John Ourand’s Post

The Varsity * The NBA is continuing to talk with Warner Bros. Discovery and NBC, but negotiations are not far enough along yet for the league to start conversations around WBD’s all-important matching rights. NBC and the NBA would have to be close to a signed deal for negotiations over those matching rights to truly commence. * Comcast and Diamond have barely spoken in the nine days since the cable operator dropped all of the Bally Sports Networks from its Xfinity cable systems. Both sides are entrenched in their positions, and it doesn't look like any deal is close. * CBS Sports’s deal with the Italian soccer league Serie A expires in a couple of weeks and the two sides are not close on a renewal. The Italian soccer league will either have to accept a much lower rights fee from CBS or find a new partner in the U.S. market. * Former Turner Sports president Lenny Daniels was considered one of the early favorites to replace Norby Williamson, but now has become a much longer shop as ESPN is not moving off its desire that the role will be based in Bristol, Conn. * Streaming, Paramount, women's sports, Spulu and sports betting were the top topics on the minds of NFL lawyers who gathered in Washington, D.C. this week. I spoke to the group on Wednesday morning about the changing media landscape, and these were the focus of most of the questions I fielded. * It looks like Netflix will wind up carrying the two NFL games scheduled for December 25, per a bevy of sources. It’s a first-of-its-kind deal, and almost certainly not the last. https://lnkd.in/eQN-tqcj

TNT’s loss could be Charles Barkley’s gain The most-coveted NBA free agent in 2025 might be a man in his 60s known more for his opinions on churros than anything he did on the court. Inside the NBA stalwart Charles Barkley could command a contract worth as much as $20 million per year on the open market, per FOS, if TNT’s broadcast partnership with the NBA is not renewed after next season. That would put the man with the worst golf swing on TV in the same lucrative company as fellow athletes-turned-broadcasters Tony Romo (10 years, $180 million from CBS) and Tom Brady (10 years, $375 million from Fox). TNT isn’t benched yet. Amazon and Disney have frameworks in place for partial broadcast rights, with NBC the front-runner to be the third and final partner, bringing the total value of the 11-year deal to ~$76 billion, according to Sports Business Journal. Normally, TNT parent company Warner Bros. Discovery would be able to match NBC’s offer, but NBA Commissioner Adam Silver is requiring a higher bid from WBD, since NBC can offer more prime-time broadcast windows and boasts regional sports networks that WBD can’t equal.

The Varsity * Sean McManus stepped down Sunday after 28 years of running CBS Sports. What were his last minutes as CBS Sports chairman like? I detail what happened inside the network's production compound during McManus' last minutes in charge. * McManus wasn't the only longtime CBS employee to retire following The Masters. The beloved announcer Verne Lundquist called his final round at Augusta National after 40 years. The kind of announcer who knows when to talk and when to stay quiet, Lunquist has always described his style as "minimalist." * Spulu - the planned sports streaming service from Disney, Fox and Warner Bros. Discovery - likely will have to contend with an antitrust trial just before its launch. I have the latest on Fubo TV's plans to derail Spulu's launch. * Baseball fans hate MLB blackouts - the ones that don't allow, say, Oriole fans to stream the team's games from parts of Delaware and Pennsylvania all the way down to North Carolina. Slowly but surely, MLB has a plan to end these blackouts. It's not happening fast enough for some fans. But it is happening. * The biggest sports business story right now is obviously what the NBA will do with its media rights packages. The second biggest? It could be the UFC’s media rights, which are up in December of 2025. Plus, details on Diamond Sports who has a fundamental disagreement with DirecTV and Comcast. Sure, Diamond knows that its regional sports networks will have to go on a digital tier. But Diamond wants DirecTV and Comcast to migrate those channels over a multi-year period - a "glide path." DirecTV and Comcast want to do it right away - "a cliff path." They still have a couple of weeks to work out a deal. https://lnkd.in/eqrBbnBB

🏀 📺 We've got ourselves a showdown in the National Basketball Association (NBA), and it's not the playoffs. After not reaching a deal during its exclusive negotiating period, Warner Bros. Discovery - parent company of Turner (Turner Broadcasting System, Inc) - is in danger of losing the NBA media rights it's held for nearly 40 years to NBCUniversal, as NBC has come in with a significant offer of $2.5 billion, nearly 120% over the current agreement. The agreement puts WBD in a Catch-22. Keeping the rights would surely mean overpaying (reports are saying they'd need to come in at $2.8 billion to have a shot), and the company is already in challenging financial times. But, if it loses the rights, it drastically weakens its cable business due to being unable to maintain its carriage rights, which are among the highest out there ($3/subscriber) and generates $2.56 billion annually for the company. Decisions, decisions. In this week’s SBP, you’ll learn (with the assistance of some memes): - How the NBA is carving up its new media rights package - The “tale of the tape” between WBD and NBC - The outcomes of either scenario (and NBC's ultimate angle) - What I think the NBA will do - The ramifications this broader deal will have on the industry as a whole Check it out below! 👇 https://lnkd.in/gtizrPdY

