John Kosner 1-on-1 with David Levy
Original Article: The Future of Sport at Advertising Week, by Global VC Sports, October 8th, 2020
GlobalVC Sports partnered with Advertising Week to present the 7th Annual “Future of Sport.” Advertising Week granted free access to the entire week, which featured 750+ Speakers and 350+ Virtual Events, including John Kosner’s 1-on-1 with David Levy.
John Kosner Appeared on a Sports AI Panel for SportsProLive on Sept. 16
Original Article: SportsProLive, September 16th, 2020
Driving the new era of sports
Leading experts across the sports ecosystem will gather to discuss the most disruptive and challenging topics facing the industry today.
Attendees will hear from and connect with the most innovative brands, rights holders and technologies from all corners of the globe.
Founded on six key pillars – everything from AI to data to sustainability to digital transformation will be tackled head-on by the event’s pioneering speakers and thought leaders.
Watch the video recording below!
John Kosner Appeared on Two Panels for SIGA Sport Integrity Week
Wednesday, September 9th: “ESPORTS: THE FUTURE, NOW!”
Thursday, September 10th: “SPORT INTEGRITY, TECHNOLOGY & INNOVATION: THE NEXT BIG THING”
For more information on the Sports Integrity Global Alliance, visit their website.
John Kosner Talks to Ben Fischer at the SBJ About the Risks if the NFL Can’t Play
Original Article: Sports Business Journal, by Ben Fischer, August 31st, 2020
Every year from September to December, America’s top-selling beer brand turns its entire marketing budget — more than $100 million — toward the NFL: Tens of millions of team-logoed Bud Light cans, retail displays, sweepstakes, national television advertisements, the works.
This year is no different, and most of that is already on its way to market. It’s a typically routine step that has taken on the feeling of risk for Anheuser-Busch InBev during the pandemic.
“If for any reason the NFL season doesn’t happen, it really pulls the rug out from under us, and quickly,” said Nick Kelly, vice president of partnerships, beer culture and community at AB InBev. “The hard costs associated with basically taking all the creative — that we put months into developing from retail to TV — and quickly running to create something else are astronomical.”
Such is life for anyone with a vested interest in the success of the NFL in 2020. The last American sports league to attempt a season during the global pandemic is also the most dominant one, raising the stakes for a sport that always carries a heavy responsibility for the entire industry in television ratings, sponsorship activation and other business imperatives. Bolstered by low COVID-19 case counts in training camp, confidence remains high at the league’s Park Avenue headquarters that the Super Bowl champion Kansas City Chiefs and star quarterback Patrick Mahomes will kick off the season Sept. 10 as planned and that the schedule will be played to completion. But there can be no promises that major disruptions can be avoided while the virus is snaking across the country untamed.
The NFL and NFLPA have adopted new operattional guidelines designed to minimize the risk. But in many key ways, this season will look very much like the ones that have come before it. No bubbles protecting players. Large rosters. Coast-to-coast travel. And all for a sport that requires frequent physical contact.
While other sports have made dramatic adjustments to their playing rules, their schedules or both, the NFL has done little of either, even while knowing positive test cases are almost inevitable. Yet because no other sports property comes close to generating the economic and social impact the NFL does, a remarkably wide range of business partners are counting on the league to complete this season’s high-wire act relatively unscathed.
“The NFL is the bell cow of the sports industry, that’s the cow that leads the rest,” said Marc Ganis, a financial consultant to the league and many NFL owners. “It goes way beyond size. It has to do with interest.”
Media rights holders AT&T, NBC, CBS, Fox and Disney/ESPN would take the immediate brunt of a cancellation, though it would reverberate throughout the sports industry over time.
“The nuclear option is if the NFL can’t play,” said media consultant John Kosner, a former ESPN executive. “I hope we’re wrong, that we never have to contemplate that, but that puts not just the networks into a very difficult place, but there’s collateral damage as far as you can see. Everybody loses in that scenario.”
Last year, the networks sold $5.7 billion worth of ads on NFL games, not including the Super Bowl, according to iSpot.tv data, dollars that networks would find immensely difficult to recover elsewhere with so few shows approaching the live audiences generated by the NFL.
Problems in college football may exacerbate the outsized role played by the NFL. This month, the Big Ten and Pac-12 postponed their fall seasons due to the pandemic, while the ACC, Big 12 and SEC are still planning to play as universities across the country struggle with fall semesters. That’s caused some marketers to shift spending away from college to the NFL, underscoring the market’s comparatively high level of confidence in the league while also raising the stakes further.
A substantial loss of NFL content would cause a revenue gap that goes beyond the sports division at the networks, said Dean Jordan, managing executive of properties at Wasserman.
“Not only do the networks sell advertising for that particular game, but like most tent-pole programming, it’s packaged with other advertising buys that go throughout the year, so the trickle-down effect could be very significant,” Jordan said.
Fox alone brought in $1.87 billion in NFL advertising last year, not including the Super Bowl, with CBS hitting $1.55 billion and NBC around $1.35 billion, according to iSpot.tv data. ESPN’s NFL advertising revenue is far less, around $475 million, but the cost is felt differently inside Disney — the NFL would need to find new topics for many hours of daily NFL analysis and talk shows.
