Is A Superstar Exodus From Traditional Media Coming?

Original Article: John Wall Street, by Howie Long-Short, June 9th, 2020

The New York Post recently reported that Jason Whitlock is “believed to be looking into starting his own direct-to-consumer business.” Unable to come to terms on an extension with Fox Sports, the former Kansas City Star columnist is said to be considering the possibility of “sidestepping traditional media” in favor of trying his hand as a standalone media outlet. It remains to be seen if Whitlock ultimately ends up launching his own endeavor (he told Front Office Sports that he had conversations with Jimmy Pitaro about rejoining ESPN prior to the pandemic), but with the tools needed to be successful widely available (think: email distribution, social media platforms, video and podcast capabilities), the roadmap set (see: Bill Simmons, Joe Rogan) and Coronavirus bound to negatively impact talent budgets across the industry it begs to wonder if other high-profile sports media personalities will look to launch their own platforms at the expiration of their current deals. 

Our Take: John Kosner (Kosner Media) foresees a superstar exodus on the horizon “in part because top talent will have no choice but to examine what they could do [in a D2C capacity] moving forward.” The former ESPN EVP of digital/print media explained that as the established players’ own businesses continue to shrink (think: post-COVID economy in the short-term, cord-cutting in the long-term), their budgets for talent are going to decrease accordingly. When high-paid talent comes up on the end of their contracts, they'll likely have to decide between taking a salary reduction or launching their own digital outlet (or both). 

““The Sports Illustrated of the future might be a collective of the most influential voices.””

— John Kosner

Transformational talent (the D2C model only works for those on the A-List) no longer needs to work for an established media company with readily available D2C channels enabling them to both push out content and build a following. In fact, a prominent C-Level executive at one sports network suggested that remaining employed with a legacy player could actually hold capable individuals back from achieving a major financial payday. He cited Bill Simmons, who was reportedly earning ‘just’ $3 million/year at ESPN before leaving for HBO in 2015, as an example of a personality who brought significantly more value to his/her employer than he/she was being compensated for. The Ringer founder managed to parlay his brand and podcast empire into a $196 million payday back in February (Spotify bought the company).

If the D2C movement gathers steam Kosner suggested it could result in the creation of a new content bundle. “The Sports Illustrated of the future might be a collective of the most influential voices - each with their own digital subscription service - who could make more money packaged together then they could if they were each a standalone.”  Customers would have the ability to personalize their individual package with their choice of different "experts".

Simmons, Dave Portnoy and Joe Rogan have all managed to experience tremendous success in the emerging D2C space, but that doesn't mean what they've done can be easily replicated. As Kosner reminds, “those men are personalities and there aren’t a lot of other examples of individuals who have built valuable media companies within the sports world." That's because aside from being hard work, it’s difficult to monetize digital media with the likes of Facebook and Google dominating ad budgets.

Subscription is the only viable business model for most in the digital space (few have the audience size needed to monetize existing platforms the way Rogan has), so a new media co. will likely need to generate content people would be willing pay for if it's going to be successful. That's easier said than done. Kosner said to build a paid subscriber base the outlet needs "to be in the business of telling the audience something they don’t already know (i.e. consumers are not paying for hot takes), be able to do it consistently and deliver the insight on platforms the audience cares about” (see: podcasting).  

It reasons to believe there are media personalities who believe because they’ve managed to accumulate “tremendous follower numbers on platforms like Twitter and Instagram” that they could/would be capable of launching a widely profitable D2C subscription service. But it’s important to remember that none of those social media followers are paying for the content produced and as Kosner said it’s “not trivial to convert people who are used to being served content for free into paid subs; particularly when some - or all - of the personality’s best contributions are available for free elsewhere” (like on Twitter and IG).

If top-end talent ends up deciding to take salary reductions Kosner believes it could come with some additional freedoms (as opposed to the exclusive terms the legacy players currently enjoy). The tech and media investor said he“could see a scenario where the media personality remains with a traditional outlet to do television at a reduced salary (as that is where much of the advertising value lies), but they’re allowed to take their digital presence elsewhere” (and monetize to the best of their ability). The sports media exec we spoke to agreed and mentioned Pat McAfee and Clay Travis as examples of individuals already pursuing that path. “[Those guys] are selling their services almost as if they were individual studios.”

ABC, ESPN Could ‘MegaCast’ Raiders Vs. Saints in Las Vegas

Original Article: Front Office Sports, by Michael McCarthy, June 3rd, 2020

Circle “Monday Night Football’s” Week 2 telecast during the NFL’s upcoming 2020 season. Not only will it be the Las Vegas Raiders’ first home date, but the September 21 game will also mark ABC’s first regular-season NFL telecast in 15 years.

On the 50th anniversary of “Monday Night Football,” Walt Disney Co. sister networks ABC and ESPN will both televise the Raiders vs. New Orleans Saints.

Broadcast network ABC could televise a straightforward simulcast of ESPN’s telecast. However, ESPN may “MegaCast” that evening’s “Monday Night Football” game the way it offers more than a dozen alternate watching options for the CFP National Championship Game, said sources.

That means ABC and ESPN could employ different teams of announcers, different camera angles, or different coverage approaches, for the same NFL game.

ESPN’s telecast, for example, would feature the regular announcing crew that calls every game. ABC’s coverage, on the other hand, might offer viewers the opportunity to hear the home team’s local radio announcers call the game. In this case, it would be Brent Musburger, the play-by-play voice of the Raiders. 

Or ABC could offer viewers the ability to watch the game from different angles, such as the popular SkyCam view above and behind the action on the field.

Having a single media partner offer alternate game telecasts on sister networks would mark a radically new approach for the NFL. 

For decades, ESPN, CBS, NBC, Fox and NFL Network offered one announce team and one telecast per game, giving viewers no other choice if they wanted to watch the game.

One of the few exceptions is during ESPN’s annual season-opening “Monday Night Football” doubleheader, which requires two broadcast crews. This season, ESPN will again employ different announce teams on Sep. 14, which will feature the Pittsburgh Steelers at New York Giants and Tennessee Titans at Denver Broncos.

Besides the CFP National Championship, Disney has been MegaCasting the NFL Draft for several years, noted former ESPN executive John Kosner.

ESPN offers the traditional X’s and O’s version of the Draft with guru Mel Kiper and Trey Wingo.  ABC, on the other hand, takes a more college football-centric approach with Kirk Herbstreit and the “College GameDay” crew.  Kosner called using that same approach for live games as a “differentiating opportunity for ESPN.”

“Even if there’s a ‘one size fits all’ game call that serves the majority of viewers, an event of the magnitude of ‘Monday Night Football’ lends itself to a broader audience approach,” he said.

Gus Ramsey, the former ESPN producer turned program director at the Dan Patrick School of Broadcasting, thinks plenty of viewers would watch an alternate call by Musburger. Or other different studio shows on the Las Vegas Strip and inviting entertainers to stop by to turn the game into more of a spectacle. Or even have its fantasy sports expert Matthew Berry host a fantasy football-focused telecast.

“Let’s start with the premise, and it’s a fair one, that not everybody is necessarily in love with the broadcast team – regardless of who it is or who it might be. So maybe on one channel, you get the home radio team. On the other, you get the visiting radio team. Then you simulcast them along with the game,” said Ramsey. 

READ MORE: Why ESPN Bets The House On College Football ‘MegaCast.’

The NFL has made some inroads into multiple telecasts of the same game. 

The league already tri-casts “Thursday Night Football” on broadcast TV on Fox, cable TV on NFL Network, and digital on Amazon Prime Video and Twitch. Amazon’s streaming coverage does not feature Fox/NFL Network’s “Thursday Night Football” announce team of Joe Buck, Troy Aikman, and Erin Andrews. 

Instead, Amazon hired Hannah Storm and Andrea Kremer to deliver an optional feed to Fox’s coverage to more than 200 countries in 2018. They’re the only female crew to call live NFL games. 

In 2017, the NFL signed a one-year streaming deal with Amazon, which owns Twitch, worth $50 million. Amazon and the NFL signed a two-year extension the next year at a rate of $65 million per season. This spring, the two sides signed a three-year extension worth over $200 million. 

Meanwhile, both ESPN and Fox Sports offer separate, Spanish-language versions of “Monday Night Football” and “Thursday Night Football” on ESPN Deportes and Fox Deportes.

Before the kickoff of the 2019 season, Brian Rolapp, the NFL’s executive vice president of media, said the league was “certainly open” to more alternate video/audio/digital feeds as  more viewers migrate from linear to digital platforms. 

“You see what we’re doing on ‘Thursday Night Football.’ We’re not only distributing 11 of those games on Amazon Prime but they’re also on Twitch (a platform for gamers),” said Rolapp.

On Monday, NFL spokesman Alex Reithmiller said the league’s stance hadn’t changed. 

The NFL will continue to “experiment,” mostly around “Thursday Night Football” which the league uses as a laboratory for new programming ideas, according to Riethmiller.  

MegaCasting “Monday Night Football” could help ESPN down the road too. 

ESPN’s $2 billion a year “Monday Night Football” contract expires after the 2021 season. MegaCasting could give Disney more ammo  as it enters contract negotiations.

As a broadcast network, ABC reaches more homes and viewers than a cable network like ESPN. Bringing the bigger ABC into the mix would help ESPN reach cord-cutters and cord-shavers who have dropped their cable TV packages.

There’s also been speculation Disney wants to shift “Monday Night Football” to ABC from ESPN. Or acquire a second NFL TV package for ABC, which will feature better games and flexible scheduling. 

Getting viewers comfortable watching live NFL game coverage on ABC again is a strategic way to do it. ABC televised the first “Monday Night Football” game between Joe Namath’s New York Jets and the Cleveland Browns on Sep. 21, 1970.

As MegaCasting becomes more popular, look for other media and digital companies to experiment with alternate video/audio feeds and more interactive elements, predicted Kosner.

“I expect NFL broadcasters will move aggressively in this direction.”

— John Kosner

“Amazon has pioneered two women in a booth for ‘Thursday Night Football.’ The NFL attracts a significant Hispanic audience; Twitch has featured the popular streamer Ninja around Detroit Lions games,” Kosner said. “There are many, many ways to go. I expect NFL broadcasters will move aggressively in this direction.”

READ MORE: NFL Embracing MultiCast Approach To Live Game Coverage

After reassigning Booger McFarland and Joe Tessitore to new duties, ESPN still hasn’t announced its “Monday Night Football” broadcast crew for 2020. So the decision on whether or not to MegaCast Raiders-Saints is still a ways off. 

An ESPN spokesman indicated specific broadcast plans for Raiders-Saints will be announced closer to the start of the NFL season. ESPN declined to comment on NFL rights negotiations.

The NFL’s average viewership grew 5% during the 2019 season to 16.5 million average viewers per game. The league generated 47 of the top 50 most-watched shows on TV. ESPN scored its most-watched NFL season since 2015 averaging 12.6 million viewers, up 8% over the year before.

Sports Leagues are Preparing for an Era Without Fans

Original Article: Axios Sports, by Kendall Baker, May 13, 2020

At the turn of the century, futurist Watts Wacker predicted that sports stadiums of the future would essentially be sound stages optimized for TV, rather than coliseum-like structures built to seat thousands of fans.

Why it matters: Prior to the coronavirus, things were already moving in this direction, with teams building smaller, more intimate venues in response to declining attendance and changing viewing habits.

• And now, as we transition from the No Sports Era to the No Fans Era, Wacker's prophecy has become reality — albeit under circumstances he could never have anticipated.

