After taking full control of Eurosport in July, Discovery Communications is "hoping to do overseas what it failed to do at home: get in the game before it’s over," according to a front-page piece by Hagey & Futterman of the WALL STREET JOURNAL. Discovery began investing in Eurosport in '12, "taking a minority stake" while the majority owner, France’s TF1 Group, "showed them the ropes of running the only sports channel group to span the whole continent." Eurosport "reaches 205 million paying subscribers across 91 countries," as well as "millions more free-to-air viewers in pay-TV averse Germany." Previously, Eurosport carried "primarily leftover rights to second-tier sports." But since taking control, Discovery "has signed more than 75 sports rights deals," from Wimbledon in Belgium to F1 in Portugal. In June, it agreed to pay US$1.4B for "exclusive European broadcast rights to the Olympic Games" beginning in '18. Discovery also "wasn’t the highest" bidder for those rights. Sources said that it "came out ahead because it presented itself as the best way for the IOC to stoke year-round interest in the Olympics, particularly among young people." Discovery believes the "biggest immediate improvement it can make at Eurosport ... is in its ad business." Eurosport was "selling ads on a pan-European basis, which isn’t the way most advertising in the region is sold." Discovery, which "has an average of 10 channels in countries throughout Europe, is changing that by creating local channels" -- similar to RSNs in the U.S. -- "using sales and distribution teams it already has on the ground." It has already "begun to get larger affiliate fee increases across its whole portfolio of European channels by having sports as part of its bundle." Discovery now is "beefing up production values, making its sports more accessible with more documentary-style storytelling and prime-time talk shows, and dumping some of the more embarrassing filler" (WALL STREET JOURNAL, 1/12).
