Sports TV Business

Unsurprising sports TV war news

by

Of course CBS Sports Network would pick up the Arena League. It’s just one more tiny league to fill time on CBSSN.

Actually, the Arena League might be a pretty big get for CBSSN, and quite possibly the biggest non-college programming on the network (unless you count odd US Open tennis coverage). It wasn’t that long ago, before the ESPN experiment and bankruptcy, that the Arena League was considered on the level of MLS and the WNBA. The earlier moves by the CFL and UFL to find networks proved that it wasn’t the NFL restricting them to “NFLN or bust”, making it all but inevitable the Arena League would fall short, especially after the final indignation earlier this year when NFLN, Olympics-restricted into carrying an NFL preseason game the night of the ArenaBowl in New Orleans, had it played at the relatively ungodly hour of 9 PM CT with a three-hour time slot. Especially with NBCSN picking up the CFL, it wasn’t out of the question for the Arena League to return to its previous stomping grounds of NBC, so for CBS to pick it up is a pretty big deal and one of those “baby steps” needed to escape being a laughingstock. It’s telling that the ArenaBowl will be aired on the CBS broadcast network on a Saturday afternoon.

I’m not even adding the Sugar Bowl shacking up with ESPN now that it’s taking the Champions Bowl matchup, since we kind of knew that already.

Sport-Specific Networks
10.5 14.5 7 6.5 1 1.5

The Premier League is headed to NBC

by

It’s official: we are in the middle of a massive paradigm shift in the world of sports, and especially in how soccer is consumed in this country. Don’t believe me? With one exception that I bet won’t stay an exception for long, the top European leagues are now aligned with a network that didn’t exist a few months ago and an entity that didn’t have any soccer presence outside the Olympics a year ago.

I was somewhat shocked to find NBC bidding so aggressively that the Premier League reportedly told the incumbents, Fox and ESPN, late last week not to even bother showing up with a bid. Without the World Cup, with MLS for only two more years, with Formula 1 recently added to its portfolio, and with its dreams of competing with ESPN looking to be on life support, I didn’t think NBC had much motivation to make an aggressive bid for the Premier League.

In the end, though, after reading the announcement, I have to figure the deciding factor was the same one I thought might land NBC the World Cup but didn’t: NBC’s Spanish language presence. I get the impression the Premier League was never going to split up the English and Spanish language rights the way FIFA was willing to, and as a result, I have to imagine a big chunk of NBC’s bid – triple what Fox and ESPN’s joint bid was – was more to land Premier League rights for Telemundo and mun2 than for NBC Sports Network. Compared to most soccer rights, the Premier League has a disproportionately English-language audience in the United States, but it is still one of the two best soccer leagues in the world with multiple major teams, which I have to imagine still makes it a huge draw for Spanish-language eyeballs as well.

It sounds like NBC could make a concerted effort to put games on as many platforms as possible on a regular basis, including substantially more live games on the broadcast network than Fox was willing to show (maybe even involving teams not named Manchester United!), as well as CNBC, MSNBC, and maybe even Bravo or on a pay-per-view package, which could help resolve any Formula 1 conflicts; I can’t help but wonder whether Universal Sports might end up being an option, and whether or not it is could hint at the long-term plans for that network. (I’m very surprised to see USA even be brought up after NBC semi-publicly dropped all non-dog show sports programming from that network. Whether or not Comcast SportsNet might pick up Premier League games would be a very interesting possibility, fraught with plenty of political implications.)

I think this sends a pointed message that NBC has every intent on taking over the unified MLS package when that comes up in another year, possibly in both English and Spanish as well – although the Premier League deal will only coincide with a unified MLS deal for another year. As for the other contenders, while ESPN made noise about its continued commitment to soccer after losing the World Cup, I don’t see them as very motivated at all to hang on to MLS and US National Team rights, certainly compared to NBC and Fox; certainly this, combined with the earlier loss of UK Premier League rights, must make it a lot harder for them to hold on to Ian Darke and other English soccer announcers after the 2014 World Cup.

Perhaps the biggest impact, though, might be to Fox. What little chance there might have been that Fox wasn’t going to launch an all-sports network is gone now, and in all likelihood it’s going to launch at least two. Fox Soccer has lost almost all the programming that was worth it maintaining a separate identity; while Fox still has the Champions League and World Cup, they don’t do nearly as much to support the network as the Premier League did, and could easily survive the transition to a system of all-sports networks, while whatever else is left of Fox’s soccer programming might be kindly described as scraps. There is no reason for Fox to maintain Fox Soccer as a shell of its former self, and I fully expect Fox to be running at least one all-sports network by August 2013.

