SBJ’s annual media conference in New York earlier this month provided interesting, fresh perspectives on some of the biggest stories I’ve been covering.
Cord cutting is slowing down.
ESPN President Jimmy Pitaro surprised me when he said that he’s encouraged by recent cord-cutting trends. ESPN is still losing subscribers, mind you. But it is not losing as many as it has before.
“For four quarters in a row right now, we’ve seen that net subscriber decline slow from a year-over-year basis,” Pitaro said. “There are two things happening there. From the traditional side, cord cutting has slowed. On the digital side, with skinny bundles and digital MVPD packages — we’re seeing that uptake accelerate faster than we had expected.”
Amazon/Facebook questions remain.
Sports media’s biggest question centers around whether tech companies will be serious during the next round of media rights bidding. A panel moderated by my colleague Austin Karp, Optimum Sports’ Jeremy Carey and Fox Sports’ Mike Mulvihill demonstrated how we’re no closer to answering that question today than we were six months ago.
Carey was optimistic that Amazon and Facebook would be serious; Mulvihill was a lot more skeptical.
Carey: “They’ve got the audience built in already. Whether that audience has established a habit of viewing that way, look no further than the entertainment space. … When the broadcast rights do come up, digital players will be in play.
Mulvihill: “Facebook is the greatest reach vehicle in the world. Yet their ability to amass an audience in real time suggests to me that they may be better positioned as a complement to the traditional distribution rather than a replacement.”
ESPN President Jimmy Pitaro said he is pleased to see a slowdown in the amount of cord cutting. roxxe ireland
The Cubs are in for a battle.
Spectrum’s Dan Finnerty offered blunt advice to the Chicago Cubs, a team that has been looking into launching its own TV network: “Proceed with extreme caution.”
Finnerty is a voice of experience. He runs the Dodgers’ channel in Los Angeles, which has been beset by distribution problems since its launch in 2014. The team has made little headway even though it has won the past six NL West titles. Finnerty: “In the distribution world, once you’re fully distributed and you have all your deals lined up … you’re only taking on one distributor a year. At that point, [distributors] have to think in their head that if they drop the service, all their competitors are going to have it. But when you’re launching a network, it is the one time when [all of the distributors are] lined up against you. You never know what’s going to happen when that happens. … Make sure that your distribution plan is rock solid before you go out there on your own.”
Legalized gambling hasn’t helped ratings yet. But it will.
Sports media executives get stars in their eyes every time they talk about how much legalized gambling is going to help their business. But that talk is for the future. The Supreme Court’s gambling ruling has had little, if any, effect so far on TV ratings.
“It is going to come down to our increased ability to have in-game wagering — make bets not just on the result of an event but on a specific at bat or possession or the score at the end of the quarter,” Mulvihill said. “The fact that you’re going to have so many wagering opportunities in the interior of the game that aren’t just tied to the result will drive a lot more engagement and longer length of tune-in.”
Carey agreed. “Everyone can gamble now. This is about gambling differently. That’s where you’re going to see the spike.”
At ESPN, Pitaro also evangelized about gambling, citing research that says gambling audiences typically are younger and more advertiser friendly.
“We know that the sports fan wants more sports betting content,” Pitaro said. “It’s safe to assume that you’re going to see more sports betting content across our networks. We’re trying to expand our audience. If you look at the average age of someone betting on sports, it is younger than our core demo. That is one lever we can pull in terms of appealing to a younger generation.”
John Ourand can be reached at jourand@sportsbusinessjournal.com. Follow him on Twitter @Ourand_SBJ.