The state of play: Our sports-less odyssey is nearing its end, but fans won't be packing stadiums any time soon, meaning a return to normalcy is still months away.

• According to a FiveThirtyEight/Ipsos poll of more than 1,000 Americans, only 24% of respondents said they would be either very likely or somewhat likely to attend a sporting event right now if government restrictions were lifted. 58% said they would be "not at all likely."

• When asked what condition would make them feel comfortable attending a game, respondents overwhelmingly answered "the development of a COVID-19 vaccine," which isn't likely until 2021 at the earliest. And 27% said even a vaccine wouldn't do the trick.

The big picture: For athletes and coaches, empty stadiums will create a surreal environment that lacks the energy and noise that fans provide.

"There's a reason why people say fans play such an integral role in the process of the game. When you don't have fans and that atmosphere, it becomes flat. And it becomes a lot of forced energy and a lot of moments you are trying to create instead of it creating it for you."

— Diamondbacks pitcher Luke Weaver, via USA Today

As for the broadcasts, fanless games will likely accelerate changes already in development, sports media consultant and former ESPN executive John Kosner tells me. And some of those changes could be permanent.

• "We will see the use of new technologies come to the fore, with things like augmented reality used to cover empty seats and actual crowd noise pumped in from fans watching remotely," says Kosner. "All to bring sight, sound and emotion to the otherwise drab proceedings."

• "You already see elements of fan interactivity on Twitch and in gaming — now we could see that take hold on traditional sports telecasts. More trivia, social media integrations, the option to choose the next guest."

• "What makes me optimistic is that we'll come up with some good ideas here that will be part of the 'new normal' once we get to the other side, and that we'll come out of this dark period with a greater appreciation for how important fans are."

Go deeper: How sports media is handling the coronavirus outage

A New Reality Powered by AI

Original Article: Sports Business Journal, by Eric Prisbell, April 13th 2020

The challenges ahead for the sports industry will expedite the growth and impact of artificial intelligence, the result of technology meeting demand.

n the morning of Jan. 8, Mark Cuban likened the global pursuit of unlocking artificial intelligence’s full potential to the 20th century space race, enlightening a packed ballroom of entrepreneurs and media and industry leaders at CES 2020 in Las Vegas with an AI endorsement as clear as it was declarative.

The Dallas Mavericks owner said that businesses that don’t embrace AI will soon become dinosaurs. AI will separate the haves from have-nots who “might as well rip out all the computers in your office and throw away your phones,” he said. And, Cuban added, if you don’t use AI now, “you’re the equivalent of somebody in 1999 saying, ‘Yeah, I’m sure this internet thing will be OK, but I don’t give a shit.’”

Three months later, Cuban’s words resonate with even more urgency. The world has been turned upside down amid the COVID-19 pandemic, thrust into a historic health and economic crisis that promises to dramatically alter all aspects of life for the foreseeable future. While the priority is saving lives and curtailing the virus’s spread, sport is a multibillion-dollar, multifaceted industry that will rely heavily on AI-powered solutions as it confronts a plethora of broad challenges in the uncertain months ahead.

“Before coronavirus, artificial intelligence and technologies such as computer vision and machine learning have been changing sports,” said John Kosner, the former longtime ESPN Digital executive who invests in and advises a portfolio of tech startups. “After coronavirus, they will transform them. It is all going to be so integrated into the sports experience, an indispensable part of the mix.”

Kosner is among those who believe that the sports world will be pressed to create “premium versions of themselves,” including high-end content like advanced statistics, customized highlights and immersive experiences (VR/AR), to begin to try to make up for lost gate revenue. These technologies will be used to create innovations to attract and engage fans.  

Industry leaders will seek to create more self-serve experiences for those either unable to return to sporting venues and health clubs because of Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidelines, or unwilling to because of the psychological impact of what they are enduring. Then there are unknown elements, such as how much discretionary income fans may have once live sporting events return, that will need to be factored into decisions by leagues, teams and sports businesses. 

The sports world’s future is foggy. But AI’s potential in sports is “pretty close to endless,” said Andrew Robinson, the CTO for Dallas-based Event Dynamic, which uses AI to optimize ticket prices for teams. “The real power that AI is able to bring to bear is the ability to analyze data so much faster than what a human could do and in a retrainable way that can constantly learn, evolve and get better.”

Technologies such as machine learning, computer vision and deep learning, among others, all fall under the umbrella of AI, which remains in the early stages of benefiting the sports ecosystem even as more organizations have hired data scientists, developers and others in business intelligence roles. The sports business’s recovery from the global pandemic will accelerate AI’s impact — and perhaps vice versa as well — the result of an emerging technology meeting opportunity and demand. And according to those who invest in, develop and lead AI-powered businesses, the outcome is expected to be revolutionary. 

“It’s going to have significant impact,” said Keith Bank, a Chicago-area veteran of the venture capital industry and CEO and founder of the firm KB Partners. “A lot of AI things that have originally been used maybe by the elite athletes and organizations, teams and leagues are going to filter down to the everyday person. There’s going to be a whole new wave of companies that take what has happened over the last month and figure out ways to hopefully capitalize. Where people work is going to change. Where people view sports is going to change. The way people view sports is going to change. There’s going to be a sea change. There’s going to be some long-lasting and permanent innovations that come from this.”

HOW CONTENT IS MADE

If live sporting events return before fans are allowed in venues, an emphasis will be placed on enhancing the broadcast. Kosner envisions the potential of live video shots of fans and influencers watching the game at home being interspersed into the live game broadcast to liven up what otherwise would be a game devoid of crowd noise.

Consider the possibilities unlocked by a company like Kiswe, which essentially is a television truck and control room in the cloud. It has enabled the NBA to personalize international broadcasts with live games in local languages. It also has worked with NBA TV (a joint venture between Turner and the NBA) to produce “FrontCourt,” offering a marquee game of the night with alternative talent that includes athletes, coaches and celebrities. With the need now for remote productions, they are helping NBA TV to produce “GameTime,” “Hardwood Classics” and more for digital and linear television.

“While the traditional model is that the truck makes the broadcast for the audience,” Kosner said, “we are moving to a model where the audience makes content for the game.”

Jeff Volk, Deltatre’s head of business and revenue, Americas, said AI will help “put the power in the viewer’s hands.”

“We are moving to a model where the audience makes content for the game.”

— John Kosner

“We know sports fans want to be able to shape a viewing experience that meets their tastes and needs,” Volk said. “What is exciting about the world of sports is that fans consume our programming predominantly live, and they always want more: more data, more interactivity, more customization. The data have shown that fans are hungry for this type of innovation, and we know they’ll pay more for personalization options.  In fact, 72% of sports fans view personalization as ‘important’ and 71% of sports fans crave ‘deeper immersion’ when watching live games.”

StreamLayer allows video stream viewers to interact with the content, from social media to merchandise to in-game wagering.

Along those lines, the Chicago-based company StreamLayer, founded in mid-2018, has developed video overlay technology that sits on top of any video stream. By clicking on the icon in the lower right-hand corner — whatever network logo that icon may be — the user calls up a menu displaying ways to interact with that video while still watching that event. It’s a transparent layer that allows a viewer to see social media feeds and chat with friends, buy merchandise or tickets, or even gamble on live action.

“It’s a way to make available to viewers all the interactive components an especially younger generation wants,” said Bank, whose KB Partners is the lead and largest investor in StreamLayer. “They can’t sit through a three-hour baseball game. They want to be doing other things. We believe it’s the wave of the future. It provides a much more engaging consumer experience. It provides all kinds of new revenue channels for rights holders. There’s also a gamification piece to it.”

The ability to personalize content is also one element of MLB’s announcement last month that Google Cloud is now its official cloud and cloud data and analytics partner. That will lead to reinventing Statcast, the automated tool for analyzing player movements and abilities. Chris Marinak, MLB’s executive vice president for strategy, technology and innovation, has been bullish on the potential of computer vision to revolutionize the viewing experience for fans. In a lengthy interview before the pandemic shut down sports, he painted a picture of cameras set up throughout the ballpark tracking everything, not just where the ball went.

“But also how fast did someone go, and not just how fast did they move their body but how fast did they move their foot, their arm, their arm angle, their bat, their glove,” Marinak said. “You’re going to have an infinite level of data and information around what’s happening on the field. That’s going to revolutionize how fans consume sports. It’s going to be who turned the quickest double play and why, who has the best footwork at second base. Those types of things will be data points that you’ll be able to get immediate access to.”

ANSWERS ARE IN THE DATA

Businesses use AI to train a machine to do a task that was previously done by humans. For the Tel Aviv-based WSC Sports, that includes revolutionizing the creation and distribution of video highlights. It eschews the manual process by using AI to personalize content for fans and customize it to geographic regions. Achieving this in real time, the technology uses audio and visual cues to pinpoint key moments in a game to curate highlights. 

The NBA has been using this technology since 2014. Bob Carney, the league’s senior vice president of social and digital strategy, calls it a “game-changer” for the NBA, adding that it takes only a few minutes now to create more than 1,000 highlight packages.

What’s next for WSC Sports is more personalized highlight packages. Leagues may begin to roll out highlight packages as licensed products tailored to fans’ individual preferences. Does a fan prefer a 70-second highlight clip or a two-minute clip? Does she want to see all the behind-the-back passes that led to baskets on a particular night of games? That could be possible as well.

Kosner has been advising WSC Sports to understand the value of its metadata, not merely what it produces. “Don’t just think about all these projects and things you’re enabling, but what is it that you know?” he said. “What’s the perfect duration for a condensed game? Does it vary by sport, by country? Insights like these are made possible by these technologies and are priceless. Companies collecting the data are the ones who are going to understand it.”

One company that understands the increasing value of its data is Boston-based Whoop, a favorite of PGA Tour players — including Rory McIlroy and Justin Thomas — that tracks key measurements including heart rate variability, resting heart rate and sleep staging to help members of its service optimize their performance and overall well-being. Whoop’s memberships range from $30 a month for a six-month commitment to $18 for 18 months, and hardware is included in the price. 

Most importantly in these unprecedented times, Whoop announced on April 1 that data collected via its wrist-worn Strap 3.0 from hundreds of self-identified COVID-19 patients who are Whoop members would be part of a study by CQUniversity in Australia, in collaboration with the Cleveland Clinic.

Data collected by Whoop’s wearable technology (below), used by golfer Rory McIlroy, will be used in a study of COVID-19 in Australia and the U.S. The company has found that measuing respiratory rate can be an early signal of the disease’s symptoms.

Since early March, members have been able to toggle on COVID-19 as an option to indicate they have the virus. When members make note of that, they are given the option to fill out a survey about their symptoms. Each day they have COVID-19 toggled on (indicating they still feel symptoms), they receive a shorter check-in survey in the app to provide any updates on their condition. 

After seeing hundreds of people respond in the first 24 hours — and many more since — the company asked permission to use the data for research purposes. In the individuals’ data examined, the company has seen that an elevated respiratory rate — effectively the number of breaths per minute — could be a specific precursor to COVID-19 symptoms. 

Earlier this year, Whoop, founded in 2012, became the first wrist-worn wearable device to validate the accuracy of its respiratory rate during sleep in a third-party study conducted by the University of Arizona and published in the Journal of Clinical Sleep Medicine.  