Without knowing how much beIN Sport bid, I have no way of knowing how much of this is NBC overbidding or ESPN and Fox underbidding. If NBC overbid, I have to wonder what their priorities are, as well as their grasp of the big picture given the F1 problem; some of Mark Lazarus’ comments in the SI interview linked above suggest NBC has become resigned to its third-place status and wants to carve a niche for the NBC Sports Network in the international sports scene (which again makes me wonder what the role of Universal Sports might be long-term). But if ESPN and Fox underbid, that would tell me that Fox may have already set its sights on transitioning Fox Soccer away from its soccer identity and was more concerned about dumping sport-specific network rights F1-style than anything else, even if the Premier League would have been valuable enough programming to add considerably to the value of a general Fox Sports network. Fox may have driven the final nail in Fox Soccer’s coffin itself.

Sport-Specific Networks
10.5 14.5 7 5.5 1 1.5

Why ESPN effectively created a Fox Sports network – and why NBC was never going to compete with either of them

by

Virtually from the moment the sports TV wars started, I have been wondering why ESPN seemed to have such a myopic fixation on NBC’s attempts to build the NBC Sports Network that it was willing to essentially give Fox rights left and right to potentially create a far more imposing competitor sooner than NBC might ever pose – especially when ESPN gave so many statements early on effectively dismissing NBC’s prospects of competing with them. Starting with the alliance for Pac-12 and Big 12 rights, continuing with Fox’s big wins of UFC and World Cup rights, up to the first rumors of the Fox Sports 1 plans, and right on through the bizarre saga of the baseball renegotiations, my bewilderment at ESPN’s game plan has grown and grown.

In retrospect, I shouldn’t have been so confused. In fact, maybe everyone should have written off NBC’s prospects of competing with ESPN from the start. Comcast’s cable operator business, seemingly the ace in the hole for carriage of all its other networks, may well be the Achilles heel that forever cripples NBC’s efforts to get any sort of head start.

What clarified this for me was a post on the Frank the Tank’s Slant blog earlier in the week (specifically the third full paragraph). Essentially, it suggests that what ESPN fears is not so much NBC as a competitor for sports rights and eyeballs as Comcast as a business partner potentially holding its own ace in the hole. ESPN really doesn’t fear any entity eating into its dominance, but what it doesn’t want in a million years is Comcast owning a sports network that might remotely be construed as anywhere close to on par with ESPN. An even remotely strong NBC Sports Network could give Comcast leverage to lower the rights fees it pays ESPN for carriage, and that could eat substantially into ESPN’s bottom line when combined with the impact of the sports network itself. ESPN may not want any real competitors to its dominance, but it really doesn’t want NBC to be one of them. It’s perfectly happy to build up Fox as its “competitor” if it means avoiding the fate a competition with NBC would entail.

I suggested that for ESPN, the smart play in the Major League Baseball negotiations was to pit NBC and Fox against one another, and that its move to grab all three of its existing primetime packages was therefore a mistake because it all but eliminated NBC from the bidding. But ESPN had a reason for its myopic focus on NBC. If it wanted to pit Fox against anybody, its first choice would be to pit it against Turner, or even CBS, before NBC. That’s exactly what it did by grabbing all three primetime packages, forcing Fox and Turner/CBS to slug it out for what initially appeared to be a single remaining package. (That ESPN didn’t come back in to grab more of the postseason when it turned out to be two packages after all remains mystifying.)

Comcast (and Cablevision, and to some extent Time Warner Cable) can leverage its cable business to build its regional sports networks. Most areas have one or two dominant cable providers, so they are primarily using regional sports networks to pry customers away from satellite companies like DirecTV, knowing they have few other options. In most cases, when there is one regional sports network in an area it develops a complete monopoly over the area’s sports teams, with the exception of team-owned networks. To my knowledge, there are only three places in the entire country where a Fox Sports network competes with a network owned by a cable operator: Los Angeles, where Fox Sports West and Prime Ticket compete with Time Warner Cable SportsNet; the South, where Fox Sports South and SportSouth compete with CSS; and Florida, where Fox Sports Florida and SunSports compete with Bright House Sports Network. But while the jury’s still out on TWC SportsNet, CSS falls far, far short of Fox’s monopoly over the South’s professional teams, with even its SEC coverage stuck behind Fox in the pecking order, and Bright House is so far further behind than that it barely even qualifies. Neither of them can use their networks to hold Fox hostage.

But when Comcast runs a national sports network, it’s competing on a completely different playing field. Its status as a cable operator becomes far less important because it must operate primarily as a media company, negotiating with other cable providers. Its goal is different as well; where a regional sports network seeks to form a monopoly over a market, the sports TV wars have all along been all about the opposite: to compete with ESPN. But it still remains a cable operator and customer of all the other sports networks as well, and the two roles must necessarily intersect. Nowhere does Comcast have so complete a monopoly that it can force favorable terms for its own sports network on anyone, because it must necessarily compete nationally, a problem numerous league-owned networks (as well as beIN Sport) have run into in recent years. Carriage on satellite providers wasn’t enough to get NFL Network on cable companies without the added carrot of RedZone, nor is carriage on some cable providers enough to get the Pac-12 Network on DirecTV. But it can do just enough to put pressure in the other direction on behalf of its cable business – but only if NBC Sports Network is already big enough to do so, and ESPN wants to make sure it never is.