And the problems wouldn’t stop with the money. Of the top 50 shows on television last year as measured by viewership, 41 were NFL games, and the networks depend on that platform to keep pace with rapidly changing consumption habits.
Networks use the NFL as a pathway to audience growth elsewhere, whether it be CBS promoting its traditional network shows on Sunday afternoons or NBC promoting its new streaming service, Peacock. ESPN will do the same with Disney+, and CBS with CBS All Access.
“It’s far more than a math problem,” said Doug Perlman, founder and CEO of Sports Media Advisors and consultant to the NFL, NASCAR, MLB and others. “Part of the reason the NFL is so different is the straightforward financial analysis, but it’s also the strategic importance of the NFL to so many different businesses.”
The biggest immediate threat is to AT&T’s DirecTV, which depends heavily on the NFL Sunday Ticket out-of-market package to drive subscriptions.
“My perception is it’s a huge driver of their customer acquisition and retention,” Perlman said of Sunday Ticket, “and if their consumer base thinks they have to go a season without NFL games, I suspect that would have significant implications.”
Simply put, the NFL is a true mass media, broadcast event in an era when those are hard to find elsewhere. Even minor NFL games draw viewership rarely seen in scripted TV or other sports.
With a Thursday night and Sunday afternoon package, Fox in particular depends on the league — 38% of its entire live network audience in 2019 came from football, according to a MoffettNathanson analysis of Nielsen figures (ESPN is 13%, CBS 12%, and NBC 10%).
Kosner said substantial interruptions to the NFL season could accelerate cord cutting, jeopardizing nonsports cable channels too. “That’s the downstream impact,” he said. “And then we’re talking about sports radio, betting and Las Vegas, and fantasy, and sports bars and restaurants, merchandise, travel and hospitality. It’s mind-boggling, the significance of the NFL to TV and everything that flows off that.”
Sports gambling, one of the most promising new revenue streams of recent years, would also take a big hit. Despite some diversification of bets that’s come with legalization, sports betting is still heavily seasonal. Last December in New Jersey, football (both college and pro) made up 39% of the state’s $571 million handle, while parlays (most likely football-related) comprised another 22%.
The vast majority of gamblers lay action on the gridiron, and then shops like DraftKings try to convert them into year-round customers, said DraftKings CEO Jason Robins.
“I think the last few months have shown that [people will find things to bet on],” Robins said. “But certainly football is a huge driver. There is a substantial base of people — and hopefully this will evolve — but there is a substantial base of people who, all they do is football. So without football there to activate them, it’s going to be harder.”
At the start of the pandemic, the NFL set its sights on a normal season. But gradually, its ambitions have been pared back. First, international games were canceled, undercutting the league’s growth timeline in the U.K. and Mexico. Then all preseason games were canceled, and as of Wednesday, roughly two-thirds of the league will start the season with no fans.
Three particular local markets stand to lose the most from virus disruptions: Los Angeles, where Rams owner Stan Kroenke’s self-financed $5 billion SoFi Stadium will be forced to open with few or no fans and cancel most non-football events, delaying the cash flow needed for debt service; Las Vegas, where the league hopes to transform the Raiders into a gold mine; and Tampa, which is counting on not just hosting Super Bowl LV but on the week of festivals it would have in advance of the game.
Even in stadiums that have obtained permission to sell some tickets, it will be a season of hard knocks. “We’re going to lose millions and millions of dollars,” said Dolphins and Hard Rock Stadium CEO Tom Garfinkel. “We’ll lose a little bit less because we have 13,000 fans [per game].”
The NFL’s accumulated wealth and conservative financial practices put it in a good position to survive the crisis, said Ganis — assuming the season does get played in some fashion. But there’s no denying the devastating impact of so many tickets going unsold.
“There’s going to be a meaninfgul multibillion-dollar loss,” Ganis said. “That’s significant. It’s going to affect every team, every owner, every player. It’s going to affect people from the star quarterback to the people who clean the stadium after the game, from the parking lot attendants to team owner. Everyone is going to get hurt.”
The concessionaire and stadium operations business, too, is preparing for the worst. Companies such as Aramark employ workforces from 800 to 2,000 in the 10 NFL stadiums where they have contracts, said Alison Birdwell, president of Aramark Sports and Entertainment. Already beset by mass cancellations in the concert industry and other sports, concessionaires are now faced with greatly reduced sale volumes under circumstances that will require costly new antivirus procedures.
“Many of our business models are built on capacity and economies of scale,” Birdwell said. “It’s a challenge when you cut it down to 10%-15% of capacity, because our business model doesn’t shrink the same way.”
In reality, it’s not simply a matter of playing or not. There are endless variations on how the virus might disrupt the season, and broadcasters, sponsors and others are trying to be flexible. For instance, Bud Light can adjust to changes in the back half of the season, Kelly said, after the initial run of retail displays and packaging is distributed.
But the worry for the NFL and the sports industry long term, said David Grant, the outgoing MKTG president of sports and entertainment, is that companies will discover new, less risky ways of reaching consumers. To prevent that, Grant said, agencies must work hard to find other ways to activate sponsorships if games are canceled.
