Netflix gets in on the World Cup, CFP expansion and will the WNBA Finals draw on TV?

Coming up on the pod, Netflix gets in on the men's World Cup, the latest on rights to a 2014 CFP and will viewers find this year's WNBA funds? Welcome into the SBJ Sports Media podcast. I'm Josh Carpenter and I'm Austin Carp Josh. My yellow jacket's finally got that first ACC win. My New York Giants are in first in the NFC's. We're not going to talk about the end of that game with the commanders. No need to go there, but your volunteers big game against Alabama coming up. What do you think? Well, I love to watch some of it. We talk a lot in this business about fall weddings. We should also talk about people scheduling a five year old birthday party at Chuck E. Cheese at 5.30 during the Alabama's NFC game. Personally, I think Bama's going to come into Knoxville and blast us. So I don't think I'll be missing much. But nonetheless, I think a wider discussion needs to be had about birthday parties, Charles entertainment on Saturday afternoons and the fall. We got to talk about that a little bit now. If you can put Chuck E. Cheese in bright orange uniform, I think it's the only way you can make it acceptable. But yeah, that should be a fireable offense there by that man. Yeah, for sure. But awesome. Let's get into a media deal that's a little bit off the beat path. It's around some big properties. It's around World Cup. That's around Netflix. Some news earlier this week. What do you have? This is one of those big media rights deals that is out there right now for that men's World Cup specifically. We were talking 2030 and 2034. So what was the news? It was Netflix getting rights to the men's World Cup in Spain and in Europe. I want to focus specifically on Spain because I really think this gives you an indication of what Netflix wants to do in some of these markets with FIFA. They already have the women's World Cup, you know, pretty much globally and what they're going to be doing there. The World Cup obviously sold market by market. We don't know where the US is going to be. But in Spain, you're going to have one match free every day in front of a paywall. There's also going to be carved out a local media rights package that's going to go over the air. That'll include all Spain matches as well as the semifinal and the championship. That's something that Netflix could replicate, especially here in the United States. We've seen FIFA kind of do those sorts of experimentations with like the FIFA Club World Cup, where DeZone got the tournament sub-licensed at the TNT as far as a linear TV option there. If Netflix wanted to go after all of the US rights for the men's World Cup, 2030, 2034, and then maybe do that sort of thing where you can have a fox or an NBC or somebody else that has a bigger presence. Come on, have that smaller package. That's something that might be able to do in the market. Yeah, again, awesome. It's a case of seeing Netflix jump in and just get a little sliver of something from a live sports perspective that maybe opens the way for them down the road to get more share bigger deal. Obviously in 2030, with Spain among the hosts there alongside Morocco and Portugal, but it would make a lot of sense for them to replicate this elsewhere. All right, awesome. Let's go over to college football here in the States. A lot of talk around ESPN around the CFP potentially expanding to 24 teams. You had an exclusive negotiating window between the CFP, between ESPN that ended last week. What's the latest route of the CFP? First, some nuance on that, the expiration of that 30 day window, right? That ended 11.59 p.m. on Friday, what I meant, the CFP has to bring like one final offer to ESPN. ESPN gets five days to review that. We're looking at potentially this coming Monday, the 19th as a deadline to keep your eye on if there isn't a deal before that. So what do we know? ESPN's very, very concerned about this. They're going to retain rights to the important parts of the CFP, the championship, the semifinals, some of those games that they even sublicensed to TNT there. This is about is the portion that is new, those new games that potential first round of games and expanded 2014 for not, is that going to go out to market? Does ESPN, can they make the economics work of paying for that? Jimmy Petaro is going to be physically responsible about that. If it makes sense, they'll go after it. If not, it's going to go to the open market. Now, if this goes to market, Josh, who's going to want this? Is it Fox? Fox has been pushing the big 10 to get to 2014 because they see that as their only potential way to get into a college football playoff. But another play I really want to keep my eye on is Amazon Prime Video. I know there are powerful commissioners that would be okay with Prime Video coming off for those first round of games. Again, that first round is taken over the weekend that currently is occupied by the conference championships. I guess my question around this 2014 playoff we've talked about it before on this podcast is what is