SBJ Media: No business like snow business for NBC in Buffalo

It was a (snowball) fight in Buffalo on Sunday night.

Heading to produce its third NFL game in just a week -- and with more than 24 inches of snow on Highmark Stadium -- NBC Sports was never concerned that the “Sunday Night Football” matchup between the Bills and 49ers would be postponed.

“There's constant communication between our operations folks and the Buffalo Bills, and the league checked in with me throughout the day to see how we were doing,” said Rob Hyland, coordinating producer of “SNF” for NBC. “Everyone was really impressed that our technical team could pull it off and provide all of the cameras and facilities to make a ‘Sunday Night Football’ game look and feel like the ‘Sunday Night Football’ games that they've expected each week.”

The "SNF" production team used 10 trucks over the last week and traveled over 3,300 miles. Nearly 200 members of the NBC Sports team were on the ground in Orchard Park for the Bills’ matchup against the 49ers, but setup for the game was compounded by the holiday weekend and road closures.

Several days earlier, NBC Sports’ production trucks had made the drive from L.A. (for the previous week's "SNF") to Green Bay for NBC’s Thanksgiving eve game before needing to get on the road to Buffalo. The standard route on the New York State Thruway was closed due to weather, so the team arrived late.

“For a setup, we normally have trucks arrive late Thursday night or very early Friday morning,” said Hyland, noting that the mobile unit did not make it to Buffalo until late Friday night. "We were going to be behind the eight ball, and then the snow on Saturday was really thick and heavy throughout the entire day and night, which made setup on an already tight schedule even harder,” said Hyland. 

With only a few hours to go ahead of kickoff, a tarp remained on the field protecting it from still-falling snow. All of NBC’s field-level equipment -- typically encompassed of both near-side and far-side cart camera systems, handheld gear and audio gear -- could not be set up until the tarp was removed.

“We have the absolute best technical team in the business, led by John Roché,” said Hyland. “He called me and ["SNF" director] Drew Esocoff and said, ‘Here’s what you may not have in terms of equipment.’”

While Hyland and Roché were ready to go with only three or four cameras, the production team ended up having all but two cameras for Sunday night. The two robotic cameras that are usually fixed to goal posts could not be hung in time for the game. The fixed-wing aerial also couldn’t fly due to wind and snow.

While everyone made it in time for the game, the booth spotter and statistician who work with broadcaster Mike Tirico had done a college football game the night prior, and only arrived at the field an hour prior to kickoff.

Winter wonderland

Tirico, a Syracuse alum who has a penchant for the cold, was having the time of his life calling the game (which was obvious to his own team and to fans at home).

“Mike is a true football fan, and to have the opportunity to call a football game in a winter wonderland, it’s definitely a bucket list event for anyone that loves calling the game or producing the game,” said Hyland. “This is the first time I had a chance to produce a snow game. It's something that I've wanted and I've rehearsed.”

While shots of Josh Allen and Sean McDermott making snow angels to celebrate their victory are spreading throughout the internet, Hyland’s favorite shot of the entire season came during a return from commercial break.

“Late in the fourth quarter, a young boy [was] tilting his head back as we came out of commercial as to catch snow in his mouth,” said Hyland. “It's [also] just fun seeing grown men and superstar athletes acting like kids, like they probably did when they were playing in their backyard and snowstorm a couple decades earlier.”

With the win, the Bills locked up the AFC East.

Fitch Ratings indicates a stable and improving outlook for the sports industry in 2025. That bullishness largely rests on an expectation that national media rights deals will continue to attract strong competition, especially from streaming platforms, and thus generate greater future media rights revenue for leagues and teams.

Fitch’s sector outlook report, released today, projects that streaming platforms will continue to accumulate live sports rights, pointing specifically to Peacock and Prime Video’s recent participation in the NBA’s new 11-year rights deals.

The ratings agency expects more games to be exclusive to streaming platforms in 2025. While Fitch cautioned that continued media rights fragmentation could ultimately lead to fan disinterest, it made the case that “added competition for sports media rights will drive increases in media contract values.”

Conversely, Fitch projects further pain for RSNs and, more specifically, for the leagues and teams that have relied heavily on local media revenue (NHL, NBA and MLB). Fitch expects more teams will explore direct-to-consumer opportunities, effectively opting for “increased reach over short-term revenue.” The ratings agency said teams will be able to offset some of that decline through “positive attendance trends” at home games, while in the long run leagues that have relied on RSNs will begin to explore more centralized models.

Other positive factors for the industry include further globalization and the continued rise of women’s sports -- two trends that Fitch expects will “unlock new revenue opportunities.” Continually falling interest rates -- Fitch projects five rate cuts in 2025 -- should also encourage further facility investing, with Fitch pointing specifically to potential new facility projects at the collegiate level.