Along with Bud Light, 36 other league sponsors and hundreds of team-level sponsors directly use NFL intellectual property to sell, many tying mission-critical holiday sales campaigns around the league. Last year, those deals generated $1.47 billion on those rights, not including the companies’ accompanying promotional campaigns, according to IEG. Even amid the pandemic, the NFL has signed two new ones already, Invisalign and Subway.
“If I’m spending $10 [million] to $20 million in the NFL, and I’m a CEO, and all of a sudden those dollars become available to me, it doesn’t necessarily mean I keep it in the NFL, or keep it in marketing at all,” said Grant, whose agency advises numerous NFL clients on sponsorship strategy and activation. “Those dollars can go anywhere else, including back to the house.”
In general, the media and marketing industry feel confident the NFL will get to the finish line. One particularly rosy set of projections — in which the NFL actually thrives during the pandemic, with ratings growth because of limited competing entertainment options — doesn’t seem entirely out of the question.
But the anxiety around the fall sports season still dents that optimism, if for no other reasons than past experience. When the pandemic first emerged, most industry insiders considered the NFL’s fall season relatively secure compared to the sports disrupted at that time. But after five months of inconsistent and ineffective response by the public and the government, the NFL remains highly vulnerable to pandemic disruptions.
“I think at the time, people thought things would be under control by now, and they’re obviously not,” Perlman said. “But by the same token, leagues have figured out how to successfully play without fans, or limited number of fans, and the NFL certainly has the ability to look at what they’ve done in the other leagues and take the best practices.”
For a league that always seems to land on its feet during a crisis, the luxury of having watched other sports navigate the pandemic is yet another leg up. But for an industry accustomed to total control, one nerve-wracking fact remains: This year, there are no guarantees.
Senior writer Bill King contributed to this report.
John Kosner Spoke to Mike McCarthy at Front Office Sports about the Big Ten and Pac-12 Networks Without Games
Original Article: Front Office Sports by Mike McCarthy, August 28th, 2020
The last decade has seen the rise of conference networks such as Pac-12 Networks and Big Ten Network. These networks have helped enrich their conferences and given die-hard college sports fans another viewing option.
But what happens when these sports cable networks don’t have any live sports to show their viewers? That programming crisis might only get worse as more colleges cancel sports and the pandemic rages with no end in sight.
The Pac-12 Networks, for example, laid off 10 staffers and furloughed another 66 employees Aug. 26, according to Jon Wilner of the Bay Area News Group and author of the Pac-12 Hotline newsletter.
The painful staff reductions came only two weeks after the Pac-12 Conference announced it was postponing all fall and winter sports until Jan. 1, 2021.
The furloughs run for three months, allowing the company to possibly fill dozens of open jobs if competition resumes in 2021.
“They’re banking on [furloughed employees] getting other jobs so they don’t have to pay them their severance on the back end,” said one laid-off employee, who declined to give his name because he’s seeking employment at another network.
Among the cutbacks, Pac-12 Networks eliminated the entire digital team responsible for its website, app, and social platforms, wrote John Canzano of The Oregonian. The result is a TV/digital network that appears to be on hiatus. Why would anybody watch, or advertise, on a network, he asked, that appears to be waving the white flag of surrender?
“From my standpoint, it’s an old-world of thinking that you have to have live sports programming 24/7 to justify having the network,” Canzano told Front Office Sports. “They’re in a tough spot because they’ve got a lot of subscribers expecting them to put out quality content. But they just laid off most of their staff — including their entire digital staff. So I don’t know how they’re expected to put together any kind of quality programming.”
Founded in 2012, Pac-12 Networks consists of one national channel and six regional channels.
If workers are going to be set adrift in the teeth of a pandemic and media recession, said Canzano, then the Pac-12 Conference should also cut the executive salaries of Commissioner Larry Scott, Pac-12 Networks President Mark Shuken and Executive Vice President of Content Larry Meyers. Or seek a less-expensive headquarters location than downtown San Francisco.
“The correct response would have been to look at cost-cutting measures that were more obvious like real estate in downtown San Francisco — and the bloated executive salaries,” Canzano said. “Invest in local programming and good shows that involve interviews with the conference’s coaches and personnel that viewers would be interested in.”
Pac-12 Networks declined to comment.
Meanwhile, the Big Ten Conference also decided to postpone fall sports, including the 2020 football season for powerhouse schools like Ohio State. But the 12-year old BTN is better positioned to ride out the storm until sports, hopefully, return in the spring, according to John Kosner, the former ESPN executive turned founder of Kosner Media.
For one thing, BTN is a joint venture between the Big Ten Conference and Fox. That ameliorates losses during economic slowdowns. That means they also have a deeper, more varied library of programming content to re-air when there are no live games.
Until the live games return, Kosner expects these college networks to do what ESPN and NBCSN did until pro sports came back. Namely, show reruns of “classic” football and basketball games. Even if advertisers are laying low now, they’ll eventually come back. Until then, these networks must do what they have to do to survive.
“When all sports shut down, ESPN became ESPN Classic. Then when they had live events to put on, they put on live events. You just do the best you can,” Kosner said.