“Our goal at Whoop is to provide as much thought leadership and research as we can around COVID-19,” said Will Ahmed, the company’s founder and CEO. “It’s all hands on deck across humanity to fight this virus and beat it. Anything that can be a potential indicator should be on the table. We believe respiratory rate may be an early indicator, and that may be something organizations can use to help predict this thing in light of the fact that we [the United States] are short on tests and we are trying to figure this thing out as fast as possible.

PERFORMANCE ASSISTANCE

If there is a premium on more and better personal data related to health and performance, the best wearables and performance-related technologies will be in high demand.

Consider ShotTracker, which uses sensors on basketballs to provide valuable shooting data in real time. The data informs assistant coaches via iPads during games and, in turn, can enhance television broadcasts with data related to shooting tendencies and the motion of players. As sports betting moves toward legalization in more states, the data could also be used in venues among fans to inform microbets during games because there is sub-second latency. 

During the 2019-20 season, ShotTracker enjoyed a partnership with the Mountain West Conference, enabling it to be used in all men’s and women’s basketball conference games, where statistics were used both during games by coaches as a teaching tool and during broadcasts to inform viewers. 

Dan Butterly, the MWC’s senior associate commissioner, called the technology an “unbelievably great product if you want to improve in basketball, not just shooting. With the number of statistics available, our coaches have said that players look at it even more than they do because [the players] want to improve.”

ShotTracker also had partnerships with several other marquee men’s basketball teams this past season, including No. 1-ranked Kansas, No. 5 Baylor, Big Ten co-champion Wisconsin and BYU, which led the nation in three-point shooting. Those programs used the system in practice, but not games because not every team in the respective leagues had a partnership. 

The emerging smart apparel industry could be the post-pandemic answer for those reluctant to return to health clubs, personal trainers and even physical therapists. Asensei, founded in 2014, won an award for most innovative fitness company at the Fitness & Active Brands Summit in Los Angeles last December because of its unique technology. Its smart apparel is infused with a network of sensors for full-body motion capture combined with a connected coaching app that turns biomechanic data into real-time coaching insights. The technologies give Asensei sport-specific understanding of posture and movement by embedding motion capture capabilities directly into sports apparel, allowing Asensei to guide, monitor and correct biomechanics. 

Asensei CEO Steven Webster said that even prior to the multitude of stay-at-home orders nationwide, millions of people were already watching fitness content on screens and devices. But his technology helps ensure people work out correctly and safely.

“Without what Asensei calls Connected Coaching, connected fitness is still just a spectator sport,” Webster said. “It’s basically the same thing that Jane Fonda introduced to the world in 1982. Consumers want to be guided through workout programs, while also being corrected on their technique and form. And overnight, not only has the need become more acute, it has become a need shared by the entire at-home sport and fitness market, not just a percentage share of it.”

HOW WILL FANS RETURN?

In such uncertain times, it will be critical for teams and leagues to have strong and efficient lines of communication with their fans, which is where chatbots and virtual assistants come in. Satisfi Labs, the AI-powered knowledge management platform, has more than 200 clients in sports, entertainment and tourism, including more than 100 in professional and college sports. In mid-March, it trained its chatbots to understand and provide answers to countless questions by fans regarding COVID-19 and topics related to it, such as ticket refunds.

ShotTracker uses sensors on basketballs to relay information to coaches and broadcast partners about players’ shooting tendencies and motion.

That technology will be increasingly critical for teams as fans seek information related to when fans will be permitted back into venues, what medical protocols may be in place and any changes that will be enacted regarding social distancing, concessions or ticketing policies. Don White, the CEO of Satisfi Labs, said an increasing number of people realize that the feedback teams traditionally have received from surveys represents only a fraction of what they could get if they could aggregate “what is already flying through their walls every game.”

“I think that is the future,” White said in an interview just before the pandemic grew. “If I were going back to school I’d be focusing heavily on data science, and I believe the sports industry is the perfect place. Data is your life. Data will never go away. There’s never going to be less of it. That’s an industry you can bet on.”

One company especially eager for games to return and to return with fans in venues is Event Dynamic. The company, which launched last year, is the first in the ticketing industry to successfully use its patent-pending AI technology to optimize ticket prices for live events across professional and college sports in pursuit of maximizing revenue and increasing attendance. The company incorporates almost countless factors — winning/losing streaks, weather, the opponent, bobblehead nights, etc. — to ensure that tickets are priced so that they have the best chance of selling. 

When games return, the challenge will be also factoring in the potential short-term hesitance of families to return to mass gatherings and the possibility of diminished discretionary income, which could vary by market. Robinson, the company’s CTO, said their algorithm will react on its own to the change in demand. And right now, no one can quantify that level of demand.

“We know there is a lot of uncertainty but we also know that if you go three or four months down our road map, our technology is that much more powerful, and we’re still building,” said Robinson, later adding, “We already believe that our algorithms will adapt and adjust faster than everyone else’s anyway. Our product was built to react to changes in demand. ... I think the difference between the winners and losers coming out of this is, one, you’ve got to survive [as a business]. Two, after you get to the other side, what do you look like?” 

Classic Game Replays on Tap As Networks Dig Deep Into Sport Archives

Original Article: Front Office Sports, by Michael McCarthy, March 18, 2020

Sports-starved TV viewers have been screaming for networks to replay classic games to fill the void left by the cancellation of virtually all live sports. 

Giving those fans their wish, MLB Network and NHL Network are rolling out revamped programming schedules that will heavily feature “All-Time” baseball games and classic Stanley Cup Finals, sources said.

In a sports world decimated by the coronavirus pandemic, these classic telecasts will feature famous players of the past, including MLB’s Ken Griffey Jr. and George Brett and the NHL’s Wayne Gretzky, while also reminding viewers of players they may have forgotten, such as eccentric Tigers pitcher Mark “The Bird” Fidrych.

For the most part, sports leagues control the replay rights to classic games and archived content, not national TV partners like ESPN or regional sports networks.

That’s providing a strategic opening for league-owned channels like MLB Network and NHL Network to replay classic games, some more than 40 years old.

Going back to the future with classic games from the archives is a smart strategy, said William Mao, vice president of Octagon’s global media rights consulting division. Moving forward amid the lack of live sports, archive sports footage will become an increasingly valuable currency, he said.

“If there’s no water, what else do you drink to stay hydrated?” asked Mao. “When there are live games, you’re not going to watch the archival content. But in the absence of it (you will).”

Still, at some point, sports viewers will tire of watching classic games, he added. Then it will be up to networks to be more creative and imaginative on how they present archived content.

For example, Mao points to the way ESPN+’s “Detail” series showed stars like Peyton Manning and the late Kobe Bryant breaking down key plays.

“NBA players are already watching their own highlights on YouTube,” said Mao. “Why don’t we spin that up as a potential area of content – where the rights holders that have the archival rights to key games in their careers can have these guys come in and commentate? That’s a potential area of content development.”

READ MORE: New NFL Wild Card Games Positioned To Be Ad Sales Boon

In more than 80 million homes, ESPN has a bigger footprint than MLB or NHL Networks. But the sports giant has been forced to fill the massive holes in its schedule, mostly with news shows such as “SportsCenter,” studio programs like “Get Up” and replays of its own original “30 for 30” documentaries.  

ESPN has some re-air rights. It’s been showing “encore” presentations of men’s and women’s college basketball games from recent seasons. It has also been anchoring its coverage around Tom Brady’s departure from the Patriots and the rest of NFL free agency news.

Still, replaying classic games is easier said than done for ESPN, according to Burke Magnus, executive vice president of programming acquisitions and scheduling.

“Re-airing full-game presentations is not a right that we or other media companies typically have at our disposal at all times. Each one of these circumstances requires individual conversations with the specific league or property to determine what’s possible,” said Magnus in an interview posted to the “ESPN Front Row” PR site.

“Since we’ve heard from fans that would love to relive full-game presentations, particularly at this moment in time, we are exploring that possibility for events and content that we don’t have re-air rights already,” he said.

John Kosner, the former ESPN executive turned founder of Kosner Media, expects his former company to get creative in the coming days.

“I am keenly interested to see where they go next – classic games integrating current and former NBA stars, who will have time on their hands, the new (high school) stars profiled on Overtime, ’30 for 30’ marathons, new formats like video podcasts with some of their great emerging talent, experimentation with gaming content… It’s an opportunity to experiment and develop a hit show or talent,” Kosner said.

Some RSN’s like Fox Sports Florida, have announced plans to replay NHL and NBA games. But these channels don’t have nearly the archives or freedom of league-owned operations like MLB Network, NHL Network, NFL Network or NBA TV.

MLB Network, for example, plans to roll out a series of “themed” nights around classic baseball games this week, sources said.

On March 17,  it will show a replay of the famous “Pine Tar” game between the Yankees and Royals on July 24, 1983.

On March 18, the 24/7 baseball network will show a day’s worth of classic baseball games, such as the Pine Tar Game and the memorable Phillies at Cubs game from May 17, 1979, where the teams combined to score 45 runs.

On March 20, MLB Network will replay Fidrych’s complete game over the Yankees from 1976, followed by the replay of Ken Griffey Jr. and the Mariners’ Game 5 win over the Yankees in the 1995 American League Division Series from October 8, 1995.

For its part, NHL Network will dive deep into the archives for “Franchise Classics” and the great Stanley Cup Finals game under the banner, “Raising The Cup.”

Starting March 18, NHL Network will go deep with classic Stanley Cup Finals games. It will replay Game 6 of the 1978 Stanley Cup Final between the Canadiens at Bruins followed by Game 5 of the 1979 Stanley Cup Final between the Rangers and Canadiens.

READ MORE: Suspended Seasons Leave Networks Scrambling To Fill Programming Hours

It will follow that up with Game Six of the 1980 Stanley Cup Final between the Islanders and Flyers, followed by the replay of Game 6 of the ’78 Canadiens-Bruins Final.

In the coming days, it also has plans to show games from the 1983 Stanley Cup Final between Gretzky’s Oilers and Islanders, the 1981 Final between North Stars and Islanders, and the 1985 Stanley Cup Final between the Flyers and Oilers. It will also feature prior Winter Classic games as well.

Suspended Seasons Leave Networks Scrambling To Fill Programming Hours

Original Article: Front Office Sports, by Michael McCarthy, March 12, 2020

Alarm. Confusion. Disbelief. Despair.

Those were the feelings of TV sports executives Thursday as they scrambled to fill the gaping holes in their programming schedules wrought by the coronavirus on Thursday.

During one unprecedented day, the NBA, NHL, and MLS suspended their regular seasons while Major League Baseball canceled spring training games and pushed Opening Day back by two weeks. Not to mention March Madness and college sports essentially shutting down for the spring.

Those decisions didn’t just impact leagues, teams, players, and fans. They upended the best-laid plans of TV networks such as ESPN, TNT, TBS, CBS, Fox and NBC that collectively pay sports leagues billions to air thousands of hours of live sports coverage.

The situation also raises the question of what exactly do sports TV networks show their viewers when there are little or no live games, matches or tournaments.

The sudden loss of NBA games – just as the league headed toward the post-season – was a blow to Disney’s ESPN and Turner Sports’ TNT.

Disney will have to potentially fill 16 NBA regular-season game windows across its ESPN and ABC networks, as well as up to 44 NBA Playoff game windows, including the NBA Finals on ABC.  

TNT, meanwhile, will have to potentially replace 14 regular-season game windows and up to 40 playoff telecasts, including the hotly anticipated Western Conference Finals.

Publicly, both of the NBA’s national TV partners supported commissioner Adam Silver’s decision to postpone its season. But the two cable networks will be hard-pressed to come up with replacement programming comparable to NBA superstars LeBron James and Giannis Antetokounmpo potentially competing for the Larry O’Brien trophy.

