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morestuff posted:We’re getting to the point where I wonder if leagues would be better off just selling their product themselves NFL network is doing well but the other ones seem like they have a pretty hard time getting on basic tiers. If you look at college the Pac-12 was the one league that tried to do a network without partnering with ESPN or Fox and it's been a disaster. Plus networks are still shelling out a ton of money in rights fees because sports are the biggest reason people keep cable.
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Jan 23, 2021 21:03
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If blackouts weren't a thing anymore I'd imagine they'd do much better. NFL Sunday Ticket has the advantage of 100% of your blacked out games are OTA anyway. It's almost certainly not enough because of what networks are paying, and that (for the NBA at least) local deals means teams don't have to revenue share, but at some point I have to imagine getting rid of blackouts in some form has to be worth it.
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Jan 23, 2021 21:08
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Everyone is measuring NBCSN against other sports channels. NBC Cable Group is measuring it (and Golf) against USA, Bravo, and all the rest of its cable channels (which honestly escape me right now and I’m too lazy to look up). Carriage fees are part of overall revenue, however the major part was advertising. Which is why the audience makeup and metrics are so important and where NBCSN and Golf skew both more older and male vs the other channels making them less desirable then say the Kardashian shows. Sports as a whole needs to have fresh shows airing all the time. Therefore they have to be cheaper to produce because you can’t really have repeats of a topical panel show or something even a week later, meaning more shows and the per-taping production costs have a shorter time frame to be recouped and you don’t have the syndication market to lean on as an additional revenue stream. So combining the above you have a channel that brings in $400M, but costs say $375M to run, has poor synergy with the rest of the channels in the lineup, and less desirable demographics. Now, I don’t know all the details, I was an IT nerd who talked to business people a few times and read between the liens in public statements and whatever got blasted out to the company writ large. Oh and I left 2+ years ago, so I’m taking general trends here vs what is currently going on. A net profit of $25M is not a ton of money in terms of a group looking to slash costs and whose leadership comes from other parts of the company who are used to higher margins. When you can sell it as adding prime live content to the company’s latest halo streaming product? It’s a no brainer to axe the channel and turn the existing facilities into a production house for content to be distributed across multiple channels and platforms. Or at least that’s my take. Like I said I was just an IT nerd who paid attention to how the business operates and based on my circumstances it was Sports in particular vs the other groups. I’ve been gone a few years but much of this strategy was being laid down prior to my leaving and just accelerated due to COVID based on what I heard from my contacts.
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Jan 23, 2021 21:15
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Lockback posted:If blackouts weren't a thing anymore I'd imagine they'd do much better. NFL Sunday Ticket has the advantage of 100% of your blacked out games are OTA anyway. It's almost certainly not enough because of what networks are paying, and that (for the NBA at least) local deals means teams don't have to revenue share, but at some point I have to imagine getting rid of blackouts in some form has to be worth it.
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Jan 23, 2021 21:25
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FlamingLiberal posted:Are they still doing blackouts when fans can't attend games? MLB didn't change their blackout rules at all in 2020. It's about protecting RSNs so I guess it makes sense from that angle.
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Jan 23, 2021 21:40
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https://twitter.com/carolynryan/status/1353057952945508352
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Jan 23, 2021 21:45
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Inspector_666 posted:MLB didn't change their blackout rules at all in 2020. It's about protecting RSNs so I guess it makes sense from that angle.
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Jan 23, 2021 21:54
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I didn't read deadspin before but I saw some highlights. I support the idea of writers getting away from the industry as it exists so I was happy to throw a year at them. After a few months I like a couple of them. My question is how did Drew Magary become a thing?
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Jan 25, 2021 08:31
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SunshineDanceParty posted:I didn't read deadspin before but I saw some highlights. I support the idea of writers getting away from the industry as it exists so I was happy to throw a year at them. After a few months I like a couple of them. his big break was as one of the early commentators on Deadspin back when it was a pain to get approved as a commentator and there were fewer of them. Will Leitch thought he was funny and would regularly highlight his comments and let him pitch hit with blogs occasionally. Eventually he and a few of the other prominent commentators started Kissing Suzie Kolber, a weird NFL humor site that definitely did age well but was pretty big at the time, and after awhile Deadspin brought him back as a regular for the funbag and that sort of stuff and he just kind of became an institution there.