Sports’ Cruel Summer
Original Article: By John Kosner and Ed Desser for Sports Business Journal, August 5th, 2020
Back in March, the NBA led a series of “postponements” and the sports industry hunkered down with the hope that play could resume over the summer. Sports has experienced a lost (NHL) season and shortened (NBA, NFL and MLB) ones before, but had never been entirely “on hiatus.” Now, we’re mid-summer, and the re-starts have begun (motorsports, golf, MLB and, last week, the NBA and NHL, so far successfully in their respective bubbles). Amidst the progress, however, the nationwide spike in COVID-19 infections is feeding a new crisis. On July 23 in “Bloomberg” Opinion, Joe Nocera wrote under the headline, “Covid-19 Has the Power to Break the Sports World.” Back on May 1, ESPN published an economics study that found: “The sudden disappearance of sports will erase at least $12B in revenue and hundreds of thousands of jobs, an economic catastrophe that will more than double if the college football & NFL schedules are wiped out this fall by the coronavirus pandemic.”
The $ 11-figure scenario may be upon us this fall. Here’s why:
1. The precariousness of staging sports during COVID-19. In the Wall Street Journal on July 16, Jack Swarbrick, the Athletic Director at Notre Dame, reported, “We’re mid-July and the trends are the wrong way … it’s the environment around us collapsing.” Notre Dame is arguably the most storied school in college football, the only one with its own broadcast TV agreement, and yet it’s already lost games with Stanford, Wisconsin and USC. It may even (gasp) play in the ACC!
2. Sports is in a period of profound uncertainty – and that uncertainty only goes one way. Stanford University, with perhaps the nation’s leading intercollegiate men’s and women’s sports programs (and huge endowment), just unilaterally eliminated 11 sports. And this was two days before the Pac-12 joined the Big Ten in announcing a conference-only college football schedule. Pro and college leagues, schools and organizations are subject to frequently changing Federal guidelines, individual state mandates and issues, and international decisions including managing quarantine orders. On July 18, Canada forbade the Blue Jays playing MLB games in Toronto this season, and in a Bills reversal, they will call Buffalo home.
3. Challenges abound. Among them: long-distance travel (a result of bigger and more consolidated college conference TV agreements), the vagaries and expenses of necessary testing (per the WSJ, the NFL’s 2020 COVID-19 testing plan could run approximately $75M), PPE and cleaning for both practice facilities, stadiums and arenas. Keeping everyone safe is harder and harder; especially with all of the professional and collegiate teams in states where COVID-19 is on the rapid rise – such as Florida, Arizona, Texas and now California. Last week, Pac-12 and SEC student athletes challenged their conference leadership on the efficacy of return to play plans. Of all the sports, golf appears the best situated to “play through” as the sport already lends itself to distancing and revised plans still call for no spectators.
4. The unprecedented nature of COVID-19 on Sports – the first existential crisis for the sports industrial complex. Even during World War II, when sports stars went to war and the U.S. rationed food, Major League Baseball continued to play (thanks to FDR, and women’s teams made famous in the movie “A League of their Own” picked up the slack), the World Series was played and fans attended. Today, sports is a multi-billion dollar enterprise built on long-term contracts and planning cycles. COVID-19 is upending, compressing and extending everything.
5. Perishable events and revenue. Yes, the strongest sports leagues like the NFL could conceivably power through COVID-19’s first and second waves (having the benefit of generating the majority of revenue from media – but facing the challenge of a sport that features heavy-breathing men piled on top of each other for significant, repeated periods of time), extending their season into the spring of 2021, if necessary. But most other sports, including college this fall, are facing cancellations of perishable events – like the 2020 NCAA Basketball Championship. The financial implications are calamitous. Two sports – college football and men’s basketball -- finance almost all the other intercollegiate programs and both are in jeopardy; the Tournament pays the NCAA’s annual operating expenses!
6. The Ramifications of COVID-19 on Sports. Today everything is interconnected. The sports industry is not just owners, players, TV networks, TV distributors and facility owners, but all of the people who work behind the scenes and all of the businesses interconnected are impacted. What does State College, PA look and feel like without Penn State football?
7. A changed and limited sports fan experience. What does the betting industry look like without football season? According to Sponsor United CEO Bob Lynch, there are approximately 450 advertising brands highly active in sports – the Super Bowl is its own phenomenon. Anheuser-Busch can sell you beer at home as well as at the pub, but with bars closed or re-closing, videos have surfaced of proprietors and brewers dumping expired kegs down over-taxed sewers because they can’t serve them to customers;
8. The Psychological impact of COVID-19 on Sports. What happens if the eagerly anticipated fall collision of virtually all major sports doesn’t fully happen? Will MLB fans steeped on the game’s traditions and unique statistical history embrace the 60-game season and its expanded Playoffs*? Will MLB’s already teetering non-Bubble plan last that long? Not only is the sports hiatus unprecedented but also today’s fans have virtually unlimited internet entertainment to fill their time. There is Netflix and an ever-expanding array of subscription VOD services (Peacock is the most recent addition). Perhaps, most important, is the rise of free, user-generated powerhouses like TikTok, Snap and Instagram. COVID-19 is a daunting adversary for sports, but the bigger, longer term threat is the free content algorithms driving social media platforms, especially among young fans.
Still, nothing matches Sports’ unique ability to command attention and galvanize communities. Society misses sports desperately right now, and ratings are thus high.
