John Kosner on sports tech investing with Chris Russo & Eric Fisher @ the Sport Business Finance Weekly Podcast
Original Article: SportBusiness, by SportBusiness Finance Podcast, September 13th, 2021
In this week’s episode, the SportBusiness Finance podcast hosts Eric Fisher and Chris Russo sit down with John Kosner of Kosner Media, a New York-based digital media and sports consultancy. A four-decade veteran of sports media and technology, Kosner has been a highly active investor and advisor with sports-related startups. Eric and Chris also discuss multiple developments surrounding the start of the National Football League’s 2021 regular season, including expected record levels of betting in the United States, robust television ad sales, a 10-year partnership between the league with Verizon, and a return of full stadiums.
John Kosner spoke with Sportico's John Wall Street about Barstool Sports & MLB
Original Article: Sportico, by JohnWallStreet, August 13th, 2021
Earlier this week, the New York Post reported, “Major League Baseball and Barstool Sports have had significant negotiations about having national midweek games on the site’s platforms” ( the non-exclusive games ESPN gave up). The story spawned a media debate largely centered around the league’s desire to cultivate the next generation of fans (see: Washington Post, Star Tribune) and Barstool’s well-documented, controversial history.
But JohnWallStreet has learned the polarizing discourse is much ado about nothing. A source familiar with the dialogue between the two parties said: “Barstool called MLB because they knew these rights are on the block. MLB fielded the call. But it hasn’t gone further than that and likely won’t. In fact, MLB was surprised to read the Post article because the conversations are barely existent.” Barstool is believed to have fed the story to the tabloid. The company did not respond to our request for comment.
Our Take: There is nothing unusual about Barstool reaching out to Major League Baseball. When tier-one rights become available, prospective partners across the broadcasting landscape will inquire. It is the smart thing to do. That’s because even if the company knows it is not going to win the package, kicking tires can be helpful in building relationships. It also provides for an opportunity to gain intel.
There is also nothing out of the ordinary about MLB taking the meeting. Doing so helps to ensure the league maintains a level of friendliness with the growing media brand. There may also come a day when the company is ready to spend $150 million per year on a national broadcast package.
What can be considered atypical is Barstool’s apparent decision to reach out to a rights owner and then look to leverage the nascent discussions in the media. But as John Kosner (president, Kosner Media) reminded, Barstool is not your parents’ sports media company. Leaking early-stage talks with MLB “is consistent with them drumming up attention for themselves,” he said, and it’s a strategy that has worked well for them.
For a company that courts publicity—good or bad—there is seemingly little downside to letting discussions with MLB be known. The affiliation helps to legitimize the Barstool Sports brand outside of their target demo and may make the company look to be more credible the next time they are pursuing a rights package.
Major League Baseball declined to comment. But the league probably isn’t thrilled by the prospect of Barstool taking talks of a proposed partnership deal to the media. The Post story has almost certainly forced them to answer questions from partners and sponsors alike.
On the other hand, baseball may not be publicly shutting down the rumors because, real or not, Barstool’s perceived interest may make the sport seem more relevant to the young demographic they desire. And there is no harm in either expanding the array of potential bidders (it’s possible that DraftKings and/or Fanatics could emerge) or having serious bidders believe the pool of prospective broadcasters is larger than previously anticipated. “It also keeps them in the news and makes the point that those mid-week game rights are available,” Kosner said.
As for those arguing MLB, and any other tier-one property, should stay away from the controversial digital media company, Kosner says they are barking into the wind. “If they have real money and want to spend it on sports rights,” he said, “there will be an audience of rights sellers.” One just needs to look at the Fox empire to make the case.
“A Revolution Led by Athletes,” John Kosner talks about sports data with Asli Pelit at Sportico
Original Article: Sportico, by Asli Pelit, July 30th, 2021
With millions of dollars on the line, athletes are discovering the power of their own personal data. Once exclusively used by sports leagues and teams to maximize performance and profits, data analytics has become a tool elite athletes count on while negotiating their million-dollar contracts.
The trend gained attention this past spring when Kevin De Bruyne, the 30-year-old midfielder for Manchester City FC, decided to negotiate with the powerhouse club without an agent. Instead, he hired a software company called Analytics FC. The company uses a database “across 100 leagues and multiple data models to highlight players that contribute to their team results in a holistic way, rather than just goals scored or xG (expected goals) earned,” Analytics FC founder and CEO, Jeremy Steele, said in an interview.
The company’s flagship product, “The Transfer Lab,” effectively calculates the expected goal difference each player contributes to the team by analyzing the player’s every action on the pitch. “We communicate the output from these [algorithm calculations] in a way which makes sense to club executives and coaches by using football language to describe them,” he added via email.
Negotiations lasted six months, but in the end, the club’s executives found the Belgian player’s argument persuasive enough to make De Bruyne the best-paid player in the Premier League, signing him to a four-year contract for $27 million a season.
De Bruyne set an example for athletes who want to control the data that leagues and teams have collected for decades. “This is a revolution led by the athletes,” John Kosner, the president of Kosner Media, said in a recent interview. “I think what is unique at the moment is how athletes themselves are sort of leading this revolution.”
One of these revolutionary efforts is called Project Red Card, and it started on the other side of the Atlantic. Last year, some 400 players across the English and Scottish leagues threatened to take legal action to establish who owns player-performance data. Data analytics companies can track over 5,000 data points per game observing player performance. The information is used by everyone from team scouts to video-game developers to betting companies. Until recently, that data has proliferated largely unchecked. The Project Red Card group is arguing that a player’s performance data is actually personal and is being exploited for financial gain without their consent. If successful, players could receive tens of thousands of dollars in compensation.
On the U.S. side, athletes are following in the footsteps of management when it comes to data. Analytics is ingrained in American sports, where data has been used to make better, more effective business decisions à la Moneyball. From sabermetrics to infrared cameras to wearables, team owners have invested in ways to collect information about athletes—in recent years with the increasing interest from PE and investment firms seeking robust returns.
More often than not this data were collected without players’ consent. When the NFL put chips in players’ shoulder pads, “some of the players did not even know they were wearing chips,” commented Brian Kopp, a pioneer in sports data analytics, who started talking about the subject 12 years ago.
Sports leagues and teams defend and promote the use of wearable technology, claiming they impact “performance optimization” or injury prevention. However, the wide-ranging consequences of collecting data and the ultimate ownership of that information are still gray areas. In their 2017 collective bargaining agreement, the NBPA pushed for a set of rules governing the use of wearable technology by the league and its players. According to the agreement, NBA teams won’t be able to use the data collected via wearable technology against players in contract negotiations. Kopp, now the CEO of Phoenix Sports Partners, thinks in the future there will be “more of a collective conversation. The caveat was always at the college level, where the players don’t have a player’s union. But I think that all changes now with the NIL ruling.”
Joshua Ebrahim, CEO of ProFitX, has a similar take. He, too, expects the new NCAA rules around name, image and likeness rights will change how young athletes look at data and its ownership. A former athlete agent, Ebrahim understands the importance of data while negotiating contracts. So he founded a software company, ProFitX, which today uses more than 90 data points compiled in the platform and AI technology to display real-time contract values and two-year projections to consult teams, players and fans.
In April the company ran a pilot program with 20 NBA teams. “I think these kids are going to come into it with much more acumen at a younger age, and maybe there’s an avenue where they start to value this data even more,” Ebrahim said. “We never had this kind of data as agents. If we did, it would have been very powerful.”
The potential power of data in negotiating contracts is kindling a new industry. This summer Analytics FC will be advising two Champions League winners, two current England internationals, and an FA Cup winner, though the company declined to name them, citing privacy considerations.
In the U.S., Steve Gera, a former NFL coach, started Breakaway Data and is consulting with a group of players in the league. “We’re basically helping them access their data, visualize it, and then customize it in a way to where they can look at their data profile,” Gera said. “The reason why De Bruyne had to hire his own [data] team is because there’s no club that wants to actually pay players more.” He believes it will be customary for players to own and use their data in negotiating with teams in the future.
And while De Bruyne decided against using one, data-savvy agents are still likely to play a huge role in negotiating contracts. “Analytics are important and crucial to make a case,” said Leigh Steinberg, the agent who secured Kansas City Chiefs star Patrick Mahomes’ record-breaking 10-year, $503 million contract. “The key is to analyze that data and show that he is statistically prolific and that he is better than the rest, using the facts. There is no arbitration, no Supreme Court in sports. How will we prevail? Stats are black-and-white values.”
John Kosner appeared on David Millay's Podcast regarding using new tech to transform fan engagement
Original Article: EngageMint, July 29th, 2021d
David sits down with John Kosner in the latest EngageMint episode, covering all things sports tech, truth speaking and leadership and the future of sports broadcasting.
Show Notes
(4:00) Forming Micromanagement Ventures with David Stern
(15:04) Importance of Humor in the Workplace
(18:11) Assembling the Right Team Around the Right Purpose
(21:51) Trust is the Essence of Every Human Relationship
(25:35) The NBA Trade Machine and Taking ESPN Digital
(32:35) Learn from TikTok, Instagram and Twitch
(34:53) Static Personalization vs. Modern Personalization
(36:55) John’s Advisory Work
(43:34) The Adrenaline Factor in Viewing Sports
(50:32) Overcoming Complacency
John Kosner spoke with Sportico's Anthony Crupi about Giannis's Instagram moment
Original Article: Sportico, by Anthony Crupi, July 21st, 2021
It was arguably the most engaging moment of the Milwaukee Bucks’ postgame celebration, but you wouldn’t have caught it if you were watching TV.