the value of those opening round games? How watered down in those games? We've already seen with the current expanded playoff. There's opening round games, blowouts in a lot of cases, viewership wise, they do okay, but they're very watered down. And then again, what does this do again to the college football regular season? You're seeing attendance in some places. It's kind of waning, even a friend of mine who's a long time Georgia fan said this week out of the Alabama game, he was like, Hey, like I used to be a nuts about this type of game. And now it's like, Oh, okay, if we lose no big deal, we just move off. The importance around the regular season used to be so high. And I just worry that we're getting to a point where the regular season is just not going to matter. But I'm not going to care about college football until we get deep into October, November because those are the games that have playoff applications. Scarcity is one of the most important things to football in this country. And yeah, you don't want to go down the path of what college basketball maybe has become where it's just paying attention to the tournament. I don't pay attention to the college basketball until December. Nobody wants that to happen to college football, but at the same time they want to offer access. They want to give more opportunity. But just talk about this past weekend, how big was that Alabama Georgia game? That like felt like that was is going to have significant importance for how the college football playoff shapes up, even with 12 teams. Is that going to be the case still with 2014? I don't know. I think like you say, though, it has just a little less importance because Alabama knows, okay, we can still bounce back to that. Yeah, Tennessee loses the Texas earlier this year, a couple of weeks ago. And I'm thinking, well, I hate that we lost, but all things expected. It's not that big of a deal because we can run off an over winds on the stretch. I'm pretty sure Georgia Tech's lost the Stanford that that's a disqualifier. So I think we can move on to 2020. All right, Josh. We also have the WNBA finals starting this weekend, the Atlanta dream, the Golden State Volcaries, who you got. What do you think it's going to do on TV? Yeah, TV wise, I believe the last two years have been records on ESPN. And now this year you move over to NBC with two games at USA Network. With the remaining five, if necessary, of course. Look, is it the best case scenario for the WNBA? Probably not. You don't have Kate Onclar. You don't have the New York Liberty. You don't have the Aces with, you don't have the Aces. Well, you do have Angel Reese, who I believe is a draw regardless of whether you're four or against Angel Reese and the dream, they are a draw. And then you've got the Golden State Volcaries, which only in their second season, pretty popular team, whether they can draw a television audience that are made to be seen. But overall, I would think network executives are maybe hot and cold headed into these photos. I believe there's going to be a drop for the audience coming off of what the numbers were last year. You go for the SPM to. Yeah, you do have, like you said, those two games on NBC on the first weekend and the second weekend, that's games one and fourth, but those are going to be going up against college football midweek. That's where you get the CNBC and USA games. Again, that's on cast is on CNBC games five, six and seven. Those could again be on USA and CNBC. I'm not sure, even if it goes seven games, and this is the second year the WNBA has had that seven game format. I'm not sure it's going to deliver what ESPN ABC were able to do in 2025. Probably not, but I think the USA and ABC still have to be feeling okay, heading into these finals, often similarly, you've got baseball down to its final four teams. You've got the brewers, you've got the rays, you've got the guardians, you've got the Dodgers, obviously going to be hard for Fox, we're talking World Series now. If you look ahead a little bit, going to be hard for Fox to top last year's World Series between the Dodgers and Blue Jays. I think that topped out around 15 million viewers with some of these remaining markets outside of L.A. Going to be hard for Fox to top some of those numbers from last year. I mean, if I had the Dodgers the last two years, the Dodgers Yankees, even though that was only a five game series, that was North of 15 million viewers, you had to go seven games last year with Toronto for that to get North of that. It was probably closer to 16 million viewers. Josh, if you look back three years ago, though, when you had Rangers playing the Diamond Backs and that game was a five game series again, only North of nine million viewers. Fox really hoping the Dodgers pick it up and wing some games here and go back to the World Series. But if you have brewers versus either guardians or rays, you're going to be struggling for the World Series to get to 10 million viewers unless you get to that game six and seven. Then maybe you'll get up to that sort of