Main Street’s demise creates havoc, opportunity; Big TV numbers during President’s Day weekend; SBJ’s Rachel Axon talks Olympics from Milan

[MUSIC] That was a great move by Radik shot back to the bottom. The nine was a sit and duck couldn't block both ways. And Michael Jordan goes to victory lane. >> Purple win. Here it goes. Scott Yebarn. >> Shifrin just get to the line. And Golden again at the Olympics. [MUSIC] >> Welcome into the pod. I'm SBJ Meteor reporter Austin Carp. Ahead in today's show. Don't look now, but Paramount Skydance and Warner Brothers Discovery are talking again. Plus my thoughts on what that could mean. We also look back at the NBA's All-Star Weekend on NBC. MLS returns this weekend. And we had high drama Sunday in NASCAR at Daytona to kick off its season. We're also going to take you inside the Milan Cortino winner Olympics with SBJ's Olympics reporter Rachel Aksen who is on the ground in Italy. We'll get into all that and more coming up, but we begin with what looks like the final nails in the coffin for Main Street Sports Group. The holding company there for those fan dual sports network branded RSNs. It initiated its legal pathway to a wind down tomorrow. That's Friday by issuing warn notices to all of its employees, learning them that as of now their jobs are going to be eliminated in approximately 60 days. Once the NBA and NHL regular seasons conclude in mid-April. Let's get to the baseball side of this first because that situation, obviously a little more pressing for those former Main Street teams. Because why? Spring training. It's already here. We have nine teams moving away from Main Street. And now nearly half of MLB is going to be operating under that centralized local media model with MLB. Guaranteed rights fee there. I'll be it way, way less than what those teams were getting. Not just last season, but well below what those deals were originally signed for. We're talking maybe half or more less than what they had signed to get. So big revenue gaps there for those teams. As my colleague Mike Mazio noted, there are now 14 total that have partnered with Major League Baseball for production and distribution of their local media rights this season. The angels, Braves, they're still kind of exploring. Can they launch their own networks in time for the season or only six weeks out from opening day and the clock is ticking? And let's call this what it is a massive revenue hit for those teams that have had to make this adjustment and it makes it tougher so much tougher to compete with the likes of the Dodgers, the Cubs, Yankees, Red Sox and many others that have their own RSNs that they operate. Commissioner Rob Manfred has not been shy in saying he wants that national package of local rights with all the teams. But where's the incentive there for those big teams that have RSNs? There better be a big one for a lot of these clubs. I'm looking at places like Chicago, you had Cubs owner Tom Ricketts this week saying he loves the independence in having his own marquee sports network. He called them leaving NBC Sports Group and Contest a couple of years ago. One of the best things the club has done and all of this as the MLB players unit has its own of people. Tony Clark, the executive director there resigning amid a number of accusations. So from the players to the league side, lots for baseball to figure out. Let's go over to the NBA and NHL side of things. I reported Tuesday that DeZone has begun talks individually with around 13 NBA and seven NHL clubs. Those are the ones impacted by the collapse of Main Street. They will likely finish the season. Those teams on those Fandall RSNs, but they're gonna need to find homes next season and they're starting as early as they can. DeZone didn't see the value in investing in the overall Main Street company. Didn't do that and that's why we're seeing Main Street kind of fold up shop here. Couldn't find a white knight there. But this streaming platform DeZone, they see some sort of collection of these local teams as one. A really good pathway to serious inroads in the US sports media market. Local rights like these are way more valuable than something like they've tried before, like the FIFA club World Cup and really drumming up business domestically. DeZone, big in Europe, hasn't really had that toehold in the US market yet. These teams, you're talking about six months of content. DeZone could really make waves there on the US market by acquiring some of those teams. Plus, they could also see this as a pathway to doing broader business with either the NHL, the NBA or both should those leagues and they said they wanted to launch national packages of local rights like MLB has discussed as well, but it looks like baseball. Gonna be partnering with ESPN there already have big business there. But DeZone already has business relationships with the NHL and the NBA on the NHL side. They sell and distribute