBA draft.

In Brooklyn, Clark sat in a white satin blazer and miniskirt from Prada, with her parents and two brothers seated with her at one of the 15 tables arrayed on stage—each with a purple tablecloth and a white-and-silver basketball centerpiece. When Engelbert announced the first pick, Clark told reporters afterward, the moment was no less gratifying for its lack of suspense. “When you’re kind of just sitting at a table waiting for your name to be called,” she said, “I think that really allows the emotions to feed you.”

This time around, the draft was more than a sorting of talent across the league’s 12 franchises; it was a formal kick-off for Clark’s professional career and a celebration of what promises to be a transformational season for the league. “Thank you to those who have been witness to the past 27 WNBA seasons,” Engelbert said during her opening remarks, “and welcome to all of you who will become WNBA fans from today on.”

Clark’s arrival comes at a key moment for the league. The WNBA is currently in talks over the TV rights for many of its games, with the remainder coming up for negotiation in the next 18 months. A new labor agreement with its players is also likely to be on the table during that span. If Clark thrives at the professional level—and if her millions of fans make the transition with her—it will change the math for everybody.

Her rise at Iowa bears echoes from 45 years ago, when the rivalry between Magic Johnson, then at Michigan State University, and Larry Bird, then at Indiana State University, drew record-breaking viewership for college basketball. That audience followed the pair to the NBA, where they took up their rivalry with the Los Angeles Lakers and Boston Celtics, respectively, helping to lift the league to its current status as a multibillion-dollar business and home to some of the most famous athletes in the world. Johnson and Bird gave way to Michael Jordan, who gave way to Kobe Bryant and Shaquille O’Neal, who gave way to LeBron James and Steph Curry, and so on. “That’s what we have coming,” Engelbert says during an interview in the league’s Manhattan offices in March. “I really believe that.”

For the moment, Clark has no peer in the WNBA when it comes to star power. But the league is full of would-be rivals. Over 40 games this summer, the Fever will face some of the best players in the world—a cast of pros who will try to bump the celebrated rookie from the spotlight. Clark’s challenge will be to keep draining those deep threes. The league’s will be to showcase its other stars, turning Clark fans into WNBA fans.

CLARK’S IMPACT ON THE COLLEGE GAME IS HARD TO OVERSTATE. AS a Hawkeye, she played in the four most-watched games in the history of women’s college basketball. Iowa’s loss to the University of South Carolina in this year’s national championship game drew nearly 19 million viewers, outpacing the most-watched non-Clark game of all time by about 10 million—and topping this year’s men’s final.

“I don’t know that we’ve ever seen anything exactly like it,” says Michael Mulvihill, president of insights and analytics at Fox Corp., whose networks carried dozens of Iowa games during Clark’s career. At the beginning of her freshman year, an Iowa game on Fox’s Big Ten Network drew about 50,000 viewers. By the end of her senior year, in a game against Ohio State on Fox’s national broadcast station, 3.4 million viewers watched her break Pete Maravich’s 54-year-old scoring record. “We’re still trying to figure out, how exactly did that happen?” Mulvihill says. According to John Kosner, a sports media consultant and former executive with the NBA and ESPN, Clark belongs on a short list of athletes who can draw in casual fans by the millions. “In my lifetime,” he says, “that’s Muhammad Ali, Michael Jordan and Tiger Woods.”

In October, in an outdoor preseason exhibition at Iowa’s football stadium, more than 55,000 people watched Clark play, a record number for women’s basketball. Virtually everywhere the Hawkeyes played last season, they matched or set records, boosting their visitors’ attendance by an average of 150%, according to the Associated Press, while their home games consistently drew sellout crowds of nearly 15,000. “She’s building women’s basketball,” says Angela Ruggiero, co-founder of the market consultant Sports Innovation Lab, a four-time Olympic medalist with the US Women’s National Ice Hockey Team and a WNBA investor. “She’s building women’s sports. She’s so much bigger than just basketball.”