In the Cruel Summer of 2020, Sports faces both the immediate challenge of returning to play and then the even harder work necessary to restore itself to its historically dominant place in our culture amid upheaval in both the media business and society at large.
Ed Desser is President of Desser Media (www.desser.tv), a sports media consultancy. He was the senior media executive at the NBA for 23 years. John Kosner is President of Kosner Media (www.kosnermedia.com), a digital and media consultancy and an investor and advisor in sports tech startups. He was the senior digital executive at ESPN for 20 years. Together they ran broadcasting for the NBA in the 80’s and 90’s.
Kosner: “An Unforgiving Time” for Digital Sports Media Start-Ups
Original Article: Sportico, by John Wall Street, August 4th, 2020
Defector Media and the Local Media Consortium (think: an alliance of local media outlets) announced their respective plans to enter a crowded digital sports media landscape last week. Defector Media, a content co-op formed by 18 former Deadspin writers and editors, will launch a podcast later this month; their website will follow in September. The content and tone of the brand is expected to resemble that of the outlet the group collectively quit last year.
The Matchup, an effort by the Local Media Consortium to give sports fans access to more news about their favorite teams, will get started by making local publications available to all readers (their destination site will launch in ’21). A subscription to any one of the consortium’s individual publications will give the subscriber access to sports content from all of the outlets (without any additional cost).
The two companies intend to take vastly different approaches to the business (Defector will be subscription-based, while The Matchup will rely on advertising). But John Kosner (President, Kosner Media) says that “fundamentally, it’s an unforgiving time for either to enter the marketplace.” Existing competition aside, “the generation coming of age prefers video to print” (so any audience built threatens to age out over time), and much of the current generation of fans is pre-occupied with recovering from COVID-19, finding work or home-schooling their kids to allocate additional time and money to more sports content.
Our Take: The former CEO of a prominent sports media outlet said there is “enormous value”—from the fan perspective—in having access to the 2-5 articles/week that they might want to read but currently can’t because they reside behind a paywall (and it’s unrealistic to subscribe to each publication individually).
The former chief executive we spoke to called The Matchup “a death sentence” for The Athletic, another outlet operating on a ‘subscribe to one market, get the rest free’ model. That’s because despite having raised +/- $140 million in venture capital, it lacks the resources Google has (Google Media Initiative is funding The Matchup) and has significantly greater operating costs. While The Athletic has to fund its expansive network of writers, “the technology, the app, the marketing and the promotion [of all the content], all Google has to do [to put out a comparable product] is build the technology and the distribution opportunity, and they win. They’re building a publishing company without having to incur any of the costs.” If Google can get The Matchup to scale, it’s reasonable to assume sports won’t be the last digital media vertical the tech giant enters (think: news, business).
If there’s a reason to believe The Matchup is going to fail, Kosner says it’s because “there is no future in ad supported media”—not with a few outlets controlling the bulk of ad dollars (think: Facebook, Google, Amazon, YouTube, Snapchat). Brands have also stopped spending with newspapers over the last decade (see: advertising revenue is about 1/3 of what it was in 2008). But the former CEO we spoke to didn’t see that as a problem. They said advertisers wouldn’t look at The Matchup’s offering as “spending money on newspaper advertising. [Instead], they will look at it as spending ad dollars on a digital audience and trust that Google Adwords is able to funnel a certain amount of guaranteed money towards them.”
While the two c-level executives we spoke to didn’t necessarily see eye-to-eye on The Matchup, there was a consensus on Defector Media’s prospects: Neither believes the company is positioned to thrive in the current media environment. While Kosner readily acknowledged Deadspin did some fine reporting in its day and that several talented journalists have worked for the company, he isn’t convinced that the brand has a large enough following to operate on a subscription model. He pegged the entirety of their audience (i.e. those willing to read their free content) “probably in the hundreds of thousands of people—not in the millions.”
Defector had 10,000 subscribers (self-reported) sign-ups within the first few days. While that may sound like a lot, $960K in gross revenue ($8/mo.) obviously isn’t nearly enough to sustain a digital publishing company with 20 employees and real ambitions. The former CEO we spoke to isn’t expecting “that number to go up in any significant way from here, [either].” They said, “There’s a reluctance among consumers to sign up for paid products (only enhanced by the recession), and I just don’t see the former Deadspin crew—who lack relevance on an individual basis—[being another subscription most people would be willing to pay for]. If you told me that it was Bari Weiss, Andrew Sullivan and a bunch of big names were [pursuing this model, they would have a greater chance at success].”
It’s important to remember that “the media environment is also vastly different now [than when Deadspin was at its peak].” Kosner explained, “When Deadspin started in 2005 it was unique, and they had their own voice. Today, [that voice] is not particularly unique. In fact, a website with [the Deadspin] name still exists, trying to do some of the same things [this group wants to do].” The former CEO agreed, adding that the company no longer has a clear role in the sports media ecosystem. “They won’t be as high-minded journalistically as The Athletic,” They said. “They won’t be as deep and in the know as ESPN. They won’t be as much of a utility as Bleacher Report or as funny to enough people as Barstool. If someone really wants to read snark around sports, and they’re right wing they’ll read Outkick and if they’re left wing they’ll read Awful Announcing.”
