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People and Pop Culture

The Sit-Down: The Shell brothers

Two brothers with years of experience in the industry talk about television viewing habits, why soccer and esports are worth keeping an eye on, and how sports is far ahead of the movie business.



JEFF: I moved over to Fox in 1994. Fox Sports had just started, and they had an idea to take these regional sports networks — Prime Sports — and turn them into little local sports networks.

Chase Carey’s idea actually, and I thought it was the greatest idea I’d ever heard.  

DAN: I always loved sports and could play it really well at 8 years old, and then peaked at 11.

I think I was making $30,000 as an assistant [basketball] coach in the Bay Area, and that’s not going to get you very far. So I transitioned to the corporate side of sports about 10 years ago. Sales became my focus.

JEFF: The Olympics were fascinating. … If you look at London, where everything was delayed back to the U.S., the ratings were at an all-time high. And then we get to Rio where most events, because it’s one hour different than East Coast [time], the assumption was that the ratings would go up in Rio, and the prime-time ratings actually went down in Rio.

Photo by: TONY FLOREZ PHOTOGRAPHY

The reason for it was because in four years all of the viewer trends had moved to, “I want to watch basketball on NBC Sports Channel” or “I want to go watch the volleyball final streamed.”   

The movie business is actually, I would say, about 10 years behind the sports business. [In] the sports business, you can watch different events in different ways on different devices all the time. … In the movie business, we’re still very archaic. If you want to see “Girl on a Train”… this weekend, you have one choice, and that is to get in your car tomorrow and go to a movie theater.

Movie theater owners have to get comfortable that their business won’t decline if you can see the movie at home.

To tell you, “Turn off your cellphone” is ridiculous. [Movie theaters] should say, “Turn on your cellphone. If you like this scene in the movie, text and we’ll run it along the bottom of the screen. After the movie vote on your favorite scene and we’ll show it to you again.”  

DAN: College sports in general is growing. The multimedia business is just one part of that. I think five years ago people would say, “You’re crazy to say that college sports is the second biggest sports [entity] in the U.S.” I think it’s pretty clear now especially if you combine college football [and] college basketball into one, it’s certainly second behind the NFL in terms of numbers.

My wife — for better or for worse, she’s the spending decision-maker in our household — she doesn’t love going to a USC football game for knowing who the linebacker is. She just loves going to the game. … It’s where she went to school. I think advertisers want to be a part of that experience. You can shape consumer decision.  

There’s a sophistication to the business now that an IMG or some of our competitors can bring to it where it’s not just selling radio and a sign in the arena. These are sophisticated partnerships that you’re putting together.   

JEFF: Probably the most rabid youth audience is college students. They go to the movies more than anybody else. … If we had to go buy every university individually it’d be too hard.

DAN: Why do you have to have a traditional broadcast with commercials that are bought through an agency on ratings points? I think there will be, whether it’s Steve Ballmer, somebody that takes control of their own broadcast. They’re still advertising but it’s not the advertising that comes in a 30-second spot. Where you can have an advertiser that fits into the broadcast in other ways and is part of the experience of someone watching television.

JEFF: The craziness about the movie business or the sports business or any of the media businesses is that we’re all still dealing with sample sizes. It’s ridiculous. In a world where there’s full information [and] everybody has a phone and everybody is interacting, data is the area that’s the furthest behind.

You should know immediately how many people are watching every event and everything. … That whole business is going to have to change dramatically.

I think rights [deals] are going to continue to go up as devices change and sports is always that one live event that you can count on that people have to watch. I think it’s going to get more and more valuable as things mediate and fragment. I actually think rights costs are going to keep going up.

DAN: I think one thing that’s interesting over the next five [to] 10 years is what sports emerge or become more popular or become less popular. You ask different people [and] you get different answers, but I think baseball is changing in terms of a younger audience. These are long games.

I did not like soccer growing up. My kids love it and I think from a viewing perspective it’s an easy sport to consume. It’s two hours. You know it.   

JEFF: As much as I am a baseball fan, I agree with Daniel on this. Baseball is tough. Still tons of people watching baseball but you go to the games [and] there’s not as many young people. Nobody wants to play Little League anymore. I think baseball has to make their sport more interesting.

The soccer thing — David Hill, who I use to work for, used to say, “If younger people playing a sport is an indication of popularity, then hide-and-go-seek would be a top-rated sport.

I actually think esports is going to be interesting.

We root for a team because of the community and the shared sense of victory. People tune into the Olympics every two years to watch sports they never would watch any other time. I think if you have a chance to cheer on a team from your university playing some video game that you’ve never heard of, you may be as interested in watching Cal beat UCLA in “Call of Duty” as you might be watching Cal beat UCLA in some sport you’re never going to play.   

DAN: Everyone’s talking about [esports]. It’s a little bit like digital. It’s exciting. It’s the shiny new toy, but let’s wait and see how it’s going to transpire.

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