After putting up 50 points and steering his team to its first NBA title in as many years, Giannis Antetokounmpo hopped on Instagram Live to toast the championship with his brother, Thanasis. Placed in the NBA’s health and safety protocol prior to Game 5, the elder Antetokounmpo was cooling his heels in a local hotel suite while the bubbly sprayed at the Fiserv Forum.
Hundreds of thousands of fans watched in real-time as the newly minted NBA Finals MVP exalted with his socially distanced brother. A Champagne-goggled Giannis kicked things off with a Delphic riff on “For the Night” by Pop Smoke, cutting off the verse right before it would have veered into the part with the F-bombs, before telling Thanasis that he was bringing the party to his rented room.
“I’ll come to the hotel! I don’t care, I’m coming,” Giannis said, while holding his phone at arm’s length.
“No you’re not,” Thanasis shot back, grinning. “I’m not opening the door.”
While there’s no way of telling just how many people watched the exchange as it happened or viewed the clip after the fact, network execs and marketers alike probably want to tap into Giannis’ base of 9.6 million Instagram followers. Unfortunately for media’s old guard, moments like last night’s impromptu IG Live event are like lightning in a bottle of Veuve Clicquot.
“After the fact, someone at ESPN may have thought, ‘Man, I wish we could do that,’ although there aren’t too many people working in TV who’d be willing to risk picking up on a live feed,” said John Kosner, president of Kosner Media. More to the point, Kosner believes that any attempt to commoditize an impromptu social media exchange would only serve to drain it of the authenticity that made the Antetokounmpo brothers’ chat so endearing.
If the traditional media may find itself shut out of this sort of viral exchange, you can be sure that a whole lot of sports stars were taking notes during the Giannis-Thanasis chat. “I can’t think of another time when a separate live event took place during the primary live event which a broadcaster has paid for the right to distribute,” Kosner said. “But if you’re an athlete, what you saw was Giannis commercializing his success. The takeaway is that there are opportunities to create your own windows,” even in the midst of a trophy ceremony.
Naturally, with opportunity comes the inevitable commercialization that spoils everything it touches. If it had been LeBron James hoisting the Larry O’Brien hardware in L.A., fans may have had to endure a not-entirely off-the-cuff bull session between the Laker great and, um, Porky Pig. (Gotta get fannies in the seats for Space Jam: A New Legacy.)
“The natural connection because Giannis and his brother is what made the moment,” Kosner said. “Because of that, and because of all the variables that were in play—the historic championship, the fact that [Thanasis] was in the COVID protocol, etcetera—it’s unlikely that there will be a command performance.”
If Giannis’ IG celebration may be an irreplicable phenomenon, it’s perhaps worth noting that the MVP knows how to pick his spots. While nobody was going to censure the guy who put up that lurid stat line, other players have caught a fair amount of grief for inviting the outside world into the locker room. When Antonio Brown in 2017 secretly posted footage of Steelers head coach Mike Tomlin talking smack about the Patriots during a boisterous playoff celebration, the receiver’s exercise in guerrilla filmmaking would mark the beginning of the end of his tenure in Pittsburgh.
At the time Brown made the recording, he noted that 40,000 followers were watching his coach’s private address to the team. This morning, 150,000 fans watched Giannis request a 50-piece order (“not 51, not 49”) of Chicken Minis and a large drink, no ice (half Sprite, half lemonade) from a Chick-fil-A drive-through.
Giannis had the MVP trophy in his lap while he ordered the tiny sandwiches.
John Kosner on the potential NBA Mid-Season Tournament with CNBC’s Jabari Young
Original Article: CNBC, by Jabari Young, June 26th, 2021
National Basketball Association executive Byron Spruell has some work to complete before the league’s next media rights deal. The NBA wants a rights increase, and developing new concepts that attract viewership could assist.
The league’s push for a mid-season tournament is one option, but it needs to gain momentum throughout its ownership group. The players union will have a say, and the other constituencies (team executives, sponsors) will chime in, too. And then there’s basketball historians and traditionalists that will make a fuss.
It’s here that NBA commissioner Adam Silver is entrusting Spruell to help create the blueprint for the mid-season tournament. But early signs suggest he needs more incentives to make it work.
What’s in it for the viewer?
The NBA’s concept for a mid-season tournament derives from its observations of international soccer leagues. European basketball clubs also incorporate tournament-style games, and one NBA team executive noted the massive fan support those games get.
The concept would include group games -- essentially enhanced versions of regular-season contests -- and teams that perform well would be invited to the mid-season tournament. The NBA is testing the idea in the WNBA for its 25th anniversary and called it the “Commissioner’s Cup in-season competition.”
WNBA players will divide a $500,000 prize pool. The winning team gets $30,000 per player, runner-up $10,000 per player and the MVP of the Commissioner’s Cup title game takes home $5,000. Google is a major sponsor of the WNBA tournament. And Amazon is the media partner that will stream the games on its Prime video service.
The NBA wanted the concept for its 75th anniversary, but the pandemic changed things. So this year, league executives will study the fanfare of the WNBA’s format.
“It’s a visionary idea,” said long-time media executive John Kosner of the tournament. “I think we’ll see more of that.”
The NBA will use money as the main incentive for team staff and players. League officials hope this reward-based business model will drive players to compete. And adding compensation for player charities, especially social justice organizations, could help get their approval.
The thing is, what’s in it for the viewers? What will make people watch a mid-season tournament, especially with the National Football League in progress? And how would the NBA keep fans engaged?
Deputy Commissioner of the NBA, Mark Tatum holds up the card of the Detroit Pistons after they get the 1st overall pick in the NBA Draft during the 2021 NBA Draft Lottery on June 22, 2021 at the NBA Entertainment Studios in Secaucus, New Jersey.
Adding a draft pick
Kosner, who led digital media at ESPN until 2017, noted consumers have more options outside sports. Covid-19 disrupted sports consumption, and viewers have identified other entertainment options. For leagues outside of the NFL, innovation around its product is a necessity. Even if it means disrupting the tradition.
“You have to convince people that there’s a reason to watch,” Kosner said. “You have to make your product as good as you can because you’re no longer competing with another sports choice -- it’s everything else that people can view and can do.”
In a fall-winter sports cycle, the NBA’s 82-game season has become a bit stale. It has moments, like the Christmas Day games, and Thursday nights are entertaining with Turner Sports’ production. But players resting is still an issue, and that impacts the national contests.
Its top superstar, LeBron James, moving out west didn’t help matters, either.
This season, the league’s viewership averaged 1.3 million viewers throughout its national games on ESPN, ABC, and TNT. Covd-19 impacted that, but pre-pandemic numbers: for the 2018-19 season, the NBA saw an average of 1.79 million viewers. And the year before James left the East (2017-18), the average was 1.89 million.
Viewership metrics are somewhat tricky to comprehend, and the NBA’s product is strong for the 2020-21 postseason, including solid play-in viewership featuring James and the Los Angeles Lakers.
But to expand engagement and increase interest around a mid-season tournament, some in league circles floated the idea of adding a draft pick to the stakes.
The NBA could place the pick between the No. 14 and 15 slots, protect the lottery teams, and add an asset for teams that win the tournament. The league can call it the “commissioner’s cup pick” or some other title sponsor to pay for the naming rights.
The pick rewards the team that stays competitive during the regular season’s early stages. It creates an asset for team owners that executives can leverage in possible trade scenarios. And finally, that creates engagement, as social media channels are filled with NBA fans examining ways to improve teams via trades and draft picks.
Byron Spruell, President of League Operations speaks at the 2017 NBA Finals Cares Legacy Project in Cleveland, Ohio.
The NBA tossed around the idea, but so far, it didn’t get enough support. There are concerns about possible backlash and of empowering good teams with star players. It’s teams like the Lakers and the loaded Brooklyn Nets, that many expect would win any tournament. But with a knockout-style match, similar to the NCAA March Madness games, even the power teams could have a bad night.
Another team executive favored adding the draft pick. The individual called the concept, The NBA Commissioner’s Cup tournament, where every contest is a Game 7.
A peek at the viewers for recent postseason Game 7s: The Nets vs. Milwaukee’s Bucks averaged 6.9 million viewers. And the underdog Atlanta Hawks took out the power team – Philadelphia 76ers. That Game 7 that attracted 6.2 million viewers. Postseason elimination games are fun, and attracts sports fans.
The elimination style could help in the regular season too, said Kosner. He agreed with the incorporating the draft pick, adding the tournament “creates another event the [sports] betting entities would get excited about. So I think it’s a good idea and hope that they’ll do it.”
“It’s more quality programming,” said former CBS Sports president Neal Pilson said. “I can’t imagine the viewer would object or not watch. The idea of the mid-season tournament has an appeal in terms of creating more exciting and competitive games that might otherwise not exist during the regular season.”
NBA betting on patience
Pilson, now a professor at Columbia University’s sports management program, cautioned about player injuries, though.
Tournament games could raise intensity levels, and force players to play through nagging injuries they could otherwise sit out. After all, the NBA’s postseason is the most important stretch of the year. If key players are injured during a high-pressure tournament game, championships could be at risk.
But with the right incentives, the league believes even the best players would be willing to help teammates earn more money.
Draft compensation could return to the bargaining table as the NBA continues designing the blueprint. Again, the plan is to examine how the concept works with other properties, including elements in the Basketball Africa League.
Configuring home and away games will also be a challenge, and determining which part of the calendar to install the tournament is critical, too. There’s talk of inviting European clubs. And placing knock games in one location – more than likely, Las Vegas. Should Spruell and Silver develop the tournament’s logistics, and owners and players approve, league officials are betting patience will allow it to grow on fans.