Perhaps the biggest problem Defector Media faces is that some of its talent will inevitably bring more value to the outlet than others (think: revenue, attention)—a recipe for disaster when everyone is being compensated equally (or close to it). The former CEO explained, “The second somebody starts doing way better than the others, my guess is they fight, they split up and those who are doing great just make the move over to Substack.” Retaining top talent is always going to be a challenge.
Covid-19 Has the Power to Break the Sports World
Original Article: Covid-19 Has the Power to Break the Sports World, by Joe Nocera, July 22nd, 2020
“Staging sports right now is precarious and unprecedented,” said John Kosner, a sports business consultant and former ESPN executive. After decades of growth and prosperity, he added, “it is sports’ first existential crisis.”
Watch John Kosner at the N3XT Sports panel with Rick Welts
Original Article: N3XT Sports, July 16th, 2pm EST
Re-watch the panel with John Kosner and Rick Welts from the Golden State Warriors online, or read a quick recap on the N3XT website.
Networks Fear NFL-Less fall
Original Article: AXIOS, by Mike Allen, July 8th, 2020
9. Networks fear NFL-Less fall
Inside an "NFL on Fox" production truck. Photo: Michael Abdella/Detroit Free Press via Reuters
While all major sports scramble to rescue their seasons, the networks are fixated on the NFL, which accounted for 41 of the 50 top-rated telecasts of any kind in 2019, the WashPost's Ben Strauss writes.
Why it matters: The NFL accounted for 39% of all ad revenue for Fox last year, 24% for CBS, 21% for NBC and 17% for ESPN (including ABC playoff simulcasts).
"It’s practically the only thing on the minds of the networks," John Kosner, a former ESPN executive who is an industry consultant, told the Post.
"If you lost an NFL season, you’re looking at a financial hemorrhage."
For TV networks, losing NFL season would be catastrophic
Original Article: The Washington Post, by Ben Strauss, July 2nd, 2020
Throughout the spring and into the summer — without the NBA playoffs and baseball’s opening weeks — the sports world has continued to feel the steady drumbeat of the NFL. The league opened free agency as usual, providing news-making moments such as Tom Brady signing with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, and then its April draft went off without a hitch, delivering boffo ratings for ESPN.
For the TV networks and sports media outlets that cover the league, this has been most welcome. But as the calendar flips to July, with NFL training camps set to open at the end of the month, doubts have surfaced about the viability of football season. Novel coronavirus cases are spiking in states across the country. Anthony S. Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said football players may need to be in a bubble environment for the season to be played. Los Angeles Rams Coach Sean McVay wondered aloud how teams will be able to both play and take precautions.
“I mean, we’re going to social distance, but we play football?” McVay said during a recent media appearance. “It’s really hard for me to understand all this.”
While there remains plenty of optimism the NFL will play — somehow, someway — networks are fixated on the league’s fall schedule given its dominant position as America’s most valuable television property. They are invested, of course, in the planned returns of Major League Baseball, the NBA and other sports, but none carry the importance of the NFL, which accounted for 41 of the top 50 rated telecasts of any kind in 2019. The lack of certainty has led to uncomfortable conversations among executives.
“It’s practically the only thing on the minds of the networks,” said John Kosner, a former ESPN executive who is an industry consultant. “If you lost an NFL season, you’re looking at a financial hemorrhage.”
All four networks that broadcast the NFL — CBS, ESPN, Fox and NBC — declined to comment on contingency plans or how they are thinking about the 2020 season. But a senior ESPN employee recently lamented that there is no fallback plan even worth considering if the NFL cannot play, because nothing can replace the content or revenue that comes with it, according to a person with knowledge of the discussion. At Fox Sports, at least one executive has told an employee that no NFL season would mean trouble for the network, according to multiple people familiar with the discussion.
No network is more dependent on the NFL than Fox, which pays more than $1.5 billion each year for two NFL packages: one on Sunday afternoon and the other on Thursday night. The NFL, including pre- and postgame coverage, accounted for nearly 40 percent of the minutes spent viewing the network last year, according to research firm MoffettNathanson.
For the league’s other broadcast partners, the NFL’s share of minutes viewed was smaller but still a hefty 10 to 13 percent last year. ESPN pays roughly $2 billion for “Monday Night Football,” CBS pays roughly $1 billion for its Sunday package, and NBC pays $950 million for “Sunday Night Football.” All bring in massive amounts of advertising for their NFL games.
Data compiled by advertising measurement firm iSpot illustrates how valuable the league is in terms of ad dollars. Last football season, CBS raked in roughly $1.5 billion in NFL advertising, which represents nearly 25 percent of the network’s total advertising haul for 2019 (not including the Super Bowl). NBC collected shy of $1.5 billion, also more than 20 percent of the network’s ad dollars for last year.
Fox was the most reliant on the NFL, bringing in nearly $2 billion from the league’s games last season, not including the Super Bowl — an amount that would be 40 percent of the network’s overall ad revenue from 2019. Additionally, advertisers that buy into NFL games often also must buy packages for other programming across a network’s schedule.
