In Super Bowl streaming deal, Verizon scores again
What a delightful week this is turning out to be for Verizon. First, archrival AT&T decides it will ditch its $39 billion bid for T-Mobile USA (as if they weren’t grinning madly in the halls of Verizon’s Art Deco building down on West Street) and then they get a piece of this NBC deal to stream the Super Bowl. No doubt, in the greater scheme of things the AT&T news trumps the streaming deal — but every little thing helps in the crazy competitive telecoms world.
Here’s the upshot: For the first time NFL postseason games — including the Super Bowl — will be streamed live online over NFL.com and NBCSports.com and over mobile devices through an app supplied by Verizon. This is NBC’s deal; Fox tells us they have “no similar plans” while we’re CBS declined to comment on whether they would do a streaming deal..
The advantage for Verizon is clear: It’s just one more differentiator. (Verizon has really been on a roll lately. Beyond the events mentioned above, they swooped in to buy a ton of cable spectrum for $3.6 billion and made headlines with their plans to take on Netflix with a streaming service).
For NBC, the thinking is they can add an online audience to their already huge TV football audience. Joe Football Fan will watch the Super Bowl and all of its $3 million-plus commercials on the big TV screen at the same time he is watching the streaming coverage on his phone or PC, which will include a bunch of extra stuff such as additional camera angles, sideline updates and in-game analysis. In other words, it will be complementary.
At least that’s the plan. And it’s likely to work out just fine for NBC. When it comes to the Super Bowl, football fans crave all the information they can get, and having access to the game on your mobile phone while your sitting in a loud, crowded living room party would, frankly, be helpful.
There is a risk, of course. Perhaps this is just one more step toward cord-cutting, or allowing viewers to watch their favorite shows without the cost of subscribing to a cable distributor. If the NFL — the NFL! — is available in real time online, then can every third-rate sitcom be far behind?
Comcast, which controls NBC, has obviously concluded the risk is very small. They’ve been streaming games on Sunday nights and, as the Associated Press reports, their broadcasts haven’t been hurt.
ESPN’s new Skipper comes out fighting
We had the pleasure of incoming ESPN President John Skipper’s company on Monday at the Reuters Media Summit in New York. Skipper, whose promotion was announced just ahead of Thanksgiving Day, had been the No.2 to George Bodenheimer, now promoted to executive chairman.
In the last few years ESPN has become the 800-pound gorilla in the pay-TV industry through its mix of exclusive sporting licenses with many of the top sporting leagues and events. But those deals cost money — like the eight-year NFL TV rights that cost $15.2 billion. Even Skipper, in his first interview since his appointment was announced, acknowledged the deal as “expensive” but added the caveat that ESPN generates great value from NFL rights.
The high cost of sports programming is one reason ESPN is the most expensive cable network in the US at around $4 per subscriber. Most cable networks charge a lot less than $1.
But Skipper is adamant that ESPN is worth every penny and pushed back strongly at any suggestion that cable companies could create new tiers to help customers pay less if their package don’t include ESPN.
“It’s demonstrably true that ESPN provides more value to our distributors than any other network — by far, there’s not a close second. If you survey cable, telco and satellite customers they believe ESPN provides the most value. The distributors themselves believe we provide the most value.
I reject the notion (that ESPN high cost should see it placed on higher priced tiers). I think the current package of pay-TV products that comes through on basic cable is a high value proposition to the consumer I don’t think breaking them up is going to provide the consumer better option. If they become broken up in an a la carte world the individual channels are going to more expensive. Consumers would get less channels and pay more money.
Every distributor will do deals with us because they believe the best protection I have against cord-cutting is having ESPN.”
File under acceptance: CBS knows it must pay up for the NFL
This time of year, it seems everybody loves football. The players, the fans, and, of course, the TV executives. And what’s not to like about football if you’re running a TV network, provided you have a deal with the NFL? Check it out, a total of 107 million viewers tuned into games between Thursday and Sunday on CBS, ESPN, Fox and NBC.
So it should come as no surprise that CBS Chief Executive Les Moonves, while speaking at today’s Bank of America conference, said he intended to renew the contract with the NFL when it expires in three years. “No surprise there,” he said. Indeed. The bigger question is what will CBS end up paying? Just last week, ESPN signed a new contract with the NFL at $1.9 billion a year. Repeat: $1.9 billion. That is about 73 percent more than ESPN previously paid the NFL.
