SBJ Media: Expect Amazon To Be Aggressive With NFL Rights

Spotted: Two senior execs with deep ties to Fox Sports playing an intense Pickleball match this afternoon at L.A.'s Hillcrest Country Club. I’m told that the match ended in a tie, one set apiece.

AMAZON GETS WIILD CARD GAME; COULD BE START OF MORE

• The big takeaway from today’s news that Amazon picked up rights to simulcast one NFL Wild Card game this season: Amazon will be aggressive in bidding on the next round of NFL rights. That doesn’t mean that Amazon is going to end up with a high-profile game package. But it is looking increasingly likely that the league will carve out a package of games that Amazon can stream exclusively -- think about a handful of Sunday afternoon games, a non-exclusive NFL Sunday Ticket out-of-market package or the league’s international games.
  
  
• It’s clear that Amazon is auditioning the NFL to see if it’s the right fit. It will simulcast 11 “Thursday Night Football” games for at least the next three seasons. This season, it will carry one game exclusively -- either in Week 15 or 16. The NFL hasn’t decided on specifics yet.
  
  
• It’s also clear that the NFL is auditioning Amazon. Judging by some of the streaming stats it has seen, the league looks likely to continue moving slowly -- not just with Amazon, but with any tech partner. The number of people streaming live sports have been eye-openingly low. Take Amazon’s “TNF” experience last season, for example. Sources tell me that while the TV audience for traditional in-home viewing was around 15 million, Amazon averaged just 646,000 viewers on a per-minute basis for its stream -- making up only 4% of the overall audience.
  
  
• That trend continued during its first “TNF” game this season, when Amazon averaged 746,000 viewers for its stream, compared to around 15 million on Fox alone. This is not a small company we’re talking about. This is one of the biggest companies in the country with more than 100 million Prime subscribers.
  
  
• It’s not just Amazon. Facebook suffered through even lower viewership numbers a few years ago when it carried MLB games exclusively on Thursday afternoons. A company with as much reach as Facebook still found it hard to aggregate a national audience.
  
  
• Still, Amazon’s deal to pick up rights to a Wild Card game is significant. The deal, which was first reported by Joe Flint this afternoon, will see Amazon stream the Jan. 10 game alongsidel linear telecasts on CBS and Nickelodeon and a stream on CBS All-Access. Financials were hard to come by. A source said Amazon was paying in the $15-20 million range for the rights. The NFL’s has told media companies that it hopes to have broad agreements on new media rights deals in place by the end of the year.

SHIFT OFF LINEAR TV MAY ALREADY BE IN FULL GEAR

• Former Fox Sports exec Clark Pierce emailed me after my Monday column on Disney’s reorg. I suggested that Disney’s newfound focus on streaming would not affect ESPN so much because distributors -- and the leagues -- will not want to move off of linear TV so fast. Pierce, who now runs his own sports media and tech consultancy, pointed out that the shift already is happening.
  
  
• Some notes from Pierce:
  
  
  • “Some media companies are like minded and have already changed their focus. Comcast and AT&T shifted their marketing and promotional focus from their traditional TV service offerings and are focused on growing Peacock and HBO Max respectively."
    
    
  • “You are correct that it will take longer for Tier 1 sports to move to streaming platforms exclusively due to the current distribution clauses in contracts. I expect the blended approach (most on cable, some on over the air stations and a sampling on streaming platforms, like NBC with the recent U.S. Open golf coverage) to continue and the price for those platforms to increase as more Tier 1 content over time migrates to streaming platforms as more deals come up for renewals."
    
    
  • “Scale and tech infrastructure will become bigger topics of discussion as cord cutting continues to accelerate. Keep a close eye on Prime Video. They have domestic and international reach and the tech chops to grow and support big audiences at scale.”

NFL AUDIENCE DOWN, BUT STILL STRONG

• NFL and TV network execs all tell me that they are pleased with their viewership performance so far this season, and I believe them. Overall, viewership is down a little over 10%, which is considered a victory when most other sports have seen even steeper drops.
  