The NBA renewed interest around the All-Star game. The play-in race is a fun concept. Now its exploring with its 82-game campaign to make that more exciting, too.
“If they created a mid-season tournament, with something at stake, you’ll get people to watch,” Kosner said.
John Kosner on The Athletic & the NY Times with Sportico’s John Wall Street
Original Article: Sportico, by JohnWallStreet, May 28th, 2021
Earlier this week, Axios reported that The New York Times (NYT) was “looking into a potential acquisition of The Athletic.” The story followed a Wall Street Journal piece that declared merger talks between the subscription sports site and Axios to be over and also pegged the NYT as the subsequent ‘leading contender’ for the digital sports media property. Vox is also said to be kicking the tires on The Athletic.
The New York Times Company would seemingly be an ideal landing spot for the once high-flying startup. “[They are] already in the subscription business and [from a prestige standpoint], they are one of the world’s preeminent media companies,” said John Kosner (president, Kosner Media).
It is less clear why the NYT would be interested in making a big bet on a growth business that has seemingly stalled, is losing money and competing in an extremely competitive digital media environment. The New York Times Company declined to comment, saying, “As a general matter of policy, we do not comment on rumors about potential acquisitions or divestitures.” The Athletic did the same, stating it “does not comment on rumors or speculation in the market.” But conversations with Kosner (former EVP, digital and print media at ESPN) and The New Consumer founder Dan Frommer indicated that corporate objectives, portfolio fit and a successful track record of launching subscription-based products are likely behind the company’s investment thesis.
““[They are] already in the subscription business and [from a prestige standpoint], they are one of the world’s preeminent media companies.””
President, Kosner Media
Our Take: New York Times CEO Meredith Kopit Levien publicly set a goal to reach 10 million digital subscribers by 2025. At last count (Q1 ’21 earnings), the NYT reported 6.9 million digital subs (includes: cooking and crossword products). “If you’re the New York Times and you set that goal for 2025, it’s hard to imagine you’re going to get there organically,” Kosner said, noting that new digital news subs are expected to decelerate now that former president Donald Trump is out of office. Rolling up The Athletic and their 1.2 million subs would push the NYT closer to its target.
It’s logical that the New York Times Company would look to add another complementary subscription product to the portfolio, as non-news subscribers are making up a greater portion of new subs than ever before. As Kosner explained, “Getting closer to the customer and serving them in different ways is a bigger business opportunity [than trying to sell news subs exclusively].” Frommer noted that with more subscription products the Times may be able to offer a broader consumer bundle.
An acquisition of The Athletic could in theory also strengthen The New York Times’ news product and support their international ambitions. “The Times has sort of abandoned sports, especially New York sports, and The Athletic has fairly comprehensive coverage of sports, both in this country and football abroad,” Kosner noted. A purchase of the digital outlet “would add a brand known to sports fans, fill a niche and fit into their plans to grow international subscriptions,” he explained.
For all of the positives The Athletic would bring, concerns about the business exist. User growth has slowed (granted, the pandemic likely had something to do with that) and despite bringing in around $80 million in 2020 revenue, the company is still not profitable. There are also questions about the size of the staff—600 full-time employees, including 400 editorial staffers—and how valuable its subscribers are, considering a significant portion remain on discounted plans. It is not clear the company will ever make money.
If there is a reason to believe The Athletic would become profitable under the NYT tent, it would be because the legacy media company has “a very impressive, robust technology and product division and is ahead of the curve [relative to the competition] at productizing and building businesses around different consumer products,” Frommer said. “They also have a huge breadth of experience, and depth of experience, developing and selling subscription products to consumers.”
One could argue that with more than 100 million people in the U.S. identifying as sports fans, The Athletic has barely made a dent in its total addressable market. But Kosner reminds: “The Athletic doesn’t just compete with other sports media subscription services. All of these subscription products co-exist together” (think: Netflix, Amazon Prime, Spotify, Audible, Hulu, The New York Times). It’s not clear there are enough people willing to choose The Athletic over those other digital products.
That said, Frommer can see how acquiring The Athletic could make sense to the NYT, even without a short-term path to profitability. “A company like The New York Times probably plans to be in business for hundreds more years, so they’re in a position to make 20-, 30-year bets,” he said. “If the bet is Americans will continue to love sports in 30 or 40 years, and [they] can own the dominant digital sports media brand, perhaps that’s a worthwhile [wager]–especially if they can buy [the company] with stock.” $NYT shares are trading at their highest level in more than 15 years.
The Athletic raised a $55 million Series D in January 2020 at a $475 million valuation (according to PitchBook). If one were to assume that any deal would ensure that those investors would not lose any money, the purchase of the sports site would be the second most expensive acquisition in Times history (behind only the $1.1 billion it paid for The Boston Globe in 1993). Of course, the company’s track record with mergers and acquisitions isn’t great. It ended up dumping the Globe for just $70 million, lost $110 million on the sale of About.com and saw two marketing companies it bought go under. In fairness, Levien represents new leadership; she was not in charge when those failures occurred.
For the record, Axios wrote that The Athletic has yet to hire bankers, meaning it is unlikely there is a deal in place with the New York Times Company.
The Adrenaline Economy
Original Article: Medium, by John Kosner and J Moses, May 18th, 2021
Last month, we watched the Academy Awards and were not surprised by the historically low TV viewership.
Were you?
Oscar’s 9.85 million viewers (down from 43.7M in 2014)?
No Mojo.
Today, we live in the Adrenaline Economy. Fans want action, involvement, real-time engagement. Entertainment options providing that electrical current are thriving; those that don’t are falling behind. Many, like the once mighty TV, music and movie awards programs, are suffering mightily.
The pandemic is a driving force here and has changed culture. During COVID, Taylor Swift recorded and released three albums. She engaged her fans, including 157 Million on Instagram alone. As entrepreneur and former Ticketmaster CEO Nathan Hubbard said in a podcast interview with Ben Thompson:
“Nora [Princiotti from The Ringer] and I did a song draft, 10 songs, she gave her first pick and we went back and forth and we drafted, we have hundreds and hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of people tweeting at us, texting us, DM-ing us, their individual drafts. People are dressing up and doing song draft parties. This fan base is just electric …”
Taylor’s all in. So is her audience. Taylor’s got adrenaline.
TikTok has adrenaline and, as a result, an astonishing 689M worldwide monthly users; making it “The World’s Fastest Growing Game.”
r/WallStreetBets, Crypto, Tinder, NFT’s, wagering — adrenaline! Financial platforms are now trading at a fraction of a second — co-locating at the exchanges and limited only by computing processing speeds. At the May 1 Berkshire Hathaway shareholder meeting, Warren Buffett lamented the rise of Robinhood, dubbing it “a very significant part of the casino aspect” of investing today. Guess what? The casino aspect is the point.
The games business is built on adrenaline. According to Grin Gaming founder Nick Bucheleres, the future of entertainment revolves around it. Free to play. Virtual goods. Creator Economy. Mobile. Global. Last year, people spent over a trillion hours watching and interacting with other people playing games! Valve’s Steam platform (including CS:GO and Dota 2) regularly exceeds 25M concurrent users.
And just wait until 5G hits. Our children will be able to play “World of Warcraft” on the subway — with no download or WiFi necessary. And they will have “wherever you are” geolocation — enabling them to integrate the people and things in the subway into their Roblox and Minecraft worlds in real-time! That’s adrenaline.
Sports, paradoxically, lacks adrenaline. Over Easter weekend, UCLA lost to undefeated, top-ranked Gonzaga in a thrilling Final Four overtime game, one of the best college basketball games we’ve ever seen. Yet, the Bruins’ epic loss drew just 14.9M viewers, the lowest ever for the prime time NCAA national semifinal on broadcast TV. Watching a thrilling game was once a amazingly exciting communal activity; now for many, it’s passive viewing.
Today, we have more people, in more households, with more money, better technology, and more screens than any time in history — yet the most popular sporting events and live awards show telecasts are attracting fewer and fewer viewers than ever before.
Why?
This is the fourth in a series of 2021 pieces about why games are ascendant in culture, especially among young people, and what those of us in Sports, Media, Investment … all of us in business … can learn from games. In our third installment, published on NCAA Basketball Selection Sunday, March 14, 2021, we noted that the massive virtual goods business in games worth $79B annually is coming to sports, finally, with the advent of “NFTs,” non-fungible tokens. Today, we look at what’s driving the younger generation’s move to interactive entertainment and how games are leading the way.
We are in the midst of a content revolution. The two of us grew up in an era of media scarcity, but now abundance rules. We all enjoy an ever-expanding menu of entertainment options — free and more and more of them are made and distributed by us. Besides TikTok and Instagram, there’s YouTube, Twitch, Snap, Twitter, Reddit, Discord, DraftKings and FanDuel to name just ten, free platforms commanding sports fans’ attention. These are places where the actual activity and energy of sports fans is the point.
On the pay side, most everyone subscribes to Netflix and Amazon Prime. They offer an awesome array of content to scroll through, select and watch on demand but these are not adrenaline choices. The Switch, Xbox Series X, and PlayStation 5 are — and they all sold out not coincidentally.
Games are what’s now and next. While TV networks blamed Nielsen for the ratings slump, the same research authority revealed that 55% of all Americans played games during COVID. In addition:
Twitch set a new record with over 2.1 Billion hours watched in April (29% year over year growth);
YouTube Gaming had its biggest year in 2020–100 B watch-time hours across 40 million active gaming channels. Per Pew Research, 95% of U.S. 18- to 29-year-olds use YouTube;
Games generate adrenaline, here’s how:
Choice. We can watch, play and pay for what we want, when we want it, wherever we want, and on whichever device we choose. The experience is always LIVE to us.