NHL's version of league pass outside the US. Plus, DeZone has NBA rights in a number of European countries. Range Sports Media Visors has been hired by DeZone to help lead those talks here domestically. So watch for which NHL and NBA teams might see the value in a potential deal with the zone. Do the economics work there? Speaking of the NBA, the All-Star game returned to NBC's airways for the first time since the 1990s over the weekend was part of a huge weekend of post football sports content. That Sunday event on NBC, a revamped format for the NBA with an Olympics lead in, came in at just under 9 million viewers or so. So the best figure since around 2011 for the NBA All-Star game that had obviously been on cable TV for a number of years TNT and TBS in recent years. So no surprise at such a big jump for the NBA All-Star game. What we don't have the final figure yet for the Daytona 500 on Fox as of this recording, due to that president's day holiday delay, we know it was tracking a little under the NBA All-Star game, maybe closer to 8 million viewers. Gonna be up over the past couple of years which had rain impacting the race down to Daytona. But the 500 also probably lost around 5% of its audience this year because it had to move up an hour on the start time to avoid rain later that was projected for Daytona. When you do that sort of thing, you are losing 5% of your audience because you're not getting close at a prime time with more people on the East Coast or maybe watching some TV. So that hurt the audience for the Daytona 500. Daytona also had to head with the Olympics. I think we're going to get a better look next year on Daytona versus NBA All-Star when there isn't Olympics hanging over it and it's more of an apples to apples comparison. Plus you're going to see those two events having to move off of president's day weekend with the Super Bowl taking that slot in 2027. And what about Olympic viewership? Milan, Cortina, average and close to 26 million viewers a day up big from Beijing four years ago. But that figure, like the Paris summer games two years ago, it combines afternoons, two to five PM in the East Coast with that traditional prime time number that we've seen reported on previous Olympics. That's how it's being sold to advertisers these days. One area I was able to break down is all right, who is watching in those afternoon windows on the East Coast versus prime time? And over the first seven days of Milan for NBC sports, those afternoon windows again two o'clock to five o'clock on the East Coast. Those are averaging around 39% of what NBC sports is reporting for its total audience delivery on a given day. Looking about two years back, Paris over that same seven day period, those afternoon windows around 41% of the audience. So a good number of fans wanting to watch these events live on NBC on USA on Pika. I know I'm going to be flipping the TV over to USA, Canada, in the women's hockey gold medal game this afternoon. That's in that afternoon window. You want to know how these sports are finishing live because the results are going to be on Twitter. You're going to see them on your social media feeds. People want to watch them on a second screen. They can do it. It'll work. They can just watch on their phone, put it near your phones. That ability is there. NBC is delivering those live events to fans during the Olympics. Well, speaking of the Milan Cortina Olympics as they are wrapping up this weekend, let's discuss the games with someone who is covering it all for SBJ from Italy. Great to have my SBJ Olympics and women's sports reporter Rachel Axon joining us this week. Rachel, how are things going over in Italy? They're going well as this is my seventh games. They're all busy. They're all kind of different in their own unique ways. But it is a fire hose of news and reporting and on the ground stuff that we are in the thick of you feel like you're close to the end, but you're kind of not still so we're slogging through some of it here. Getting to Italy was just the start of your travel. This is obviously two cities. You got the mountains. You got Milan, Cortina up there. How has the travel been for you in getting back and forth? Well, thankfully I've done it only one time in each direction. So the way these games are, they're spread out all over Northern Italy. So there are venues and clusters but have not and will not go to just because they're distance-wise too far to go in between. So I spent about the first week in Milan and then took the trip up to Cortina where they have women's alpine, the sliding sports like Bob's Ladskeleton, Luzge, and curling as well. That took eight hours, and then none of it was hard, but it was like taxi to train, to train, to lugging my suitcase and all my stuff up a hill. And then coming back, the train to train was on the option. So I was on a very windy bus ride that I thankfully took a drama, I mean, for