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Jan 25, 2021 13:54
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MourningView posted:his big break was as one of the early commentators on Deadspin back when it was a pain to get approved as a commentator and there were fewer of them. Will Leitch thought he was funny and would regularly highlight his comments and let him pitch hit with blogs occasionally. He's also a novelist but I'm not sure how much overlap that has with his online stardom.
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Jan 25, 2021 14:50
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Salvor_Hardin posted:He's also a novelist but I'm not sure how much overlap that has with his online stardom. That and the more mainstream gigs like GQ all came out of the Deadspin stuff
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Jan 25, 2021 15:04
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MourningView posted:NFL network is doing well but the other ones seem like they have a pretty hard time getting on basic tiers. If you look at college the Pac-12 was the one league that tried to do a network without partnering with ESPN or Fox and it's been a disaster. Plus networks are still shelling out a ton of money in rights fees because sports are the biggest reason people keep cable. More to this point: https://variety.com/2021/digital/news/wwe-network-peacock-exclusively-streaming-1234890954/ WWE has been trying to get this thing going for like a decade, tanked their PPV revenue, and never got past like 1.5m paid subscribers (down to 1.1).
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Jan 25, 2021 15:21
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jackofarcades posted:More to this point: They did just get a billion dollars from nbc to make it part of peacock so they continue their two decade plus pattern of failing upward
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Jan 25, 2021 15:24
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jackofarcades posted:More to this point: So that first live event was in Feb 2014, meaning we're coming up on 7 years of no PPV. Is there really that much of a benefit of getting ten bucks monthly off of a million credit cards instead of the payday off of big tickets from an audience that demands it?
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Jan 25, 2021 15:36
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Gerund posted:So that first live event was in Feb 2014, meaning we're coming up on 7 years of no PPV. Is there really that much of a benefit of getting ten bucks monthly off of a million credit cards instead of the payday off of big tickets from an audience that demands it? There's a good reason so many businesses are going to monthly subscription models, whether it's sports, media, razor blades, food delivery, basically any business you see advertising on social media or podcasts. It's dependable (and relatively steady) income month over month as opposed to betting and hoping on a monthly event to hit a certain number of purchases. It's also why it's drat near impossible to buy exactly one thing as a 'trial' from those businesses without also getting their negative-option offer. They know that once you're signed up to the subscription, you're far less likely to cancel because you just forget about it.
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Jan 25, 2021 15:42
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Gerund posted:So that first live event was in Feb 2014, meaning we're coming up on 7 years of no PPV. Is there really that much of a benefit of getting ten bucks monthly off of a million credit cards instead of the payday off of big tickets from an audience that demands it? Yes. Subscription revenue is king. Relying on selling big tickets means a couple flops and your broke, not to mention people forget their subbed and thats bonus bucks. Even if you subscription revenue is less dollars (it usually isn't) being able to forecast your cashflow is worth a considerable amount.
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Jan 25, 2021 15:50
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In the WWEs case it also helped to reduce wrestlers pay and bonuses based on PPV pay.
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Jan 25, 2021 15:53
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Gerund posted:So that first live event was in Feb 2014, meaning we're coming up on 7 years of no PPV. Is there really that much of a benefit of getting ten bucks monthly off of a million credit cards instead of the payday off of big tickets from an audience that demands it? in their case no, they lost a shitload of money off it and had huge start up costs that took forever to recoup but survived because their tv rights fees went nuts to the point where it didn't matter MourningView fucked around with this message at 16:32 on Jan 25, 2021 |
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Jan 25, 2021 16:28
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I haven't paid attention to WWE in some time but every story seems to be how their ratings are in the tank, they're bleeding money through the network, but here's another zillion dollar TV deal anyway.