Persona. In games, we can be ourselves or we can adopt an avatar; and, coming soon, there are a host of new virtual identities we can assume.
The Audience Both Creates Content … Running the gamut from producing videos, podcasts, live shows, essays, comments, memes, tips, song drafts … redefining engagement … and actually…
Impacts … Games, TikTok, etc. in real-time. Our behavior matters!
Purpose. As Marcus Ticotin, a longtime games executive and now CEO of Abandon Entertainment and college classmate of John’s, says, “we have a goal, an activity, when we play.”
Place. Games take us to other worlds and situations and it’s all …
Global. Content is produced — and viewers can access it — from everywhere making the addressable and relevant audiences much, much bigger and dynamic.
Now, contrast all of those developments with watching sporting events and live awards shows on traditional linear TV. Our experience is plainly inferior. For one thing, we have little to no choice. We pay handsomely to see the games on traditional pay TV channels. And, for the sports industry, beware what you wish for. It has been so successful in building its moat (generating outsize broadcasting and related rights payments) that Sports has essentially isolated itself on its own island and it’s hard to get there. Sports is not available for the most part on the platforms that most young people use. That’s a problem, says Yannick Manual Ramcke, the OTT lead at OneFootball in Berlin, because “if it’s not happening on the platforms where you are, you don’t know about it and you don’t care.”
And the viewing experience hasn’t changed much since we were teenagers. Compared to playing games, live sports is full of dead spots — one-sided basketball games can get boring fast, not to mention the pace of baseball and football, especially with all the commercial breaks. There’s no swipe left or right. Do younger people appreciate the nuanced beauty that crops up unpredictably in big-time sports? Or has it in fact become too complex, lumbering and time-consuming to scale?
Meanwhile, in sports viewing, we cannot create or share content.
Yes, on a second screen, we can follow and be heard (to a certain extent) on Twitter but we can’t distribute NFL highlights on TikTok, we can’t access live games on Instagram or Snap. We can’t simulate the game experience of watching and playing together in real-time anywhere.
Because sports broadcasts are largely not personalized, they don’t recognize or reward the persona we bring as fans. They do take us to another place; but, once there, we serve little purpose other than as people watching passively. We don’t impact anything.
To change the current viewership declines, Sports leagues and organizations must get their games and highlights in front of far more people. More personalization would help. They need to update the playbook and rethink and rework their rights agreements. Networks need to make their broadcasts available to more devices in more geographies. We need an end to blackouts and video latency and an emphasis on the urgency and exciting communal serendipity of live events.
Most of all, we love the action and sports needs to give it to us. Compare watching this year’s Kentucky Derby (audience down 12% from its last May date in 2019) with digital, virtual horse racing [No drug testing necessary!]. Fans on TikTok must be able to create and share content that includes real-time league highlights. Fans can also lead behavior — as baseball fans are doing now @wallstreetbets-style with No Runs First Inning.
A ray of light arrives tonight with the NBA Play-In Tournament — a brilliant addition by the League (sorry, LeBron!) that has simultaneously expanded and shrunk the Playoff lineup simultaneously, adding drama while eliminating “tanking” talk. Adrenaline. And more: Sports and the NBA are actually leading the current NFT explosion.
It is illustrative to both of us that our teenage sons are happy to come watch a few minutes of any live sporting event with us but they then quickly retreat into their bedrooms to play games with their friends — leaving our traditional media “pipe” for their “metaverse” — the topic of our next column.
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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. J Moses has been in and around the Sports, Games, and Tech businesses for over 40 years. He has been a Director at T2 since 2007, and is currently an Executive Producer on a scripted Esports show for the CW (www.optinstudios.com). Both John and J are admirers of Roone Arledge of ABC Sports.
John Kosner spoke with Bloomberg's Lucas Shaw about the Deshaun Watson case
Original Article: Bloomberg, by Lucas Shaw, April 25th, 2021
In the five weeks since more than a dozen women accused Houston Texans quarterback Deshaun Watson of sexual assault, sports media has been tongue-tied.
ESPN's “First Take” and “Pardon the Interruption” have spent more time on the NCAA Tournament and the NBA playoff race. Talk radio has gone long on the NFL trade market and the Masters. It's not just sports media. While coverage of the allegations picked up after two women came forward with their stories -- prompting Nike to drop Watson -- the story has yet to appear outside the sports section of national newspapers.
Several senior media executives have expressed surprise at how little coverage the case has gotten thus far. Watson is one of the best players in the most popular sport in the U.S. His demands for a trade received wall-to-wall coverage at most of the major sports media outlets. But allegations of sexual abuse, not so much.
“It’s not been nearly as big a story as the merits of it warrant,” says Pablo Torre, host of the ESPN Daily podcast.
Torre’s podcast has been a notable exception, having now devoted two full episodes to the story. In the first episode, he interviewed investigative reporter John Barr about the case, and then spoke with Texans beat reporter Sarah Barshop. In the second episode, Barr returned to talk about the “conflicting narratives” now that some women have come to Watson’s defense.
The muted coverage contrasts with that of recent entertainment scandals. National newspapers like the New York Times and Los Angeles Times have run a series of front-page stories about toxic cultures at institutions like the Magic Castle and the Friars Club. Both the Hollywood Reporter and New York Times just this month published long investigations into producer Scott Rudin for being an abusive boss. (The Rudin story ran on the front page of the paper.)
Media executives cite many factors for the subdued coverage of the case thus far, including the relative anonymity of football stars, a long history of false accusations against Black men and the profession of the accusers. Watson is accused of sexual assaulting his massage therapists. While they are trained professionals, it has led some to dismiss the case as “tabloid fodder.”
“If you go to the NFL page for ESPN, it’s there. But I haven’t really seen coverage in leading newspapers I look at,” says John Kosner, a longtime sports media executive who used to work at ESPN and the NBA. “I suspect at the moment they are going on the information available to them.”
The story has received more coverage in the Houston market, though the tenor of that coverage has missed the mark, according to Texas Monthly's Dan Solomon.
One reason this story is still relegated to the B block is the evolution of sports media, which now prioritizes “the take” above all. A take is an interesting opinion, an angle on a story that no one else has discovered. It is the foundation of all the biggest sports media personalities on TV.
Stephen A. Smith is the maestro of the outrageous, if not always correct, opinion. Skip Bayless, his former partner-in-banter, built his entire career on takes. Bill Simmons, Colin Cowherd and Mike Francesa all have loyal followings because their listeners want to hear their take on a given topic.
It’s hard to have a good take on the Watson case. If you make it about the football impact, you may dismiss the allegations themselves. If you believe the women, you risk being the latest bigot guilty of falsely accusing a Black man. If you don’t believe the women, you have even bigger problems. Top sports hosts have often resorted to say things like, “This doesn’t look good for Deshaun Watson.”
None of these concerns have ever stopped cable news pundits from speculating or commenting on ongoing legal matters, but sports media treads more carefully. ESPN has a policy distinguishing between a civil trail and a criminal trial. Criminal trials merit closer coverage.
The investigations into Watson are still ongoing. The Houston police department and the NFL are looking into the allegations. The Texans haven’t punished him either.
“When there is active litigation, civilly -- and you don’t have obvious conclusions to draw about what’s true and false -- it would be irresponsible to do so. I don’t fault the shows that are run on takes for not diving into this through their lens,” says Torre, who is also a frequent guest on “Around the Horn” and co-host on “Pardon the Interruption."
And yet, ESPN showed no such reluctance to cover the outcome in the case of Derek Chauvin. The network, which just a couple years ago vowed to stick to sports, spent more than an hour of “First Take” on the trial’s verdict, and made it the biggest story on its website’s homepage.
Most members of the media cheered this coverage as a sign of how the activism of professional athletes has forced ESPN to adapt. That story has little to do with sports. But professional athletes cared about it, and spoke out about it, which means their teams had to pay attention, which meant the leagues and their media partners had to pay attention.
But in the case of Watson, his teammates, the Texans and the NFL would prefer this story just go away. -- Lucas Shaw
John Kosner & Ed Desser connect with David Halberstam of Sports Broadcast Journal
Original Article: Sports Broadcast Journal, by David J. Halberstam, April 22nd, 2021
Ed Desser and John Kosner worked together at the NBA for a significant number of years under the tutelage of the late commissioner, David Stern. It was a precious way to learn the business. Stern built the NBA from a drug infested league that failed to get its championship playoff round on live television to a multi-billion dollar entity with huge global footprints. Anyone who worked for the driven Stern knows that he was hands-on and a taskmaster. But many will also tell you how much they learned interacting with him regularly.
For 23 years, Desser served as the senior media executive in Stern’s NBA office and ultimately as President of NBA Television and New Media Ventures. He now has more than 40 years of experience in sports media, performing valuations, determining strategy, and negotiating major media deals in the local, national and international TV marketplaces, and serving as an expert witness.
At the NBA, Kosner was in charge of U.S. broadcasting during the Dream Team era. He then spent 21 years at ESPN where he helped build the world’s leading digital sports destination, a powerhouse in short- and long-form editorial content, streaming, social media, podcasting and fantasy sports. In 2018, John and Stern created Micromanagement Ventures, a portfolio of sports technology start-ups focused on media, betting and player health. Stern passed on New Year’s Day 2020 after a brief illness.
Kosner and Desser negotiate sports media agreements for rightsholders. They’re both ahead of the curve and clearly project conceptual frameworks that will dictate future television deals. The average fan might not know their names. Yet they’re well known and greatly respected in the suites of top television and network executives.