If TWC SportsNet really takes off, especially if it wins Dodgers rights, it’s entirely possible it could force Fox to leave the Los Angeles market completely. Certainly whenever Comcast has moved into a market, Fox has pulled up its tent poles and fled town. When Comcast signed up with the Astros and Rockets to form CSN Houston, Fox shut down FS Houston virtually the instant its last Astros game ended. Fox also knew FSN Chicago wasn’t long for this world when the area’s teams signed up with Comcast as well. As I suggested before, Fox realizes that as a pure media company without a cable operator business, it is at an inherent disadvantage in the regional sports network market, and I think that’s why it is thinking of changing its sports strategy away from its current mix of RSNs and sport-specific networks and towards the formation of at least one general national all-sports network – and why I think it’ll cannibalize FSN’s remaining national programming to do so.

I have to imagine the NHL has to regret shacking up with NBC now, staking the future growth of the sport to Comcast’s ability to grow the NBC Sports Network at a time when that ability looked a lot bigger than it actually was. Had the NHL’s contract come due even one year later, I have no doubt it would have come crawling to Fox to take it in; as it is, it’s now stuck with NBC for the rest of the decade, at which point (assuming the Internet hasn’t rendered TV rights meaningless by then) I fully expect it to beg and plead with another entity to take it in anyway, pending the outcome of NBA negotiations and the overall course of the sports TV wars. (Having another two years on its previous NBC and Versus deals also means any customers wouldn’t have to worry about the lockout the NHL is going through right now. Just reason #2246 why Gary Bettman is clearly a mole planted by David Stern to undermine the NHL.)

This also affects how I see future contracts going down. I now suspect Turner has the lead over Comcast for whatever Thursday Night games the NFL elects to sell (though I still doubt they sell any), because if Comcast starts looking like a legitimate threat Fox and especially ESPN will go all-out to keep them down. (Fox would be the no-brainer favorite if not for its existing NFC package; as it stands I still see ESPN in third place, not that far behind Comcast.) Anyone looking for the return of “Roundball Rock” can forget about it right now, because it’s far more likely you’ll see Fox make a serious run at NBA rights than NBC, especially with NBC’s existing NHL commitments. And it’s hard for me to see a future where NBC has much of a chance to win MLS rights long-term, especially with Fox looking to complement their World Cup rights; I don’t think it’s far-fetched for Fox to beat both incumbents and rejoin MLS two years after losing those rights to NBC, especially as Fox Sports 1 wasn’t being bandied about at the time. Unless Comcast wanted to separate all its non-RSN sports properties, including the entire NBC broadcast network and stations, from at least its cable business, the NHL might remain now and forever the only thing keeping NBC Sports Network from CBSSN’s level.

The latest on a potential suite of all-sports Fox networks

by

So, I said I was going to lay out how a trio of all-sports Fox networks would work, only to find that for the most part, it works with plenty of space to preserve non-live programming, even if you kill FCS. There was one weekend with a multitude of college football games clashing with a UFC event, Premier League soccer, baseball, AND the NASCAR Truck Series, but that’s the exception.

On the other hand, it’s now looking very, very likely to happen, because the English Premier League bidding has attracted as many as five bidders, with a surprising sixth kicking the tires but dropping out. If any but Fox (or marketing firm IMG) win, that is probably the death knell for Fox Soccer. ESPN, NBC, and beIN Sport would all love to be the ones to drive a stake into Fox’s heart, even if they don’t actually pull it off. Oddly, reportedly Discovery Networks, the group mostly known for its networks filled with documentaries (even if verging into the sensationalistic or “reality” these days), was kicking the tires on adding games to its Velocity network, the former HD Theater, one of a number of former HD channels from when HD was a novelty (existing more to show off the technology and lump together several networks’ programming for HD simulcasts than anything else) that now have very little reason to exist, but apparently decided against it.

I’m not surprised NBC didn’t put up much of a fight; I actually hadn’t considered them much of a player to begin with, and for all the pub the Premier League has gotten, F1 might actually net them comparable ratings. On the other hand, I don’t buy the argument that beIN Sport actually picked up too many rights to add the Premier League to that too; I think they’ve shown plenty of signs that they’re willing to launch a second network in each language if circumstances warrant. ESPN would love to get the rights but I think ultimately if they do, they sublicence a number of games to Fox or NBC. My hunch is that it’s a two-horse race between Fox and beIN Sport, with ESPN running a close third that might ultimately form a joint bid with one of the others (more likely Fox). Normally, I might call Fox the favorite, but as always, never underestimate the power of Arab oil money; at the very least, a Fox-ESPN joint bid might be necessary just to fend off beIN Sport.

