DAZN goes big on local media; what can MLS get in its next rights deal?; What to follow with Paramount Skydance’s legal case; and the WNBA keeps rising.

0:00Coming up on the pod, a big shift in local media, MLS's future media rights value, and the latest with Paramount Skydance, Warner Brothers Discovery.

0:15Welcome into the SPJ Sports Media Podcast. I'm Josh Carpenter. And I'm Austin Karp. Josh, I'm going to be at CBS's NFL Media Day in a couple of weeks, and it feels like a lot of the attention now will be shifting away from, I don't know, maybe meteorites and CBS's NFL future to now having to talk about Tony Romo and his OWIs. Yeah, I mean, it's unfortunate. We saw this play out over the weekend. This came out about Romo's OWI up in Wisconsin. He was playing in the Wisconsin Stadium, you know, and this happened after that. It's pretty unfortunate that this becomes a storyline, but it's something we have to talk about in terms of what does this mean for CBS?

0:55What does it mean for Romo? I don't believe at this point that CBS has come out and commented publicly on this matter. I know there was a report from the Daily Mail that kind of talked about like them backing him. It's definitely an issue, but in terms of that report kind of said that they're going to move forward. He's their top game analyst. As you mentioned, that becomes the talking point heading into the season. I will say watching social media on Wednesday, that video of his arrest pulled over on the side of the highway was everywhere. That's the only thing I saw on Wednesday. I will say, watching that video, I don't want to discount what he was arrested for.

1:31Wasn't belligerent or anything. But he wasn't belligerent. He wasn't cursing at the officers. There wasn't like this groundswell on social media that Tony Romo should be suspended immediately by CBS for weeks or months or whatever. So I think that did lighten the blow a little bit. Romo has been keeping a very low profile through all of this. And I think that will help his case a little bit as we get a little bit closer to the season. I think it just reinforces, folks, get an Uber. Get a Lyft. Have it on your phone. Do not drive drunk. Yeah, for sure. Austin, let's get to the news of the week.

2:04We've been talking about DAZN a lot over the last few months. We can go back to DAZN acquiring ViewLyft for about$100 million earlier this spring. And we kind of talked about at that point about that being a precursor to DAZN picking up more rights here in the U.S. We know that they're based in Europe. Talked about them becoming more of a U.S.-centric company. And now you've reported this week that they're basically picking up the digital rights to both MSG and Yes Network. But really, I mean, this deal goes deeper than the New York Sports Network, the Gotham Sports app. It's layered down to NBA local deals, potential NHL deals.

2:40Anybody that has a local tie. You know, first off, I got to give some credit to my SBJ colleagues, Tom Crandon, Mike Mazzeo, for helping on the story. Bing helps there. But, you know, this is something that I first started reporting on back in February, that DAZN, once Main Street was falling apart, they were immediately sitting down with all of these teams that were going to be coming off the Main Street sports books. But this is something different. This is them getting in hot and heavy in the biggest media market in the country with the biggest teams. So what does it all mean? Those games that have been streaming on the Gotham Sports Set that launched in 2024, that streaming is all going to be moving over to DAZN.

3:14You're talking about the Knicks, the Rangers, the Islanders, the Yankees, probably next season. That's probably going to stick out on Gotham the rest of this season. Devils, Sabres, and the Nets, of course. In the biggest market, those are some very, very well-watched teams. And what has DAZN really struggled with is finding something that really resonates in the U.S. market. They've tried things like the Club World Cup, and they've tried things like boxing in the past. That just hasn't cracked the code. So this is a way in. And I don't think we're done yet. I think we're going to see more of these DAZN deals.

3:43We reported that there might be something coming up with the T-Wolves, the Cavs, the Pacers, the Spurs, and the Grizzlies. Shoot the nuts. That's where their local rights will be. You might see DTC-only options coming with the Magic and potentially the Hornets. We talked about could a Victory Plus have been a solution for a lot of those companies. Well, what did we see in the last couple weeks? That is not happening. We saw these teams. Think about Victory Plus. There's some issues out there in the market in terms of their long-term viability. Obviously, the Rangers moving their streaming away.

4:12The Dock's moving their streaming away. And we've heard reports out there about missed payments on the Victory Plus site. DAZN, though, huge in Europe, incredibly well capitalized. So that's never a problem. It's just do they have enough tonnage now to be that sort of service where viewers are going to go? And now it sounds like they're going to have the teams to make that happen. Yeah, that's what you have to have. As you mentioned prior to now, it's been mostly in Eurocode, mostly smaller kind of niche sports. But if they tap into that U.S. prime sports market, NBA, NHL, MLB, that's the tip.