In light of the whopping $113 billion NFL deal, I checked in with them to get their takes on how the deal breaks out, what viewers can expect, the entities that they think could be big TV players down the road and how in a changing world we’re likely to consume sports down the road.
Q& A – Ed Desser and John Kosner
Both of you worked for the late David Stern at the NBA. He had a reputation of being somewhat of a taskmaster. What are each of your memories of David? Any fun recollections?
Kosner: I got to work with David twice – the first time after Ed hired me from CBS Sports, 1987-1994, and then after I left ESPN, David and I worked together in 2018 and 2019. My first go round, I got very accustomed to screwing things up and then hearing about it in high volume and frequency from David – leading to multiple “firings.” When we reconnected in 2018, David was a more content, relaxed person and my work experience with him was great fun. But he never lost his competitive edge. David kept his phone number private so when you saw the “no caller ID” show up on your phone you knew who it was. One time, I was working with David on an investment/advisory deal with a startup and the startup rejected one of our key terms. I sent David an email late on a Friday night, stating that success was unlikely because the startup “can’t do the deal we want.” As soon as I sent it, I felt this familiar shudder – No!!! David’s going to call me right back and say: “Listen, you ____, it’s not that they can’t, it’s that they won’t. You’re fired!” Two minutes later the “no caller ID” popped up on my phone. The difference this time was that after David read me the riot act, he had a good laugh when I told him that I got exactly what I deserved.
Desser: I too was “fired” multiple times by David…sometimes more than once in a day, sometime deserved and other times just for dramatic effect! Perhaps that was the reason he had both John and me working there at the same time! There are so many stories I could share about my 23 years at the NBA (plus another 5 before that locally, and 16 since working on NBA-related deals), but I think it’s best to just say there has never been a smarter, harder-working, more gifted, and more transcendent sports executive. David understood how every aspect of the business worked, and what needed to happen to advance the state of the NBA: “everything is a priority.” He recognized the power of new technology to supercharge opportunities, which was especially valuable for me. He never took himself too seriously, but made sure that we understood that “no one was going to care about the NBA more than we did.” He made my career possible, and I will forever be grateful for all the opportunities he provided, the support he gave, the lessons he taught, and his friendship.
Kosner: Can’t say any of that better. I would just add that David was also self-taught. He reinvented the industry but only after he learned each part of it (broadcasting, marketing, basketball operations, community service, next-gen technology, etc.).
Desser: I was one of his early teachers, before he mastered the subject and taught me a thing or two about sports broadcasting!
Did the enormity of the $113 billion NFL TV deal surprise you in any way? Other than a few tweaks here and there, be they ABC joining the Super Bowl rotation and Amazon getting Thursday nights, the distribution of rights mirrors what the league and networks have now.
Desser: The NFL deals collectively are the most outrageous, audacious, overpriced, but completely worth it media deals in sports history. The power of the NFL as a property, a brand, and a perfected form of entertainment, is something that can launch series, networks, businesses, and technologies in the USA. It is simply unmatched. It defines the high-water mark that all others seek to attain. While the deals are innovative (e.g., carving out gambling rights, making Amazon exclusive on Thursday nights), they largely continue the NFL’s long practiced approach, staying with established incumbent partnerships, while continuing the practice of “slicing the salami,” as David would say, just a bit thinner each cycle. No one gets all they want, but everyone is happy to be inside the tent.
Kosner: I was pleasantly surprised that Amazon paid $1 billion annually to get exclusive rights to the Thursday night games. Amazon’s purchase of these rights is the most significant deal in our industry since Fox took the NFC package away from CBS in 1993. What Amazon does with these rights – innovative production, multiple feeds, heavy stats, Twitch, shopping, X-ray – is going to be the most fascinating part for me. I’m also very curious about the streaming plans for other broadcast partners. They are each approaching the challenge differently.
The huge dollar amounts required of the networks for the NFL might very well diminish what the networks have left in the till for other sports broadcast rights. As such, it’s been reported that the NBA is seeking an early renewal of its rights deal with Turner and ESPN. The league is hoping to triple its rights fee from $24 billion to $75 billion. The current deal ends in 2024-25. From an overall revenue picture, other than the NFL, which of the sports will fare best in a landscape that can be financially tighter?
Kosner: I believe the strong will get stronger. The NBA is uniquely popular among young fans and basketball continues to grow globally. If the NBA does not re-up early with ESPN and WarnerMedia, it could become the first league to strike a truly global media agreement with one or more tech companies when its current deal expires mid-decade.
Desser: The upward trajectory of major sports rights is unabated. There is still nothing else quite like sports to gather a huge, reliable audience. The pool of available funding is growing from streamers and potential gambling opportunities, while the pay television market continues to slowly shrink. Caught in the middle will be the sports properties that don’t command sub fee allocations, and which can’t bring large amounts of content and subscribers to streaming platforms. They will have to adjust to the new normal, but will find a host of alternative options available as streamers look to build sub-bases in the current phase, creating new leverage for previously marginalized properties, provided that they have devoted, well-heeled audiences. Combining out-of-market rights with national rights is also a key “new” opportunity for MLB, NBA, and NHL.
NBC had the whole kit and caboodle in an exclusive NHL deal. ESPN recently bought a chunk of the rights beginning next season. NBC would like to cut a deal for the half that remains but has drawn a line in the sand. It will pay just so much. Thoughts?
Kosner: The NHL’s deal is indicative of what’s coming. The traditional rights buyers are all launching streaming services (except for Fox) and that is where they are investing. The NHL gets the ESPN and ABC platforms for its biggest events but the real news here is that the NHL’s outer-market package and its vast number of games is moving to ESPN+. Did ESPN backstop the deal to pick up the other half of the NHL if it doesn’t find a buyer between incumbent NBC, Fox and CBS?
Desser: The news here is that after 20 years of being a secondary national sports product in the US (primary in Canada), the NHL has become sought-after by multiple networks. This will be transformational to the NHL’s national revenue picture, which has lagged for some time since ESPN abandoned it in the early 2000s. Gary Bettman and David Proper have done a great job building the league into a true major league media property.
The sponsorship market seems hot. No issues there. Is it sponsorship revenue alone that is fueling these eye-popping deals?
Kosner: The ad market is hot now, but with ratings down across the board, will there be enough sports GRPs (gross rating points) to buy? Part of the energy here is coming from betting companies looking to build brand as legalized sports betting accelerates state by state – and to use sports to sign up more first-time depositors.
Desser: Sponsorship helps but the main driver of revenue is pay TV subscriber fees and current + future subscription revenue from SVOD (Subscription Video on Demand). The future revenue adds leverage to the valuation as they (like entertainment companies and Wall street) consider the lifetime value of a sub, and right now, valuations on new streaming services are very high for that reason.
Amazon struck hard and is putting lots of dough behind Thursday nights. Can other major digital retailers like e-Bay for instance take an interest. E-Bay engages with 35% of American consumers?
Kosner: I doubt it but it wouldn’t surprise me to see telecom giants like AT&T, Verizon and T-Mobile jump in, using sports to supplement their Netflix, Disney+, Discovery+ offers. They’re the real bundle now.
Desser: I’d also consider competitors of Amazon as potential players…Walmart, Costco, Target are unlikely to completely leave entertainment content + retail to Amazon alone (Amazon Prime is a subscription service which packages together free shipping, entertainment programming, music, photo storage, and many other items to create subscriber value). That could also pave the way for 3-way tie-ups with Apple, Netflix, and Google.
Kosner: I have to admit, David, that Ed seconded your point so maybe I need to reconsider …
How will Amazon measure the results of its investment? Where does it expect to generate its revenue beyond advertising? Can the NFL be a profitable package?
Kosner: Amazon is an eCommerce company – so, gaining new Amazon Prime members (lift), better retention of those Prime members (less churn), targeting TV advertising to those members, presenting them with new commerce opportunities, perhaps a new Black Friday initiative … In general, Amazon can use its superior personalization to grow affinity with NFL fans and take a chunk of ad sales in NFL broadcasts. Most media companies have some sort of black box analysis to tell them whether or not a particular sports or entertainment package is profitable. Amazon is perhaps the most analytic of all sports TV rights buyers. I expect them to make the point internally and externally that their NFL investment is profitable for them.
Desser: Amazon is unique with ads, promotional value and subscription like traditional networks, plus the data analytics, commerce and future options like ticket sales, travel packages, merchandise and even prescriptions. Figure Amazon to also play in the gambling space as a data-based operation. Thus, Amazon can make money via content in many unique ways giving them a competitive advantage. And added sports content provides justification for Prime price increases as well, which they have proven is highly inelastic. The formula is working very well, as Prime now boasts more US subscribers than all pay TV operators combined, next only to traditional OTA (over the air) broadcasters.
Is the very threat of social media and Direct to Consumer (DTC streaming) marketing forcing the Regional Sports Networks (RSNs) to dig deeper into their pockets so that they’re not marginalized?
Kosner: Yes and RSNs have to embrace both to survive and re-invent themselves.
Desser: RSNs have valuable, exclusive content that fans want. The marketplace is changing, but content is still king. RSNs are the incumbents, so they start out with established revenues and credibility that newcomers don’t have. Teams are very cautious about how they approach the platform (media). That is the primary way most fans experience their products. That isn’t something easily entrusted to newcomers. Change will happen, but RSNs still represent value in a changing ecosystem.
What’s the next piece of intrusive technology that will affect the way fans consume games?
Kosner: Sub-second video latency to enable in-play betting, instant highlights, watch party tech and other features.
Desser: The NFL carved out an opportunity in this space in the new deals. Look for others to follow. I also think the idea of live cut-ins as a new product is intriguing.