While the WNBA has seen strong growth in viewership and attendance since the pandemic—with women’s sports in general experiencing a boom in interest and investment—Clark’s Iowa numbers far outpace the league’s. Last year’s finals between the defending champion, the Las Vegas Aces, and the New York Liberty drew an average of 728,000 viewers per game, making it the most-watched in 20 years. Regular season attendance was the highest it’s been since 2018, at an average of 6,615 fans per game.

Women’s college basketball has a more than 100-year headstart on the WNBA. It enjoys spillover from the deeply ingrained allegiances and large followings of other college sports. Mulvihill at Fox Sports says his company’s networks plan to pivot from promoting Clark to other stars still in college such as JuJu Watkins of the University of Southern California and Paige Bueckers of the University of Connecticut. “If you just ask sports fans, ‘Have you ever heard of the USC Trojans? Have you ever heard of the Connecticut Huskies?’ Everybody has,” he says. “The WNBA has a challenge in front of them just in terms of establishing their brands to a general sports audience.”

In the final months of Clark’s senior season, the gap between the size of her Hawkeye following and the WNBA’s audience led to a public debate about whether she’d be better off staying in college another year. Clark had the option to do so, because the National Collegiate Athletic Association had granted an extra year of eligibility to athletes whose careers had been disrupted by the pandemic. Because the NCAA had also abolished its longstanding prohibition on athletes profiting from their name, image and likeness (NIL), Clark had assembled a multimillion-dollar portfolio of marketing deals with blue-chip brands including State Farm Insurance, Gatorade and Nike.

“I am probably speaking stupidity here when I say this,” Tony Kornheiser, co-host of the ESPN talk show Pardon the Interruption, said on air in January before suggesting that Clark stay at Iowa for another year “because of the pay cut she is going to have to take to go to the WNBA compared with the NIL money.”

The self-doubt was justified. Clark is, of course, free to sign marketing deals as a WNBA player and has only added to her off-the-court income since turning pro. In March, just a few days after she declared for the draft, the Indiana-based financial services company Gainbridge, which owns naming rights to the arena where the Fever and Pacers play, announced it had signed her for an undisclosed amount. A month later, Clark agreed to a new deal with Nike Inc. for $28 million over eight years, the biggest endorsement contract for a women’s basketball player.

The “pay cut” discourse got started because of Clark’s rookie salary with the Fever. According to the WNBA’s collective bargaining agreement (CBA) with its players, she’ll take home a base pay of $76,535 in her first year. As new fans turned their attention to the league, this figure—less than a hundredth of the $12.2 million salary of the first pick in the 2023 NBA draft, Victor Wembanyama—went viral and became a rallying cry for equal pay in women’s sports. “It’s time that we give our daughters the same opportunities as our sons and ensure women are paid what they deserve,” wrote President Joe Biden in a post on X the day after the draft.

“Look, it’s low,” says Engelbert of Clark’s base pay. “It’s low for a reason.” In 2020, when the WNBA entered the current agreement, she says, the league’s economics weren’t where they needed to be to pay more. That, she says, is changing.

THE WNBA HIRED ENGELBERT AS ITS FIRST COMMISSIONER IN 2019. (Though she was the first to get the title, Engelbert, like WNBA presidents before her, reports to the NBA commissioner.) As an undergraduate at Lehigh University, she captained the lacrosse and basketball teams. Before taking the WNBA job, she’d spent 33 years at Deloitte, where she rose to become the first female chief executive officer of a Big Four accounting firm. It was a “bit of a shock” to go from running a 100,000-person company to “a league of 144 players,” she says. The WNBA she inherited, she adds, needed a “total transformation.”

The NBA formed its sister league in 1996 to fill in summer broadcast and arena schedules. It began with eight teams the following year and, by 2000, had expanded to 16. Four teams folded within the next nine years. Over its first two decades, NBA Commissioner Adam Silver told the AP in 2018, the league operated at a modest loss of about $10 million per year. “It’s not a secret that we haven’t cracked the code on how to make money in women’s basketball,” Silver said.