mostly out for, but it is difficult. They're very spread out. And so you're only getting kind of a slice of what the games are, depending on where you are. Sounds like covering this thing is an Olympic in and of itself. So I appreciate you going through all of that for us. Covering the Olympics is always an Olympic in a event in itself, you know, I'm averaging more than 20,000 steps a day, just getting around to where I need to be. So that's kind of part of the deal. You also spend some time at that NBC compound over in Italy, walk us through, what's the vibe there, what's going on there? I was over there, I visited with Gary Zankel, president of NBC Olympics early in the games, and you know, I've been around the International Broadcast Center before, and I think it felt a little bit different for two reasons. One, you know, think about their operation. It's about one third, two third here in Stanford. So like the real hive of activity that like people might think of in games is actually in Connecticut, right? That's where all the production is being done. And then because of the house spread out, these games are themselves. NBC's operations is kind of in self-sustaining bubbles, right? So like they have one here in Milan, down a big hallway in the building, I'm in. And then in Lavinio and Cortina, they have like self-sustaining operations. So like it's too far to get anybody to. So they have to have like all the engineers in need, all the producers, all the whomever on staff. So it felt like it games just like condensed smaller version with their footprint here versus, you know, being spread out wherever they are. Well, Rachel, I know you haven't been able to catch a lot of that that's been on NBC. It has looked really fantastic. So I really loved the other night. They had that snowstorm going during the ski jump. I was like, how are these athletes doing that? How are you leading that sort of thing? It was really though a fantastic visual on NBC. They did a great job. I've had at times, you know, BPM didn't NBC, when I'm not at a venue or had honestly Italian TV on. And it looked pretty snowy, but I've been out in some of those nights and they can keep going. They'll be okay. You know, something you've also written about is just the heavy influence of creators on social media elsewhere around these Olympics. What have you seen on the ground? Well, it's been really interesting to see the evolution over the multiple games, you know, NBC's been on leader of this, but they're certainly not the only one. You know, rights holders really be expansive in terms of embracing their own content approaches on social media, but bringing in influencers and creators. So I spent a Tuesday out at Speed Skating with a few of those Riley Arnold who is a dancing with the Stars Pro who is here. Nicholas Niven who is a very popular TikTok creator and then Mariah Rose who is kind of the only, well, one of the few ones with like a sports background. I mean, she kind of translates sports for a younger audience. And so it was interesting to view kind of this, you know, experience that we're all used to through their eyes. And NBC, the IOC has their own program, Team USA has their own program. They really view this as way as like broadening the top of funnel. Like yes, NBC wants you to watch the broadcast and stream a bunch of these sports on Peacock, but there's a lot of audiences, particularly younger, Gen Z audiences who are just kind of sitting in front of a streaming service or a linear broadcast. And so how can we bring them in? How can we get them to engage? And where everybody has gotten is to where, you know, like it's still a work of progress, but it's really additive in terms of who it's bringing attention to the Olympics and Paralympics. - Rachel, a lot of talk back here in the US, you know, a topic not related to the competition, but related to the Olympic space has been about the future of Casey Wasserman and what his role is going to be in the LA 28 games. What has been the talk on the ground there in Italy about his future with the Olympic movement? - They're facing continued questions. Obviously early in the games, the board of LA 28, retained a law firm who did a review of what is out there and they say what is already publicly known is all there is. And so we're, you know, we have a vote of confidence in Casey Wasserman, we can keep him. I think they're still going to get those questions, you know, I hear questions if he's selling his agency. How can he still do this? Obviously, now the mayor of LA has come out and said, he should not be in that role. So I think it's something we'll continue recording on, but as the games have gone on, the talk around that has, you know, really taken a little bit of a back seat here to what's happening on the ground. - What would you like we talked about? Just a couple of days left. What is the rest of your trip to meetably going to