According to Fitch, 91% of its sports-related credits have stable ratings outlooks.

My boss Abe Madkour in this week's SBJ dedicated his Forum to Rudy Martzke, the longtime USA Today media columnist who passed away Nov. 20 at the age of 82.

Madkour wrote in part, "Martzke could make or break someone’s day. That’s how much influence and impact USA Today’s sports TV columnist had from his time writing for the paper from 1982 to 2005. Martzke frequently pumped out columns that were a tour de force of news and opinions, and a report card of what was working in sports television. It drove the bold-face names of sports media crazy."

A number of longtime media industry execs recalled Martzke's influence on the business:

• CAA Sports co-head Mike Levine: "I loved this column and knew Rudy well. My first job was in the comms department at CBS Sports in 1992, working for Susan Kerr, Sandy Genelius, Lou D’Ermilio and Robin Brendle. We lived/died on Rudy’s column and Neal [Pilson] was constantly in our office talking about what he said. I recall him having a love for [Dick] Ebersol that was outsized and constant."

• Former CBS Sports President Neal Pilson: "Rudy was an inconvenient truth most of the time, so his columns were eagerly awaited. Most of us loved the guy, but he surely was a pain in the ass on many occasions.”

• Sports industry veteran Harvey Schiller, "A typical [conversation] was, 'Hey Harvey, I hear ...' And then he’d ask you what he already knew!”

• Former ESPN exec Mike Soltys: “Rudy brought a work ethic, passion and panache that was unsurpassed and made his tenure so memorable. Yes, he was aggravating at times, but he elevated the beat, and while he retired too soon, the modern sports media ecosystem was built on the colorful foundation Rudy poured his heart into.”

• NBC Sports’ Jon Miller recalled: “Rudy could make or break careers with his column, and leagues and commissioners all noticed. Monday mornings, his column was the talk of every office, league, agency, and oftentimes executives from competing sports divisions could ‘communicate’ indirectly with leagues or agents with a line or two in his columns.”

• Former CBS Sports Chairman Sean McManus agreed: “We’d literally wake up first thing Monday to run out and get USA Today to read the hard copy and see what Rudy had written about the various broadcasts that weekend. If it was something nice, you were ecstatic. If you got the ‘Dreaded Glitch Award,’ it was a bad day.”

• Former ESPN exec Chris LaPlaca: “Rightly or wrongly, his column is how many kept score, and that dynamic seeped into all corners of sports TV, which then put pressure on all the comms teams. You’d open the paper and find out if it was going to be a good day or a bad day. You respected how he grinded. And he was the kind of guy you couldn’t stay mad at.”

• Former Fox/MLB exec Vince Wladika: "If anyone tries to say that Rudy wasn’t important, they are full of shit. Rudy had the first fully national outlet, and USA Today was available everywhere. The outlet helped make Rudy, but Rudy took full advantage of having the outlet. It was a perfect storm.”

• Bespoke Sports & Entertainment's Mike Boykin: "I so remember reading Rudy’s columns and believing everything he said."

• Following the NCAA Women’s Volleyball Selection Show on Sunday, ESPN launched a new bracket game, marking the first time the tourney will be available for fans to compete bracket-style. It'll use the same tech that power’s ESPN’s basketball tournament challenge. For the last few years, my friends and I have been using a PDF and manually updating our brackets, so I’m very excited. The tournament begins 3:30pm Thursday across ESPN airwaves, including a title match on ABC on Dec. 22.

• TelevisaUnivision's corporate restructure will eliminate several hundred roles, a source confirmed to SBJ, but Olek Loewenstein will continue to lead the sports business unit. He'll be working closely with José Luis Fabila, who will now oversee a new global content organization

• SBJ's 2024 list of Power Players: Women's Sports is out this week, and among those in the media space honored are the four athletes and sports media veteran who launched Togethxr (Sue Bird, Chloe Kim, Simone Manuel, Alex Morgan and Jessica Robertson), Netflix's Jenna Anthony, ESPN's Rosalyn Durant, GOALS' Caroline Fitzgerald, Just Women's Sports' Jackie Caldwell, The Gist's Ellen Hyslop and Jacie deHoop and Women's Sports Network's Carol Stiff.

• Sascha Malas, the head of Overtime Select and director of content operations at Overtime, talked to SBJ's Jesse Gordon about her journey and the full-circle moments she’s experienced.

• Transmit Live, a purpose-built ad insertion tech for livestreaming partners, partnered with ViewLift to maximize placement and monetization of ads in digital feeds of games, notes SBJ's Joe Lemire.