As The New York Post’s Claire Atkinson points out in a story today, the ESPN deal has come under some heavy fire, particularly from the pay-TV industry, worried that it’s going to jack up rates.
“ESPN is a different animal,” Moonves said at today’s conference. “It’s really apples and oranges. There are a lot of other things involved than just the games. There’s a lot of content, and ESPN can maximize it. We have three years left on our NFL deal. We intend to keep the NFL, no surprise there. I’m sure there will be an increase — I hope it’s not the increase that they paid.”
Other comments from the always-upbeat Moonves:
- Advertising is fine at CBS. Done worry. There’s no slowdown
- CBS is not about to go crazy on big, blockbuster movies. Keeping it small, keeping it real
- Not joining Hulu was a totally fantastic decision
- Forget all that negative stuff you hear about CNET. “We’re pleased with the way it’s going”
- Political advertising is going to rock, even if the politics are ugly business
- More digital distribution deals — like the Netflix one — could be considered, “but with caution”
- Outdoor — ummm, I’m pretty sure he said something about that
- Publishing is more profitable than a year ago, even with revenue under pressure
When it comes to NFL, TV executives put on brave face
Shrewd? Prescient? Delusional? Tough to know, but top TV executives this week all seemed relatively confident — even off the record — when asked about the chances that NFL games would be played this fall.
The background, of course, is that NFL team owners and players are at odds over salary caps and other issues, raising the possibility of a lockout and the cancellation of some or all of the 2011 football season. Very bad news, if you’re a fan or a network executive.
As Yinka Adegoke and Liana Baker wrote in a piece this spring, “It is difficult to overstate the importance of the NFL to the revenue and profits of broadcasters like CBS Corp, Walt Disney’s ESPN, Comcast Corp’s NBC and News Corp’s Fox.”
Consider this: The broadcast and cable networks that share the NFL rights sell about $3 billion in advertising time for games each season. That’s $3 billion that’s up for grabs.
As TV executives made the rounds this week to introduce their 2011-12 prime-time schedules, they couldn’t escape the 800-pound linebacker in the room. It’s noteworthy that all of them — even if they were privately sweating — put on a brave face. Here’s a taste… “They’re going to play,” said John Skipper, who oversees content for ESPN. “I don’t know when they are going to play, but eventually they will play, and we will show it on Monday nights.”
If you really want brass, check out the what Entertainment Chairman Bob Greenblatt had to say over at NBC, which counts on the NFL for blockbuster ratings every Sunday night. “We’ve obviously pretty close to what’s going on with this situation. We’re feeling pretty optimistic that football will be there. Worst case scenarios is we might have delay of games for a few weeks, in which case we’ve got a contingency plan to produce several high quality live event reality type shows that will fill out Sunday. But we’re feeling pretty good about where we’re going to be with the NFL.”
And Fox? A bit more wishy-washy, but hardly any signs of panic. “I think they’re planning for there to be an NFL season and at the same time working on contingencies if there’s not,” said Fox Networks Entertainment Chairman Peter Rice.
Fox/Cablevision still talking, FCC also talking. Yet no change on Day 4.
So you know the story well by now: Fox Networks’ Fox 5 and My 9 channels have been off the air for Cablevision’s 3 million odd homes in the New York area since midnight on Saturday morning because both sides have been unable to reach a carriage deal. As a result New York football fans have missed a key Giants game versus Detroit Lions (pictured) and could miss more if this continues. As you might expect, the argument between Fox and Cablevision is over money.
Since then both sides have exchanged barbs and made various claims about who’s to blame — which is standard practice in a programming fee dispute. But FCC Chair Julius Genachowski appears to have had enough according to this statement:
“I am deeply troubled that Cablevision and Fox are spending more time attacking each other through ads and lobbyists than sitting down at the negotiating table. The time for petty gamesmanship is over.
“I have called the CEOs of both companies and reiterated the importance of reaching a deal, as many companies have done before. I reminded the companies that they share responsibility for consumer disruption, and that they shouldn’t punish consumers because of their unwillingness to reach a deal. I also insisted that they negotiate in good faith. We will continue to scrutinize their actions very closely.”
According to Fox, both sides did talk on Tuesday for a short while on the phone but “no material progress was made and we remain far apart.” Fox said they’d continue talking tomorrow.
