Warner+Fox+ESPN streaming service

[jesmu84]

As peacock did with an NFL playoff game, I'm guessing more and more high profile events will be moved to exclusive streaming

[Mr. Nielsen]

The first round and quarterfinals are less valuable properties. I also haven't seen when these games will be played, if there's any overlap, etc.

First round   Dec. 20-21 (NFL games also played on Dec. 21)
Fiesta Bowl | Quarterfinals   Dec. 31
Peach, Rose, Sugar Bowl | Quarterfinals   Jan. 1
Orange Bowl | Semifinals   Jan. 9 (Thursday)
Cotton Bowl | Semifinals   Jan. 10 (Friday)
Atlanta, GA | National Championship   Jan. 20

[Heisenberg]

I hope you and Scoop are still around to gloat in all your glory when you are finally, years from now, correct.

Why do you think ESPN, Fox, and Time Warner are banding together to create a sports streaming service expected to cost $40/$50 per month? Because they are bored and have nothing better to do? Throwing something against the wall?

And you think they are going to create this streaming service with this subscription price tag and then leave all these sports properties on cable for a fraction of the price? They will during a transition period, but then we are all going to need hundreds of dollars a year to watch sports when they ditch cable and go full streaming behind a paywall. This is the point of this effort!

It is because cord-cutting is accelerating, and the "writing is on the wall" about cable? 11 years ago cable, effectively 100% of TV households had cable TV. It is less than 60% today, and cord-cutting is accelerating that percentage lower at the fastest rate ever.

Yes, the cable is never going away, but it is about to become as relevant (or should I have"irrelevant") as broadcast TV.
---

See the local TV operators Scripps (SSP) and Sinclair (SBGI) since the streaming service was announced last week. Their stocks have taken a big hit.  Immediately, Sinclair, who owns the Tennis Channel, put it up for sale.

Change is coming, and someone has to pay the $1.3 billion/year for ESPN to broadcast the college playoffs. And if it is not going to be tens of millions that subscribe to cable and do not watch ESPN.

80% of cable subscribers do not watch sports regularly, but they all pay for it on their monthly bill. This business model has allowed sports broadcasting rights to swell into the stratosphere ... everyone pays for it.

Now, with streaming, the 20% that watch sports will have to pay 100% of the sports broadcast rights (once we cross the Rubicon and go full streaming).

[Heisenberg]

As peacock did with an NFL playoff game, I'm guessing more and more high profile events will be moved to exclusive streaming

Yep

Right now, most streaming services are losing money. They see the NFL exclusives as a way to drive signs up for their service.  It worked for Peacock.

Peacock's Streaming-Only NFL Wild Card Game Drove Record 2.8 Million Sign-Ups, Research Firm Estimates
https://variety.com/2024/digital/news/peacock-signups-nfl-wild-card-game-chiefs-dolphins-1235885957/

[Heisenberg]

This should be good news for Big East contract negotiations, right? Now the football money is set, and Fox needs to go after other sports and hopefully differentiate with college basketball. Or is there another angle to these TV wheelings and dealings?

https://theathletic.com/5272749/2024/02/13/college-football-playoff-espn-media-rights-deal/?redirected=1&source=googlesearch&access_token=12973123

Why is the NFL and college football so popular, and every other sport more or less struggles?

Maybe the answer is as simple as gambling. The design of the NFL makes it perfect for endless gambling on prop bets down to the next play.

Basketball, baseball, and Hockey are not designed as well as the NFL for prop bets.

So, why does the NFL still think they can get huge sports rights? Gambling junkies will pay any price to get real-time access to the games to gamble on them.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/jacobgrubman/2022/02/11/nfl-ratings-rise-with-expansion-of-legal-sports-betting/?sh=7f8a3b6d5bc5

https://awfulannouncing.com/gambling/sports-betting-increase-nfl-ratings.html

----

Side note, another sport well designed for prop bets is tennis. While betting on tennis is not popular in the US, it is massively popular in Europe and Asia.

And Tennis has this problem  (this is not a problem in the majors, but it is in the second and third-tier tournaments)...

Over 180 professional tennis players participated in a global match-fixing ring
https://www.npr.org/2023/09/10/1198675541/over-180-professional-tennis-players-participated-in-a-global-match-fixing-ring

Grigor started wondering whether there was a way to gamble on tennis that would guarantee the outcome of the wager. And what he learned as he did a little bit of research is that tennis players at the lowest tier of the sport make almost nothing. And once he figured out that these players were corruptible, that they were vulnerable to this sort of bribery, he grew the network from one player to more than 180 over the course of two or three years.

gambling on tennis has become. It's now a $50-billion-a-year industry. And it's not just people betting on the outcomes of matches. It's people betting on parts of very obscure matches, as you said, a point or a set or a game. And so Sargsyan was able to convince players that they didn't even need to lose an entire match. They could lose a game or a set, potentially still win the tournament if they guarantee the outcome of a part of that match. So that's what people refer to as spot fixing.

[The Sultan]

First round   Dec. 20-21 (NFL games also played on Dec. 21)
Fiesta Bowl | Quarterfinals   Dec. 31
Peach, Rose, Sugar Bowl | Quarterfinals   Jan. 1
Orange Bowl | Semifinals   Jan. 9 (Thursday)
Cotton Bowl | Semifinals   Jan. 10 (Friday)
Atlanta, GA | National Championship   Jan. 20

Yeah. I can see right there why there's less per game value. Either conflicts, or avoiding conflicts with the NFL. Thanks.

[Mr. Nielsen]

Yeah. I can see right there why there's less per game value. Either conflicts, or avoiding conflicts with the NFL. Thanks.

I can see a couple of Q-Finals outrate a semi as well, just for the fact that Q-Finals will be played on college football's day, NYD.