number or maybe between 10 and 13 million viewers. But I don't think that you're going to get anywhere near the 15 million viewers without the Dodgers in the fall class. Yeah. And having the Guardian's there wouldn't hurt, right? Chrono make freight that curse, but I don't know how many casual sports venues are really paying attention to the Guardian's Toronto Brady Street. I don't know. We'll see. We'll see how the World Series faired in a couple of weeks on Fox. Austin, for this week's interview, you spoke with John Kozner at Desert. They've got a book that's out inside the big business of sports media, a great interview. Let's take a listen. Well, if you're listening to this podcast, you're into the inside baseball of sports media. And there is a new book hitting shelves and he readers from two executives with decades of experience in this space. I'm talking about Ed Desser and John Kozner, their new book. It's called We're Live inside the big business of sports media. And they are here to talk about the book and some broader issues in the space, gentlemen, welcome into the the SBJ Sports Media Podcast. - Great to be here. - Thank you, Austin. - You know, let's get into it. You've described this as, neither a traditional textbook, nor some sort of complete history of sports meeting, like that. So I gotta ask, like, in the creation of it, and what you were all were trying to achieve, what were some of the pain points in writing a book like this? - Well, what we wanted to do was help explain this business to those who don't live it every day, and who aspire to understand it better. And so we wrote it really with younger people in mind, those in colleges and universities that are studying sports management and sports business. So we tried to ask ourselves constantly, if we were those students, what would we need to know in order to one day be in this business and understand how the pieces fit together? So that was our goal. - I would just add that a key influence growing up were these books that Mark McCormick, who was a founder of IMG wrote, they were called What They Don't Teach You at Harvard Business School. And what was unique about those books was Mark talked in plain English about how he did his job and how he built his business with tons of anecdotes and stories. So it wasn't just sort of like a laborious text. And Ed and I, for better or worse, have tons and tons of stories, which we thought could really add to people's understanding and appreciation of the subject matter. - You know, I like that you've spent a whole chapter going over a Mount Rushmore of sports media executive. Runarlo, David Hill, Pete Rosell, and of course David Stern. I want to ask you both specifically about David Stern, both worked at the NBA under David. You have a dedication for him at the start of this book. Just what did he mean to you both personally and to the growth of sports business? - Personally, he was really the guy who found me, he often said in the depths of the forum in Los Angeles and decided that I could help the NBA in what became constant growth through the '80s and '90s to become what it has today. And so I appreciate that he saw something in me that said to him, "Hey, this guy can really help." And in retrospect, it was quite an honor and something that has truly transformed my life and career. - When I found remarkable with David and I had the good fortune to work with him twice. Ed worked with David for 23 years and actually had worked with David when he was at the LA Lakers prior to come to the NBA. I worked with David twice once during the dream team era when I was in charge of US broadcasting for the NBA, working for Ed and then after David retired, David and I started a portfolio of sports tech companies which we invested and advised in. Many of these have been written up in the SBJ like Woop and WSC sports and live like. But David was tireless and dedicated to doing things better. I think for both Ed and me, the most inspiring time was a sort of dream team era where we negotiated this new agreement with NBC and where the NBA really became a prime time sport. And many people contributed to that but it never would have happened without David's sort of ferocious energy intellect. Working with him was unlike anything I think either of us experienced rest of our careers. - And you know, you go over this next question a little bit in the book but like, I wanna go and talk about some of what are the prospects for some of these big even legacy media companies out there but also the streamers like Amazon that have gotten into sports. What is going to be their future in terms of playing a larger role in sports? Like who's gonna emerge from all this? Who's gonna have maybe an omnipotent future? Ed, I wanna start with you on that. - We believe that Amazon has already established a position as a new sports challenger and they've got the resources and technologies to do things that have never before been done so we would start there. YouTube hasn't been a big player yet in purchasing sports rights but as the