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SBJ Media: Dish Net Plays Long Game With RSNs


A brush with celebrity: I shared an elevator ride with Anna Wintour yesterday while working out of SBJ’s Manhattan office at One World Trade.

 

EXPECT DISH TO CUT AN RSN DEAL -- EVENTUALLY

  • I had to laugh when I saw Dish Network CEO Charlie Ergen’s comment that “It doesn’t look good that the regional sports will ever be on Dish again.” Ergen will cut a deal to carry the Fox Sports-branded RSNs. I don’t know when he will cut it, but it will happen. “This is classic Charlie,” said a good source who has negotiated carriage deals with Ergen for decades. “Charlie’s throwing the first shot across the bow. He’s essentially saying, ‘I’m not standing by and getting punched first.’”

  • The Fox Sports-branded RSNs went dark on Dish Network last Friday. When the RSNs were owned by Fox, distributors had to buy the RSNs in a package alongside the broadcast channel, FS1 and, in some cases, Fox News. That’s a lot of leverage. Distributors had to take the whole package or get nothing. Not surprisingly, they all took the whole package. Now operating independently while waiting for Sinclair’s purchase to be approved by federal regulators, the RSNs only leverage is in their programming -- and local sports content is the most powerful TV programming there is. It’s much easier for Dish to drop channels that are not part of a bigger package like Fox offered. It’s also easier for Dish Network to drop these channels in the summer, when MLB games are the only thing on and TV viewership drops sharply with people on vacation.

  • Most of my sources believe that the RSNs will stay off Dish Network until, at least, the Justice Department approves Sinclair’s purchase. Dish Network negotiations will hinge on when Sinclair’s retransmission consent deals for its 175 or so broadcast stations expire. I’m told that is a year-and-a-half from now. The big question is how many subscriber defections Dish Network can withstand before it cuts a deal. With the presence of lower-cost virtual distributors like YouTube TV, Hulu and PlayStation Vue, it’s easier for subscribers to make that switch than it used to be.

  • The bottom line: I expect this impasse to be prolonged. But I also expect Dish Network to be back in business with the RSNs -- despite what Ergen says publicly in the middle of a negotiation.
     

THE TIGER EFFECT ON MEDIA RIGHTS TALKS

A PGA Tour exec said Tiger Woods is a "non-issue" in current TV rights talks
  • When Tiger Woods is in contention, TV ratings go up. When he’s not, they go down. Everyone knows this, right? With the 43-year-old legend in the twilight of his career, it would seem logical that TV networks would shy away from cutting a PGA Tour rights deal that doesn't have a competitive Woods. That viewpoint has proved to be dead wrong so far, the Tour’s Rick Anderson told me. “When you’re talking to the people who have been in business with us and know the sport and how it actually works, Tiger is a non-issue,” he said. “Tiger is icing on the cake for this deal. If Tiger does great for the first three or four years of the new deal, all the better.”

  • The issue of life on the PGA Tour without Woods has come up in conversations with media companies, Anderson said. But it’s only been new entrants that have requested data about the potential impact of the Tour without Woods. “We’re having to educate them about that,” he said. “It hasn’t stopped any conversation. Nobody is coming into it saying, this deal will really work for me if Tiger plays another 10 years.” The PGA Tour’s U.S. rights deal with CBS, NBC and Golf Channel are up in 2021. It’s currently negotiating with several media companies and expects to have a new deal in place by the end of the year.

  

 

EXPERIMENTING TO SEE WHAT STICKS

  • Joe Buck told SBJ last month that his experience with mic’d up players at the Midsummer Classic was “surreal.” We’ll see if John StrongStu Holden and Katie Witham have the same feelings after tonight’s MLS All-Star Game broadcast on FS1, which will feature four mic’d up players during the match: Brad GuzanChris WondolowskiWalker Zimmerman and Paxton Pomykal

  • NBC Sports will continue with its “radio-style” NASCAR telecasts this weekend at Watkins Glen, where announcers are positioned around the track. NBC first used the telecast Sunday at Pocono, with Rick Allen and Steve Letarte in the booth down the main stretch and Mike Bagley in a tower at Turn 1. Dale Earnhardt Jr. was in a tower at Turn 2 and Jeff Burton in a tower at Turn 3. The September regular-season finale in Indianapolis is the other race when NBC plans to use this format.

 

SPEED READS

  • Sources are telling me that Endeavor will relaunch its FightPass streaming service by October. Two things to watch: 1) How will ESPN respond, especially considering how much the network has been using UFC fights to grow its ESPN+ streaming service; and 2) How will the addition of boxing programming on FightPass affect DAZN’s U.S. streaming business, which initially has been built on boxing? Endeavor hired Crowley Sullivan from ESPN in the spring to oversee the FightPass business and revamp original programming on the service.

  • One of my favorite non-traditional events on the sports calendar, X Games, starts tomorrow from Minneapolis. This is the latest spot on the calendar for the annual event since 2013, and I’ll be looking to see if the move back to early August helps viewership. The last two events, held in mid-July, brought the X Games’ lowest TV numbers, bottoming out in 2018 with a record-low average of 511,000 viewers. X Games hasn’t topped 600,00 viewers since 2015, and last averaged over 1 million viewers in 2011.

  • In 2014, it was Aereo that tried to stream broadcast channels for free before being shut down when the Supreme Court decided it violated copyright law. Today, it’s Locast -- a non-profit funded, in part, by AT&T and Dish Network. The Wall Street Journal's Joe Flint had the scoop today that CBSABCNBC and Fox filed a suit in federal court to shut down the service.

  • I’ve been surprised at the amount of interest in The Basketball Tournament. The summer hoops event saw record average attendance for an eight-team regional at Koch Arena in Wichita over the weekend (5,500 over four nights). I will be checking to see if that interest can translate to TV ratings. ESPN has televised many of the early games and will also air the quarterfinals, semifinals and championship from Chicago from Aug. 1-6. Some reasons why it might work: a dearth of live sports this time of year, no competition from the NBA, G League or Summer League and shorter games (average of 1 hour 40 minutes). If former Maryland players ever get a team together, I’ll be all in.

  • The U.S. Open Series, which is comprised of the North America-based hard court tennis events leading up to the U.S. Open, has its biggest TV presence this year, with nearly 300 hours of coverage on ESPN2 and Tennis Channel over 34 days. This year has seen a lot of the coverage move from ESPN2 to Tennis Channel, which added 116 hours of live action over the five weeks. This year, Tennis Channel will carry 239 total hours of live tennis from the series. As part of the shift, ESPN will carry six hours of daily coverage of a U.S. Open qualifying tournament from Aug. 20-23.

 

ESPN2 and Tennis Channel are airing nearly 300 hours of coverage around this year's U.S. Open Series

 

 

Enjoying this newsletter? We've got more! Check out SBJ College with Michael Smith on Tuesdays and Thursdays for insights into all the latest news around the world of college sports.

Something on the Media beat catch your eye? Tell us about it. Reach out to either me (jourand@sportsbusinessjournal.com) or Austin Karp (akarp@sportsbusinessdaily.com) and we'll share the best of it. Also contributing to this newsletter is Thomas Leary (tleary@sportsbusinessdaily.com).