Such losses are normal for a startup sports league. But while the WNBA was steadily increasing revenue and, more important, building the allegiances that are the lifeblood of professional sports, it wasn’t clear, at least to Silver, that the venture was sustainable. Engelbert was hired to make it so. Her first task: negotiate a new pay package with players.

In January 2020 the league struck an eight-year collective bargaining agreement. For the first time in WNBA history, the association boasted, average compensation would exceed six figures—a landmark that mainly underscored how low the baseline was. In the first season of the deal, the maximum salary was set at $215,000, up from $117,500 in the last year of the expiring deal. It’s this agreement’s rookie wage scale—established while Clark was a senior at Dowling Catholic High School in West Des Moines—that set her 2024 salary at a rate more fitting for an entry-level accountant than a once-in-a-generation basketball talent.

The 2020 CBA also created incentives for players to help the business grow. Every off-season, a handful of stars can make up to $250,000 each through marketing agreements with the league. Instead of going to play in Australia or Italy, as many players do to make extra money, they spend their fall and winter training in the US—and occasionally make promotional appearances for league sponsors such as CarMax, Deloitte and Google. (Phoenix Mercury star Brittney Griner was returning to Russia to play for club team UMMC Ekaterinburg when she was detained in Moscow in February 2022.) “It’s not a heavy lift to do a league marketing agreement,” Engelbert says, “but they can make some good money.” Between this program and a similar arrangement available from each franchise—plus salaries and a handful of performance incentives—top players can make as much as $500,000.

On top of that, if league revenue increases by 20% each year—using 2019 as the baseline—it triggers small payouts for all players. Pandemic disruptions, however, put that target out of reach. In 2020, the WNBA had $56.2 million in sales, according to internal documents reviewed by Bloomberg News—only an 8.5% growth rate.

Read more: Women’s Basketball Is Raking in More Cash Than Ever, But the Players Aren’t

Players have yet to receive payouts even four years later. Now, however, the incentive is basically moot; at the end of this season, players can abandon the agreement early, making 2025 its final year. Everything indicates they plan to do so. (The WNBA players’ union didn’t respond to requests for comment.)

Once the CBA was done, Engelbert went out to raise money. After a pandemic delay, the WNBA announced in early 2022 that it had brought in $75 million from a group including Michael Dell, Condoleezza Rice, Laurene Powell Jobs, Ruggiero and Nike. The deal valued the league and its teams at about $1 billion. Engelbert used the funds to go on a hiring spree, adding software engineers to revamp the league’s app and beefing up the marketing department. Clark’s arrival is perfectly timed. While she was making a name for herself at Iowa, Engelbert was laying the groundwork for the WNBA to better sell itself.

The formula for a good product, Engelbert says, has three parts: household names, rivalries and games of consequence. Clark checks the first box. The upside of the women’s game is that schools still do much of the work of identifying, developing and promoting young talent. The WNBA doesn’t allow US players to enter the league before age 22, ensuring that most spend four years in college. “You don’t have to create the identities for the players,” says Taylor of Pacers Sports & Entertainment. “They’re already bringing them.” And their fans are especially devoted. “Women athletes drive engagement at very, very high levels,” says Lindsay Kagawa Colas, an agent for Griner and other WNBA stars at talent management agency Wasserman Media Group. “There is a stickiness to their fandom, to the way that people love them and follow them, that is unique to women’s sports.”

In the men’s game, the chances of someone having a record-breaking college career like Clark’s are increasingly slim. The NBA’s minimum age of 19 means many top players spend only a year in school, if they attend at all. Startup leagues such as OTE, founded in 2021 for players as young as 16, offer alternative paths to the NBA, and many top prospects come from Europe. For casual fans, this means that rookies often arrive out of nowhere. The projected top pick in June’s NBA draft is Alexandre Sarr, a 7-foot-1 Frenchman who plays in Australia.

