ESPN Eyeing Growth In Areas Beyond Just TV Rights Deals

The FINANCIAL TIMES’ Tim Burt wrote that ESPN’s growth “requires a balancing act where it secures rights to the big sporting fixtures that make ESPN a must-have collection of channels, while developing other businesses less exposed to the vagaries of bidding wars.” ESPN & ABC Sports President George Bodenheimer said that the two areas “are complementary -– neither will ever replace the other.” Bodenheimer: “ESPN is a multimedia company, not just TV. Online, we have eight different subsets of ESPN.com, which is a major part of our growth strategy. Today, we are increasingly talking about a bigger bundle of rights –-across different media outlets –- in almost all negotiations with rights holders. We’re not upsetting the apple cart, the business is simply evolving.” More Bodenheimer: “If you are running a TV network today you need to be extremely creative to continue to grow” (FINANCIAL TIMES, 5/3).

EXAMPLES: ESPN announced plans for ESPN Fantasy Football 2005, its first fantasy magazine. The 176-page magazine will feature ESPN’s fantasy experts, TV personalities and writers from ESPN.com and ESPN The Magazine and will retail for $6.99 beginning June 21. It will also be available online to ESPN.com Insider subscribers (ESPN)....ESPN and “Baseball Tonight” analyst Harold Reynolds have teamed for “Harold Reynolds Presents Baseball In Association with ESPN,” a series of seven instructional DVDs that feature Reynolds, HOFer Ozzie Smith, Twins CF Torii Hunter, Rangers manager Buck Showalter, former MLBer Joe Girardi and ESPN’s Tony Gwynn and Jeff Brantley. This is the first time ESPN has joined with a pro athlete to unveil a series of instructional DVDs (ESPN).