dominant platform in viewing, it has the potential of being a huge player in the business going down the line. We also think that the legacy carriers, the ESPNs of the world, the NBCs, need to continue to have sports as a key part of their portfolios in order to be relevant. And so we don't see them going away. We believe that one of the first things that the Warner Brothers Paramount merger will hasten, David Burstin's gonna go out and see what he can do about extending some of his key rights deals in order to continue to be relevant. - I would just add, one of the points of the book is that sports has always been undervalued which seems kind of curious when we look at the rights fees paid today for major sports properties but there's a reason that they keep on increasing and it's that sports is the only content that draws mass audiences at the same time all over the world. It's the only content that unifies people. And if you're either a legacy media company or an up-and-coming streaming powerhouse, sports represents the only way to build a big time advertising business. Ed did not mention Netflix but both of us think that Netflix which once famously wasn't gonna do sports and they weren't gonna do advertising now they're doing both. We expect them along with Amazon YouTube to become bigger players. The other thing we would throw out is that, and this was a big point Davis Stern used to make is companies sort of make their mark and come of age by buying sports rights and the history of the industry has been new entries coming in. Fox famously with the NFC change broadcast television. We foresee in the next decade AI LLMs potentially being rights holders. We foresee companies like Walmart, if he not necessarily allowing Amazon to have sports rights to themselves. So it's gonna continue to be a competitive environment. Also, the last thing I throw out is, if you look at spending on programming now, both of us would argue there's lots of room to take money from entertainment spending which we believe is gonna get commoditized and put it into sports. - I gotta say the NBA and NBC has a different ring than the NBA on Walmart or the NBA on Open AI. It just feels a little different to me. - You're such a traditionalist. - Think about how central Amazon is becoming to the sports viewing experience. When Prime Video launched 20 years ago, we wrote about this in the SBJ, I was scratching my head that you'd want to watch TV programming from the entity that was basically your e-commerce supplier. - So things change. - They do. - John, I wanna stick with you on this next one. We've talked about YouTube and I agree with Netflix. I believe they're gonna be players, but does Apple ever really go for it? We've seen what they've done with MLS to already getting out of that deal. They have F1, I don't believe any of the numbers that they kinda put out there publicly. So what is the future? Are they gonna be a player in sports? - It's not clear. They have all of the resources to do it and they've made a couple of deals. They also have a smaller deal with Major League Baseball. My impression has been that they want to carry sports under their terms. No blackouts, we own the whole product. And that's a hard deal for a lot of sports entities to make that you really, you need both the reach and the revenue. Apple has all that potential. But if we just go on the evidence of what we've seen so far, it's not clear that Apple is gonna become a bigger player in sports rights anytime soon. Possible, but not clear. - I would just add, you know, Eddie Q of a big friend of Johns is a huge sports fan and so he gets it. It's not like a company where they don't speak the language. He does. So I would say don't count them out because everything that we said before about sports being kind of the linchpin in the future of the entertainment business is still true. And yes, they can produce TV shows and movies and they produce some very good ones. But, you know, that doesn't really differentiate them from other streamers. And if they wanna differentiate themselves, they're gonna need to expand their menu. - I mean, the numbers bear that out. You look at those nilist-engaged numbers every month. Apple TV's not even on there. And I agree, like, I watched a ton of their shows, a ton of their movies. The production value is incredible, but if they're going to get, if they're gonna make any sort of strive in adding subscribe, either gonna have to buy another streaming service, or they're gonna have to get deeper into one of these bigger sports properties, correct? - It would seem logical. And of course, you know, they have the ability to buy most anything, you know, assuming they can get it, you know, through the Justice Department. So, I mean, they could buy Fox. They could make a big swing. So, that's why I just don't count them out. - Now, looking at the future of sports properties, do you think that there is going to continue to be this chasm that develops in terms of the haves and the have-nots? - I personally think the answer is yes, and the chasm