For the rivalry piece, the WNBA is full of players ready to oblige. In Las Vegas, the league has a budding dynasty in the two-time defending champion Aces, who are led by A’ja Wilson, a center with flawless footwork. In their home opener on May 16, the Fever will face the New York Liberty, who lost to the Aces in last year’s finals, which has a cast of stars including sharpshooter Sabrina Ionescu and reigning league MVP Breanna Stewart. Once household names and rivalries are in place, games of consequence follow.

During this year’s March Madness women’s tournament, the WNBA ran ads featuring veteran players with the tagline “Welcome to the W.” In one, Dallas Wings guard Arike Ogunbowale recommends that rookies use a “No Shade” lotion for “guaranteed thicker skin.” In another, Stewart sits down to eat a bowl of “Rookie-O’s” cereal “packed with first round draft pick flavor.” The tongue-in-cheek spots, created with ad agency Wieden+Kennedy, were both an invitation for college fans to follow their favorite players to the WNBA and a warning to those players—a way to build anticipation for Clark’s arrival while turning the spotlight onto the league’s broader talent pool. “It can’t just be about Caitlin,” Engelbert says.

Still, the WNBA’s national TV schedule, announced just before the draft, is suddenly Fever heavy. Of the team’s 40 regular season games this year, 36 will air nationally, including two on ABC, two on CBS and five on ESPN. Last year, the team had one national TV game, with some games only available on its Facebook stream.

Even before setting foot on the court in a WNBA game, Clark has helped give the league leverage in its TV rights negotiations. The association currently pulls in about $60 million annually from Disney’s ESPN, Paramount Global’s CBS Sports, the Scripps-owned network Ion and Amazon’s Prime Video. Engelbert has said she hopes to double that revenue. That goal, says Daniel Cohen, a media rights consultant at Octagon Inc., would’ve been out of reach before Clark, but it’s now achievable. “The Caitlin Clark effect is real,” Cohen says. “She is a generational talent and could not have come at a better time for the W.”

In April, the WNBA extended its deals with Amazon.com Inc. and CBS through the end of the 2025 season, coinciding with the expiration of its agreements with Ion and, most importantly, ESPN. The majority of the WNBA’s TV revenue is derived from ESPN, which broadcasts 25 regular-season games along with the playoffs on its cable networks and ABC. ESPN acquired WNBA games as part of a nine-year, $12.6 billion deal with the NBA that began in 2016.

Both leagues are poised to renew their contracts with ESPN in an 11-year deal projected to generate about $2.6 billion annually, according to Bloomberg News, nearly doubling the NBA’s current annual revenue from the network. Additionally, the WNBA is involved in a new agreement between the NBA and Amazon, which will contribute $1.8 billion annually over 11 years to augment Amazon’s existing WNBA package. The WNBA’s share of both deals, neither of which is finalized, is reported to signify a significant increase in rights fees for the league, according to a source familiar with the negotiations.

Engelbert notes that the conversation surrounding women’s sports has evolved. Previously, broadcasters and corporate sponsors regarded the WNBA as a marketing expense—a means to earn goodwill by demonstrating support for gender equality. However, in recent years, they have come to perceive women’s sports as a legitimate entertainment asset offering the potential for a meaningful return on investment. Engelbert remarks, “When I came in, people were viewing women’s sports as a charity. We’re far from that.”

Any increase in TV revenue for the WNBA will enhance the leverage players possess at the bargaining table with the league. Player salaries typically lag behind. For instance, Michael Jordan's rookie salary in 1986 was $550,000. Even a decade later, amidst a dynasty with the Chicago Bulls, he earned only $3.9 million annually. However, due to Jordan’s influence in reshaping the NBA’s economics from a league generating revenue in the hundreds of millions of dollars to one with billions, even average players now earn tens of millions annually.