Looking ahead, ESPN’s flagship network plans to air live “SportsCenter” editions, all day and night, while ESPN2 will simulcast a combination of ESPN and ESPNEWS programming. ESPNEWS, meanwhile, will continue to air its usual video simulcasts of radio shows such as “First Take, Your Take With Jason Fritz” and “The Will Cain Show.”

John Kosner, the ex-ESPN executive turned President of Kosner Media, expects Turner and ESPN to take different approaches to the crisis.

Turner is really an entertainment network with some marquee sports properties, he said, while ESPN is more news-oriented.

Kosner predicted Turner will mostly plug the holes with entertainment programming, while ESPN relies on news and studio shows. 

He also expects ESPN to take a “back to the future” approach, replaying the greatest NBA games and other “classic” programming. Or filling holes through marathon showings of its “30 for 30” sports documentary series.  With little or no live sports, look for ESPN Classic to also become a go-to destination for sports diehards.

“I think Turner will go to its high-profile entertainment programming – and just fill the slots with that,” Kosner said. “In the case of ESPN, you have a very sophisticated, well-resourced newsroom. So they’re certainly going to cover what’s going on. I expect they’ll spend ample time talking to players from different sports about how they’re spending their time.”

There’s no downplaying the potential disaster facing sports TV networks with little or no live sports to offer viewers. But such a black swan event could spark some interesting programming experiments on new topics such as sports gaming, said Kosner.

With NBA players having time on their hands, he can also see ESPN integrating current and former NBA stars into coverage of classic NBA Finals and games. Plus,  more coverage of high school athletic stars similar to what you see on youth-oriented networks like Overtime.

“They will have a captive audience of sports fans (like me) who will be tuning in,” Kosner said. “It’s an opportunity to experiment and develop a hit show or talent.”

The potential loss of the NBA Playoffs is just one of the multiple problems facing sports TV networks.

CBS and Turner pay over $1 billion annually for the rights to air the NCAA men’s and women’s basketball tournaments. But there will be no madness this March. 

CBS, TBS, TNT, and truTV were slated to televise all 67 games from the Division I Men’s basketball championship. TBS was poised to televised the Final Four on Saturday, April 4 and National Championship on April 6. 

The first casualty of the NCAA decision could be CBS’ presentation of “The Selection Show” that was scheduled to air Sunday, March 15 from 6 p.m. to 7 p.m. ET.

From March 3 to March 15, ESPN was set to televise no less than 29 men’s, and 24 women’s, college basketball conference championships.

Over the coming weeks, ESPN will also have to replace canceled matches, tournaments and games from its TV partners at MLS and the Association of Tennis Professionals (ATP). 

ESPN was supposed to televise 31 regular-season MLS matches this year as well as MLS All-Star Game on July 29. But the network only got to show three matches before the season was suspended. 

Likewise, the network was also supposed to provide “first ball to last ball” coverage of the BNP Paribas Open starting Wednesday, March 11 before the tennis tournament announced it was a no-go.

NBC Sports, meanwhile, will grapple with how to program canceled NHL game windows as well as MotoGP races.  NBC still had more than a dozen regular-season game telecasts planned for its broadcast network and NBCSN before the puck is supposed to drop for the Stanley Cup Playoffs in April.

“We want everyone, everywhere to be safe from the spread of this virus,” said NBC spokesman Greg Hughes.

The best-case scenario is that some of these sporting events will only be postponed for a few weeks or months, not canceled.

Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban, for example, told Mike Greenberg on ESPN’s “Get Up” morning show Thursday that he could see the NBA postponing the season for 60 days, then returning to play the last 7-10 games of the regular season and finally an NBA Playoffs that reaches into July if not August.

Traditional Sports Look To Gamers To Reshape Viewers’ Experience

Original Article: The Wall Street Journal, by Sarah Needleman, March 6, 2020

One of Alexander MacFall’s favorite pro videogame players was in the middle of live-streaming a practice session when he decided to get in touch with the digital athlete. Using a text-chatting feature baked into the broadcast, the 33-year-old told Jong-Ryeol “Saebyeolbe” Park he was “hyped” to see him compete in an upcoming match.

Moments later, Mr. Park, the captain of a local team that competes at the videogame “Overwatch,” thanked him on camera—so he and anyone else watching could see.

“I freaked out a little bit,” says Mr. MacFall, a graphic designer who lives in Pomona, N.Y. “For him to see my post and actually respond to it was really, really cool.”

Videogame enthusiasts are using technologies such as live-streaming and virtual reality. They’re watching esports competitions while text-chatting with each other and commentators on the same screen, and strapping on VR goggles to socialize in virtual spaces with far-flung friends.

“A more immersive experience around sports is definitely coming”

— John Kosner

Now, traditional sports leagues are paying attention. Executives at tech companies say they are testing a range of gamer-inspired features for sports broadcasts. Some, such as live polls about what viewers think will happen in matches and the ability to toggle across camera angles, could roll out widely over the next several years. Others, like access to front-row stadium seats in VR, are poised to take longer because they depend on factors including faster internet speeds, cheaper hardware and deal-making among teams, leagues and media outlets.

The coming tech capabilities aren’t designed to eliminate live experiences but rather make viewership from afar more engaging, particularly for fans who’ve grown up with the internet and mobile devices.

“Sports is grappling with an audience under 30 that’s radically different than” older fans in terms of what they want out of broadcasts, says John Kosner, a former executive at Walt Disney Co. ’s ESPN. He believes sports broadcasts need to evolve to become more appealing to young fans, or viewership could erode over time. “A more immersive experience around sports is definitely coming,” says Mr. Kosner, now an investor in sports-technology startups.

LiveLike and other upstarts are developing technology that allows fans with smartphones and other devices to text chat beneath live video of sports matches, among other interactive features.

Esports broadcasts are considered a proxy for the future of traditional sports programming by leagues, media companies and others because the broadcasts take place mostly online and can be wildly popular. Last November’s “League of Legends” World Championship Final—the computer game’s equivalent of the Super Bowl—peaked at 44 million concurrent viewers world-wide, according to its creator, Riot Games Inc., a unit of Chinese conglomerate Tencent Holdings Ltd.

Some sports fans might struggle to imagine following a match on a laptop or smartphone while text-chatting with other viewers on the same screen. But such behavior is common among esports fans and is starting to occur among traditional sports viewers, says Nicole Pike, managing director of esports at the ratings provider Nielsen. “It’s a generational thing,” she adds.

Upstarts such as LiveLike Inc. and Genvid Technologies Inc., both of New York, are developing technology that allows fans using smartphones and other devices to text chat with each other beneath live video of sports matches; purchase team emojis to share within those chats; and guess what will happen during the action via real-time polls, among other interactive features.

Tech firms are also working to allow viewers to toggle between camera angles on their screens to see different perspectives of a match, as well as call up stats and highlight videos for athletes of their choosing. Sports-betting capabilities are also on deck.

With chat in particular baked into game streams, sports fans could potentially also engage with commentators, coaches or their favorite athletes during breaks in the action or at other times—much the way Mr. MacFall connected with one of his esports idols through Twitch, Amazon.com Inc.’s live-streaming platform.

Twitch is best known for live broadcasts mostly of expert gamers playing videogames and pro esports competitions, but it also airs some traditional sports matches. The platform recently began allowing users to take on the role of a sportscaster for certain games from the National Football League, National Basketball Association and a handful of others, with permission from those leagues. User-commentators call plays or talk about the action during live broadcasts, and anyone can tune in unless marked private. Going forward, Twitch users might be able to choose from a list of celebrity, pro athlete or other high-profile commentators, says Michael Aragon, senior vice president of content at the company.

The NBA meanwhile is testing the option for viewers of its League Pass live-streaming service to select commentators who can call games from remote locations and in more languages. “We are just at the beginning of this world of alternate commentary,” says Sara Zuckert, the NBA’s senior director of domestic programming and content strategy.

The way gamers socialize in virtual reality is also expected to influence sports viewership. While VR headsets are currently pricey and bulky, future iterations won’t be, says Jason Rubin, vice president of special gaming initiatives at Facebook Inc. The latest version of the company’s Oculus headset is wireless, unlike its predecessor, in addition to being lighter-weight and less expensive at around $400 including two “Touch” controllers.

VR technology is capable today of broadcasting live, real-world entertainment. Last year, Facebook hosted a concert with singer Billie Eilish through its Oculus Quest. Though viewers saw one another as cartoonish avatars, Ms. Eilish appeared live from Madrid thanks to cameras that captured her stage performance in the real world and streamed it in the virtual one.

It will likely take many years, though, for such broadcasts to become widespread in sports, largely because media companies, leagues and other parties are waiting for wider adoption of VR headsets to cut deals, says Miheer Walavalkar, chief executive of LiveLike. The entity that owns the live-streaming rights to a sports game might charge to include the cost of virtual seats as part of a package to access all its content through whatever device a viewer chooses.

“Once the tech reaches a point where it’s really good, it can definitely be an upsell opportunity,” he says.

With VR gear, sports fans will be able to watch matches from home seemingly in front-row seats or private suites. Space is essentially infinite in the virtual world, so potentially anyone logging in could access the same perspective, according to VR experts. Friends from any location would be able to join in the same stream, with all parties appearing to one another in the form of avatars, they say. And depending on the platform the streaming provider uses to broadcast a game in VR, viewers might be able to design the look of their avatars by selecting from a menu of hair styles, skin colors and more.

Fans will also be able to move their virtual seats at any moment during a game on par with the action, as well as engage with virtual objects. “You can throw a tomato” on a soccer field, for example, only it won’t be real, says Mr. Walavalkar. It would be possible, though, to order a real pizza for home delivery without exiting the VR broadcast, he adds.

Sports viewership is also forecast to change with help from other tech. Augmented reality might enable people who attend sports matches in person to see the kind of digital imagery normally reserved for TV screen viewing—such as the strike box in baseball broadcasts—through their smartphones or AR goggles, says Michael Davies, senior vice president of field operations and tech at Fox Sports.

At home, panoramic video could also be on the horizon, or even broadcasts that make it seem as if miniaturized athletes are running across a person’s dining-room table. “You can’t get past the hologram idea, like in ‘Star Wars,’ ” Mr. Davies says.

Sports Networks Increasingly Interested in Showing High School Stars

Original Article: Front Office Sports, by Michael McCarthy, December 3rd, 2019

Is high school the next growth area for sports networks?

With media rights for pro and college sports costing billions of dollars, media companies are increasingly eyeing relatively inexpensive high school sports that could have national appeal. The growth of streaming and OTT platforms is allowing media companies to cover high school games that wouldn’t make it to linear TV.

That is perhaps no better exhibited by ESPN electing to show 15 high school basketball games this season highlighting ‘Bronny’ James and Zaire Wade’s Sierra Canyon High School.

Nicknamed Bronny, LeBron James Jr. is the 15-year old freshman son of Los Angeles Lakers superstar LeBron James. Zaire Wade, a 17-year-old senior, is the son of retired Miami Heat star Dwyane Wade. 

Two games featuring this season’s loaded Sierra Canyon squad in Los Angeles are earmarked for the linear ESPN2 and ESPNU TV channels. The other 13 will be shown digitally on ESPN3. 

Dan Margulis, ESPN’s senior director of programming and acquisitions, cited interest in the younger James and Wade, as well as the Trailblazers’ nationally-ranked Ziaire Williams and BJ Boston, for the coverage decision.

