Sports TV News
John Skipper: ‘Hollywood Strikes Will Not Impact NBA Media Rights Negotiations’
“He is going to get a very big increase.”
Published
2 months agoon
By
BSM Staff
Media rights for national television packages for the National Basketball Association are set to expire following the 2024-25 season, with negotiations expected to begin in the new year, which could occur amid Hollywood strikes. The NBA’s exclusive negotiating 45-day window with its current rights holders – The Walt Disney Company (ABC/ESPN) and Warner Bros. Discovery (TNT/TBS/NBA TV) – opens on March 9, 2024 before the rights can be taken to the open market.
Numerous sports media entities have reported interest in the league, including Amazon Prime Video, Apple TV and NBC Sports as NBA Commissioner Adam Silver could look to triple the aggregate fee for games. The league is in the midst of a nine-year deal worth a collective $23.4 billion with the two broadcast entities and has positioned itself for an increase through a new In-Season Tournament, rules regulating load management and additional media incentives.
Linear platforms, combined with sports talk radio and digital outlets have burgeoned coverage of the league to new heights. Superstars such as LeBron James, Stephen Curry and Giannis Antetokounmpo regularly dominate sports conversation in various locales, and the Association has embedded itself in the culture both domestically and abroad. The NBA is expanding globally, holding several international contests each year and marketing its teams, players and personnel in new ways, leveraging its position as the predominant basketball product for augmented fees.
While there seems to be an end in sight for the Writers Guild of America (WGA) strike against the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP) after almost 150 days out of work, companies making bids for the Association project the holdout to stymie certain revenue streams. Warner Bros. Discovery could take a hit between $300 million and $500 million, while The Walt Disney Company shares dropped a collective 14% amid losses of more than $4 million per day.
“This will have zero impact – the strike – on what the NBA gets paid for their rights,” Meadowlark Media co-founder and CEO John Skipper opined on Skipper & Samson. Skipper was part of negotiating the current deal and sees the value the league has in that there are more people interested in broadcasting the games than there are game packages themselves. Because of this, the NBA should have leverage in its negotiations with both traditional and digital outlets.
Conversely, former baseball executive David Samson affirmed that the Hollywood strikes will likely have an impact on negotiations because of the power it grants legacy media in negotiations. Zaslav, as surmised by Samson, will use these strikes as an excuse to justify a diminished fee increase, something he feels will be countered by the NBA with the question of why the company inked its Inside the NBA commentators to 10-year extensions.
“He’ll say back, ‘Well actually, we’ll repurpose them the way we’ve already started to repurpose Barkley,’” Samson articulated. “So I think that the strike actually gives leverage to Warner Bros. Discovery in its negotiation with the NBA.”
David Zaslav, the chief executive officer of Warner Bros. Discovery publicly stated that the entity will not overpay for the NBA and said it does not need the property. Negotiating through the media is a bad idea, according to Skipper, who was previously involved in these negotiations while serving as the president of ESPN. He came to that conclusion after ESPN lost the rights to the National Hockey League after the 2004-05 lockout, a property it did not reacquire until the 2021-22 season.
“In this industry, I never found it anything but deleterious to my discussions with the leagues if I said anything publicly other than, ‘We love this league; we want to renew our rights,’ which we said all the time,” expressed Skipper. “I even said it when I didn’t love the league and didn’t want the rights because, as you know, the second-best outcome of any negotiation is that somebody else pays way more money than they think they have to [in order] to get rights.”
Since the demand outweighs the supply, Skipper does not think that anything going on in the world of entertainment and late night television will affect how much networks will end up paying for the NBA. The league will continue to have every intention of proliferating its earnings derived from media rights, and he thinks it will be successful in its quest to do so.
“He is going to get a very big increase,” Skipper said, referring to Commissioner Silver, “and the writers’ strike is not going to have any effect on that increase, in my opinion.”
Sports TV News
The CW to Air 2023 Barstool Arizona Bowl
After going streaming-only last year, the 2023 Barstool Arizona Bowl will also air on the CW.
Published
3 hours agoon
November 30, 2023By
Jeff Kotuby
The Barstool Arizona Bowl just secured an additional broadcast home — The CW.
The news broke earlier today on Twitter from the official Barstool Arizona Bowl account. The 2023 Barstool Arizona Bowl will stream once more on Barstool.TV but can also be found on your local CW affiliate.
🚨BREAKING🚨- The 2023 Barstool Sports Arizona Bowl is partnering with @TheCW Network as the official Broadcast partner for the Bowl. We are thrilled to be able to bring the most cutting edge postseason experience to college football fans across the nation. pic.twitter.com/rvDlbyL5NR
— The Barstool Sports Arizona Bowl (@theARIZONABOWL) November 30, 2023
Fear not, Stoolies — your favorite Barstool personalities won’t be replaced by The CW’s broadcast teams. Pardon My Take’s Jake Marsh confirmed that he will once again assume play-by-play duties, while his bosses Dan “Big Cat” Katz and Dave Portnoy will join him as color commentators. Caleb Pressley and Adam “Rone” Ferrone will act as sideline reporters.
Last year, Barstool ditched a traditional media platform to air their bowl game after reports surfaced that CBS wouldn’t work with Barstool to broadcast the game. Instead, the company streamed the game direct-to-consumer on Barstool.TV, the company’s streaming platform. Ratings were about on par with a streaming-only event, with 1 million total viewers, 500,000 unique viewers, and a high of 130,000 concurrent viewers according to Front Office Sports.
