Monumental Sports & Entertainment GM, Network Friday Abernethy, NESN CMO Ahmed Darwish and SNY President Steve Raab discussed the future of RSNs today at the SBJ Media Innovators conference in N.Y. As the growth of streaming services continue, Raab said RSNs are not a distressed business because they “hold the power of sports in a local way.” On the heels of Monumental's acquisition of NBC Sports Washington, Abernethy said there are customers "who are not in the bundle anymore that want have that local sport connection, and that's what direct to consumer will do."
Quick Hits:
- Abernethy, on selling points RSNs have when going to direct-to-consumer: “It goes back to the fandom and the local, the localness of regional sports. When you're a fully integrated organization like that, you have the ability where you can extend those tickets. Where if another media company owns the rights but doesn't own the teams or the stadium, you can't do that. So that's where I think Monumental Sports and others have that unique perspective where we have the complete ecosystem, and we can create that fandom in the community.”
- Darwish, on NESN’s pursuit to go direct-to-consumer: “When you're going direct to consumer, you're, you're going to get the spectrum of customers. And we're no longer in a world where you just have a handful of customers that have to be happy, and you don't deal with people directly. ... We took the approach of ‘let's get out there, let's learn as much as possible, and let's give people the best product possible sooner than later.’”
- Raab, on facing potential piracy issues: “We’re really in maybe the first inning of all these other issues that touch on streaming. It's not just price. It's not just how many subscribers did you get. There are so many other pieces to this that are going to play out over a long time.”
