SBJ Media: Sankey Confident In Strength Of SEC Package

Coming off a strong season on TV, Sankey is optimistic about the next SEC football rights deal "iaf-sankey"

When it came to the ongoing rights negotiations around the SEC’s CBS package, conference commissioner Greg Sankey did not unveil many new details during an on-stage interview at the Intercollegiate Athletics Forum. But reading between the lines of Sankey’s answers, it’s clear that the commissioner is expecting a huge rights fee increase for the CBS afternoon package that expires after the 2023 football season. CBS pays an average of $55 million for the rights.
Sankey talked about the SEC’s television ratings this season, which averaged 7.1 million viewers per game and helped CBS post its highest college football viewership in 30 years. “People who are media savvy know that 30 years ago, we were essentially chiseling in stone tablets on television every week by comparison to what’s happening now,” Sankey said. “It wasn’t a couple of compelling matchups. We essentially had playoff games the last eight weeks of the regular season.” Sankey went so far as to say that his ratings performance should be enough to give his conference “the most significant sport accomplishment of the year award” at the upcoming Sports Business Awards next spring.
As for how he’s approaching negotiations, Sankey said, “As we look to the future, this current media environment window I don’t think is really well defined any longer,” Sankey said. “We want to make sure that we’re fully prepared for whatever opportunity may present itself so that in the future we’re in the strongest possible position.”

Temple AD Kraft (l) may have snuck in some hoops action on his phone at the NFF event last night "iaf-kraft"

Collegiate athletic departments outside the SEC increasingly are relying on media rights gains to fund their business. That was one of my takeaways from the opening panel at IAF that I moderated today. Cal AD Jim Knowlton pointed to 2023-24, when the Pac-12’s deals with ESPN and Fox expire, as a time that promises “a huge boost for revenue for all the schools" in the conference. Knowlton: “Selling out the stadium is only going to get us a finite amount of resources. ... We really count on that media rights deal to be an important part of our budgets.”
The Mountain West Conference is at the tail end of negotiating a new rights deal; its current one ends in three weeks. San Jose State AD Marie Tuite described these final stages of the negotiations as a “touchpoint moment" for the conference. “The landscape is much different now. The platform is much different now, with digital and linear and all of the options that are out there.” As a conference outside the Power 5, the Mountain West has to balance exposure and revenue, causing it to “make adjustments as far as when games are played, what time they are played and what platform they are on.”
Tuite could look at the American as an example. As Temple played crosstown rival St. Joe’s in basketball last night, AD Patrick Kraft was at the National Football Foundation dinner watching via his iPhone. The American will stream 1,000 conference events from 17 sports on ESPN+ by 2023. “A couple of years back, you’re like, ‘man, we’re going to a streamer? That’s like a kick in the, you know.'” Today though, “I’ve really come full circle. It’s great.” Kraft pointed to the high quality of the telecasts and the popularity of smart TV's as reasons why he changed his mind.

Swofford (l) and Duke’s Kevin White chatted about the successful launch of ACC Network "swofford-white"

By almost any measure, ACC Network’s August launch was a success, especially considering that Comcast was the lone distribution holdout. Given that the pay-TV business is losing subscribers each month, it would seem that the channel has limited room to grow. Not so, said ACC Commissioner John Swofford. “The way we look at it is that we started something really, really positive that’s going to serve the league for a long time. There are possibilities. It may be distributed differently and we’re very open to that,” Swofford said. “(Disney and ESPN executives) have shown over the years an ability to adjust to what’s out there technologically in the marketplace. And I fully expect that the ACC Network will be part of whatever transitions and changes that are necessary.”
Duke AD Kevin White said that he saw Adam Silver -- a Duke alum -- on Friday, and White brought up comments the NBA Commissioner made last weekend about the pay-TV system being broken. White: “ESPN has the lion’s share of the inventory, and these guys have figured out how to make these businesses work for a heck of a long time. I’m really confident that this thing will change. ... But these guys will figure it out. And I am really confident that we’re going to head to a really good place with ACC Network. We’re with the very best guys. … If Adam was sitting here, he would agree with that.”

Don’t look for Cal to be one of the Pac-12 teams playing in a game that kicks off at 9:00am local time. Golden Bears AD Jim Knowlton said that he surveyed fans and found nobody who wanted a bloody mary with their football. “[The] good news was it’s not in the contract, so it would have to be an opt-in type of thing,” he said. “Cal will not be opting in.”

The next 10 years will be defined by the likes of Disney, Netflix and AT&T "building out their direct-to-consumer operations and developing other strategies that won’t always require huge deals," said LionTree CEO Aryeh Bourkoff, whose investment bank was involved with the Viacom-CBS merger. "The last decade has been characterized by frenetic (mergers and acquisitions) to reach scaled platforms. That mountain has been climbed," Bourkoff told WSJ.
NBC Sports will roll out two unique camera setups for tonight’s Capitals-Bruins game on NBCSN, reports SBJ’s Mark J. Burns. The telecast will use two ISO cameras -- up from one it normally uses for the Wednesday night series -- that will focus on top goal scorers David Pastrnak and Alex Ovechkin whenever they’re on the ice (the cameras will follow other players when they’re on the bench). Additionally, a handheld replay camera will be inside-the-glass with analyst Brian Boucher and shoot at 16x super slow-motion, replacing what is traditionally a hard camera. According to NBC Sports, the camera operator who uses this specific camera for the Stanley Cup Final will be handling it tonight.
ESPN saw one of its best UFC audiences of the year on Saturday, drawing 1.1 million viewers for a Fight Night event from DC (9:00pm-1:00am ET). The UFC telecast had a median age of 43.1 years old, which, on a day full of conference championship football games, made it the youngest-skewing sports event for the day among programs averaging at least 200,000 viewers.
There’s been effusive praise for NFL Films' "Belichick & Saban: The Art of Coaching" doc that premiered on HBO last night. SBD's David Rumsey writes it "did a great job of showing the detailed history the two coaches have, while highlighting not only their similarities, but also their differences." NFL Network's Ian Rapoport: "Excellent stuff. Just two dudes talking football and we all get to nerd out." Variety film reporter Justin Kroll: "Highly recommend. ... especially if you enjoyed the ESPN Parcells-Belichick doc from last year."

"I’m a big in-car singer. It’s either classic rock – Billy Joel, Elton John -- or musical theater. I really like the soundtracks to ‘Dear Evan Hansen,’ ‘Hamilton,’ ‘Wicked’ -- those types of shows that I know by heart. I used to listen to sports radio but I don’t going to the park because I like to clear my mind of it before I get there" -- White Sox play-by-play man Jason Benetti during an interview with SBJ's Thomas Leary.