There is the issue of Sunday Ticket. We know that DirecTV won’t bid again. Where is it headed and how can it differ from a distribution perspective? Any last minute, surprise bidders?
Kosner: Sunday Ticket could go non-exclusive. it’s an appealing product for streaming platforms.
Desser: Yes, unlike the other NFL packages, Sunday Ticket has always been an à la carte subscription offering, that requires a buy-through, meaning that you had to first buy a DirecTV subscription in order to get Sunday Ticket. This means that it has both direct and indirect revenue opportunities for a licensee. Amazon, ESPN+ or YouTube tv could offer Sunday Ticket as a way to get new prime, ESPN+ or YouTube TV subscribers, and then still charge for Sunday Ticket subscriptions on top. And, like HBO, this need not be exclusive. DirecTV could even keep non-exclusive rights at a lower cost as a retention tool. While it might drive fewer new sign-ups, a non-exclusive deal with multiple players could maximize total NFL à la carte subscription sales.
Will the NBA, MLB and NHL ever go an NFL model and sell all their rights to one network that would also get local distribution rights?
Kosner: if the RSN business unravels it’s likely that some sort of hybrid arrangement will emerge.
Desser: Historically, there was only so much shelf space for NBA, NHL, and MLB on a national basis. This drove the current national/local bifurcation approach. While any change will impact teams in different ways, depending on market size and attractiveness, something more like the NFL model could very well emerge in places from the changing dynamics of the regional business.
What do these leagues and networks do about recapturing young viewers?
Kosner: Most need a new playbook and will have to re-examine their current rights agreements and philosophies around exclusivity, distributing live games and highlights. You have to be where your audience is – and that is going to be increasingly fragmented.
Desser: This is something that sports has never had to deal with before. The built-in father/son bonding and things like Little League created automatic affinity for young fans. Sports has taken this automatic fan development for granted historically. Now under 30s don’t have pay TV, and prefer Esports rather than playing catch with Dad. Teams and leagues will have to find new ways to get where future fans are in order to indoctrinate them and power the business for future generations.
Betting has been embraced by the leagues. DraftKings recently announced that it’s purchasing VSiN for $100 million. How will it change the way we watch games in the next ten years or so?
Kosner: We are likely to see separate streaming feeds that feature in-play betting. However, most betting activity will probably take place on your phone than on your TV set. The movement of betting companies to get into content (such as DraftKings purchasing VSiN) will probably be hit and miss. I favor connections to live games, influencers versus establishing your own sports media company.
Are you surprised by the continued growth in franchise values – despite the deep losses suffered by the scourge of Covid?
Desser: Covid is mostly (though not entirely) a transitory event. While it has long term implications, humans continue to be hard-wired to gather. Sports, concerts, weddings, and even business dinners are all things we enjoy. However, never before have we needed to question the wisdom of getting into a room with 20,000 others. This will pose a long- term hang-over, but there is also pent-up demand to eat, play, watch, travel, gather and cheer. The growing number of the world’s billionaires, with little left to spend on after buying a few homes, a jet, and saving humanity, are left with sports franchises as a real life play toy and the ultimate status symbol.
Kosner: The rich “franchise team” will continue to get richer. There is plenty of wealth out there and very few beachfront properties. Values of the 32 NFL teams will benefit from the new TV and betting data deals. Smaller market teams with less certain local TV rights potential may not be as successful.
Desser: It is the most exclusive of all “clubs,” with “initiation” starting in the multiple billions of dollars.
What are the two of you focusing on and what kind of questions are you being asked?
Kosner: I am fascinated by the explosive growth of the video games business and believe it provides a roadmap of sorts for sports.
Desser: I am constantly focused on how the old world of pay TV sports will evolve as a practical matter. The underlying dynamics of changing taste, availability of broadband, expectation of on-demand products of all sorts must co-exist with a historical business model based on nearly everyone paying a small amount for nearly every kind of programming they could want in a huge package. Like when cable evolved from broadcast, and again when digital/DBS (Direct Broadcast Satellite) provided an alternative to cable, the new world of SVOD (Subscription Video on Demand), DTC (Direct to Consumer), and AVOD (Advertising supported Video on Demand) superimposed upon an installed pay TV base provides financial and practical exposure challenges for the sports industry. Trying to be ahead of that curve provides a fascinating, dynamic puzzle to solve.
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For more information on our guests visit:
Ed Desser www.desser.tv
John Kosner www.kosnermedia.com
John Kosner on “Hot Mic” issues with Sportico’s John Wall Street
Original Article: Sportico, by JohnWallStreet, April 13th, 2021
Back in late March, NHL referee Tim Peel was fired after admitting on a “hot mic” that a penalty called in a game between the Nashville Predators and Detroit Red Wings was predetermined. That slip-up came two months after Golf Channel microphones caught PGA Tour star Justin Thomas uttering an anti-gay slur following a missed putt. (It’s believed he was fined; the PGA does not publicly disclose disciplinary actions toward its members.) That followed just weeks after Meyers Leonard was banished from the Miami Heat indefinitely for using a derogatory term during a live video game stream (Kyle Larson was fired by Chip Ganassi Racing for a similar offense in 2020). But despite the series of costly microphone missteps, a pair of media industry insiders—Mark Gross (senior vice president, production and remote events, ESPN) and Dan Cohen (SVP, Octagon)—expect that leagues will only be providing their media partners with more access moving forward (think: MLB Spring Training on ESPN). “Collectively, the top priority [for leagues and networks] is serving the sports fan, and access is at the very top of the list of what they want,” Gross said.
Our Take: Sports leagues looking to gain younger fans and/or keep them engaged will provide more and more access to their media partners because that is what sports fans have come to expect. “This is an established element of broadcast at this point,” Cohen said. “[The leagues] opened up the opportunity for fans to be this close to the action. [They] can’t close that lid now. Sports leagues are punching into the wind if they think they can [now] turn the ship away from providing consumers a better viewing experience.” Gross agreed, saying, “Access has been increasing for a long time now across sports, so the cat is out of the bag in that regard.”
Research studies done by ESPN during the 2020 season have confirmed that point. When given a choice of alternative production elements, most fans advocated for ones that brought them deeper into the telecast. The element fans were most passionate about was the utilization of player microphones to provide the natural sounds and conversations during a game.
John Kosner was on board with that line of thinking until the recent succession of hot mic incidents. The former NBA and ESPN executive-turned-startup investor now views “the combination of hot mic risk, social media’s instant global distribution and the current unforgiving culture that we all live in” as too great a liability for the big four leagues, and thinks a change in approach is on the horizon. The potential for “players, coaches and executives [to blow] themselves up instantaneously by saying the wrong thing at the wrong time is so palpable that you’re going to have people retreating here. When you have incidents that come up, and the punishment is that the person who makes the mistake is gone forever, there is just too much risk,” he reasoned. Remember, there was already a lot of pushback before the recent series of mic slips.
Kosner suspects it won’t just be the players’ and coaches’ unions, worried about one of their members landing in hot water, that will oppose the increased use of hot mics on the field. “If [a team] has a star player, who is caught saying something offensive, and there is public pressure for the team to sever their relationship with that player, then the owner feels [the burden], the team feels it, and the league feels it,” Kosner said.
Putting on-field/behind-the-scenes audio content on a short delay is a logical enough solution to the problem. Kosner reasoned leagues could “achieve 85% of the value and take out most of the risk” by doing so. But while a delay is fine for the purpose of short audio vignettes or an alternative feed, the approach would seemingly run counter to the leagues’ desire to capitalize on sports betting. “You need a real-time audio/visual feed to make in-game prop bets,” Cohen reminded. In-game sports betting is expected to explode in the U.S. within the next three to five years. For perspective, Bet365 has estimated roughly 80% of sports betting revenues in the U.K. come from in-play bets.
It’s fair to point out, as Kosner did, that “access is just one part of modernizing the game experience to get more [young] people interested.” Providing those fans with “watch party” functionality (commonplace in the gaming world) or any number of other innovations could potentially serve the same purpose. But Cohen says, “While a block party is great and creating multiple feeds with alternative broadcasters is great and tokenizing a match like the NWSL has on Twitch is awesome, none of these different engagement enhancements or innovations replace feeling like you’re a part of [the game] as miking up some of these athletes.”
To be clear, Cohen didn’t deny that “mic slips” can be problematic. But he said leagues concerned about them should focus their attention on accountability and education rather than trying to put the toothpaste (i.e. access) back in the tube. “It’s incumbent upon these leagues to remind people when you’re in public, you’re in public,” he said. “Everyone on the court or field [including the coaches and referees] needs to be aware that [on-court/field mics] are now a normal operating procedure for sports that are broadcast.” Those on or near the field of play simply need to be responsible for the language they use in the workplace—no different than employees in any other field of work.
Key questions teams should ask now about their RSN deal
Original Article: Sports Business Journal, by John Kosner and Ed Desser, 4/5/2021
“How much more are my rights worth?”
For the last 30-plus years that’s the first question teams had about their next local media deal. But now, with the NFL’s $100 billion-plus agreements speeding pay TV’s decline and (with an assist from COVID-19) Americans’ move to streaming, change is upon us. “Power” RSN teams retain solid options, but for the majority of pro franchises, there is no one-size-fits-all solution. The pressing questions facing teams right now:
Can they expect to get an increase in rights from their current RSN partner? That depends upon the leverage the team has in its market, and when and where its last deal landed. If under-market, the team should still expect some improvement, though not nearly as much a reset as in the past. If already at or above market, don’t expect much, if any, growth. Supporting value: There is little else in media quite like the home team in the home market (check out “How to make your media rights more valuable”; SBJ 4/23/18).
