Bank of America Securities’ Jessica Reif Ehrlich is "The Big Get" on this week’s Marchand & Ourand Sports Media Podcast, which posts Wednesday morning. That means the future of ESPN will be a main topic this week. Subscribe here.
It looks like Diamond Sports Group will walk away from the D-backs, sending that team’s local media rights to MLB. A bankruptcy court will make a ruling Tuesday, but word is that the team and Diamond-owned Bally Sports Arizona were not able to come to terms on a restructured deal.
The most interesting part of tomorrow’s hearing has less to do with the rights. It has to do with what happens to Bally Sports Arizona’s position on pay-TV systems, considering that the RSN has now lost the D-backs and Suns.
These are the questions the judge will have to answer: Will DirecTV and other distributors still have to carry the channel -- minus those two teams -- at a rebated price? Or will they be allowed to carry MLB’s production at the channel position currently occupied by Bally Sports Arizona? Distributors want to make sure that they are not paying twice for the same content.
Sources said that distributors are ready to carry MLB’s productions of D-backs games without interruption. They just aren’t sure where -- exactly -- they will be on their channel lineups yet.
The success of the USWNT combined with the growth of women’s sports has convinced Fox Sports to devote more broadcast windows than ever to the FIFA Women’s World Cup, which starts this week. Fox will carry 29 WWC matches on its broadcast channel during the event from Australia/New Zealand.
“A lot of the programming strategy is to just elevate as many matches to our biggest platform as we possibly can,” said Mike Mulvihill, Fox Sports’ president of insights and analytics. “It’s great to have the support of our affiliates allowing us to be as aggressive as we’re going to be.”
Teams and matchups, of course, dictate potential viewership more than other factors, and Fox should see big numbers from the U.S. team, as its first two games will be in primetime on the East Coast -- July 21 against Vietnam and July 26 against the Netherlands (the Aug. 1 game against Portugal kicks off at 3am ET).
“We've seen so much organic growth in the Women's World Cup since we took it over in 2015,” Mulvihill said. “We made a commitment to do more games on broadcast and put more marketing muscle behind it.”
Mulvihill also pointed to overall growth in women’s sports as a reason why he’s optimistic about viewership numbers. “One of the stories of the year in our business is this breakthrough moment for women's sports,” he said. “You see it in the women's college basketball numbers and some of the WNBA numbers.”
What I’m looking for: Will DirecTV’s Nexstar dispute have any effect on viewership? Because of this battle, around 40 Fox stations are dark on DirecTV, DirecTV Stream and U-Verse, including big markets like Kansas City, St. Louis, San Diego and Denver. The likelihood is that a DirecTV-Nexstar dispute has the potential to dampen viewership -- but not by a lot, probably only by around 1%.
Grand Finale: The well-respected David Neal has told colleagues that this will be his final event for Fox Sports. Neal, who is Fox Sports' executive producer for the FIFA World Cup, has a long and storied sports media career that has seen him oversee productions for the Olympics, NBA Finals, World Series and, of course, the World Cup. I wrote about his decision to leave this morning.
BT Sport officially becomes TNT Sports on Tuesday in Great Britain and Ireland as part of Warner Bros. Discovery’s joint venture with BT Group, which was signed late last year. WBD Sports will make its announcement on Tuesday, highlighting its distribution deals (BT TV, Sky and Virgin Media) and rights agreements (including the Premier League, UEFA Champions League, Gallagher Premiership Rugby, UFC and WWE) with the channel. The channel also will be available to discovery+ users in that region.
A part of this deal that I find particularly interesting is the growth of TNT as WBD’s main sports brand internationally. It is already prominent in Latin America as WBD’s main sports brand and now is making inroads across the pond and will become WBD’s main sports brand in other countries.
That hasn’t been the case so far in the U.S., where TNT, TBS and Bleacher Report all could lay claim as a WBD Sports’ dominant sports brand.
I would expect to see the TNT Sports brand become much more visible in the U.S. now, especially considering that WBD Sports has never been pushed as a consumer brand.
This fell under the radar, but Peyton Manning told “The Pat McAfee Show” that Netflix already has greenlit a second season of “Quarterback.” The show has had the quickest start of any Netflix sports doc series. This morning, it had earned the top spot in the U.S. on Netflix for the fifth consecutive day.
Produced by NFL Films, Omaha Productions and 2PM Productions, the series had a red carpet premiere at L.A.’s Netflix theater last week with the series’ three stars (Patrick Mahomes, Kirk Cousins and Marcus Mariota), who are pictured below with Netflix Chief Content Officer Bela Bajaria, VP/Nonfiction Brandon Riegg and VP/Sports Gabe Spitzer.
Netflix has already greenlit a Season 2 for its documentary series "Quarterback"
- Almost as soon as the N.Y. Times announced that it was shutting down its sports department, I thought of the podcast interview Andrew Marchand and I did with Malika Andrews a month ago. In this clip, Andrews talks about being rejected for a job at the paper. “They said, ‘Working for the New York Times is like a Supreme Court justice seat. It is a seat for life, and you’re not ready."
- Apple TV’s stream of Lionel Messi's introduction ceremony on MLS Season Pass suffered from a series of production problems, including inconsistent audio and missing video during the in-stadium presentation, notes SBJ's Alex Silverman. A source said heavy rain interfered with the production team’s ability to capture in-stadium audio and video feeds.
- Here’s hoping that Jeff Passan feels better soon. ESPN’s MLB insider took to Twitter to say he broke his back cleaning up from a storm in Kansas City. “A large tree limb decided to fall and crush me. The good news: I still have use of my arms, legs and Twitter fingers. The bad news: I have a broken back."
- My boss Abe Madkour chimed in on the NCAA's media rights in his SBJ Forum this week: "It seems like a certainty that the women’s basketball tournament will be sold as a stand-alone after it drew record ratings this past April. But what else? ... The fear is that if the NCAA pulls out too many popular sports, the package will become so diluted it will lose any value and defeats the purpose of maximizing rights fees and distribution."
- MLB has been quick to get on Meta's new Threads social media platform. By the time the platform had amassed 70 million users (within two days of its July 5 launch), all 30 MLB clubs were up and running, notes my colleague Erik Bacharach. By July 10, Threads had 100 million users. MLB’s main handle racked up 670,000 followers through its first week, or 6.1% and 6.7% of its total Twitter and Instagram follower base, respectively.
- Congrats to D.C.-based WUSA sportscaster Darren Haynes, who accepted a job to become a sports anchor at KCBS/KCAL in L.A. Haynes has been in D.C. for six years. His last day is Aug. 16.
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