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Jan 25, 2021 16:33
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Tater Love 
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My understanding is their TV/ad revenues are down, but their expenses are WAY down
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Jan 25, 2021 16:49
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DJExile posted:My understanding is their TV/ad revenues are down, but their expenses are WAY down The expenses being down has made them more profitable during the pandemic because they don't have any touring expenses but TV revenue was generally way up over the last few years even before that because their rights fees went through the roof even as their ratings cratered (and cratered faster than tv ratings generally have cratered so it's not just cord cutting). MourningView fucked around with this message at 17:04 on Jan 25, 2021 |
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Jan 25, 2021 16:59
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The WWE is like a dude that was toasted two years ago getting a five-year contract and far too much gravity/respect from defenders who should know better. (Source- I stopped watching it years ago)
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Jan 25, 2021 17:17
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zakharov posted:I haven't paid attention to WWE in some time but every story seems to be how their ratings are in the tank, they're bleeding money through the network, but here's another zillion dollar TV deal anyway. Their ratings started to nosedive around the time that sports TV contracts started going through the roof because live sports was one of the only things keeping people subscribed to cable. They also benefitted from the fact that USA hasn’t been able to launch any new properties worth a poo poo in recent years, so while their ratings declined, their value to the network has remained the same relative to its other programming. Revenue took a hit because they switched from the PPV model to the WWE Network model, but the product has also gotten unspeakably lovely over that same time so the extent to which the WWE Network failed because of the method vs. the product is debatable. Once UFC switched its model to selling PPV rights to ESPN+ for a flat fee every year, the pressure was kind of on WWE from an investor standpoint to do the same thing because it eliminates instability. WWE should be in dire straits right now when you look at how terrible their ratings have gotten and how god awful the product is but they keep being in the right place at the right time when it comes to the tv rights fees for sports products and now the streaming wars has people desperately competing for content.
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Jan 25, 2021 17:19
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MourningView posted:in their case no, they lost a shitload of money off it and had huge start up costs that took forever to recoup but survived because their tv rights fees went nuts to the point where it didn't matter they also forced an industry shift into everyone having some sort of streaming service available which has been mixed
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Jan 25, 2021 17:33
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the balkanization of streaming services is gonna wring the market dry in a few years with a lot of services just not doing that well, and i imagine that's going to result in a consolidation of streaming services into what are essentially cable packages all over again it's hard to imagine the wwe won't benefit from that as well
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Jan 25, 2021 17:45
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The WWE was in a bit of a pickle. They had a cable on demand product for years that they could only get a few thousand people interested in that already had a ton of old PPVs and matches. They probably could not have pulled in many people at $10 a month for their internet version of that, which initially would have less content, without the PPVs. And they were starting to lose money on a PPV or two a year, with the trend looking like it would spread to more of the small PPVs, so I see why they bundled them with the network since they make a little bit more for those on the network than they did on PPV (and actually quite a bit more when you consider they were able to cut a lot of bonuses for these PPVs to wrestlers). But they gave up hundreds of thousands in revenue, and a chance for a UFC style giant streaming deal by including ALL of the PPVs. They probably should've tried some way to keep 4-6 off network, or at the very least Wrestlemania,
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Jan 25, 2021 18:19
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Declan MacManus posted:the balkanization of streaming services is gonna wring the market dry in a few years with a lot of services just not doing that well, and i imagine that's going to result in a consolidation of streaming services into what are essentially cable packages all over again Its kind of hard to tell in terms of the Wrestling market, Sinclair Broadcasting owns ROH, the Jacksonville Jaguars basically own AEW, IMPACT continues to be a weird albatross. Internationally CMLL has been in factional power struggles after its longtime owner died, NJPW has ownership but its expansion plans got nixed, and AAA had been doing well up until it came out that they are being sued by a US based subsidiary that they granted exclusive rights to worldwide based revenues because the parent company made like $650,000 off of twitch
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Jan 25, 2021 18:51
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MourningView posted:his big break was as one of the early commentators on Deadspin back when it was a pain to get approved as a commentator and there were fewer of them. Will Leitch thought he was funny and would regularly highlight his comments and let him pitch hit with blogs occasionally. I appreciate the detailed response and that all makes sense. He's not my thing at all, but I get why he has his fans. Kissing Suzie Kolber is another thing I only saw the highlights of. To me he's just a Bill Simmons I could stand to be around for a conversation.