A Closer Look at Fox’s All-Sports Network Plans

by

Two motorsports TV contracts were signed over the weekend that continue to firm up and clarify Fox’s plans to start an all-sports network.

First, NBC signed a deal with Formula 1, moving those races off Speed; among other things, only four races will air on broadcast, meaning unlike Fox, NBC could end up tape delaying as few as one race all year (the other three being in Canada, Texas, and Brazil). While it adds good programming to NBC Sports Network (programming that complements the existing IndyCar contract), it’s hard not to see this story as really being about Fox clearing motorsports inventory off of Speed to prepare it for a transition to an all-sports network. This despite the fact that F1 is probably Speed’s best non-NASCAR programming and generally only takes up space on the Speed schedule late at night when there’s nothing else on; even conflicts with international soccer are surprisingly minimal.

There are many ways in which the Fox network still feels a lot less mature than its older competitors, and sports are one of the more subtle ones. NBC and CBS both have all sorts of niche sports dotting their weekends on top of all the more prominent sports they’re known for, and even ABC still has an interesting variety of sports dotting its schedule. For the most part, until recently Fox Sports pretty much consisted of football, baseball, and NASCAR, and that’s it. They’ve added college football and UFC, not to mention the odd soccer game, but before that Formula 1, despite the tape delays, was the closest thing to one of those niche, “Wide World of Sports”-esque sports that Fox had. Now it’s leaving, and there aren’t more than two or three live soccer games on Fox all year. I hope Fox doesn’t neglect its broadcast network as it builds an all-sports network like ABC had; it may be all the more critical in Fox’s case than any other that an increased emphasis on sports have spillover effects on the broadcast network. (And Fox’s college football coverage doesn’t seem quite up to the snuff of the established broadcasters to me.)

Perhaps more illuminating, even critical, to Fox’s network plans is its long-rumored early renewal with NASCAR. The main reason Fox wanted to renew this deal early was so it could clarify what a Fox Sports network would be required to broadcast, and nothing in this deal is tied to a specific network, allowing Fox to move some Sprint Cup points races to Speed whether it becomes a general all-sports network or not. Fox remains the broadcaster for the entire Camping World Truck Series season, and at least for now, doesn’t pick up any Nationwide Series rights. For a Fox Sports network, Fox picked up rights that will allow it to have a nightly show devoted to NASCAR news, “NASCAR-branded pre- and post-race shows”, and the ability to re-air races for 24 hours. While I wonder how wide-ranging Fox’s ability to have on-track and pre- and post-race shows is, Fox also retained the rights to show practice and qualifying… for the races whose rights it controls.

While Fox doesn’t appear to have picked up any rights it doesn’t already have, and so might end up picking up more rights later, that may indicate that Fox’s network prospects may now hinge on what happens with the rest of the contract, and whether or not someone else is willing to take on practice and qualifying rights for every single race they show, without being able to pawn them off to Fox. Certainly Fox has enough rights now to keep Speed a motorsports-focused network if it so chooses. ESPN already shows a considerable amount of practice and qualifying for its races, but it’s not universal and one wonders how much it’ll be willing to fit more onto its crowded schedule. NBC Sports Network would love to take it on just to fill time on the schedule, but given its existing IndyCar commitment (and potential hockey playoff conflicts) I wonder how much NBC would want to take on the Nationwide Series. And while Turner, which currently outsources all its practice and qualifying to Speed, would not want to add such fairly low-rated programming to TNT, such programming (backed by Nationwide Series races) could help it build the sports profile of truTV, but may represent too much of a commitment to sports for Turner to be comfortable with it, especially given their lack of success so far.

But perhaps Fox’s network plans extend beyond a single network to a complete revamping of the structure of its sports properties, one with potential knock-on effects spreading far and wide, and perhaps already doing so.

I have referred only to an “all-sports network” of Fox’s because I don’t like the reported tentative name of the network, “Fox Sports 1”. Part of the reason for that is the lack of a Fox Sports 2, but Fox could certainly relaunch one of its other networks to fit the bill, especially in the case that Fox Soccer loses its bread and butter… or completely overturn its specialty-network strategy and take on ESPN’s family of networks head-on. Ken Fang of Fang’s Bites raised this possibility in a post last week, suggesting that Fox might not only re-launch Speed as Fox Sports 1, but at the same time relaunch Fox Soccer as Fox Sports 2 and Fuel as Fox Sports 3. (I doubt he has any evidence that this is what’s actually going to happen, but speculation is fun, so we’ll go ahead and play his game.)