The Varsity * Amazon's last-minute bid for the NFL's Christmas games. * The still doesn’t have a signed deal with Netflix for the two Christmas Day games. Complicating matters is the fact that in recent days, Amazon tried to pry the games away by submitting its own bid to the league. * The vibe coming out of the NBA is that the league prefers NBC’s bid over Warner Bros. Discovery's. The NBA likes NBC's plan for two primetime broadcast windows per week and the type of promotion that has turned Sunday Night Football into the most watched primetime show in the land. There’s also a real question about whether WBD's matching rights can actually match NBC’s bid. * Optimum Sports' Jeremy Carey on this week's Upfronts: “We know that we’re going to see more sports and bigger areas of exposure across the board. There’s no doubt we’re going to see more women’s sports in bigger areas across the board." * Sinclair is selling 60 local TV stations—about 30 percent of its total—to pay down its $4 billion in debt. It’s not hard to draw a straight line from its disastrous 2019 purchase of the Fox Sports-branded R.S.N.s to this decision. * At some point in the blowout second half of the atrocious Game 4 of the Knicks-Pacers series, I realized just how much I missed Jeff Van Gundy and Mark Jackson, who were part of ESPN’s top NBA broadcast team alongside Mike "Bang Bang" Breen for nine years before leaving at the end of last season as the network cut costs. * Despite its deal to carry MLB's Sunday morning games, Roku isn’t about to become a real competitor for exclusive sports rights anytime soon. The streaming service is not set up to compete with the likes of broadcast networks, or even streamers like Amazon or Netflix. Rather, as the media business continues to unbundle and become more fragmented, it is positioning itself as a place where content companies can find scale again. https://lnkd.in/eYMb6TeC

The NBA is getting a raise 📺📝 Big media drives the NBA's revenue, with companies like Warner Bros and Disney (ESPN) paying billions annually for broadcast rights. This accounts for 41% of the league’s revenue. However, fewer people are watching the NBA. 📉 This must make it harder for the league to demand a high price from broadcasters right? Not quite... Here's a breakdown of the obstacles the NBA has faced and how they've overcome them ⬇️ Obstacles for the NBA 👀 TV Viewership Trends: Ratings for regular-season NBA games have dropped 42% over the past 20 years. ⭐️ All-Star Game Decline: 2023 viewership hit a record-low 4.6 million, with a slight increase to 5.5 million in 2024. 👴 Aging Stars: With LeBron James, Steph Curry, and Kevin Durant nearing retirement, there's concern over maintaining viewership. Despite these challenges, the new media deals are projected to bring in $6.9 billion per year, more than double the previous value. How? Enter Adam Silver, NBA Commissioner and Strategic Wizard 🧙 Adam Silver’s Uno Reverse Card 🧩 Modular Events: Breaking events into distinct, sellable parts, like the successful In-Season Tournament. 🤝 Opening Negotiations: Inviting NBC, Amazon Prime, and others to bid after the exclusive window with TNT and ESPN expired. 🎰 Diversifying Revenue: Supporting legalized sports betting, jersey patch sponsorships, and private equity investments in franchises. The final stages of contract negotiations are approaching, paving the way for a prosperous NBA decade. The big question remains: who will be the new face of the league? Follow SportsBall and subscribe to our newsletter in the bio for more data visualizations 📊 Source: Front Office Sports #NBA #MediaRights #sportsbiz #AdamSilver #linkedinsports #sportsball #datavisualization

✅🖥️ Crain’s Chicago Business (6/3): “The Chicago Sports Network is the name of the venture launching in October. The channel will stream more than 300 live games, post-game coverage and 24/7 multi-sport programming, according to a statement from the network. Both the Blackhawks and the Bulls will have their preseason games aired in October, while the Sox will make their debut on the network in 2025. The network is a partnership between the teams and Nashville-based Standard Media, which owns four local stations in Nebraska, Rhode Island, Missouri and Kentucky. The move comes as the teams' contracts with NBC Sports Chicago are set to end on Oct. 1. NBC has been the teams' broadcast channel since 2004. The network lost the Chicago Cubs when the team signed a deal with Sinclair Broadcast Group to create the Marquee Sports Network in 2020. The Chicago Tribune first reported on the aim to launch the new regional sports network in May detailing the many hurdles the teams seem to have overcome, including having to get the NBA, MLB and NHL to sign off on the plan and to work out complicated rights fees as cable providers such as Comcast have "blacked out" regional sports networks due to contract disputes.” 🏀🏒⚾️⬇️ #streamingtv #ctvadvertising #livesports https://lnkd.in/e-zmfan3

Despite the price hike, this year’s tournament has already sold more tix than last year — but supply does influence demand. 👇 • The women’s Final Four takes place at Cleveland’s Rocket Mortgage FieldHouse with a 19.5K capacity, while the men’s will be at Glendale’s 63.4K-seater State Farm Stadium. Since locations are chosen years in advance, these decisions don’t reflect the rapid growth of women’s basketball since 2022. 🚫📈 • But in better news, ESPN — which will air the women’s tourney through 2032 — recorded its most-watched women’s basketball regular season since 2009. Average viewership for the 81 games was up 37% YoY as 272K average viewers tuned in across linear and digital channels, while matchups aired exclusively on ESPN and ABC channels averaged 476K viewers. We love to see it. 📺 • Love keeping up with women's sports wins? Subscribe to our free, 3x-weekly sports biz newsletter for the latest on the league: https://lnkd.in/gHDGQDem

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