“Sierra Canyon is in two of our linear games due to having the number 5 and 9 recruits not to mention the story of Zaire Wade and Bronny James,” said Margulis. “There is a strong national interest in this and because of that, we were able to clear 13 more Sierra Canyon games on ESPN3.”

ESPN’s coverage led some NBA players to joke the younger James is getting more airtime from one of the NBA’s two national TV partners than they are this season. 

“LOL, they got more than us,” tweeted Washington Wizards point guard Isaiah Thomas.

Overall, ESPN’s 2019/2020 high school basketball slate includes 37 games: 11 on the linear ESPN, ESPN2 and ESPNU Channels; and 26 digitally on ESPN3. The schedule will feature 68 ranked players and 17 ranked programs.

That’s up from 24 total games in 2018/2019 (11 linear; 13 digital) and 11 games (all linear) during the 2017/2018 and 2017/2016 seasons.

Media rights fees for high school sports are tiny compared to pro/college, running hundreds or thousands of dollars. While the financial barrier to entry is low, the decentralized nature of high school sports makes it a herculean undertaking.

There are literally thousands of high schools, hundreds of conferences and dozens of governing bodies. Control over the rights may depend on the state where the school is located, whether the school is public or private and their membership in various governing bodies.

That’s where middlemen like Paragon Marketing Group come into the picture. Back in 2002, the Skokie, Illinois-based company secured the rights to put a Cleveland high school basketball phenom on local TV.

Instead, they took 17-year old LeBron James to ESPN. The Worldwide Leader in Sports nationally televised the game featuring James’ No. 23 St. Vincent-St. Mary High School beating No. 1 Oak Hill Academy. The Chosen One scored 31 points. The era of live, nationally-televised high school games was born.

Eighteen years later, ESPN still works with Paragon to put its high school schedule together. Here’s how it works: ESPN tells Paragon what windows it has available to show high school games. With its intimate knowledge of the high school scene, Paragon picks out the best teams and players that fit ESPN’s requirements.

Paragon deals with coaches and superintendents at “thousands” of high schools nationwide, said Rashid Ghazi, a partner at Paragon.

“It’s a detailed process that requires a lot of diligence, a lot of relationships and a lot of understanding of different schools and different school’s needs. One of the reasons we do it is we are experts in the youth space, we’re experts in the high school space. And we can help ease the process for ESPN to make decisions on what teams we want to put on, what opportunities exist and where are the places to go,” said Ghazi.

“You’ve got to remember, most of these high schools don’t have sports information directors. A lot of schools have athletic directors who are extremely busy running sports day-to-day. So for ESPN, we serve as that one-stop-shop to navigate this world and being experts in it.”

Digital has “completely changed” coverage of high school sports, added Ghazi. The NFHS Network, for example, now streams thousands of high school sporting events nationwide, both live and on-demand.

ESPN has “always been a significant player” in high school sports, noted John Kosner, the 20-year ESPN veteran turned founder of Kosner Media. Due to its longstanding relationships, and the flexibility from ESPN3 and ESPN+, the sports giant has been able to enhance its high school coverage this year.

That extension to covering high school sports stars is only likely to further increase, predicted Kosner.

Fan and media interest are already building around the next young expected star – Emoni Bates, a sophomore small forward from Lincoln High School in Ypsilanti, Mich. 

ESPN ranks Bates as the No. 1 recruit in his 2022 class. He’s been called the “next Kevin Durant” by Forbes.

READ MORE: Overtime Aims To Be Next ESPN For Generation Z

Now, these budding teenage stars are experts at using social media to turn themselves into national, and even global brands before they’re legally able to vote.

Bronny James, for example, already boasts nearly four million social media followers across Instagram and Twitter. 

“What’s changed is that the top (high school) athletes are far savvier about their own media presence and creation than previous generations,” said Kosner, who has teamed with former NBA Commissioner David Stern on the new Micromanagement Ventures investment firm. “You also have new Gen Z media companies like Overtime that really help bring them to life, and expand their audiences globally.”

While it’s easy to take today’s blanket coverage of college sports for granted, it was only a few decades ago that only a few games had national relevance. A similar path may be possible for high school sports as more media outfits take advantage of a low barrier of entry due to smaller rights fees.

That’s one reason start-ups like Brooklyn-based Overtime have prospered. Overtime has used its expertise in high school sports as a springboard to cover all sports as well as launch long-form shows featuring Andre Drummond of the Detroit Pistons and Pro Football Hall of Famer Deion Sanders.

“Overtime is accelerating interest in (high school) sports by both telling – and letting the players themselves tell – their stories,” said Kosner.

There’s always been interest in high school sports, according to Paragon’s Ghazi. Before he became Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, a young Lew Alcindor of Power Memorial Academy sold-out arenas.

But the advent of the Internet and technology is enabling the brightest young stars to become national brands overnight.

READ MORE: ‘Let’s Bring Women In:’ Chargers Lean Into Podcast For Female Fans

As more states ease up travel schedules, more schools are playing national game schedules and showcase events. Social media has enabled high schoolers like Zion Williamson and LaMelo Ball stars to become influencers before they turn pro.

“High school sports have gone from local to regional to national…There’s a large interest in watching these kids play,” Ghazi said. “Not just seeing highlights of them. But seeing full games. The kids themselves are becoming social media entities.”

Lessons and Wisdom of Micromanagement: Former NBA Commissioner Stern, ESPN exec Kosner Team Up with Firm

Original Article: Sports Business Journal, by Eric Prisbell, October 28, 2019

Sitting comfortably in his office high above Midtown Manhattan, David Stern chronicled his typical day at 77 years old — a 6:30 a.m. call to Tel Aviv; 11 p.m. text messages to a Kansas City-based startup founder; and in between a daylong procession of meetings he and investment partner John Kosner have with entrepreneurs — and then concedes the obvious: 

“I thought I was stepping down so I could relax a little bit,” said Stern, who retired in 2014 after 30 years as NBA commissioner. “But it’s not happening.”

Not when Stern and Kosner — the 59-year-old former ESPN executive vice president, digital and print media — have formed a robust team three decades after they worked together at the NBA. The two are the leaders of Micromanagement Ventures, which provides counsel to and high-level introductions for sports tech startup founders while investing in and advising a boutique of 15 startups in their portfolio. 

This isn’t a case of two accomplished sports guys dabbling in a cool side hobby. Their aim is ambitious: help shape the next generation of media consumption, enhance player health technology and catch the fast-evolving wave of sports gambling innovation.

“The single most exciting thing about all this is that sports always has been the place to demonstrate technology, and as technology expands, so much is possible,” said Kosner. “We have very high expectations, but there is a level of involvement and service throughout the portfolio that is different than if we just had set up as a fund, because it’s not a fund.”

They are personally — and financially — invested with the founders they align with. Each combined investment comes from their own money and is a minimum of $100,000. And they exhibit complementary skill sets: Stern, the grand, strategic thinker with a nuanced understanding of how the worlds of sports, entertainment and investment collide; Kosner, the media executive with a firm grasp of storytelling and the value of crisp messaging. Their contact list rivals that of almost anyone in the sports ecosystem. 

Davyeon Ross, co-founder of ShotTracker — which provides in-game basketball analytics data to coaches, fans and television analysts and is one of Micromanagement’s investments — said they are stronger together than they would be apart, adding, “John understands David; he’s the translator. He is the yin to David’s yang.”

“In many ways,” added Aviv Arnon, co-founder of another investment vehicle, WSC Sports, “they complete each other.”

Consider when Stern and Kosner first met with Tel Aviv-based WSC Sports, which uses artificial intelligence to generate almost real-time highlights for sports leagues and media outlets, saving countless man hours. (“A game-changer,” said Bob Carney, the NBA’s vice president of emerging media.) For Kosner, with a background deep in digital sports highlights, the meeting in Stern’s office in May 2018 with co-founders Arnon and Daniel Shichman was eye-opening because he understood the boundless possibilities. For Stern, he acted as he usually does when introduced to revolutionary technology, marveling like a kid in Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory. 

“I have a particular sensitivity to it,” Stern said, recalling the meeting, “because it renders asunder my life’s work of providing each of the NBA teams in 1982 three-quarter-inch VCRs, hooking those VCRs up to broadcast trucks, having a young person earn 25 bucks to FedEx the resulting two-and-a-half tapes to Secaucus (N.J.), logging tapes … and then digitizing them.”

Stern paused and smiled.

“And these bozos come in here and just say, ‘OK, that’s easy, we’ll give you virtual real-time with AI, computer vision, machine learning and everything else.’ I was, like, mesmerized by it. I told John, ‘You’ve got to see this!’”

‘Wonderful puzzle’

Founders of many of the portfolio’s startups paint Stern as having almost a Yoda-type persona, a revered elder statesman flush with wisdom yet fluent in tech speak. Stern’s curiosity has long been expansive; for years he would notoriously clip out stories in printed publications to save and read. 

But to truly grasp his legacy as a visionary and why he is on the Mount Rushmore of all-time sports commissioners, consider the state of the NBA in the early 1980s: Teams were losing money, attendance was dropping and the NBA Finals weren’t far removed from tape-delayed broadcasts. During his tenure from 1984 to 2014, league revenue ballooned from $165 million to $5.5 billion; gross retail merchandise sales went from $35 million to $3 billion; and the salary cap rose from $3.6 million to $58.1 million. 

He ushered in a golden era for the league when stars became recognizable by their first names — Magic, Larry, Michael, etc. — not just nationally, but globally. He oversaw the birth of playing exhibition games around the world, the creation of the WNBA and NBA Development League, NBA League Pass and NBA TV. He had such an eye for innovation that he once had the NBA All-Star Game taped for HD viewing so that it could be shown in Japan. The year was 1991.

“The beauty of my 30 years as commissioner, and six years [as general counsel and executive vice president] before that, was that it all was a wonderful puzzle, and the pieces kept changing that you had to learn about,” Stern said. “I made the first cable deal and then the satellite deal and then the Internet was invented — thank you — and then social media became a thing and — picture us as surfers — we were all surfing that. I stepped down and said, ‘Well, there’s no reason to stop learning.’”

Zack Weiner, co-founder of Overtime — a cross-platform startup focusing on high school and amateur sports video and short-form content — said Kosner possesses both the perspective of an insider as well as a disrupter, and says, “that is an extremely potent combination.”

Kosner received his indoctrination with Stern when he began a seven-year tenure with the NBA in 1987, serving as vice president of programming and leading the league’s broadcasting operations. When he left in 1994 to become vice president of TV programing and development for Sports Illustrated, Stern told him that SI’s television venture would be an abject failure. Kosner now jokes that whatever is below abject failure is what was achieved. 

When Kosner left Sports Illustrated in 1996, Stern recommended him to ESPN President Steve Bornstein. Kosner spent 20 years at ESPN — in 2008, Sports Business Journal named him the most influential person in sports digital media — and starting in 2003 he oversaw ESPN.com. He helped build ESPN into a leading digital sports destination, pioneering online video with ESPN3, ESPN Motion and the WatchESPN app and forming valuable partnerships with Apple, Facebook and others. Toward the end of his ESPN tenure, Kosner would take meetings with startups including Overtime and ShotTracker that had been sent his way by Stern, who had become immersed in the tech world after retiring as commissioner. 

Kosner helped build ESPN into a digital giant during a 20-year career at the company.