I have a number of problems with his specific scenario, largely because I didn’t really think of Fuel as a “sports” network in the same sense before it picked up UFC rights, but rather as a male-focused network with an emphasis on extreme sports, but in an even broader sense, he seems to think that such a change would amount to little more than a change of name in the case of Fox Soccer and Fuel; most soccer programming would remain on Fox Soccer with little more than what FX already has on FS1 and none on FS3 (and little to no non-soccer programming, to the point that Fox Soccer Plus would get the absurd name of “Fox Sports 2 Plus”), and all of Fuel’s programming would remain there with little to no programming from the other networks and UFC programming on FS1 and FS3 but not FS2. What’s the point of rebranding the networks in that case? Would Fox really want a collection of straight numbered networks with such a clear hierarchy yet with such targeted emphasis outside the main network? I guess it’s possible, but so far as I can tell from Wikipedia, it doesn’t fit News Corporation’s best practices with Sky Sports in the UK and Fox Sports in Australia.

Let’s think bigger, and fit a number of other developments into this picture. If this is the direction Fox wants to go, here’s what I see happening:

  • Speed becomes FS1, Fox Soccer becomes FS2, Fuel becomes FS3. We don’t need to change Fox Soccer Plus’ new name much, either from its existing name or from Fang’s proposal; it becomes Fox Sports Plus, and keeps most of its existing programming, with some use as an overflow channel for stuff Fox has the rights to but can’t cram onto three channels.
  • FS2 remains more soccer-focused than the other two, but a lot of soccer programming leaks onto the other two networks; at the very least, FS1 picks up every Premier League match Fox has the rights to pitting Manchester United against Arsenal, Chelsea, or Manchester City not on the main network. Fox also revamps its scheme for airing UEFA Champions League matches, with FS1 and FS3 joining FS2 and FS+ in airing games every matchday – half of all the games played at a time. FX wasn’t airing games regularly partly to increase the profile of Fox Soccer but also because it had other things to do. FS1 doesn’t; I could see it taking on more Champions League games even if Fox Soccer isn’t rebranded. (One factor that could play into the chances of Fox Soccer being rebranded is the loss of Serie A and Ligue 1 to beIN Sport and the threat of more; all of what Fox Soccer has left is either programming that could almost move to FS1 full-time, or stuff that doesn’t attract any eyeballs at all.)
  • UFC broadcasts are distributed among Fox, FS1, FS2, and FS3 based on the quality of the card and what each network is doing at any given time, all branded as “UFC on Fox”. FS3 continues to show prelims for Fox and FS1 cards, with PPV prelims airing on FS1 or FS2.
  • Most Truck Series races, as well as Sprint Cup practice and qualifying, move off their current network and onto FS2 and FS3.
  • Here comes the big part: the final nail is driven into the coffin of Rupert Murdoch’s original dream of using FSN to compete with ESPN. Especially if Dan Patrick decides to move to NBC. Only fitting that it comes when Fox actually does launch an ESPN-alike, right? We’ve been seeing the vestiges of this start to slip away ever since the start of the sports TV wars, to the point that despite the return of strong Fox branding to FSN national programming, FSN itself hasn’t returned with it, only being referred to as the “Fox Sports Networks”.

    Earlier this year Comcast SportsNet, always iffy with its carriage of FSN programming, dropped it entirely; originally it seemed that this was a temporary hiccup, but right now it seems Fox has given up the ghost, finding over-the-air stations to air FSN programming in Comcast markets. CSN may be setting itself up to air its own national programming, especially if it wins Big East rights, but even Root Sports, still airing FSN programming, has been airing Big Sky football games “nationally” on its three networks. Fox just doesn’t have the hegemony over the regional sports network landscape that it used to, and Fox doesn’t even need it anymore to distribute sports that don’t fit the other networks or that need a more national audience without being on FX. Plus, it’s lost Pac-12 rights to the Pac-12 Network, leaving it with just the Big 12 and Conference USA, and even conferences like the SEC and ACC that haven’t launched networks have sold packages to regional sports networks. College sports on regional sports networks have effectively become just as regional as everything else.

    Thus, as big a reason as the threat of beIN Sport to relaunch multiple networks is the desire to bail on the last vestiges of the FSN concept and move its bigger games to FS1, which should also provide plenty of inventory for FS2 once the soccer games end as well, with FS3 able to chip in in a pinch.

  • Along with the shutdown of the national FSN concept, Fox also shuts down its “that exists?” Fox College Sports enterprise, using the networks to goad cable companies into increasing carriage of FS2, FS3, and possibly FS+. FCS-exclusive games would move into the few remaining open spots on FS2, with the rest on FS3, FS+, and other platforms. Incidentally, I see a big shakeup in the TV rights for the third-tier college basketball postseason tournaments soon as the sports TV wars affect them; with HDNet’s rebrand into AXS TV, I see them dropping the CBI soon, and if Fox shuts down FCS that means they need to find a place for the CIT. When the dust settles, both tournaments will end up somehow distributed between NBC Sports Network, CBS Sports Network, and Fox; I see one on NBCSN and one on Fox, but it may not be the CBI on NBCSN and the CIT on Fox.

Later in the week I’ll take a look at what this might look like in practice.

Sport-Specific Networks
10.5 13.5 7 5.5 1 1.5

The major-league-baseball contract post-mortem

by

I don’t understand what baseball was doing in its negotiations for a new broadcast contract. Leave it to baseball to screw things up once again.