Cablevision for its part continues to push for binding arbitration i.e. getting an independent third party involved to help both sides meet somewhere in the middle.
Sports stadiums going green?
By Sarah McBride
Stadium owners dragging their heels on finding greener ways to power up their high-definition scoreboards and retractable roofs just got a kick in the pants from their league commissioners.
Major League Baseball, the National Football League, the National Basketball Association, the National Hockey League, and Major League Soccer have dished out letters to their teams and facilities asking them to embrace solar power.
Sports suck up a lot of energy—but exactly how much is unclear. A spokesman for the Natural Resources Defense Council, which is working with the professional sports leagues to encourage their teams and stadiums to go green, says offering an estimate “could be premature and misleading, because it varies from team to team, based on size, location/climate, efficiency and type (indoor vs. outdoor) of stadiums.”
Some venues already use solar power. At the Staples Center, home to the Los Angeles Lakers basketball team, solar panels provide around 5% of the venue’s total power. If all arenas and stadiums had solar installations equivalent to Staples, they would reduce carbon emissions by about 86.6 million pounds a year—the equivalent of taking about 8,000 cars off the roads, the NRDC says.
Along with the letter, all teams and venues received a guide prepared jointly by the NRDC and the Bonneville Environmental Foundation that outlines what each stadium needs to do to add on-site solar power generation to its facilities.
We use about 10,500,000 KWH a year in our ballpark. We are looking at a solar project that would produce about 68,000 KWH per year, slightly more than we use on a game day. Renewable energy combined with conservation efforts make good business sense. This is an opportunity for teams to leverage their brand to engage the public.
Thank you BEF and NRDC for encouraging teams to lead by example and promoting renewable energy.
It’s time for all of us to wake up and break our dependence on fossil fuels.
from Shop Talk:
World Cup is no March Madness in sapping productivity
It may be the World Cup, but when it comes to sapping productivity in the United States the global soccer tournament still has a thing or two to learn from March Madness and the National Football League.
Outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas, which often measures lost workplace productivity, said many U.S. fans will tune in for the quadrennial soccer tournament, which kicks off Friday in South Africa, but the event still trails the NCAA men's basketball tournament, dubbed March Madness, and other events.
"Soccer simply has not caught on with the majority of American sports fans, Challenger CEO John Challenger said in a statement.
"However, the World Cup is a unique event and could attract a lot of viewers who might not typically go out of the way to watch a match," he added. "Even as the sport grows in popularity, though, it will have far less of an impact on workplace productivity than the March Madness basketball tournament, for example."
In Challenger's nonscientific, nonbinding ranking of sporting events with the most potential to affect workplace productivity, the World Cup ranked No. 4:
No. 1 -- NCAA men's basketball tournament (aka March Madness): Widespread office tournament pools and the fact that about half of the first 32 games are played during working hours makes this "the granddaddy of productivity sappers," the Challenger firm said. Proof of that was the use of the "Boss Button," which instantly hides the webcast behind a fake spreadsheet, 3.3 million times this year.
No. 2 -- NFL fantasy football: Millions of fantasy football participants manage their teams from their office. Talk about drafts and trades adds up over the 17-week season, the firms said.
No Super Bowl blues; expect big TV ratings
The U.S. economy might be weak, but the Super Bowl still scores with consumers.
The CBS broadcast of the National Football League’s championship game on Feb. 7 between the Indianapolis Colts and New Orleans Saints should draw strong TV ratings, possibly challenging viewer levels not seen since the late 1990s.
“We’re looking at a big rating,” said Neal Pilson, former CBS Sports president and head of his own sports consulting firm. “The fact that the two conference championships got better than usual ratings usually indicates that there’s a lot of public interest.”
The NFC Championship game between New Orleans and the Minnesota Vikings drew 57.9 million viewers, ranking it as the most watched conference championship game since the 1981 contest between Dallas and San Francisco that featured “The Catch.” It was also the most heavily watched TV program, excluding Super Bowls, since the 1998 “Seinfeld” finale.
Meanwhile, the AFC final between Indianapolis and the New York Jets drew 46.9 million viewers, ranking it as the most watched AFC Championship in 24 years.
While a Super Bowl with popular Vikings quarterback Brett Favre might have scored a higher rating than the current matchup, the Saints are an exciting team that received a lot of exposure in the championship, Pilson said. It also helps that it’s the first NFL championship to feature both conferences’ No. 1 seeds since January 1994, when Dallas played Buffalo.