“The difficulties in starting a new company [now] are not the same as when we were trying to start ESPN.com,” Kosner said. “[Tech founders] were starting quicker. They would come and show me their prototypes for new products, which were done much faster than we could do them. Before I left ESPN, I began to wonder whether we would be able to keep pace. There was something about the way these companies could operate that made me think that things were changing.”

Kosner left ESPN in 2017 and joined forces with Stern early the next year, and what he’s seen since has only reinforced his belief that there are a “whole set of these companies that operate nimbler, quicker, faster and the pace of technology makes it hard — not impossible — but hard for big companies to operate.”

When asked about mistakes they’ve made in their few years together, Kosner said he makes them every day. Stern took a breath and wondered aloud about two companies that they declined to invest in (he declined to name them publicly). He’s rooting for both to succeed. 

For them, investing and advising is about more than becoming enraptured with a product or new technology. It’s also about what they think of the founders as people. Stern said he used to feel he’d fall in love excessively with founders before realizing that there was a “method to my stumbling because John said, ‘Look what you’ve accumulated in the portfolio — the next-gen of television, the player-health issue and sports betting.’ Those are our three points of emphasis, which allows us, with good faith, to say to most of the companies that come over, ‘I’m sorry but we’ve looked at it and wish you good luck, but it doesn’t fit what we are doing currently.’

“Until the next one, which we will fall in love with and we’ll add another category. But that’s my story and I’m sticking with it.” 

Stern advice

Several of the founders said they initially met Stern through venture capital fund Greycroft Partners, for whom Stern is a senior adviser. That was the case for Ross, the ShotTracker co-founder, who recalled a person at Greycroft recommending that he “talk with David.”

“David who?” Ross said.

“David Stern.”

“The commish?” Ross said.

At the 2016 NBA All-Star Game in Toronto, Ross spoke by phone with Stern, who in an hourlong conversation challenged, pushed buttons and interrogated Ross about why he thought he’d be successful. At the end of the talk came an abrupt pivot: Stern said, “I like you. You should come see me in New York.”

“He tries to punch you in the mouth the first second,” Ross recalled. “That’s just his style, right?”

It always has been. Ask Rick Welts, the president and COO of the Golden State Warriors who worked for the NBA from 1982 to 1999. Welts refers to it as Stern’s “Uncle David” mode. After bristling criticism would make Welts feel as large as an ant, frequent late-night phone calls would do just the opposite. 

“He would talk about all the amazing things that were happening, how lucky we were to be a part of this league at this time, how the future was unlimited, and basically how the world was ours to conquer,” Welts said. “You felt you mattered to him, and his amazing leadership just oozed through the phone.”

Stern’s knack for offering blunt criticism is offset by his ability to infuse the founders with unbridled enthusiasm. Kosner is also adept at providing both — minus the Stern-heavy sarcasm and gentle needling. Ask the founders what feedback from Stern and Kosner has resonated the most and answers vary greatly.

“They are almost like parents — they are going to call you out when you need it and also pick you up when you need it. It’s very important to have that group in your life.”

Phil Wagner

Founder, Sparta Science

For Phil Wagner, founder of Sparta Science — which uses artificial intelligence to help identify potential injury risks — it’s the emotional support because the entrepreneur’s journey is a “very emotional one. You can be at your highest and lowest points almost in the same day. They are almost like parents — they are going to call you out when you need it, and also pick you up when you need it. It’s very important to have that group in your life to say, ‘Hey, that’s bull.’ There’s very few people, especially investors, where I get that direct black and white.”

For Miheer Walavalkar, co-founder of LiveLike — which combines live sports streaming, an immersive technology experience and a social community of friends — it’s sound advice. That could come in the form of line-editing a press release, or not allowing themselves to be spread too thin and going to too many events — Stern has told him, “You’ll go to the opening of an envelope” — or knowing that during negotiations, silence is your friend and even awkward silence is good. 

For Arnon of WSC Sports, it was fashion advice from Stern, who criticized him after he wore ripped jeans once to his meeting and was once awakened by a phone call in the middle of the night from Stern, who had thought of someone for Arnon to meet.

Kevin April, the founder of SportsCastr, which enables fans to choose or become their own broadcaster for games, was impressed with how Stern and Kosner immediately grasped the concept when it was little more than a napkin idea. 

Stern and Kosner go to great lengths to encourage the company’s founders to build relationships with one another, exchange ideas and perhaps integrate concepts. They believe in the technology as well as the founders, and that the future is blooming with possibility. 

“When you can pick up the phone and you know your company has the goods, that makes all the difference in the world,” Kosner said. “Our credibility is all we have. We say, ‘You should really sit down with these guys, you will not be disappointed.’ Then they overdeliver on that, which is what happens.”

Sitting in Stern’s office, which is full of memorabilia and pictures that tell the story of the last four decades of the NBA, Kosner said their goal is to be the best advisers the founders can possibly have, because lots of other investors may have more money.

But as Stern quickly interjected, “No one has more fun.”

Will Tony Romo Become Biggest Free Agent in TV Sports History?

Original Article: Front Office Sports, by Michael McCarthy, August 29, 2019

Tony Romo of CBS Sports could potentially become the most sought-after free agent in sports TV history. 

With the new 2019 NFL season a week away, talks on a contract extension between Romo and CBS have stalled with little progress, said sources.  

Romo’s original three-year deal with CBS expires after this season. That’s raising the possibility Romo will table negotiations to avoid distractions, play out his rookie contract, then hit the open market in 2020. 

During CBS’ NFL preview day, Romo declined to address his contract negotiations except to tell Front Office Sports: “I love football. I love working for CBS. I love the fact that I get to be an analyst doing football games.”  

Odds are still very good the former Dallas Cowboys quarterback re-ups with CBS, said TV insiders. The network loves him; he loves the network. The 39-year old Romo is close friends with play-by-play partner Jim Nantz, sharing a mutual love of football and golf.  

During CBS’ upcoming 60th NFL season, the network’s No. 1 team of Romo, Nantz, and Tracy Wolfson will get to call the best games from the AFC.

With CBS and NBC swapping spots in the Super Bowl rotation, Romo is also poised to broadcast his second Super Bowl after the 2020 season. CBS Sports Chairman Sean McManus said he expects to keep Romo on the network for a long time.  

But stranger things have happened. Romo’s reps at Creative Artists Agency are seeking a hefty raise to $10 million annually from his current $4 million-a-year pact, said sources. 

Legendary NFL analyst John Madden ended up working as a color analyst for four networks during his TV career: CBS, Fox, ABC and NBC. If Romo becomes the first sports analyst to earn an eight-figure contract, he’d eclipse even Madden, who earned $8 million during his 1990’s heyday, according to The Ringer.  

That would also make Romo the highest-paid NFL analyst currently on TV. Troy Aikman, Fox Sports’ No. 1 game analyst, makes around $7.5 million per year. Before returning to the Oakland Raiders, Jon Gruden earned over $6 million a year from ESPN to call Monday Night Football. 

CBS is willing to give Romo a substantial raise to stop him from testing the free-agent waters, according to Andrew Marchand of the New York Post. CBS also has the right to match competing offers for its star analyst, he wrote.  

The risky decision by McManus and CBS Sports President David Berson to install the TV rookie over veteran Phil Simms as CBS’ No. 1 NFL analyst in 2017 has paid off “brilliantly,” said John Kosner, the ex-ESPN executive turned president of Kosner Media.  

After a second regular season together, Romo and Nantz called a virtually flawless telecast during the Patriots thrilling 37-31 overtime win over the Chiefs in AFC Championship Game. If CBS doesn’t pay Romo, another bidder will, Kosner predicted.  

“Tony Romo is an exceptional, expert analyst working on America’s most popular TV sport.  Considering how much networks and advertisers are paying — and will pay — for NFL live game rights, his ask is not outlandish,” Kosner said. “He is a reason to watch. His chemistry with another exceptional talent, Jim Nantz, is special and unique as well.  If CBS were to pass, someone else would meet his number.” 

The rest of the sports TV industry is watching closely. If Romo pulls off an annual eight-figure payday, it would “set a new paradigm,” said a source, enabling other analysts to ask for more money. 

“Romo’s worth more than $10 million,” that source said. “Look, 88 of the top TV broadcasts last year were sports. Tell me why Ryan Seacrest is worth $20 million a year? But a No. 1 NFL analyst isn’t? Live sports covers all the bills.” 

Still, other TV insiders are doubtful Romo will reach the eight-digit mark. Instead, they think the $10 million figure is more of a negotiating gambit. When all is said and done, they think he’ll end up roughly doubling his pay to the $7 million to $8 million a year range. 

“I do think he’ll get a serious increase. But frankly, he’ll only get $10 million if somebody else is willing to pay him $10 million,” said another source. “And I think that’s unlikely.” 

Romo’s been nicknamed “Romostradamus” for his uncanny ability to predict plays and coverages on the field. He’s such a unicorn in that respect that even if he gets the big payday, it won’t change the landscape, warned Patrick Crakes, a former Fox Sports executive turned independent media consultant.  

“The spread/gap between the top flagship analysts and everyone else grows,” Crakes said. “He’s his own thing.” 

During his 14-year career with the Cowboys, Romo banked $127.4 million in salary, according to Spotrac.com. Romo’s still a young man. There’s an outside chance he even walks away from television to pursue other opportunities.  

Romo told Richard Deitsch of The Athletic he’s received “legitimate offers” to return to the NFL. Gruden, for example, attracted a monster 10-year, $100 million deal to leave ESPN’s Monday Night booth and return to the league as coach of the Oakland Raiders. 

Marketers and even Hollywood have come knocking too. Romo has endorsement deals with Corona, Skechers, and Ralph Lauren’s Chaps brand (The young husband and father appears with his wife and kids in Chaps ads).

Romo’s been approached to host entertainment shows, ala Michael Strahan of Fox Sports, said sources. There’s even talk the scratch golfer might try his hand on the PGA Tour after winning the American Century celebrity golf tournament for the second year in a row. 

Yes, Romo loves CBS. But he’s not a network lifer like Nantz. He’s a businessman. Don’t forget, Madden played CBS, ABC, and Fox off against each other so expertly, that he made more than any active player in the league at the time. Many younger athletes/TV analysts like Romo don’t like to negotiate contracts once their “season” starts, viewing it as a headache.

Waiting in the wings as potential Romo bidders in 2020 are ESPN and Fox. Not to mention deep-pocketed tech companies like Amazon and Google seeking NFL game rights during the next round of negotiations in 2021-2022. “$10 million’s a rounding error for these companies,” said a source.

If CBS gives Romo $10 million a year, Kosner would want a “commitment” from their superstar analyst that he’ll continue to work on his TV game over the next five years. 

“His play call predictions in the 2024 AFC Championship will hopefully be on par with what we saw at during the New England-KC game,” Kosner said. “I would probably look to add him to other programming and gain his commitment to work with our advertisers. Find more ways to make my investment pay without overusing him.” 

Romo laughed off the “Romo-mania” that made him one of the biggest stars at Super Bowl 53. Leading up to the big game, the sports media swarmed him more than most of the players. 

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he quipped. “I’m just trying to make sure I don’t say the wrong thing.”

John Kosner on WSC Sports in The Athletic

Original Article: The Athletic, by Daniel Kaplan, August 21, 2019

TEL AVIV, Israel — This year, about 1.6 million official sports highlights viewed on platforms ranging from Twitter, NBA.com to Instagram, to name only a few, will be generated by a small Israeli company that deploys artificial intelligence to do a job that once took teams of video editors.