Last year, Ohio defeated Wyoming 30-27. We’ll find out which two teams will play in this year’s Barstool Arizona Bowl following this weekend’s college football slate.
Jeff Kotuby is a nationally-published journalist with bylines on many popular broadcasting and pop culture sites, including The Streamable, eBaum’s World, Twin Galaxies, and more. Jeff grew up in the shadows of New York City and cultivated his love for sports media with the classic broadcasting voices of the area, like Mike & The Mad Dog, Mike “Doc” Emerick, and Michael Kay. You can reach Jeff on Twitter @JeffKotu3y.
Sports TV News
CFP National Championship Game Could Rotate Between Partners in New TV Deal
According to Front Office Sports, ESPN and FOX have already made presentations to the CFP.
Published
3 hours agoon
November 30, 2023By
BSM Staff
Ahead of the College Football Playoff (CFP) expansion to 12 teams in the 2024 season, the playoff could look to have the National Championship Game rotate among its media partners every year.
The goal through the process would be to maximize the scope of the media rights fees and cross-promote the game once the existing 12-year, $5.64 billion rights deal with ESPN expires, sources have told Front Office Sports.
Various media outlets have reportedly expressed interest in acquiring rights to the CFP, including ESPN, FOX Sports, NBC Sports, and Warner Bros. Discovery, along with streaming providers Amazon Prime Video and Apple. Michael McCarthy and Amanda Christovich of Front Office Sports reported the news of the prospective structure, along with several media companies that could be involved in the bidding.
Within the report, it is stated that no structure of a deal has been agreed upon at the moment. Last year’s contest between Georgia and TCU averaged 17.2 million viewers on ABC, which made the contest the least-watched National Championship Game since the Bowl Championship Series (BCS) came into existence in 1999. According to Front Office Sports, ESPN and FOX have already made presentations to the CFP, and ESPN could be reportedly willing to forgo part of the CFP to pay for other rights, such as the National Basketball Association.
The discussion surrounding the CFP comes at a time when NASCAR recently announced seven-year media rights deals with CBS, NBC, Warner Bros. Discovery, and Amazon Prime Video worth a combined $7.7 billion. Moreover, the Big Ten inked a seven-year, $8 billion deal with CBS, NBC, and FOX that began this season and is slated to run through 2029.
ESPN will broadcast the National Championship Game on Jan. 8, 2024 at 7:30 PM ET.
Last year, the network presented an alternate broadcast featuring Pat McAfee and members of his program, The Pat McAfee Show, broadcast on ESPN2 while Chris Fowler, Kirk Herbstreit, Holly Rowe, and Molly McGrath were on the traditional presentation on ESPN.
Sports TV News
Andrew Whitworth: Being on Amazon Prime Video Keeps Me Connected to Football
“I just finished this incredibly long football career, but I feel like I’m 18 years old and I just got a fake ID and I can go to a club.”
Published
5 hours agoon
November 30, 2023By
BSM Staff
After 16 seasons in the NFL, Andrew Whitworth is officially retired from playing the game, but he is still very much around the gridiron as a member of Amazon Prime Video’s Thursday Night Football studio broadcast team.
Whitworth is on-site at the games every week behind the desk as an analyst on TNF Tonight where he provides his insight and expertise regarding the action on the field. The four-time Pro Bowler is situated alongside Tony Gonzalez, Richard Sherman, and Ryan Fitzpatrick, along with host Charissa Thompson.
In a recent interview with Yahoo Sports, Whitworth described how he is looking at the game of football in a different light now that he is retired. Within his remarks, he conveyed that he is not sure if he was necessarily a fan of the sport when he was playing, something he acknowledges is ludicrous to state but a legitimate question he has. Rather than viewing the game as a whole, he was more focused on his role as an offensive tackle and being able to effectuate scoring drives by stopping defenses.
“I just finished this incredibly long football career, but I feel like I’m 18 years old and I just got a fake ID and I can go to a club,” Whitworth said. “That’s how I feel watching football now – I just want to consume everything I can.”
Immediately after the final season of his career – which ended with a Super Bowl championship as a member of the Los Angeles Rams – Andrew Whitworth wanted to discover a way to remain involved in the sport. There were options, he shared, to stay within the Rams organization, along with opportunities to work with other teams. His mindset was focused on the art of storytelling though and how to promulgate and discuss a sport that granted him a successful career.
“Being in these stadiums, it keeps you so connected,” Whitworth said. “And every week it seems, I’ve got players asking me, ‘Hey man, you got any thoughts on my game? Things you could help me with?’ For my last five or six years in the NFL, I was kind of a coach-player, mentoring guys. Now, I’m getting to do that a little bit while also covering the games, which has been great.”
Andrew Whitworth outlined a typical week as a member of the Amazon Prime Video Thursday Night Football broadcast, which begins with a production meeting on Monday mornings and subsequent research and film study. In the afternoon he coaches a junior high basketball team for his son and then proceeds to coach his other son’s football team. The film study continues on Tuesday before traveling to the city where the game is taking place that night.
“As soon as I get to that city, I start putting together a tape to talk about and show the producers,” Whitworth said of his Wednesday routine. “We all get together, usually at the hotel, and spend [four to five] hours having dinner and talking about the game.”
Another production meeting takes place on Thursday morning before touring the city and finding enjoyable things to do throughout the day. The crew then arrives to the stadium to do the broadcast that night – in this case, a matchup between the Dallas Cowboys and Seattle Seahawks, which begins with TNF Tonight at 7 PM ET.