First, they told Fox that FX wasn’t good enough and it needed an all-sports network to be a serious contender, but then later apparently decided it didn’t want to prop up NBC’s own sports network, while also allowing TBS, which is almost exactly equivalent to FX (especially since all of Turner’s other non-NCAA Tournament sports are on TNT) to continue to even sniff baseball rights.

Then, they allowed ESPN to sign their agreement in advance and lock up all three of its existing packages – despite the fact that this would effectively eliminate NBC as a contender, since they were too smart to overpay for the shitty Sunday afternoon package, and reduce Fox and Turner’s interest for the same reason.

Then, they made a lot of noise about unifying not only the Saturday and Sunday afternoon packages, but the entire postseason with a single partner, going so far as to tell ESPN they would take their single wild card game and like it. And since they weren’t going to accept Turner’s CBS-alliance scheme, where CBS got the World Series, All-Star Game, some odd LCS games, and exactly zero regular season games, that meant that the contract was Fox’s to lose.

But wait! It turned out that, again, Fox wasn’t dumb enough to pay through the nose for the shitty Sunday afternoon package either! So when Turner refused to go away, not wanting to let go of TBS’ baseball legacy through its long history of Braves games, MLB ended up accepting a deal that amounts to the status quo.

The differences? Fox will now have a doubleheader of games each Saturday, so its all-sports network will have either one or two games each week, except I can pretty much guarantee that in weeks it has just one, it’ll be worse than the Sunday afternoon package; Fox gets back in the division series, splitting with TBS in similar fashion to the LCS’s and sending two games to MLB Network; and TBS gets co-exists for its Sunday afternoon games, so it won’t be blacked out in the home markets of the teams, except that means absolutely nothing because no one even knew TBS had regular season games going up against local games and everything else in sports Sunday afternoons… and TBS will now only have games the last three months of the season, so the problem where TBS seems to come from out of nowhere to take over the postseason will now get even worse!

What the hell? Why didn’t ESPN come back into play when it became clear that MLB was going to have to split up the postseason after all? Heck, ESPN and Fox could have had a league split running right through the wild card, division, and league championship series before Fox takes over the whole World Series. Sure, ESPN would probably have had even less interest in the Sunday afternoon package, but then those games would have gone to MLB Network where they belong, which is surely a boon to that network – and more important, it would have been better for baseball as a whole. Hardcore baseball fans with Extra Innings may be rejoicing over the end of blackouts of out-of-market Fox games (which I don’t think will amount to as much as you might think with Fox’s decreased inventory), but this may be even more confusing for the casual fan than the old agreement; TBS still comes from out of nowhere to take over the postseason, and ESPN shows up for the tiebreakers and one wild card game and then completely disappears. The shambling corpse of TBS’ old Braves package just will not die despite being pumped full of lead repeatedly, using the postseason as a shield. What was baseball thinking? It couldn’t have been this.

I think that, for all the money baseball raked in with this deal, they left money on the table by being too hasty to accept ESPN’s Godfather offer to keep all its existing packages in order to box out NBC. I bet baseball could have more than made up the difference in heightened interest from three partners for whatever ESPN left on the table. It didn’t end up working out very well for ESPN either; besides whiffing on its attempt to get more than one measly wild-card game, ESPN must surely know at this point that Fox’s potential all-sports network is a bigger threat than NBC’s, and as such its best play is to pit the two against one another so that both are left with a fraction of what ESPN has and unable to gain much ground, but there isn’t even any evidence that they lent any support to the Turner/CBS alliance scheme. Instead they continue to be so myopically focused on NBC that they keep handing contracts into Fox’s lap! They’ve managed to kill everyone else, but like a poor marksman, they keep! Missing! The target! KHAAAAANNNNNNN!!!!!!!!

Fox continues to be the only outfit with much sense in the sports TV wars. The baseball contract is the crown jewel for an outfit that already has plenty of programming to hit the ground running with an all-sports network. The last piece will come when Fox finishes its early renewal of the NASCAR contract, giving the network Sprint Cup races, the All-Star Race, and possibly Nationwide and Truck races. (I’ve heard that NASCAR isn’t thinking about a NASCAR network anymore, but unless it wants to foist practice and qualifying on its other partners, I don’t see Fox wanting to keep it on an all-sports network every week.)

NBC, meanwhile, now turns to NASCAR as its last real chance to get a killer app for NBC Sports Network, with the Big Ten awaiting as a last resort, but it may already be too late for them to catch Fox. All their numerous bells and whistles of side programming, from NBC SportsTalk to Costas Tonight to NFL Turning Point to Caught Looking to Sports Illustrated to The Lights, may ultimately be all for naught, a way to cover up the network’s lack of real programming; they may have given NBC a head start on infrastructure, but Fox may want to have all its infrastructure in place from the start, given their acquisition of baseball rights for a nightly highlights show. The NHL may be regretting not shacking up with Fox when it had the chance.