is going to get deeper. - In our book, we talk about, in our book, we talk about what constitutes and makes a tier one sports property, like the NFL, for instance, versus the others. And what we're seeing is that the value for that set of properties is increasing. And, you know, Austin, you cover this in your reporting about the industry. The middle class, the tier two sports aren't getting squeezed. And with evidence like the NFL re-opener, which is now in discussion, it's likely to exacerbate everything. We think, again, with the Skydance deal closing, we think the two most important things that David Berson can do is to extend his NFL deal and also try to extend the NCAA Men's Basketball Championship deal. - You know, that acquisition is $111 billion. And yet, to us, the most valuable programming assets they have are those two. - Those are big. You know, there's still a couple of years left, I think, before the NCAA tournament comes to market. I think it's been one of the sweetheart deals in all of sports media over the last 20 years about a time that deal is done. - Quoting David Stern, you know, only the incumbent can pay you more now. - So that's a card that Skydance could try to play. - Donald Stickle do, what will sports TV presentation look like a decade from now? - There's lots of discussion about personalization. We see that increasingly coming to the fore that say, Austin say, you and I could be watching the baseball playoffs tonight and each be getting sort of different feeds or different stats or different features. So personalization is one, higher quality video feeds. I was always super interested in this concept of sub-second latency. You know, just basically eliminate latency so that you could watch broadcast live live. That's what betting houses do today. We see higher quality of presentations, the expansion of businesses like Cosm and the sphere. In general, these things we believe are gonna get bigger. Here in New York City where I live, the spring and summer were pretty remarkable for all of the watch parties featuring the next playoff run and then the World Cup, the ability to aggregate things. So this concept of one feed of a big event is probably gonna be supplanted by a variety of different feeds of sports, which we also think are gonna be on all day long from all over the world. - Before I get to you Ed, like John, you talk about live, live latency getting there. Would the FCC ever allow that? Just given audio and having to avoid swear words and such. - I suspect that's something that can happen. Networks would explore the liability for that. The Super Bowl, which was streamed for free, was on had sub-second latency, at least a couple of years ago and maybe more recently. So that's an issue, but I believe it's a solvable issue. And if you've had your friends basically text you about something that happened in a game, before you're able to see it yourself, that spoiler services is something that fans would love to get off from under. - Yeah, back before Janet Jackson had her famous wardrobe malfunction. It was customary to show things live live. There was a little bit of latency because the signal had to get from the site back to New York and then get to the affiliates, but it was a second or so. What John's talking about is really, really fast, is basically like the same speed that you see it in the venue. And all that is technically possible just a question of how much bandwidth you have available and if you provision for that. - All right, General, I'll get you out of here on this. And I, in the book, I just find it to be incredibly instructional for this next generation of people coming up that have an interest in sports media. I have a 14 year old son, he's a high school freshman. He's taking a growing interest in how this whole operation works. What should I tell him? What do we tell younger people in terms of growth areas in terms of sports business jobs? Where should they be looking? - Well, our council is that the place than the majority of jobs are in sports and the perfect launching pad happens to be in sales, sale of ticket sales, sponsorship sales of suites, that's where the people are. And so that's a skill set that is worth developing as an entry level person in order to then be inside the door and work the organization. And so that's I think one of the most important pieces of direction that we provide. Though it's not intuitive to most students. And in fact, they would say, well, I don't want to be a salesman. I want to be the assistant general manager. And you're not going to get there just at a school. So you better have a longer term plan. - I would just throw out two things. I would just throw out two things we talk about in the book, the value of volunteering wherever you can. Many of us got our break in the industry by doing that. Second, and our book is an example, there's now plentiful information about how the industry works and time well spent. Anybody you're going to interview with, he or she has a presence on LinkedIn. They likely have appearances