Since streaming is all the rage, should a team abandon RSN distribution now to establish a new position? Probably not. RSNs still provide favorable economics and broader coverage — at least for now. Streaming has certain benefits, but is less likely to produce superior results for most teams near-term.
With the traditional cable audience aging, how can a team reach and galvanize interest among young viewers? This was a big challenge even before sports media started to change dramatically in the last decade. Heavy use of social media, creation of non-live game products to attract younger fans (highlight sharing, partial games, experience-orientation, access to players and behind the scenes, esports, fantasy and betting) all play a role. However, teams need to explore some availability of their live product on platforms where young fans are. This cuts to the heart of traditional RSN exclusivity grants, which support lucrative rights payments.
Can a team retain streaming rights and sell linear rights to an RSN like the NFL did previously with Fox and Amazon on Thursdays? Perhaps, but expect the RSN to demand a steep discount for the loss of exclusivity, and don’t anticipate replacing lost rights fees with direct-to-consumer subscriptions alone. It might be better for the team to partner with its RSN to develop a differentiated companion streaming product which addresses both sides’ interests. But the RSN will have to justify such an approach with its MVPD distributors, contend with MFNs and, of course, the execution of the streaming app matters (see “Sports DTC squeeze play”; SBJ 1/13/2020).
Are long-term deals (10-plus years) still preferable? Probably not. With much greater uncertainty in cable distribution, new opportunities developing, and added risk that highly leveraged RSNs may not always be able to meet their financial obligations, shorter deals seem prudent.
Are Apple, Netflix, Amazon and YouTube poised to be big bidders, filling in the potential void of retrenching RSNs? Unlikely. Netflix has focused on long-tail “evergreen” programming — content they can produce and show for many years globally — unlike live sports, which principally matters when they’re played. Apple has not yet shown interest in acquiring sports, focused rather on entertainment and its “services” business. Amazon has just made an $11 billion bet on NFL, but that’s a national deal, and its emphasis has been international with major brands such as the Premier League. YouTube’s audience is growing significantly without live sports, though it has dabbled with some regional MLS rights (see “Netflix of sports”; SBJ 1/18/21).
How does a team know if it’s a good DTC candidate? Market size is critical in forming the denominator for any revenue projection. Relative popularity is next most important. If just tens of thousands of fans watch a team’s games when they are available via RSNs (without game-specific incremental cost), what portion will choose to pay for a team subscription? Also, smaller audiences will influence ad and promotional value. However, a highly popular franchise in a single-team market could have a true opportunity. Further, if a team’s current deal is well below market, it may have to consider DTC in order to achieve a material fair market value reset in today’s environment. DTC is also another way (along with fans threatening to switch carriers) to address coverage gaps resulting from certain MVPDs (e.g., Dish, YouTube TV) not carrying particular RSNs. However, a team that doesn’t deliver large audiences, or in a midsize market, may be better of being packaged with other teams on an RSN or local broadcast station.
How can leagues assist regional rights transactions? A league could marry its own national network (NBA TV, MLB Network) and/or out-of-market streaming services (NBA League Pass, MLB.TV) with local team rights in individual markets. The league’s network could serve as an optional backstop if a team can’t get the local deal it desires, by packaging its innermarket game rights with the league network to derive value and exposure through a combined sale (while raising attribution/allocation issues). Will this become part of the new NHL/ESPN deal? Alternatively, leagues could revert to selling primarily national TV packages, as the NFL has done for decades. How a team exploits its media rights is both its biggest business challenge and opportunity. Time to plan wisely!
Ed Desser is president of Desser Media Inc. (www.desser.tv), which has advised on over $30 billion in sports/media transactions. John Kosner is president of Kosner Media (www.kosnermedia.com), a digital media expert and sports investor. Together they developed league strategy and ran the NBA’s electronic media operation in the ’80s and ’90s.
John Kosner appeared in the SPAC in Sports panel for UJA-Federation on March 24
Original Article: UJA, March 24th
PART 2: SPACS IN SPORTS
INTRODUCTION
Sports For Youth Council Members:
Rob Tillis, Inner Circle Sports
Seth Finkel, Neuberger Berman
MODERATOR
Donna Orender
CEO, Orender Unlimited & Founder, Generation W
Former President, WNBA
PANELISTS
Jon Ledecky
Co-Owner, New York IslandersJohn Kosner
President, Kosner MediaAlan Kestenbaum
Chairman of the Board and CEO, Sports Ventures Acquisition Corp.
John Kosner spoke to Digiday about the NFL's latest rights deals
Original Article: Digiday, by Tim Peterson, March 23rd, 2021
For the past several years, the National Football League’s next round of broadcast rights deals were seen as the likely tipping point for streaming to overtake TV.
But now that those deals have been announced, they underscore an oxymoronic moment: streaming is overtaking TV, but also that TV is overtaking streaming. “It’s less a revolution than an evolution,” said Patrick Crakes, a former Fox Sports executive and principal of Crakes Media Consulting
The major TV network groups, including Disney, Fox, NBCUniversal and ViacomCBS, retained their rights to air NFL games on their TV networks on March 18. But the 11-year deals also enable the companies to distribute more games on their streaming services to people who do not have traditional TV. And whereas the potential loomed for a tech giant to swoop in and steal rights away from the traditional media companies, in the end only the NFL’s Thursday Night Football package went to Amazon, albeit on an exclusive basis aside from the local TV broadcasts.
As a result, the NFL’s latest rights deals do not appear to represent a watershed moment for the convergence of traditional TV and streaming. But they are — or, at the least, they have the potential be. “To me when all of these games are available to stream and you don’t need a pay-television subscription, that’s when things change tremendously,” said John Kosner, a former ESPN executive and president of Kosner Media.
That moment may not be much farther off. Starting this year, NBCUniversal and ViacomCBS will have the rights to stream their NFL games on Peacock and Paramount+, respectively. Additionally, Disney will air one game exclusively on ESPN+ in 2022 and has the rights to air all of its NFL games on the subscription-based streamer starting in 2023. Fox appears to be the only one of the TV networks not to acquire rights to make games available to streaming-only audiences, though it will air condensed games on its free, ad-supported streamer Tubi. That the networks have acquired these streaming rights puts them in position to retain their positions in the broader TV market as it shifts to streaming.
“It’s very hard to see that the future of any digital distribution won’t be owned by the same established media companies that owned the old” distribution model, Crakes said.
However, while the networks have the rights to stream games to cord cutters, only NBCUniversal has been explicit about actually doing so. Disney and ViacomCBS said they have the opportunity to do so but not that they, in fact, will as soon as they have the option. That leaves open the possibility that the companies could choose to keep their NFL games limited to traditional TV viewers. That would be an odd move considering the networks are reportedly paying more than $2 billion per year — $2.7 billion in Disney’s case — for their NFL rights, per CNBC. But it’s because the networks are paying so much that they may be wary of making the games accessible to cord cutters and severely undercutting their linear TV businesses that effectively subsidize their streaming businesses.
Protecting their linear TV businesses appears to be why the TV network owners were reportedly willing to pay 75% to 80% more money for the right to air NFL games, according to The Wall Street Journal. “For these networks, they’re trying to give life and breath to their traditional channels,” said Eunice Shin, who has consulted for companies including Disney, Warner Bros. and NBCUniversal and is a partner at consulting firm Prophet.
If the TV network owners all were to make their NFL games available to streaming-only audiences, “it’s going to accelerate the decline of pay-TV subscriptions, which already largely subsidizes sports in this country at the moment. That’s going to be an earth-moving moment,” Kosner said.
The earth is moving, though. The pay-TV industry lost 6 million subscribers in 2021, according to research firm MoffettNathanson, and two of the companies that own NFL rights — Disney and NBCUniversal — each reorganized their companies around streaming last year. So, for as much as the latest NFL deals suggest the TV market isn’t changing all that much as streaming takes center stage, it is changing, but the companies involved are largely staying the same. “Ninety percent of [NFL games] are staying with established partners who built new streaming assets,” Crakes said.
The TV network owners’ primary motivation for paying up to retain their NFL rights may have been to protect their legacy linear businesses, but at least a contributing factor was likely that traditional TV’s most prized programming could prove just as valuable in building up their streaming businesses.
Offering NFL games could help the networks’ standalone streamers to contend with the likes of Netflix and WarnerMedia’s HBO Max in the war for people’s streaming subscription budgets. Not only may people be more likely to sign up for Peacock or Paramount+ because of the NFL’s availability, but they may be more likely to stay subscribed.
““Fewer people are going to drop subscriptions from September through February because of the power of NFL programming.””
That power was not lost on Amazon whose acquisition of NFL rights should not be overlooked. While last year Netflix had hits like “Tiger King” and “Queen’s Gambit,” Disney+ had “Hamilton” and “The Mandalorian” and HBO Max had “Wonder Woman 1984,” Amazon Prime Video “didn’t really have a moment. There was just no news about Amazon,” said Shin. That has now changed. Whether it amounts to much by way of drastically increasing Amazon Prime Video’s audience remains to be seen, but it will likely increase the competition among TV networks and streamers for live sports rights overall.
“Amazon’s aggressive move into sports will neither be their last nor are they likely to be the only digital entity to get into sports,” said Kosner. “This might have been the moment that broke the dam a little bit.”
Is Gonzaga an NFT?
Original Article: Medium, by John Kosner and J Moses, March 14th, 2021
Is Gonzaga an NFT?
Not yet, but soon.