All five contenders in the sports TV wars have their count go up by one because ESPN, NBCSN, and CBSSN just signed a new agreement with the Atlantic 10 at the same time. Most basketball games go on NBCSN and CBSSN, with ESPN getting the conference tournament finals with, curiously, the semis on CBSSN and the quarters on NBCSN. The PBR and Mountain West recognize that NBCSN > CBSSN. Why doesn’t the Atlantic 10?

Sport-Specific Networks
10.5 12.5 6 5.5 1 1.5

Reassessing the new sports radio wars

by

CBS may not just be the favorite to take the spot behind ESPN Radio in the Darwinian world that has developed in national sports radio. It has a chance to run down ESPN for .

In an absolutely shocking move, Jim Rome, the dean of national sports radio hosts, will be jumping ship to the new CBS Sports Radio network when it launches this January. Rome does have his existing relationship with CBS Sports and the CBS Sports Network, but I am amazed that he would leave his home of many, many years to join a brand new sports radio network when he never left Premiere for ESPN Radio in all the time he was hosting Jim Rome is Burning, always maintained his show’s independence from Premiere’s Fox Sports Radio network, and repeatedly stated his commitment to the terrestrial radio stations that made him, to the point that if you don’t get a station that carries his show, your only recourse is to stream one that does, or sign up for his “Jungle Insider” package. I didn’t even think his contract with Premiere was up for renewal yet. I would also note that CBS Sports Network would love to air a TV simulcast of the show, but Jim Rome seems to have been adamantly against the idea of any such thing for some time now.

Why would Rome do this? I suspect the main reason is the changing shape of sports talk radio. Rome has boasted on his show that he has more stations than ever carrying it, but that hides some attrition among the stations that matter most. If you’re a major market sports station – by which I mean any market with big-time professional or college teams – your bread and butter is going to be local shows talking about local teams that people care about, which you control all the advertising for instead of splitting with a syndicator. By far the most distributed shows of the existing sports radio networks are the ones occupying the period from the start of primetime, when most of the games start, until the start of morning drive, despite these often being the ones with the least promotion and the smallest names, because the rest of the time is usually occupied with local shows (NBC seems to have realized this); despite what I said about CBS’ bank of existing big-market sports radio stations, don’t expect them to carry much CBS Sports Radio programming.

Many big-market stations, including some of Rome’s oldest and most loyal affiliates, have been cutting back on their coverage of Rome’s show or dropped it entirely for local shows. WKNR in Cleveland shunted the first hour off to a sister station with a signal barely leaving Cleveland proper; KILT in Houston dropped the whole show entirely, both of them among Rome’s earliest affiliates with fundamental roles in the growth of the show. Rome may have decided that, in order to maintain his audience and relevance, he needed to find a platform that would give him the biggest exposure in the national sports radio landscape of today, one reliant on streaming and TV simulcasts to find today’s audiences.

Besides elevating CBS Sports Radio, this could prove absolutely devastating to Fox Sports Radio, already essentially a simulcast of flagship station KLAC’s lineup, despite not officially having Rome in its lineup (or the bank of play-by-play rights Fox has recently won for it) – especially if Dan Patrick, whose contract with DirecTV is reportedly up soon, decides to join NBC Sports Radio, in which case it could plunge to very nearly the level of Yahoo as co-favorites to ultimately fold. If DirecTV manages to keep Patrick and keep him on FSR, they should be able to hold off NBC Sports Radio for the time being, but ultimately the fate of FSR depends largely on how much presence Premiere wants to maintain in the sports talk radio market going forward.

The biggest threat to any part of ESPN’s hegemony may end up having very little to do with television.

Acknowledging the Big 12’s new rights agreement

by

The Big 12 has announced a 13-year rights agreement with ESPN and Fox that will earn the conference about $20 million per year per school, about on par with other BCS conferences.

This agreement was so delayed that it held up the final release of the TV assignments for early-season football games and ultimately was finalized after the first week of football games. As such, it’s been rumored for so long that it’s mostly a formality, aside from the fact that Fox will have no role in broadcasting basketball, and as such I don’t have much to say about it (you can read a bit more about it here), so let’s just go to the scorecard.

Sport-Specific Networks
9.5 11.5 5 4.5 0 1.5

Hopefully the last word on the baseball contract until it’s announced

by

How might Fox use baseball to set up a Fox Sports network when ESPN has locked up all three of its previous packages? Apparently, by taking a page from Turner’s playbook.

As it turns out, it’s being reported that the situation in the room is pretty much as I suggested previously: Turner wants to get out from the utter disaster that is the Sunday afternoon package and wants to take over Fox’s Saturday package. What I hadn’t anticipated was that Fox would be more than willing to do so. Apparently, the offer they made Major League Baseball would have moved most of Fox’s regular season package to a Fox Sports network in addition to the Division Series, with the broadcast network keeping its share of LCS games. (Although both packages would still include the dreaded Sunday afternoon package.)