look like? - Well, I have a lot of writing. I'm looking at like a long list here of stories that are in the works. I'm in Milan for the rest of the way. So I have some meetings with folks. Gonna go see some men's and women's hockey. I'll be there Thursday for the gold medal game between US and Canada. So that'll be interesting to watch. And then yeah, just trying to get as much done fit in as much as I can before I head out. - All right, last question for you. And this is the important one. How has the penetrating bin in Milan? I know that's a big thing for you. - So this is maybe my best Olympics here. Let me see if I can show you guys. Obviously we've got our SBJ pin, which is very popular. I've got a TINA one. I met the Trinidad and Tobago Bob's lead pilot, randomly on the street in Cortina. I had been on the hunt. I always get a Canada pin and I got the Canada little lemon mitten at speeds skating yesterday. Some guy wanted the AP pin, badly of all things. So good for the AP. Let's see what else do we have here. That's interesting. Pizza ski, T-MUSA curling. So it's been very good. I still need to find a Poland pin. So if anybody hearing this is on the ground and has a Poland pin, you let me know. - You heard it. She needs to get that Poland pin. You can also check out Rachel's video of her pin trading adventures on SBJ's YouTube channel. And SBJTV.com. Rachel Axon, our correspondent on the ground in Milan, covering it all. Appreciate you coming on the pod this week. - I'm happy to do it. Good to see you guys. - I gotta admit, I'm a bit jealous of Rachel's assignment, the food, the line in Italy alone, totally worth the trip. Appreciate her coming on. It's now time for Carp's Corner. This is where I give you a few things that have my attention. So let's get right to it before we wrap up the show. Paramount, Skydance, and Warner Brothers Discovery. Talks are resuming there. Netflix gave a blessing for a seven day period where Paramount needs to really offer up its best and final offer that's by this Monday. Should Paramount Skydance come over the top with that huge bid for WBD? It's gonna be a big win, not just for WBD stockholders, but also potentially for a lot of these leagues that have been partnered with a TNT. Now they have the potential of being in that CBS Sports portfolio. Maybe some broadcast TV options, a lot of interest out there from those leagues that are partnered with TNT Sports right now, what the future is gonna look like there for WBD. But Netflix has the right to match this offer. That was part of the original agreement that they signed. So pay attention to what the future and direction of TNT Sports is gonna be with this deal. The MLS season also starts this weekend. No more double paywall for the league. If you have Apple TV, you get the games, no questions asked, no more extra season pass layer that you gotta go through and the league. And Apple really trying to give fans the most exposure possible so you can see those games. But we already know MLS and Apple have a three season exit strategy. Now they can get to see whether there can be a critical mass of audience numbers, which quite frankly, just really haven't been there yet. You should read Alex Silverance preview for MLS in this week's magazine. He goes through a number of issues that MLS is facing as to its media future. We've seen some interesting college realignment recently. Yet North Dakota State headed to the Mountain West, Sacramento State going to the Mac for football only. We know that the Mountain West recently did new TV deals, CBS, Fox and CW. Even though North Dakota State was added after those deals, it's not gonna impact them at all. Even though arguably North Dakota State is likely the best football program in that reconstituted Mountain West. The addition of Sacramento State to the Mac, it's an interesting one. Sacramento State reportedly has big financing behind that program. And the Mac's TV deal with the SPN, that's coming up soon. However, I'm not sure Sacramento State really moves the needle on any sort of rights negotiation. And it'll be real interesting to see them having to play action games on Tuesdays and Wednesdays in places like Toledo and Bowling Green. And finally, check out SBJ this week for a profile of NBC Sports President Rick Cordella by my colleague Richard Dijge. Legendary February been really huge for that company. He talks to Cordella about what that is all meant and what the future of NBC Sports is gonna look like. And that does it for this week's show. Thanks again to my colleague, Rachel Axen, for taking the time to join us from the Malon Cortina Olympics. Speaking of colleagues, thanks to my production team of Chris Mason, Reginald Walker and ACY at, and thank you for listening. Make sure to like and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. Make good choices out there. And I'll talk to you all again next week. (upbeat music)