But even when compared to the historical standards of their male counterparts, WNBA players are considered underpaid. According to data compiled by sports economist Rodney Fort, during the 1972-73 NBA season, which was the league's 27th season, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar of the Milwaukee Bucks was the highest-paid player, earning $350,000. Adjusting for inflation, that amount would equate to about $2.6 million in today's currency. In contrast, the highest-paid WNBA player today earns only about $242,000 in salary. Former ice hockey player Ruggiero expresses hope for a future where gender becomes irrelevant in determining pay, emphasizing that the focus should be on who brings the best entertainment value.

Engelbert, whose primary responsibility is to safeguard the interests of the owners, has a long-term objective of increasing franchise values and expanding the league. In February 2023, the ownership of the Seattle Storm sold a minority stake in the team at a franchise valuation of $151 million, as reported by Sports Business Journal, nearly ten times the previous record for a WNBA team sale. Additionally, in October, according to Sportico, the NBA's Golden State Warriors paid a record $50 million expansion fee for a new WNBA team in San Francisco set to commence play in 2025. Engelbert highlights the inadequacy of being a league present in only 12 cities within a country of 330 million people, stating, "that’s not enough." She outlines her aim of expanding to 24 teams in the next decade.

EARLY RETURNS SUGGEST MANY OF CLARK’S FANS ARE, IN FACT, following her to the WNBA. Even after raising ticket prices twice in the past six months—once when they won the draft lottery and again when Clark said she was going pro—the Fever will soon have a waitlist, Taylor says, for season tickets in its lower bowl. The team used to remove about 800 seats behind one basket for Fever games to make room for a giant inflatable slide and other carnival games. The “Family Fun Zone” is gone now. The team needs the seats for paying customers.

The Aces and Washington Mystics have moved home games against the Fever to larger venues to account for the unusual demand—the Aces from their usual home at the 12,000-seat Michelob Ultra Arena to the 18,000-seat T-Mobile Arena and the Mystics from the 4,200-seat Entertainment & Sports Arena to the 20,000-seat Capital One Arena. Overall WNBA ticket sales are up 93% over last year at this time, according to online marketplace StubHub.

Clark’s fame is such that the league is scrapping its policy of having teams fly commercial between games, a hassle that Clark didn’t have to endure at Iowa. Video of Clark on the flight to Dallas for the Fever’s first preseason game against the Wings in early May became a news story, complete with footage of her by the baggage carousel and eyewitness testimony from a passenger in her row. Four days later, Engelbert said the WNBA would be moving to charter travel for players “as soon as we can get the planes in place.”

For those who’ve followed the league—and for the players who’ve helped build it—the attention that follows Clark feels both welcome and long overdue. “I, of course, feel elated and vindicated and energized,” Lindsay Gibbs, a reporter who has covered the WNBA and women’s sports for more than a decade, wrote in her Power Plays newsletter, “but I also feel angry that it didn’t happen sooner.” In a league in which many of the biggest stars and nearly 80% of players are people of color, there’s also the question of why it’s taken a White player to galvanize interest.

Colas at Wasserman points out that much of the media gushing over Clark has been ignoring the league for decades. “This wave that feels like it’s cresting has been building energy over many, many, many years,” she says.

However it happened, the wave is here. Clark has lifted nearly every measure of demand by an order of magnitude. She begins her WNBA career with unprecedented attention, sky-high expectations and proud veterans waiting to welcome her to the W. “Reality is coming,” Diana Taurasi, the WNBA’s all-time leading scorer, now entering her 20th season with the Phoenix Mercury, said on ESPN in April. “You look superhuman playing against 18-year-olds, but you’re going to come [play] with some grown women that have been playing professional basketball for a long time.”

Clark isn’t shying away. “There is kind of a target on our back,” she says after Fever practice in April. “That’s something you embrace and you love. You wouldn’t want it any other way.” The Fever lost that preseason game against the Wings at a sold-out College Park Center in Arlington, Texas, with Ogunbowale hitting the game-winning three, but Clark led her team with 21 points, including five threes—a promising start to her pro career. “Give her the ball, and let her do her thing,” Ruggiero says. “She wouldn’t be this popular if she wasn’t that good.” —With Randall Williams