  
• Every pundit can offer a dozen reasons why the NFL has remained stable. SBJ's Ben Fischer sat in on a press call on Tuesday when Commissioner Roger Goodell hit on one potential reason -- increased offense. It’s been a TV truism for decades: more points equals more viewership.
  
  
• NFL teams have scored a combined total of more than 3,900 points through five weeks -- a league record, Goodell said. “Not only are the games high-scoring, they are incredibly close," Goodell said. "More than 70% of our games have been within one score in the fourth quarter. And the comebacks have been extraordinary. ... 2020, I believe, is also the first season in which at least one team has overcome a deficit of at least 16 points to win in each of the five weeks of the NFL season."
  
  
• “Our fan engagement numbers are incredibly strong,” Goodell continued. “We are putting further distance between the NFL and all other content.” He cited a stat showing that NFL games make up 18 of TV’s top 20 this year.

NBA VIEWERSHIP DROP IN LINE WITH MANY PROPERTIES

• Everybody seems to have their own take on NBA viewership from the bubble. Here’s mine: the TV numbers are ugly. But they are in line with every other sport not named the NFL. SBJ’s Austin Karp crunched all of the numbers from this fall. This is what he found.
  
  
• NBA viewership dropped 37% during this year’s playoffs, a drop that compares favorably with the NHL Stanley Cup Playoffs (-38%), U.S. Open tennis (-45%), Kentucky Derby (-43%), U.S. Open golf (-42%) and MLB Divisional Series (down 40%). College football has dropped 30%, Karp reports.
  
  
• The NBA’s low point came in the Finals, which dropped 49% and had the four least-watched NBA Finals games on record. Consider this: the aggregate primetime audience for CNN, Fox News and MSNBC was +78% over the first five nights of the Finals compared to the same spread of games in 2019.

SPEED READS

• Fox Sports doesn’t have an NBA deal. But its studio shows have used NBA-heavy talk to draw decent audiences. On Monday, the day after the Lakers won the NBA Finals, “Undisputed” logged 326,000 viewers (the fourth most-watched show in its history), and “The Herd averaged 227,000 viewers, its fifth most-watched show.
  
  
• NBA Head of Next Gen Telecast Sara Zuckert said the league saw its Orlando restart as a “new opportunity to test different camera angles and other ways to bring fans closer to the game that wouldn’t otherwise be possible with fans in the arena.” NBA VP/Live Production & Entertainment Carlton Myers, on the broadcasting approach from the bubble: “My first focus was on the players and their experience. We wanted to give them the most authentic experience as possible to make them comfortable." See more from SBJ's Intersport Brand Innovation Summit.
  
  
• Rafa Nadal's straight sets win over Novak Djokovic in the rescheduled French Open on Sunday morning averaged 1.58 million viewers on NBC. That is down from 1.79 million viewers in the event's normal June slot last year, when Nadal defeated Dominic Thiem.
  
  
• The most-watched pro all-star game on TV is going to be off the air this season, per my colleague Ben Fischer. The NFL has canceled the Pro Bowl to give itself flexibility to add a week to the regular season without moving Super Bowl LV from Feb. 7. Last season, ABC, ESPN and DisneyXD combined to average just over 8 million viewers for the game. The even hasn't topped 10 million viewers since NBC aired it in 2014 (11.4 million).
  
  
• Don't count on Anthony Davis wanting to get to the Magic Kingdom anytime soon after months in the Orlando bubble. Jimmy Kimmel asked the Lakers' star last night: “Do you think you will ever go to Disney World again?” Davis: “Probably not for at least two years. We were even talking about boycotting playing the Orlando Magic for a while.”

THE LAST WORD

• Today’s Last Word goes to ESPN’s Ben Cafardo, who posted this touching photo on his Facebook page this morning: "107 straight days in the #NBABubble at the Walt Disney World Resort documenting the most historic NBA season ever. Reporter malika_andrews and producer @malindamadams served sports fans to the fullest and yesterday finally got to go home."

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