The startup North American Sports Network has emerged as a key overseas player for U.S. sports rights, signing a deal with the NHL that sources say guarantees the league more than $45 million over four years — a better than 50 percent increase in the league’s previous European television revenue.
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| The deal will allow NASN to sub-license NHL rights on a country-by-country basis. |
Dublin, Ireland-based NASN, which launched in December 2002, received a cash infusion in May from venture capital firm Benchmark Capital Europe, which replaced Paul Allen’s Vulcan Ventures as an investor. The new money enabled the network to sign multiyear deals with the NFL and NHL for English-language rights in Europe.
The NHL deal also makes NASN the league’s pan-European master rights holder, with the ability to sub-license NHL rights on a country-by-country basis.
“In order to drive distribution, we’ve got to have the content,” said Amory Schwartz, a Philadelphia native who founded and runs NASN. “That’s why we went out and acquired NFL rights.”
The network reaches 300,000 homes on the European continent and hopes to be in 5 million or more by the end of the year, Schwartz said. In the United Kingdom and Ireland, it’s available as an a la carte pay channel on the Sky satellite service and the major cable platforms and has about 40,000 subscribers.
The service originally was geared toward American expatriates, but Schwartz said 80 percent of the subscribers in the British Isles are native. Now, NASN is pursuing a more aggressive strategy in Europe by stockpiling rights to U.S. leagues and using them to help drive distribution on digital basic cable, a strategy supported and funded by the new investors.
Schwartz, who speaks with a touch of an accent picked up through living in England and Ireland since 1993, says the turning point for his network came when it caught the eye of Benchmark Capital board member Ynon Kreiz, an Israeli national with close ties to billionaire children’s animation mogul Haim Saban. “He got what we were doing right away,” Schwartz said.
Setanta Sports, a major worldwide soccer broadcaster that has a subscription-based channel on DirecTV in the U.S., also is a shareholder in NASN.
The network is the exclusive NFL rights holder in 21 European countries, and shares rights with Sky Sports in the U.K. NASN also has deals with MLB, the NBA, NASCAR and ESPN, all of which predate Benchmark and have some greater limitations.
But with the NHL, NASN will have up to 200 games, while also being able to sub-license NHL rights on a country-by-country basis. Existing NHL deals with carriers such as Canal Plus in Scandinavia and France and NTV in Russia have been renewed, while NASN will provide English-language coverage in the U.K. and throughout Europe.
The NHL deal is the fledgling network’s largest ever from a financial standpoint, and takes the network from bit player to gatekeeper status.
Europe’s primary cable sports network, Eurosport, had made an offer for NHL rights, reportedly in the $40 million range. But NASN bid more.