The story behind that company, WSC Sports, is almost as wild, if not more so, than many of the plays its technology now delivers to fans around the globe.

“My initial thought was, ‘I’ve heard this pitch many times;’ I was skeptical,” said Bob Carney, the NBA’s vice president of emerging media, recounting his 2014 meeting with WSC when he handled digital for the NBA’s D League (now the G League). “Their Point Deck was incredibly poorly designed.”

AI was just coming into vogue, so business executives were used to hearing from obscure technology firms about how their software was the one. WSC had just branched into highlights from coaching technology, so that served as another negative. Nevertheless, Carney let them try a finished D-League game as a test and what came back shocked him; “eyebrow-raising” is the phrase he deployed.

“It was a pretty remarkable transformation from having one piece of content that was two minutes in length that was being manually created to 20-plus pieces of content per game that were being automatically created,” he said. Within a few years year, the NBA had hired this small startup with less than a half dozen employees to handle league-wide highlights for not just G League, but WNBA and then the NBA.

Those 1.6 million highlights are double the 2018 total, and by the company’s estimate 10 times the content human editors could produce.

WSC’s technology allows a league like the NBA, for example, to identify each dunk by a French-born player and immediately distribute those plays to French social media, or recognize cues like crowd noise or game moments to generate a highlight, which can be a few seconds or few minutes in length. The system actually learns what a highlight is.

Clients now include the PGA Tour, Cricket Australia, MLS, Bundesliga, Bleacher Report, Stadium and even esports. That list is hardly exhaustive because many leagues don’t give permission for WSC to say who they work for when there is not a sponsor relationship.

That’s why WSC, which says it works in 14 sports including surfing, steadfastly declined to comment on what is likely their biggest client, the NFL. That bit of information came from John Kosner, former executive vice president of digital media at ESPN, and a media consultant who advises WSC.

“They do all the NFL video highlights,” Kosner said. The NFL did not reply for comment.

Located about two miles from the Tel Aviv beach on the 28th floor of a black office tower, WSC is expanding rapidly with now over 100 employees. It just added 1,600 more square meters of office space, a 133 percent increase.

A half decade ago, it was largely just the four co-founders, self-identified Israeli “geeks.” Tech and NBA acolytes growing up, they were so smart in high school they qualified for an Israeli military program that sent them to school for four years instead of the front lines (they followed that up with six required years behind the scenes in the military). Almost all Israelis begin three-year military service when they turn 18.

“Our guys (in the military) were in charge of video solutions, video streaming, video encoding and stuff like that,” said co-founder Daniel Shichman, seated in a WSC conference room, the Mediterranean glittering in the distance. “I was in charge of wireless telecommunications systems. We have Jewish moms, so they wanted us to go and, you know, work as an engineer, go to Cisco, Intel, IBM.”

Israel is a tech hub, with the country of eight million third behind the US and China in number of listings on NASDAQ. But Shichman and his friends were basketball junkies, so following mom’s advice and taking the steady paycheck didn’t appeal (Ironically IBM’s name adorns their office building).

Shichman said as a teen he would stay up until 3 a.m. to listen to NBA games. In the main hall of the headquarters hangs Larry Bird and Magic Johnson jerseys. Not signed or special memorabilia; off the rack jerseys.

That youthful spirit is alive elsewhere in the office, which boasts a full-scale Jorkyball court. A French game played in an enclosed 33-by-16-foot enclosed court that pits two competitors who can only kick the ball (not dribble or control), at the two goals. Think of a cross between soccer and racquetball, and that’s what WSC employees do to blow off steam.

David Stern, the former NBA commissioner and adviser to WSC, calls them the crazy Israelis and still harangues co-founder Aviv Arnon for wearing torn pants to their first meeting.

“My girlfriend chose the jeans. It wasn’t me and I don’t remember why. But my other pants were off-duty that day,“ Arnon recalled of the New York meeting, where he admits he was in awe of meeting Stern. “I actually hid it for most of the meeting, I was able to like, I didn’t show, it wasn’t a big rip and tear. But when he walked around the table at some point and he saw it and then I was gone. That’s it. He hasn’t stopped talking about it.”

Shichman even jokes if the company goes public, they will make Stern wear a pair of shredded jeans. But Stern calls them crazy for more than ripped fabric. Beside the gall to disrupt the traditional and time-consuming video editing system necessary in the past to show highlights, they will do just about anything to get a meeting and woo a client. Arnon spends half his time on the road, and still flies coach. Asked wouldn’t it be better to fly business and arrive better rested, he replied, “It’s the hustling mindset.”

“Their system is smart… it’s constantly learning and improving itself.”

— John Kosner

Once Shichman and Arnon were at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas and waited all week to get a meeting with Dan Gilbert, the Cleveland Cavaliers owner and now a WSC investor. (Disclaimer: Dan Gilbert holds an ownership stake in Courtside Ventures, which in turn holds a minority interest in The Athletic.)

The last night they were told no, but kept pushing. Gilbert was flying to Texas the next morning and offered them 15 minutes alone on his plane. They took it, got the entire 75-minute flight, and after landing bought tickets to get back to Vegas.

Asked if they got what they wanted, Shichman replied they only wanted to hear Gilbert’s view of the business. Of course it takes more than sleep-deprived bravado; the technology works.

“Most software systems that do this kind of work, are fairly static, meaning you have a tool and you can identify clips and distribute them, but it’s the same every time,” explained Kosner, the media consultant. “Their system is smart… it’s constantly learning and improving itself. So you say for instance, ‘OK, show me the best plays from Kawhi Leonard and Kevin Durant from the fourth quarter of Game 2 of the NBA Finals.’ And within a couple of minutes, it automatically spits that out, prioritizes by their algorithm. And then there are other little magical things.”

Shichman, Arnon and their partners — Hy Gal and Shmulik Yoffe — initially did not choose highlights. After the military they developed scouting technology for basketball (thus the WSC stands for World Scouting Corp). They decided the finite number of teams limited the business.

Then Shichman saw Dwyane Wade with a great block in the 2013 NBA Finals and tried to watch the highlight. “And I only found like a very bad version, pirated, low-quality version on YouTube,” he explained. “And then we said, it doesn’t make sense that now we’re watching, they’re very low quality, we’re not enjoying it, took us time to find it. The NBA doesn’t get anything for us watching that clip.”

The next frontier for WSC is gambling. The company is in discussions with betting houses to deliver highlights to gambling apps. The rights belong to the leagues, which would first have to sell the clips. But within a year, WSC expects to have a new client base.

The company counts several major-league owners as investors in addition to Gilbert. HBSE Ventures, the venture capital fund of the owners of the Philadelphia 76ers and New Jersey Devils, invested earlier this month in a $23 million Series C round. The Minnesota Vikings owners, the Wilf family, invested in 2016 through their WISE Ventures.

“WSC Sports has been a great fit in the portfolio,” Brian Cargo, who manages WISE’s portfolio, said in a statement emailed by a Vikings official. “We have been impressed by Daniel’s leadership, the consistent growth of the company over the last few years, and continue to support their on-going success.”

So why did an Israeli startup, and not say a Silicon Valley one, come to have such a heavy presence in this market? Essentially, WSC built a better AI mousetrap.

“We’ve got a significant amount of experience, further than anybody else, particularly in sport,” Arnon said. “And we’ve trained the software to identify those indicators, those key moments that are more interesting or less interesting, we teach the system to rate how great players are, but also to identify what is the play, and how to edit it. And to do that, by regular software…would have too many variations.

“Well, with machine learning,” he concluded, “you can, you can basically give it the insight that… an editor would, and then figure out all those cues in the visual, audio, in the statistics, and mash it all together to identify, ‘Oh, this moment, is a great moment.’”

Ask the experts: SBJ asked John Kosner what sports story he was following

Original Article: Sports Business Journal, by John Ourand, August 19, 2019

Every summer as I head out on vacation, I ask some of the smartest minds in sports business to help write this column. They always answer the same question: Name the most intriguing sports media story to follow over the next four months. Each year, this column serves as a personal editorial calendar, identifying stories that I plan to report and write about through the end of the year.

AFFILIATE DEALS

“This year’s big challenge in sports media lies with the ability of over-the-air TV broadcasters to renew carriage agreements in a timely manner with the top distributors, like the AT&T/DirecTV-Nexstar/Media General dispute that could last beyond the start of college and professional football. This has a cascading effect on sports media as ABC, CBS, Fox and NBC all have affiliated stations with Nexstar that carry premium sports content. Further, an even larger fight in this space is lurking around the corner when Sinclair’s TV station carriage deal with Dish/Sling TV expires at the end of the year. The opening shot in this battle was fired two weeks ago when the 21 RSNs Sinclair intends to purchase went dark on Dish/Sling TV.”

Matt Cacciato Executive in residence, director, masters of sports administration program, Ohio University

THE EVOLVING DIGITAL LANDSCAPE

“I will be watching stories about personalization of sports media for various audiences. Do sports fans want to hear influencers ‘narrate’ live games? Do they want long- or short-form highlights instead of (or in addition to) live games? Do they want ‘Twitch-like’ engagement for live sports or real-time highlights? How will mobile betting be integrated into the live game experience? There are so many amazing tech platforms trying to seize on these experiences. Which will rise above the rest, and which league or sport will embrace this change?”

Leslie Gittess CEO, founder, Blue Sky Media

RSNS

“I’m interested to see what Sinclair has in store for the RSNs. The RSNs are a cash-flow play for Sinclair, as opposed to a growth play. Given the low purchase price, the RSNs will need only 2%-3% annual growth to reduce debt and generate cash flow. I assume that Sinclair will focus on the equity revenue share component in team rights deals to mitigate significant subscriber erosion issues, and I won’t be surprised if they explore sports wagering as a new revenue stream. Look for how Sinclair packages its local stations with the RSNs to create leverage in driving revenue from retransmission consent in distribution negotiations and more ad revenue from political advertising next year.”

Dean Jordan Managing executive, properties/media, Wasserman

NEW FOX

“I am excited to see the ‘New Fox’ in action this fall. There’s never been a broadcast network with the flexibility to focus on sports and live events exclusively. Now there’s Fox — and they have two NFL packages, the baseball playoffs and World Series, half-packages with the Big Ten, Pac-12 and Big 12, Big East basketball and Friday night WWE. Next year brings the Super Bowl, XFL and the first half of NASCAR to the network. That’s an excellent rights portfolio. What are they going to do with that? Can they make it bigger than the sum of these great properties?”

John Kosner President, Kosner Media

NFL STORYLINE

“We may be entering the ‘Age of the Black Quarterback.’ Black quarterbacks are on the verge of becoming the faces of the NFL, and of redefining the position. The league’s reigning MVP, Pat Mahomes, is a black QB. So is the No. 1 draft pick, Kyler Murray, and the NFL’s highest-paid player, Russell Wilson. Black quarterbacks are some combination of the leaders, saviors, thrillers, future of multiple franchises — from Cam Newton to Deshaun Watson, from Dak Prescott to Lamar Jackson to Dwayne Haskins. And then there is one black signal caller, Colin Kaepernick, who is out of football right now but still looms large as an emblem of social justice in sports. What will become of him?” 