The NFL numbers at ESPN were somewhat less significant — around $500 million and less than 20 percent of its advertising revenue — but they don’t come close to capturing the importance of NFL highlights and discussion segments to the 24-hour cable network’s studio programming. ESPN is also the network that is likely to be affected most by a canceled or shortened college football season, which is considered by health experts to be at greater risk than the NFL because of its lack of a central authority, varying testing policies and uncertainty over whether students will be able to return to campus this fall. ESPN and its Disney-owned broadcast partner, ABC, received more than $1 billion in advertising revenue from the sport last year.
The NBA and MLB are more important to regional sports networks. The entire MLB season and playoffs delivered less than $700 million to national broadcasters ESPN, Fox, Turner and MLB Network in 2019. The entire 2018-19 NBA season and postseason accounted for a total of roughly $1.5 billion for ESPN, ABC, Turner and NBA Network, according to iSpot.
Since the pandemic began, ESPN, Fox and NBC have asked top talent to take pay cuts as they treaded water waiting for sports to return. Current and former executives predicted far more draconian developments without an NFL season — from layoffs to severe cost savings to networks being forced to take out large loans. One former Fox executive predicted studio shows would be hit the hardest.
“As the recent COVID-19 data points turn more negative, we are growing increasingly worried that the scheduled return of all sports in the coming weeks and into the fall will be impacted in different ways, leading to more pain for our media companies,” read a MoffettNathanson report published in late June.
In the longer term, said David Hill, a former president of Fox Sports, missing an NFL season hurts the broadcast networks in their battle for relevance against streaming services such as Netflix. Their main advantage in that struggle, Hill said, remains the NFL, and sports continue to be one of the key drivers for consumers paying for cable packages. According to MoffettNathanson, traditional paid TV subscriptions fell by 1.8 million in the first quarter of this year as the pandemic hit and live sports were mostly canceled. It was the highest-ever rate of cord-cutting in a single quarter.
“The NFL is absolutely key because it plays into the essence of what the network is,” Hill said. “It’s becoming the only way that networks can talk to consumers. If families are sitting in their living rooms watching the streamers — and they’re not turning on the networks for the NFL — there’s going to be less awareness in anything they’re doing.”
Regardless of whether the NFL season goes ahead, the league’s broadcast agreements are set to expire in 2021 and 2022, meaning the same networks will have to pony up what many observers expect to be large increases in rights fees — potentially as much as double the current figures, some industry insiders believe — even as they are potentially scrambling to patch budget holes for the current year. This week, Fox ended its broadcast agreement with the U.S. Open golf tournament several years early, a move that indicates a further commitment to its core properties, the biggest of which is the NFL.
“If you miss the NFL season, I think it makes the networks even more desperate to sign it again,” Hill said.
Still, alongside the simmering concern about what a lost season might do to the networks is the hope for what a season could mean. Given the high ratings for the draft, plus the possibility that fans won’t be allowed to attend games and people could still be limited in what they can do outside, there remains the chance 2020 could be a banner year for NFL broadcasts.
Hill said that, for whatever uncertainty exists now and in the coming weeks, he believes the NFL will find a way to play its season.
“It’s one of the very rare, absolutely must-have items,” he said. “And I would imagine that everyone being locked inside would be good for them, too.”
Prepared for Post-COVID Sports?
Original Article: Sports Business Journal, by Ed Desser and John Kosner, June 24th, 2020
“Crisis” derives from the Greek word “krisis,” which means “turning point in a disease.” While all of us hope for medical breakthroughs signaling the end to the COVID-19 scourge, we have no assurances right now. What we do have is time and with summer finally here, our recommendation is that all of us make the best use of that once in a career opportunity to put ourselves and our properties on firmer ground. From a rights/property holder perspective, we think you should focus on the following:
Phase One: Re-Think.
Have you put your most pressing problems into priority order? With revenues prospects down, how best to trim expenses? What do your media and sponsorship agreements state in terms of Force Majeure, and compensation adjustment procedures? How best to maintain these vital relationships? We are just beginning to understand the ramifications of COVID from a media rights perspective. Anticipate some form of renegotiation (see SBJ 5/18/20 “Follow the Money”).
But your people are central to keeping things together. Who are your most critical personnel, what are their key issues in this environment, and how do you keep them close and secure? What are you doing to complement Zoom communication? Who are your most vital customers, including fans and media partners, and what are you doing (communications, engagement) for them during this time-out? Are you using idle production capacity to help your media partners fill their huge un/under-programmed expanse of airtime?
In the midst of your team’s extended “home stand,” we suggest planning and organizational opportunities. Do some long term planning: Think about reorganization/streamlining to focus on high-return future opportunities. Three practical topics:
What is the status of your media agreements? What do you want these to be going forward – including whether or not you’re looking to expand your direct relationship with your fans?
How are you set up across existing and emerging social media platforms? Have you identified and connected with your sports’ key influencers? These will be even more important post-COVID; and
Where are you with your betting strategy? State-by-state betting legalization and mobile betting are likely now to accelerate as states need new revenue sources and fewer people will be going to casinos for the time being.
Phase Two: Re-opening.
