This is my last newsletter of the year for SBJ, and my colleague Austin Karp told me to “have fun” with it. That’s easy. This job is fun. I often get asked, “How do you like it?” Well, I love it. I love sports, and I get to watch, read and write about sports full time. It’s a dream.
I get reflective toward the end of the year, and I want to take this space to thank Abe Madkour and Josh Barnett for trusting me with the media beat, my editor David Bourne for his excellent guidance, Austin for being my go-to soundboard (as well as podcast co-host and easy mark on sports wagers). Also a big shout out to Acie Wyatt, Reggie Walker and Chris Mason for producing the SBJ Sports Media Podcast on a weekly basis, Betty Gomes for involving me so early in the role in incredible projects like Power Players and to colleagues Rachel Axon and Jennifer Azara for the Teams group chat that’s fun (and a space to talk about being women in sports business -- plus share pet photos). And just a huge thanks to everyone else that has made SBJ feel like a home for me in the nine months I’ve been here.
Back to sports. My extended family does a college bowl pool every year, and inflation has even struck that (the get-in has skyrocketed to $15). The audacity!
While I’ll be watching a ton of college football this holiday season, I’ll also be paying attention to what’s coming in 2025 and thinking about how much the sports media landscape has changed in just a year. Will Venu Sports launch? How much will ESPN’s “Flagship” shake up the landscape? Who will be the Pac-12's next media partners? How will the RSN world shake out?
I have thoughts ...
Media news moving the needle in 2024
So what caught my eye on the media side in 2024?
Women's sports had an incredible year. The WNBA will now get $2.2 billion over the next 11 years as part of the league’s new media rights deal, and that doesn’t include smaller packages expected to land back with CBS and ION. And with the addition next season of the Golden State Valkyries (followed by expansion in Toronto and Portland in a couple of years), combined with an influx of young stars on the way, the WNBA should have even more reason to exercise the option to renegotiate this media deal in three years.
The soon-to-launch Unrivaled women's 3-on-3 league also got a deal done with TNT Sports(and without having to lean on the participation of Caitlin Clark), while the NWSL in the first year of its new deal capped off the campaign with a record TV audience for the championship on CBS.
But beyond women's sports, it was the NBA's media deal that made the most noise. While I knew it was going to be a big number, the $77 billion price tag across ESPN/ABC, NBC Sports and Prime Video even made me do a double take. And with TNT on the outside looking in, there were lawsuits galore. In the end, during WBD-Comcast carriage talks, WBD had to accept a flat rate for TNT now that live hoops are headed elsewhere.
But WBD didn't stand pat, quickly pivoting to a strategy of gobbling up rights to smaller properties like the French Open, Big East hoops and a CFP sublicense (from ESPN). The company also settled its lawsuit with the NBA by licensing "Inside the NBA" to ESPN, and in exchange getting some lower-end Big 12 rights. All of these come with a much lighter price tag than the NBA.
As a Big Ten alum, I was very intrigued to watch how Oregon, Washington, UCLA and USC helped the conference perform in TV viewership. For Big Ten Network, the additions clearly helped, and the West Coast schools helped drive BTN viewership up 9% this football season (it was a different story for audience numbers on Fox with a number of "Big Noon Saturday" window blowouts).
Over at Comcast, the future of Golf Channel (and other channels) was thrown up in the air as the cable network was included in the "SpinCo" spinoff alongside other NBCU networks, like USA.
On the executive side, we got to see CBS' David Berson take the reins from industry legend Sean McManus. Berson made bold choices like taking "The NFL Today" studio show on the road for the first time during the regular season (on the heels of shaking up the lineup of personalities as one of his first moves earlier in the year). He also inked a deal to produce Netflix's Christmas NFL games. This all comes as Berson is navigating what CBS Sports will look like under the auspices of a Skydance-controlled Paramount.
2025 predictions: Venu Sports doesn't take off; Pac-12 keeps linear TV presence
First, my most important prediction is that Northwestern men’s basketball will be dancing in March for the third year in a row.
But on to media! Here are a couple of predictions for the coming year in the space:
Venu Sports doesn't get off the ground
I don’t see Venu Sports launching in 2025. I want to be bullish on the joint venture between WBD, Fox and ESPN, as there’s smart and talented folks on that leadership team. But with Fubo winning several antitrust injunctions, I don’t see a path forward for the skinny bundle. There are also doubts about its place in the marketplace. Venu wants to target cord-cutters and cord-nevers who are also sports fans. But why do those demos need Venu? I subscribe to YouTube TV (and literally every other streaming service) and have a hard time imagining a market where fans would pay skinny bundle prices for a sports-heavy streaming service that doesn’t even have all sports (as in only half of the NFL).
Plus, ESPN is launching its DTC service “Flagship” early next fall, which Chairman Jimmy Pitaro has described as the company’s No. 1 priority. WBD is still heavily invested in making its OTT service, Max, be successful. Fox lacks an OTT service, but it continues to sing the praises of its FAST channel, Tubi. It doesn't seem like there is enough incentive for any of the three companies to stage a major (and expensive) legal battle.
The Pac-12 keeps a strong linear TV presence, with streaming a key component
After sniping a few schools from the Mountain West, Pac-12 Commissioner Teresa Gould is looking for her conference to rise from the ashes. Gould and her media advisers from Octagon were at SBJ's Intercollegiate Athletics Forum last week, and my colleagues Austin Karp and Ben Portnoy also spotted execs from Fox, ESPN, and CBS in town. The conference has bulked up to seven football playing schools at this point, and it's safe to assume negotiations are well underway on rights for the reconstituted Pac-12. Gould also sat down with SBJ for an interview, discussing what the conference is looking for in a media deal.
There’s media interest in the Pac-12, though not the $50 million annually the conference was initially seeking from ESPN. I predict an expanded Saturday afternoon package for the CW in some fashion, as the conference has been comfortable this year as a media partner for Oregon State and Washington State.
It doesn’t hurt that production arm Pac-12 Enterprises will be a key part of negotiations.
Speed reads
- SBJ this week rolled out our list of the Most Influential People in Sports Business, and among those with ties to sports media are CBS Sports' David Berson, NBC Sports' Rick Cordella, Amazon Prime Video's Jay Marine, ESPN/WWE's Pat McAfee, ESPN's Jimmy Pitaro, Fox Sports' Eric Shanks and Mark Silverman and Warner Bros. Discovery's David Zaslav and Luis Silberwasser.
- MLS is exploring new ways to attract viewers to its MLS Season Pass streaming service on Apple TV for the 2025 season, which a league source said could include integration into pay-TV and electronic program guides, as well as partnerships with wireless carriers, reports SBJ's Alex Silverman.
- For the past three weeks, ESPN has introduced a weekly segment during Tuesday’s airing of “NFL Live” in which Dan Orlovsky puts on a Meta Quest headset and enters VR to re-create key plays from the previous weekend. He’s able to shift the immersive video to the points of view of any player on the field, and then telestrate within that environment. As SBJ's Joe Lemire reports, this is all made possible via the new media tool from StatusPro, the VR training and gaming company that uses NFL Next Gen Stats to render the movements of players.