In other words, it’s basically the same as the CBS/Turner offer, but with the added benefit of being a single entity… and more importantly, leaving some regular season games on broadcast. Apparently MLB is rather leery of giving the World Series to CBS without a commitment to at least some regular season games. As a result, Fox should now be considered the favorite to win the contract again with CBS/Turner lagging behind – bad news for those who want to be rid of Tim McCarver, great news for those who want a competitor to ESPN.

NBC is considered to be lagging behind considerably, but this development makes me think that maybe they don’t necessarily have to be. NBC could put together a similar package as Fox, with most regular season games on NBC Sports Network with the World Series and some regular season games on the broadcast network – which also helps solve potential conflicts with hockey, horse racing, and golf. Apparently conflicts between the World Series and Sunday Night Football are an obstacle, but I can’t imagine it’s really that much of a problem. I imagine the NFL would be perfectly willing to go back to not competing against the World Series if NBC asked them to.

MLB also apparently wants to unify the postseason under a single rights holder, meaning ESPN might not end up with more than it already has after all. It’s possible MLB informed ESPN that if it wanted more than a single wild-card game and any tiebreakers, it would have to take the whole shebang, including the World Series and some regular-season games on ABC. Considering how crowded ESPN’s schedule can be, especially in fall with college football, ESPN may have balked and decided to stick with what they could get. In that light, I’m a little surprised MLB even gave ESPN that much, which makes me think ESPN may still get a few Division Series games.

Rethinking the rest of the Major League Baseball contract

by

Suddenly ESPN’s agreement with Major League Baseball makes a lot more sense, because of an arrangement I knew about but hadn’t anticipated.

The New York Times is reporting that CBS and Turner, evoking their NCAA Tournament marriage, have formed an alliance to try to win the baseball rights. I had laid out a potential CBS/Turner marriage as a possible dark-horse option for the NASCAR contract, but I had figured that such an alliance was impractical and unnecessary in baseball, especially with CBS’ own existing commitments and successful primetime. This means that the scenario I had laid out as the favorite on Tuesday, essentially a maintenance of the status quo, may now be a nonstarter, as TBS neither needs nor probably wants Fox to be the broadcast partner. Under the circumstances, that makes such an alliance a very strong contender to kick Fox out of the sport, one that could box NBC out entirely.

Perhaps more interesting, though, CBS reportedly only wants the All-Star Game and World Series, which evokes shades of NBC’s post-Baseball Network contract in the mid-late 90s, an arrangement I hadn’t thought would be repeated. That tells me that TBS isn’t dumb enough to take the crappy Sunday afternoon package again, which means it might be moving to MLB Network after all. No, TBS has their sights set on a far bigger prize, the big enchilada, Fox’s current main Saturday contract. Even with one game each week compared to ESPN’s three, that, coupled with TBS’ considerable postseason coverage (though I still expect ESPN to get a piece of the Division Series and maybe even an LCS), would instantly cement TBS as the main baseball broadcaster, similar to TNT’s place in the NBA contract. I had described the “ESPN/TBS” scenario as the worst-case scenario for people wanting an ESPN competitor, but while it is bad for NBC and horrible for Fox, it may well be the best scenario for baseball fans, who lose Joe Buck, Tim McCarver, and the infamous blackouts of out-of-market Fox games – that last being something I couldn’t promise with NBC.

On the other hand, if MLB is seriously considering not putting a single regular season game on national broadcast television, they’re once again proving how out-of-touch they are. Leave it to MLB to find a way to be the first professional league to sign a contract as cable-reliant as the BCS and NCAA Tournament deals despite the anti-trust exemption hanging over their heads. Combine that with the monopoly many regional sports networks have over teams’ games, and many fans without cable might be utterly unable to see any baseball games other than the All-Star Game and World Series all year long. (Incidentally, the All-Star Game seems like it’d be an even weirder fit on CBS than it would Fox, since it’d be the only game on CBS for months. I don’t see any reason not to put it on TBS; is the ASG covered by the anti-trust exemption threat too?)

That leaves me hesitant to proclaim the CBS/Turner alliance the new favorite; after putting up Tuesday’s post, I realized it actually did make some sense to put the Sunday afternoon game on FX, though a Fox Sports network is still a non-starter (to the point that Fox retaining the baseball contract might now be a bad sign for its chances of launching a network). But despite the lack of broadcast presence, it is the scenario that makes the most sense to me. And it certainly makes enough sense that it probably murders what little chance NBC still had to win the baseball contract, which has to send NBC panicking; after all its commitment to sports, NBC may now find itself the only broadcast network without a presence in the three non-NFL modern major sports, potentially setting up some cruel NHL jokes at NBC’s expense (“it’s appropriate that the NHL is on NBC because…”) and placing a massive premium on winning a piece of the NASCAR contract.