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Jan 25, 2021 19:04
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SunshineDanceParty posted:I appreciate the detailed response. He's not my thing at all, but I get why he has his fans. Kissing Suzie Kolber is another thing I only saw the highlights of. To me he's just a Bill Simmons I could stand to be around for a conversation. He changed his style A LOT over time. His current stuff is almost unrecognizable from his older writings and he admits openly that his old stuff is garbage and that he didn't deserve the attention he got. He also doesn't take himself nearly as seriously as Simmons. I'm not a huge margary fanboy or anything, I mostly just skimmed his stuff before it was paywalled, but he is closer to a old-style SA frontpage than a Simmons.
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Jan 25, 2021 19:09
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Didn't know about that NBC/Peacock deal with WWE 'til now. It's good to know because I was sort of on the fence about Peacock but definitely don't want to give money or views to any entity that supports the WWE at this point.
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Jan 25, 2021 19:10
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Lockback posted:He changed his style A LOT over time. His current stuff is almost unrecognizable from his older writings and he admits openly that his old stuff is garbage and that he didn't deserve the attention he got. He also doesn't take himself nearly as seriously as Simmons. That's fair. I really meant that in the sense that his stuff gets a ton of comments and attention and then I read it and I wonder why. But I have a better understanding now.
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Jan 25, 2021 19:11
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quote:In Greek mythology, Cronus overthrew his father, Uranus, to become king of the Titans. But eventually Cronos’s son, Zeus, rebelled against him. The ensuing war was called the Battle of the Titans. The new gods defeated the old. Zeus became king of Olympus.
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Jan 25, 2021 19:44
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SunshineDanceParty posted:That's fair. I really meant that in the sense that his stuff gets a ton of comments and attention and then I read it and I wonder why. But I have a better understanding now. the other advantage that magary has is that his fanbase has developed, grown, and matured with him and since he doesn't have old media web 2.0 stink on him there's always going to be a market for what he's selling, wherever he goes
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Jan 25, 2021 19:49
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I guessed this was from Simmons. Close enough.
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Jan 25, 2021 19:51
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SunshineDanceParty posted:I appreciate the detailed response and that all makes sense. He's not my thing at all, but I get why he has his fans. Kissing Suzie Kolber is another thing I only saw the highlights of. To me he's just a Bill Simmons I could stand to be around for a conversation. A lot of his schtick is actually making fun of dumb Bill Simmons ticks but he's been doing it forever and Bill Simmons hasn't written a column in years so I'm not sure that comes through now. I actually agree that most of his Deadspin/defector writing is pretty boring but he seems like a delightful labrador retriever of a person and I like him on the podcast with roth.
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Jan 25, 2021 19:56
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Nybble posted:I guessed this was from Simmons. Close enough. Rick Reilly?
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Jan 25, 2021 20:01
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In Greek mythology, Cronus married his sister. But eventually Cronos’s son, Zeus, also married his sister. A thousand epochs later, we are getting our own taste of Greek mythology. Tom Brady will kiss his son on the mouth in the Super Bowl.
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Jan 25, 2021 20:04
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https://twitter.com/FOS/status/1353861579696177153?s=20 Well that probably explains them restocking on actual journalists
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Jan 26, 2021 01:34
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That strikes me as the definition of too little too late but I guess we'll see
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Jan 26, 2021 02:29
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FlamingLiberal posted:Are they still doing blackouts when fans can't attend games? NBA definitely is, I’m annoyed that I can’t watch games @Minnesota or @Indiana because I live in Iowa under normal circumstances, the fact that I still can’t watch them in the middle of a loving pandemic is infuriating. You’d think that the NBA would be encouraging anyone who wants to willingly watch Timberwolves games without making them jump through hoops
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Jan 26, 2021 02:30
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