Maybe you’re already open, maybe the time is coming soon. In-venue issues are vexing and both league and local governmental requirements are subject to change. Have you done the exercise to determine your capacity with 6-foot separation (e.g., killing every other row, and 1-2 of every 3 seats in occupied rows)? How you can maintain distance in concourses? One-way hallways or lane dividers? Your requirements for fans to wear face masks or bandanas (a new licensing and/or sponsorship opportunity?!). New security personnel or procedures? Arena surface cleaning measures? Are there new “doors” procedures you will need to implement, such as temperature checks at security screening locations, fan entrance and egress schedules, additional social spacing for fans waiting in entrance or concession lines, changes in concession and usher hygiene operations?
If – or once – you’re back, how can fans otherwise access your property (Linear TV, Streaming Video & Audio, Highlights, Social Media)? Expect more changes in fan expectation here. A unique COVID challenge is creating community around your team/sport if people can’t attend live? (we suggest tech to make “studio” sports more entertaining, improving your app, adding “Zoom Watch Parties”). Can social distance be achieved in a TV Truck? Another challenging issue is generating attention, audience, advertising, traffic, and sales when all othersports also come back at once … the scenario we expect to see by late summer.
Phase Three: Re-build.
The “new normal” is hard to imagine at the moment. Still, there are new processes that everyone is using now that you can implement going forward, such as (1) more work from home for employees and customers, (2) video conferencing for League and team events; and (3) use of newer technologies such as AI-tech for video highlights, live remote production, REMI and “Truck in the Cloud,” enhanced live viewing applications to both improve quality and lower costs, voice applications for “Hands-Free” experiences (“A new reality powered by AI,” SBJ, 4/13/2020).
Mostly though, we are encouraging you to think aggressively and creatively. Are there businesses you should consider exiting (e.g., retail, restaurants) or transitioning to online-only (box office, elimination of paper tickets)? Going forward, should your league consider a more unbalanced schedule and/or MLB-style (multi-games with a single opponent) home stands that cut down on travel and better protect player health? Game presentation adjustments to align with the new environment. And, of course, new sponsorship categories? The “Heat Check” seems too obvious to us! Official cleaning materials, gloves, N-95 masks, and disinfectants.
We don’t know how much longer the current fan-less sports hiatus will last or how severe the results will be long-term. Our training is to expect the difficult and prepare accordingly. We do believe our outcomes will be better if we can take advantage of this summer to plan, reorganize and prepare to emerge energetically. Sports fans, and all citizens need a return to a sense of normalcy which sports will provide again. We hope soon.
Ed Desser is President of Desser Media (www.desser.tv), a sports media consultancy. He was the senior media executive at the NBA for 23 years. John Kosner is President of Kosner Media (www.kosnermedia.com), a digital and media consultancy and an investor and advisor in sports tech startups. He was the senior digital executive at ESPN for 20 years. Together they ran broadcasting for the NBA in the 80’s and 90’s.
John Kosner Appeared in Frog Design Panel on Streaming Media June 24 with Matthew Ball, Veronica Belmont & Tom Richardson
Original Article: Frog Streaming Experience, June 24th, 2020
The Attention Economy is about more than just the streaming wars—it's everything that's currently fighting for the attention of the consumer, including news, podcasts, social media, literature, gaming, and more. The battle for consumer awareness is at an all-time high, bringing with it a golden age of entertainment and the potential for wide-scale tech fatigue.
So how does a platform stand out and successfully capture a piece of the “market share” that exists in consumers’ minds? By differentiating based on experience, rather than price and/or content alone.
What Was Explored:
• The Attention Economy and how to effectively break through the noise
• The current state of D2C streaming, including impacts from the COVID-19 crisis
• Why a human-centered experience is the only way to stand apart
John Kosner Interviews Villanova Men’s Basketball Head Coach Jay Wright
Original Article: Circles: Supporting Leaders, by Betaworks, June 17th, 2020
Video of John Kosner’s interview with Villanova Head Basketball Coach Jay Wright for Betaworks "Circles.”
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.””
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.”
“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.
Adam Grossman, CEO of Block Six Analytics interviewed John Kosner on Northwestern University’s “Revenue Above Replacement” podcast
Original Article: Block Six Analytics, by Revenue Above Replacement, May 21st, 2020
Northwestern's Master of Arts in Sports Administration (MSA) program is host of the Revenue Above Replacement (RAR) podcast. MSA faculty members Adam Grossman and Brice Clinton interview sports industry leaders like John on a weekly basis on a wide range of topics including business, economics, marketing, branding, media, sponsorship, events, and public policy.
The podcast will also be directly integrated into the MSA curriculum with students taking MSA 401-0: Sports Research Methods and Quantitative Analysis creating a production plan that includes an episode’s guest, questions, audience and timing as part of a group assignment for the course.
@ UCLA Anderson: What's Next in Sports Post COVID-19
Content Provided by UCLA Anderson School of Management, May 20, 2020.
John Kosner on "What's Next in Sports post COVID-19" for UCLA Anderson Class on "COVID Impact on Sports and Entertainment.”
Follow the Money: Unpacking Sports Media from the Coronavirus Shutdown
Original Article: Sports Business Journal, by John Kosner and Ed Desser, May 18th 2020
Everyone is talking about how and when sports will return. Few are addressing the pain to come: the great adjustment and renegotiation chain. For now, force majeure language in nearly all agreements forestalls this process. These provisions prevent either party from being in breach of the agreement...
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