If the game remains close into the fourth quarter, he expects a rating of 43.0 or better. A ratings point is a percentage of U.S. television households that watched the game.
30-Seconds are the operative word here. Look, I am not a big fan of contact sports, look what it did to OJ, so forgive me for what I am about to say. This clone of British Rugby always makes me think that these hulks are gay Hell’s Angels bikers in tights that had their motorcycles repossessed but were allowed to keep their helmets as an occupational necessity. They run out of breath every two minutes and then perform YMCA moves. The US needs to learn to keep momentum. This stop-and-start foreign policy confuses people. Don’t take the foot off the gas-pedal, unless of course it is a Japanese vehicle.
from Shop Talk:
Auto show-Super Bowl TV ads don’t score for Mazda
Advertising during the Super Bowl doesn't score for Mazda.
While the Japanese automaker plans to boost its marketing budget this year as it launches the Mazda 2 small car, running TV ads during the National Football League's championship game in February won't happen.
"You're never going to see us on Super Bowl," Mazda North American chief Jim O'Sullivan said at the Detroit auto show. "We're not going to spend that kind of money on that kind of property because, yeah, you get a lot of impressions and stuff out there, but the fact of the matter is, do you really get to the target you really wanted? That's more of a feel-good ad for a lot of people."
O'Sullivan said it was a "given" that Mazda's media budget will be up in the first quarter, as well as for the year, although he didn't say by how much. He said Mazda, which expects its U.S. sales to possibly rise faster than the overall market this year, will spend more on social media and digital advertising this year as it tries to reach younger buyers for its late summer launch of the new 2 model.
However, O'Sullivan said advertising on the Super Bowl -- where Korean automakers Hyundai and Kia, and Germany's Volkswagen will advertise this year -- is more about the creativity of the spots than the product or service being sold.
"The one thing about the Super Bowl too, if you're going to go and do ads at the Super Bowl, you better make sure you got some very good creative because you'll get criticized for your ads if you don't have very strong creative," he said. "So is it about selling cars or is this an agency's competition? They're memorable in some cases, but that's a very expensive property."
"I'd rather take those resources and go where our customers are and focus on what our brand is," O'Sullivan added.
Fox vs Time Warner Cable retrans dispute could get political
(Photo: Reuters)
Fox Networks went public today in what it said has been a fruitless nine-month-long carriage negotiations with Time Warner Cable, the No.2 U.S. cable company. It said there is the very real possibility that popular shows like American Idol and NFL Football could disappear from the air if you’re one of the Time Warner Cable’s nearly 14 million customers.
Fox wants to get paid for giving Time Warner Cable the right to carry its free-to-air Fox broadcast network for around $1 a subscriber every month. The talks also include negotiations for Fox’s bevy of entertainment cable networks including FX, Speed and Fuel but does not include its news networks. See Fox’s marketing campaign website keepfoxon.com here.
Time Warner Cable executives don’t want to pay a buck for so-called retransmission rights and claims it is has recently agreed to pay affiliate broadcasters around 25 cents per sub. See Time Warner Cable’s earlier marketing campaign warning customers of programmers plans here.
Pali Research analyst Richard Greenfield said in his blog (subscription required) today that in retransmission consent negotiations the side with the most leverage always wins. Usually the weaker side is the cable or satellite company as they get the calls from irate customers if their favorite shows get blacked out. What may be different this time around is that Fox leverage might be hampered by a growing political intervention risk if the Government gets involved, said Greenfield:
While Retrans negotiations are all about leverage, the benefits of leverage to a broadcaster could evaporate if the government chooses to get involved going forward – in turn, a fine line must be walked. Remember, broadcasters are using public spectrum to broadcast and a now Democratic-majority FCC may not be as willing to let consumers pay the penalty for retrans battles the way prior administrations did (whether it be via higher video pricing and/or signal loss). We are actually quite surprised at how openly (and aggressively) the senior executives of the four major (owned and operated) station groups are talking about retrans – as we would fear that the government would begin to look at them as a cartel.
This fight is ridiculous and pathetic Fox is soooo greedy!
you cant get more greedy they just want cable to pay them more now because their carrying MLB world Series and American Idol the is nonsense i mean cable should just drop Fox and we should find someone else that carries these channels for a lesser value thats not soo greedy!