Kevin Merida Senior vice president, editor-in-chief, ESPN

DIRECT-TO-CONSUMER

“We’ve been spending a lot of time thinking and talking about the implications of the ever-increasing role that OTT platforms are playing in sports media. Virtually all of the incumbent networks have their own offerings and strategies (e.g., ESPN+, B/R Live, NBC Sports Gold, CBS All-Access, etc.), while “pure play” companies like DAZN and FloSports have emerged as serious bidders, and the digital behemoths like Amazon, Facebook and YouTube continue to loom large. This is going to have serious implications for the sports business, as it will undoubtedly impact consumer viewing (and buying) habits, rights fees, etc. It’s a story with many angles that we intend to focus on this fall and beyond.”

Doug Perlman CEO, Sports Media Advisors

SPORTS GAMBLING

“I’m most curious about how media, in all forms, will be impacted by, and will impact, sports gambling. My main question: How will the media incorporate (or not) sports betting into their programming? Will we see an increase on the reporting of sports betting lines? What networks have the appetite to carry advertising from sports gaming enterprises? We saw a few years ago how the fantasy ads became dominant. I also will be monitoring to see how live commentary handles betting lines in real time. Could this new commentary impact coaching decisions and player performances?”

Kenneth L. Shropshire CEO, Global Sport Institute; Adidas distinguished professor of global sport, ASU; professor emeritus, Wharton School

John Ourand can be reached at jourand@sportsbusinessjournal.com. Follow him on Twitter @Ourand_SBJ and read his twice-weekly newsletter.

The New A.A.F. Is Betting on Football, and on Betting

Original Article: The NY Times, by Joe Draper, February 8th, 2019

There are a multitude of ways to lose money in sports, and historically one of the most dependable ways is to start a professional football league. Charlie Ebersol knows this better than most. He had a front-row seat when his father, Dick, the longtime NBC executive, was a partner with the XFL for its only season in 2001.

Still, Charlie Ebersol, a co-founder of yet another new league, the Alliance of American Football, is bullish on his chances to beat the market. And he argues that timing and technology are on his side this time.

The A.A.F.’s 10-week season opens Saturday and ends before the N.F.L. draft. This is by design, Ebersol said.

“It would be an act of insanity to try to compete with the N.F.L.,” he conceded. Instead, Ebersol intends to fill a post-Super Bowl vacuum and feed a viewing audience that he and his partners believe has an insatiable appetite for football.

“Two hundred million watch college and pro football compared to the 130 million combined that watch the other major sports,” Ebersol said. “We don’t need to get all of those football fans to tune back in, but I like our chances of getting a significant chunk of them.”

To do so, the A.A.F. is working to make its games easy to find. In addition to a deal to place some of its games on the NFL Network, the A.A.F. has agreements with CBS Sports’s networks, TNT and Turner’s B/R Live streaming service.

But the A.A.F. business plan goes beyond football and television; it is hoping to land in a right-place-right-time moment in which sports betting is now legal and expanding in the United States. Eight states already offer gambling on sports contests, and by next year, sports betting could be legal in at least a dozen more.

Anticipating and embracing interest from serious and casual gamblers, the A.A.F. has invested heavily in the technology and platforms that can provide data in a blink of an eye, all in the hope of transforming a minor league football broadcast into an interactive experience. Among the A.A.F.’s early investors were venture capital firms like Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund, media companies like the Chernin Group and the gambling and entertainment powerhouse MGM Resorts International.

MGM executives said they were most taken by the A.A.F.’s app, which can provide a host of data in milliseconds. The information arrives so fast, in fact, that the league and its partners said it could eventually allow in-game betting on play outcomes — like pass or run — and a host of other propositions.

“It’s a technology play,” Scott Butera, MGM’s president for interactive gaming, said of the A.A.F. “These specialty leagues will be relevant to sports betting. We think what they are doing is portable to other sports in terms of streaming, watching and making it an entertaining customer experience.”

Ultimately, however, the A.A.F. will be judged by the quality of its football. To that end, a founder of the league, Bill Polian, a former general manager of the Buffalo Bills and a Pro Football Hall of Famer, has put together a league office of seasoned football people, including the former N.F.L. players Hines Ward and Troy Polamalu. The league owns all eight of the teams and has installed big-name veteran coaches — Steve Spurrier, Mike Singletary, Dennis Erickson, Mike Martz — in cities like Orlando, Memphis, Salt Lake City and San Diego.

The league will lean on some gimmicks: There will be no kickoffs (teams will start on their 25-yard line instead) and no point-after kicks (only 2-point conversions allowed). And a so-called sky judge will keep watch over the action, empowered to correct officiating errors immediately.

But some other innovations — no TV timeouts; completing games in two and a half hours; tickets priced no higher than $50; three-year, $250,000 contracts to hundreds of players — have raised questions about the league’s long-term economic viability.

“There’s always been a belief that there’s room for spring football because of the game’s popularity,” said John Kosner, a longtime ESPN executive who now runs his own company, Kosner Media. The problem, he noted, is “no one has pulled this off before, so it’s not trivial what they are trying to do.”

Kosner said the A.A.F.’s timing — just as sports betting tries to move into the mainstream of American culture — is fortuitous, since the amount of energy and venture capital investment available in sports right now is “unparalleled in my career.” He also suggested that Ebersol’s experience as a television and film producer would come in handy.

“Charlie is smart, organized and patient, and best of all, he is a good storyteller,” Kosner said. “He can make the fans care about the game.”

Seventy percent of the players signed so far have played in the N.F.L. in the past 18 months, a group that includes quarterback Aaron Murray (Atlanta Legends) and running back Trent Richardson (Birmingham Iron). All have been signed to a three-year base deal that includes not only the $250,000 salary but also what the league calls engagement bonuses. Those are based in part on their contributions to the community.

And because the season is so short, all will be free to go to camp and sign with N.F.L. teams.

“We are not trying to be sexy,” Ebersol said. “We just need to block and tackle on the field as well as off it.”

For now, he is preaching patience.

“This is going to take five to seven years, and there’s going to be empty seats at first,” Ebersol said. “I caution everyone that this is not going to be an overnight success. But we will succeed.”

At The Athletic, a Hiring Spree Becomes a Story in Itself

Original Article: The NY Times, by Kevin Draper, August 24, 2018

The Athletic, the hyperlocal sports website and app, is growing quicker than any sports media company in recent memory. This month, hardly a day passes without the announcement of a new hire. Or four.

A football writer in New Orleans. A baseball writer in Cincinnati. An N.B.A. columnist and a college basketball editor.

Just 10 months ago, when The Athletic celebrated its second birthday, the subscription-only website had 65 editorial employees in 10 markets. By the time the N.F.L. and college football seasons open next month, it will have more than 300 editorial employees, and sites focused on 38 markets.

Backed by $28 million in venture capital, The Athletic long ago moved past simple questions like what to cover and where, to more existential ones: Can its rapid growth be sustained? Will it eventually make a profit? And why do its investors believe it will sail counter to the prevailing winds in media?

Those answers are not easy to find, but the business plan at The Athletic is largely a bet that it will emerge as a Netflix-like solution to the decline of local sports coverage by newspapers decimated by budget cuts, and that it could eventually win over millions of subscribers. Its current hiring surge, then, is more a doubling down on that bet than a tangible payoff on it.

Daniel Leff, the founder of Luminari Capital, which has invested in The Athletic, argued that the website is already worth hundreds of millions of dollars, and the only remaining question presently is how large it will grow. “This is a company that has already achieved escape velocity,” he said.

Without subscription figures or internal financial reports, Leff’s optimism is impossible to validate. Media companies like Netflix, Spotify and Sirius XM have tens of millions of subscribers paying monthly for their services, but few journalism companies approach those numbers. The New York Times leads newspapers with 2.9 million digital-only subscribers, and several magazines have circulations in the millions.

Taylor Patterson, a spokeswoman for The Athletic, said the company has “well over” 100,000 subscribers, each paying about $5 each month. Leff, the investor, said it had “many multiples” of 100,000.

Its recent expansion has generated considerable skepticism, however, especially as the behemoths of media are merging and acquiring to achieve greater scale; other venture capital-backed midsize media companies like Buzzfeed and Vice are struggling to meet revenue targets; and local news organizations are withering.

Brian Grey, who was the chief executive of Bleacher Report when the sports media company raised $33 million in investment capital and later was acquired by Turner Broadcasting for around $200 million, wonders if the Netflix or Spotify comparisons are accurate. “Video and text are two different animals,” he said. “The subscription and consumer willingness to pay for content may not map completely.”

But to Leff, small-bore questions about expansion or profitability are missing the forest for the trees. “Just to get to 100,000 subscribers is a huge endeavor,” he said. “They may or may not need additional capital to do it, but if so, so what? There are a multitude of capital sources that want to put money into this company.”

When asked if The Athletic was already worth the $200 million Bleacher Report was acquired for six years ago, Leff responded: “Absolutely. We wouldn’t take that.”

Still, The Athletic has received heavy criticism from the industry it hopes to dominate. In several markets, The Athletic has hired multiple writers away from the same newspaper, decimating the sports staffs at papers like The San Jose Mercury News and The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, among others.

The Athletic’s initial practice of hiring mostly veteran writers without posting jobs publicly also has perpetuated homogeneity in an industry that is overwhelmingly white and male, leading to criticism. Since then, The Athletic has begun hiring more women and people of color, and the company participated in the recent National Association of Black Journalists convention in Detroit.

At the same time, with the news industry under stress and as some have come to view supporting local journalism as a moral imperative, one of the founders of The Athletic, Alex Mather, told The Timeslast fall that his company would “wait every local paper out and let them continuously bleed until we are the last ones standing.” (Mather later apologizedfor his tone.)

John Kosner is a former longtime ESPN digital media executive who oversaw ESPN’s failed attempt at creating local sites almost a decade ago. He cautioned that while The Athletic is off to a promising start, it would need to “sell an awful lot of subscriptions to become a big profitable enterprise.”

But he also argued that The Athletic may be different from Netflix and Spotify in a crucial way: The Athletic’s first subscribers were avid fans who already spend thousands of dollars each year on sports. To get to its goal of millions of subscribers, Kosner warned, it eventually will have to attract casual fans, a far more difficult proposition. Netflix and Spotify had the opposite challenge; both found it hard to attract subscribers initially because they had small content libraries, but they grew quickly as they added more titles, a concept of steady, relentless growth known as the flywheel effect.

“Yes, you can go into new markets and get sports fans,” Kosner said of The Athletic’s recent growth. “But it may not be as easy to continue to grow in these markets than it is to get started.” He predicted the end goal for The Athletic would be acquisition by a major media company, not a long-term future as an independent company.

Patterson, the spokeswoman at The Athletic, said even converting just a percentage of die-hard sports fans into subscribers “would result in a very healthy business for us.” She said the company has not seriously entertained any acquisition offers.

Leff also believes there is a crucial difference from other subscription companies: Though Netflix increasingly produces original shows, it and Spotify are still mostly licensing companies. Combined, they have to pay billions to stock their services, while The Athletic creates 100 percent of its content.

That content may be the crux of the challenge.

Most of The Athletic’s writers, including many of its most recent hires, earned their following over years, or decades, at newspapers, a following they — and their new bosses — turn into Athletic subscribers. But stocking the site with newspaper veterans (there is also a very strong contingent of former “Sports Illustrated” journalists) means The Athletic often doesn’t read that different from a newspaper sports section.

At Netflix and Spotify, the compelling product is the video and the music. But in sports, the most compelling product isn’t the writing. It is the games themselves, and Grey, the Bleacher Report veteran, wondered if that might be what The Athletic needs in order to truly scale its audience.

“Facebook is buying rights to live games. Twitter is buying rights to live games,” Grey said. “The Athletic may need to find itself moving in that direction.”