The Fans Have Spoken: More Sports, More Connections

Michael Hedges January 17, 2022 Follow on Twitter

Sports coverage has been a mainstay for publishers and broadcasters forever. A generation ago speciality newspapers and magazines emerged. Certainly, every locality is distinct. Winter sports like skiing are more popular where winters are longer, tennis and swimming more popular in warmer climes. Team sports are popular everywhere.

Given time and prolific media coverage publishers, followed by broadcasters, began to specialize, tacit at first, appealing to more specific interests. For the US market, Time Inc. (later Time-Life) launched Sports Illustrated in 1954 as “magazine with sports.” There had been another magazine with the same name but it failed. In its early days Sports Illustrated followed spectator sports as well as vanity sports like yachting, hoping to attract advertisers. By the mid 1960s the editorial focus was firmly on professional and collegiate team sports. It became the first US magazine to exceed a circulation on one million.

Even earlier was L’Equipe, the weekly sports newspaper in France. It first appeared in 1946, covering football, motor racing and cycling. Amaury Group has been its sole publisher, adeptly expanding into broadcasting ventures and, eventually, the internet. Today there are more than 100 sports publications in France as well as all-sports TV and radio channels. Spain has two competing sports publications, Diario AS and Marca, both concentrated on football. There are also regional sports publications, also concentrating on football. Marca was founded in 1938 and has had the second largest daily newspaper circulation for two decades. It is published by Unidad Editorial, publisher of El Mundo, and owns Radio Marca, an all-sports radio station.

Sports media has thrived, more or less, for decades. TV sports has expanded exponentially, again focusing on spectator sports. While sports rights cost inflation tamped down the competition, new channels emerged with cable and satellite distribution. All-sports radio channels took a different tact appealing to hard-core fans. The coronavirus outbreak two years ago put a damper on spectator sports, a justified fear for team and league owners, not so much for broadcasters.

In the US, TV cable and satellite subscriptions to sports channels dropped in the two years since January 2020. But all cable TV subscriptions dropped. “National sports networks — typically the priciest channels on cable systems — have seen a much slower rate of erosion over that two-year time span,” said Sports Business Journal (January 10). “Cord-cutting (dropping multi-channel subscriptions in favor of online services) is happening more slowly for sports networks.” The average subscriber decline through the period was 5.2%, reported financial research company MoffettNathanson (January 6). Worst hit were league-owned channels MLB Network (baseball) and NBA TV (basketball). On the other side, distribution of NFL Network (American football) rose 5%. FS2, the Fox Sports channel principally owned by the Murdoch family, was also up 5% and beIN Sports gained 7%.

Through that ever-magic digital fast-forward button, sports media has more than adapted. Amazon Prime, Apple and DAZN are becoming major distributors of sports content. It’s all about streaming and special events. DAZN has about 11 million subscribers worldwide and is “near a deal,” said Reuters (January 12), to acquire BT Sport for US$800 million although Discovery, which owns Eurosport, remains in negotiations with the pay-TV subsidiary of UK telecom BT Group. The successful bidder will acquire UK and Ireland rights to a good chunk of English Premiere League and Champions League matches on the football side plus rugby and more. Discovery will become Warner Brothers Discovery with the acquisition of WarnerMedia from AT&T closes this summer. It has been pitching a joint-venture with BT Group. DAZN is a subsidiary of Access Industries, principally owned by billionaire Len Blavatnik.

Meanwhile Apple seems poised to bid for piece of US Major League Baseball (MLB) rights, reported New York Post (January 10). It would be the 60 week-night games once broadcast by ESPN and an entry into sports for Apple TV. The principals are not commenting the price tag cold be more than the US$1 billion Amazon paid for rights to the 18 Thursday night NFL matches, poached from Fox Sports. Amazon recently acquired rights for Swimming Australia, dropped by commercial channel Seven.

Publishers are not just sitting by and watching. The New York Times Company recently acquired The Athletic, a subscription-only sports publisher, for US$550 million. The Athletic offers highly-targeted newsletters for superfans that include audio and video. L’Equipe, in France, already offers a newsletter and podcasts. Others will follow.

Leagues and teams are still reeling from the pandemic loss of fans in the stands. Certainly, sports rights revenues are recovering and fans can watch matches, bouts and events on the screens of their choice. But nothing replaces that customer contact. The US NBA (basketball) has been selling non-fungible tokens (NFTs) of exciting “moments.” One of LeBron James sold for US$250,000. Pacific League Marketing recently began selling NFTs from Japanese baseball games. "In the past, professional baseball's point of connection with fans was the stadium," said chief executive Tomoki Negishi, quoted by NikkeiAsia (December 31). "But the last two years have seen a situation where we couldn't get a lot of visitors to the ballpark. Connections need to be made elsewhere."

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