that are on YouTube or on X. And the ability now to read up, to watch, to listen, to come prepared and to be able to formulate opinions about the business is pretty unique. And most of it's for free. So the odds on getting into the business, it's like an Ivy League admission. On the other hand, people do it every day. And many of the things that we think about or talk about in the book, sort of work ethic, drive, vision. These things serve people as well in 2026 as they did in the early 1980s when we were getting started. - We would also add that one of the best things that would be employees should be doing is reading SBJ and the daily. - Yeah, exactly. - Ah, there's the plug we were looking for. But it's very sincere because that's something that didn't exist when we got into the business. So they're at an advantage and their ability to be able to synthesize data and understand how the business is operating is useful and we would commend them to do so. - Well, we appreciate the love as always. The new book is called We're Live Inside the Big Business of Sports Media, Ed Deser, John Coesner. Thank you so much for time on this spot and for your continued contributions to SBJ where 50 columns today, best of luck with the launch of the book. - Thanks, Austin. - Thank you, Austin. - Well, a fascinating conversation. There were two sports media legends. We really appreciate Ed and John for stopping by. Before we wrap up, we got to do one more piece of business here and that is the staple who won the weekend. Josh, who was your winner? - Yeah, I'm gonna go with Mike's hobble and on football night in America. Been a big fan of his since joining that crew, you know, this season. He's very, very witty. Again, he's a recent coach. So he's still like kind of in the thick of things and we were talking on the office earlier this week about that debacle between your giants and the commanders and the end of that game. And I loved how Tom and just said he was disgusted by it and he said he threw open his mouth a little bit. I think there was an old coach who kind of, who said that, I forget who it was, but I love hearing Tom and just kind of just have fun with it. And clearly he was obviously disgusted by what he saw. I think we all were, again, allowing your giants to remain in first place in the NSC East, by what we saw there at the end of that game. But I love Tom and just jumping in and having a little bit of fun there. Austin, who won the weekend for you? First off, I hope Tiki Barber can come to each cam scatiboo headout security. that ball and it'll see you had some problems and then you see as the way you held the ball there for a while Can't need to learn some of that can't humble that ball there mine was not necessarily something that happened But news about something that is going to happen mine went to the week and goes to ESPN with these added telecast They've announced for the Super Bowl. I'm talking about on ESPN you You're gonna have fuel pass with Pat McAfee that has proven to be a really strong all-cast for ESPN Especially around the CFP some of the biggest numbers that they've had for all castes You're already gonna have the manning cast on ESPN 2 that was already announced now you get McAfee in ball I also like how they're getting NFL network in ball that could be maybe a couple more million more viewers That's gonna have a next-gen stats approach another all-cast But another way to watch the game you add that to what we talked about last week with Disney plus and there is still Likely going to be an animated version of the Super Bowl like we've seen around Monday Night Football toy story and all of it You're staying all cast. Yeah, there's a Star Wars movie coming out in 2027 Josh Imagine some sort of Super Bowl animated all cast in the world of Star Wars I think it will be smart for Disney and ESPN to go after that no announcement yet But if I was a betting man, I would probably lean that direction seems like we'll have no shortage of ways to watch the Super Bowl I'd be worried next year and but that this is what's going to get the Super Bowl over 130 million viewers hasn't gotten there yet 127 million two years ago didn't quite get there this past season if you want to get past 130 million You want to set the record for a Super Bowl. You have to do all these things ESPN Disney doing everything they can to get that number as high as possible Might take seven or eight outlets Yeah, okay, and if you're a Fox and NBC or see yet, you don't necessarily have those options But Disney and ESPN taking advantage of everything in the arson. Yep, can't wait to see it in February Well, that does it for this week's SPJ Sports Media podcast. Thanks again to our guests Ed Deser and John Kozner There's always thank you to our production team of Chris Mason, Reginald Walker and AC Wyatt and finally thank you for listening Make sure to like and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts for Josh Carpenter I'm Austin Clark make good choices out there and we will talk to you all again next week (upbeat music)