Gonzaga is the undefeated #1 seed in men’s college basketball as tonight millions of us fill out our March Madness brackets. A year from now, we will probably use blockchain technology for our brackets – opening up prizes, experiences and recognition not possible today; the winning one would become March 13, 2022’s biggest “NFT.”
Perhaps you live under a rock … or your eyes glaze over when confronted with the latest complicated and speculative idea. What is an NFT and what is all the excitement about?
An NFT is a “non-fungible token.” As Mason Nystrom and Ty Young of Messari write in their excellent explainer, “NFT’s are a [digital] file format that transfers data and value on a blockchain network like Ethereum … an NFT is simply a token (or piece of information) that is unique.” An NFT is neither divisible nor interchangeable – you can’t exchange it 1-1 like you can Bitcoin, today’s leading cryptocurrency. Today, among other things, you can buy NFTs that represent art work (Yes, a Beeple went for $69 million at Christie's this week) and in sports, NBA video highlights through Dapper Labs’ “NBA Top Shot” app (where one collector’s $175K investment is now worth $20 million).
Virtual goods are coming to sports – finally.
This is the third in a series of essays about why gaming is ascendant in culture, especially among the young, and what those of us in Sports, Media, Investment … all of us in business … can learn from games. In our second installment, published on Super Bowl Sunday, Feb. 7, 2021, we wrote that games naturally promote and benefit from super-engaged communities. A direct result: a virtual goods business in games worth $79B annually. The business of those “goods” – including “skins” to dress up and “powers” to enhance your in-game persona – is actually growing 8% a year. But Sports gets about $0 from virtual goods.
That is, until NFTs and blockchain – the most important new trend in sports fandom and, intriguingly, a potential threat to the games business which invented the virtual goods bonanza.
You can buy an NFT and own it forever and monetize it however and whenever you want. That is possible because of blockchain – the new internet that allows everything to be catalogued. David Pakman, a partner with VC firm Venrock and one of the earliest investors in Dapper Labs, notes that NBA Top Shot [here is an example owned by John’s friend Ryan] is “a digital collectible. It has a provenance. It has a set of rules encoded in software behind it. It is written on a public blockchain. It’s fully verifiable. It runs across hundreds or thousands of computers around the internet. On a network that anyone can join.” Because NFTs can be cataloged, they can be traced. In there is the revolution.
Today, there are two types of virtual goods:
1. Powers & Skins
2. Collectibles
Powers & Skins. Virtual goods in games (the $79B business referenced above) is fully-integrated. Think: Fortnite. You can only use virtual goods in the game you’re playing. They give you an edge in the game. Favored by early adopters and super users, they power the super communities supporting games.
This industry is pre-blockchain and there are downsides. Virtual goods in games are virtual and you only really “own” them while you’re engaged in the individual game. They are not interchangeable between games. Control of these game virtual goods rests with the game’s publisher (like Epic Games) which means, per Pakman that you have “to trust them not to print more all of a sudden like Fortnite does all the time to ruin your scarce assets.”
With the explosion of NBA Top Shot, one might expect that any video game based upon league name and marks – such as EA’s Madden NFL or FIFA games – would begin to include NFTs.
That is not likely anytime soon.
A version of game virtual goods (“loot boxes”) is the subject of a class action suit against Apple in California, arguing that these are “gambling” and potentially “predatory practices enticing consumers, including children.” To counter any gambling taint, game companies offering virtual goods take the following legal position currently: virtual goods can be consumed within the game only and nothing of value can be transferred or traded out of the game.
Worth noting also that NFTs are the nemesis of the game model because the player, not the publisher, actually owns them and thus they have a value outside of the game’s vertical walled garden. The 80 (or rather, 79)/2 rule applies here. Two percent of the super engaged gamers create the 79B virtual games marketplace. We expect similar dynamics for sports.
Collectibles. Sports collectibles hasn’t really changed its physical roots since we were kids. It’s still a robust business. But prior to the blockchain, there was no way to enforce digital scarcity.
For those of us over 40, remember when you saved up your money as a kid to buy Topps trading cards? Put them in your bike spokes or traded them with your friends? Then you put them in a cigar box and there they sat until you moved and your parents tossed them out? In J’s case, heartbreakingly, movers lost his childhood memories box. In that box was a Stan Musial baseball card in mint condition. John would nag his father to go to New York Yankees’ Bat Day so he could get a Reggie Jackson bat. The latter was the subject of great attention for 48 hours, then went into a closet and oblivion.
The new world of NFTs solves all of these problems and creates monumental new opportunities. Yes, NFTs are virtual and you may think: who wants a virtual card, bat, highlight or ticket? But let us explain why you might. Remember, you were once reluctant to purchase a movie online when you could buy a physical jewel box version instead. Collectibles are morphing from physical to digital because of the scarcity enabled by NFTs on the blockchain. Your possession of the NFT with its digital certificate of authenticity means movers can’t lose it, you can’t spill water on it, etc. The new owner of the New York Mets’ Steve Cohen recently purchased Collectors Universe. How long until the Mets roll out a game ticket that’s an NFT and rewards their long-suffering fans? Scan in the QR code at the gate and, after you attend 25 games, you get a tour of the clubhouse. Fifty and perhaps you can meet the Owner himself!
And then there is the real game-changer: the subject of the collectible and its owner – say, the Honus Wagner estate or Zion Williamson and you – can now capture future value together.
In the past, professional athletes would get paid for their rights to be represented in a trading card, typically through their league’s joint-player license with a third party like Topps or Upper Deck. That’s it. When their card value escalated, the players got bupkis. But now, the players don’t just participate in the future value of their virtual good, they have incentive to do so. Forever.
As in games, this is where super-engaged communities (the subject of our last column) come in. There is a connection between the original Bitcoin subreddits of the previous decade, wallstreetbets and the 2021 stock market “short squeeze” and where NFTs are headed. Passionate communities will drive adoption and value of NFTs over time as individual investors stand to gain by connection to the creator. It is one thing to subscribe to a notable’s YouTube account, another to be financially tied.
This is a crucial point as we look at the future of sports and the triple whammy of (1) the current decline of key revenue sources like pay TV through cord cutting, (2) the lessening interest of young audiences towards watching live games and sports in general and (3) escalating player salaries. NBA Commissioner Adam Silver has made the point that 99% of a team’s fans will never attend a game. Now through digital collectibles and unique products like Fan Tokens (pioneered by Socios, a European blockchain startup, now serving some of the top European football clubs like FC Barcelona, Juventus and Paris Saint Germain), sports can offer an interactive experience with previously impossible access to young fans globally. Today, fans of certain teams can choose the music that their players enter to and the shoelaces they wear. In time, that input will expand. And, sports rights become more valuable to digital players!
Imagine if the bat that John forgot about included a limited-edition signature from the Yankee Hall of Famer? If it constantly updated with new video highlights and metadata? [Nike is already doing this with NBA replica uniforms]. If John could show it to friends on his phone and potentially sell shares of it through collectible marketplaces like Rally Road? If, at the time, it could have facilitated some actual connection to Reggie Jackson?
Typically, collective bargaining agreements are among the most grueling processes and often feel like a zero-sum game for leagues and their players. In the new world, however, the right collective bargaining agreement is the key to unlocking tremendous value for both. Ultimately, those 100 “official” Zion dunk highlights on NBA Top Shot are most valuable with both the imprimatur of the league and its IP (the highlights, the marks, the brand) and Zion’s participation himself. How long before a blockbuster deal like Dak Prescott’s 4-year, $160M contract with the Dallas Cowboys includes a club buyout of the player’s NFT rights?
Of course, it will be a long and pothole-filled road getting from here to NFT nirvana. The user experience in acquiring many NFTs remains hopelessly difficult for normal people. It’s not a coincidence that Dapper Labs, creator of NBA Top Shot, is actually a games company. If you use Top Shot, there is no mention of NFTs, blockchain or crypto wallets and you can use your credit card. Dapper is abstracting the experience just as Steve Jobs and Apple did with the complications of MP3s and digital music players when they launched the world-beating iPods 20 years ago. Additionally, some of the blockchains being utilized today will not succeed. For that and other reasons, the legal agreements here need work. Today’s speculative boom is certainly tomorrow’s bust. The energy, ecological, social-political, money-laundering and IP control issues now being raised are complicated to say the least.
Nonetheless, in time, we believe these problems will all be solved or dealt with. NFTs are a breakthrough for sports – not just economically but because of the joy they will bring.
Originally, we would fill our NCAA brackets by pen and paper. Then they moved online – and the faraway schools we selected, such as Gonzaga, were pre-NFT’s (digital assets that were ours). We may be a ways off from sports’ virtual goods having powers – like a Gonzaga-killer that fans of the other 67 NCAA Tournament schools would be buying now – as that product would require a vertically-integrated engine similar to what we see in games. But that’s coming too.
Meanwhile ... look out! And, since you asked, yes, this column is also available as an NFT here: JohnKosner.Kred
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. J Moses has been in and around the Sports, Games, and Tech businesses for over 40 years. He has been a Director at T2 since 2007, and is currently an Executive Producer on a scripted Esports show for the CW (www.optinstudios.com). Both John and J are disciples of the legendary Roone Arledge of ABC Sports.
John Kosner moderated the SIGA Female Leadership in Sport Web Summit panel, “Has Women’s Sport Been Hit Harder by COVID-19” on March 9, 2021
Original Article: SIGA, March 9th, 2021
John Kosner moderated the SIGA Female Leadership in Sport Web Summit panel, “Has Women’s Sport Been Hit Harder by COVID-19” on March 9, 2021.
A big thank you to the Sport Integrity Global Alliance for the opportunity and to all of the speakers!