4:42The timing is great, too, because it sets them up to be potential partners with an NBA or an NHL or maybe even what Major League Baseball plans to do on a national scale. Those national packages of local media rights. Can DAZN be a part of those discussions? Can they house things for maybe one of those leagues? That's also part of this, not just at the local team. London. I'm curious, Austin, like what does this mean for various local over the air stations that would want to pick up a team's rights? Yeah. I mean, it's a solution we've seen a lot of these teams take in terms of smaller packages, but I don't think anyone has gone completely like, oh, we're just going to have this local over the air thing because I don't know that the money is there for that.

5:20That is what the zone is bringing. They're bringing the dollars. And if you are MSG and you are Yes Network, which, you know, those are the two companies that own Gotham Sports, and you only launched this thing two years ago and you're seeing growth it took those DAZN dollars to make this happen it took trust in DAZN's management to really make this happen to make that shift and move that streaming over to DAZN from Gotham Sports so I'm not ruling out any maybe smaller packages there might be some for some local OTA and it might even be for some of these teams obviously the MSG and the YES Network that's still going to be linear but for those NBA teams I was talking about.

5:55Yeah, there may still be smaller packages over the year, but I doubt that that's a full deal they'd be after. All right, Josh, let's talk about some soccer. There was a report this week. MLS still has a few years on its media rights deal, probably through, I think, 2029 now with that renegotiated deal with Apple TV. But there was some speculation on what Major League Soccer is going to be looking for in its next rights deal. And some owners think that you might be able to get between$400 and$500 million for that media rights deal. That's up from around $250 a year right now with Apple TV. And you're talking about a deal that is on par with what right now the Premier League gets in its deal, around$433 million.

6:35What do you think? Is MLS worth Premier League dollars? Yeah, I don't know if they are. It's been interesting. We've talked about this World Cup momentum coming up that we expect to see for soccer and other sports really here in the U.S. from an ad perspective, like just kind of this boom, global soccer. And we were talking with a couple other colleagues earlier this week that maybe MLS is missing out on this boom a little bit by being on Apple, by being on a platform that's not so widely distributed as others. You read those Nielsen Gage reports every week. Apple TV is not cracking that list.

7:06I mean, I've had several examples of folks telling me like across MLS and F1, they've said, hey, because they're on Apple, we just don't watch. That's a big problem in my mind. So I think they're missing out a little bit on that boom from the World Cup. And so that's surely going to impact in my mind when this opt-out comes up in 2029 and their attempt to get 400 plus million dollars is a lot. I mean, as you mentioned, like the Premier League currently is only getting a little bit more. And they only Premier League is going to get more than that because they only have two more years left on their deal.

7:34They're going to get a massive increase too. But and I say massive are the dollars out there. We talked about this crunch coming a lot because the NFL wants its bag. MLB wants its bag. NBA got its bag of dollars. So we saw the crunch affect a little bit with like the bundesliga's deal which was essentially flat i know that that is bundesliga but even they had to get creative major league soccer yes they've had everything soup to nuts on apple for these last few seasons and that's something apple wanted owning everything english spanish whatever documentaries mls may need to take the path that it used to have and that a lot of these other properties have taken like nascar going from two to four like the wmba which has around media rights partners 10 different parts you may need to have a partner we know cbs like soccer.

8:15We know ESPN likes soccer and they just lost Bundesliga. So in a couple of years, maybe they would like Major League Soccer. You get a piece of that streaming pie. You need a streaming partner. You need a partner that's going to give you a lot of visibility. You also like Bundesliga may need to break out that Spanish language package. And I would love to see Major League Soccer get the exposure to Spanish speaking soccer fans that you can get on a Televisa Univision or Telemundo. And Telemundo, heck, we saw during the World Cup, soccer fans really go to Peacock and they go to Telemundo for a lot of their software.

8:45Univision too, of course, the numbers are great there. That's been the path for these sports properties, right? Diversifying your platforms that you're on. Look at how many platforms the NFL is on now compared to 20 years ago when they were basically on three channels. The NBA had to initiate that tap to watch feature because they went, you don't know, you didn't know where the games were this season. You had Amazon, you had NBC, you had Peacock, you had ESPN and ABC games. It was a lot. MLS would not be alone in having to educate fans on where to go for games. Yeah, personally, at least I'm an old man.

9:14I like for things to go back to how they were back in the day, where you knew exactly where your team was playing night in, night out. I'm looking forward to the Hurricanes having this team-owned, team-produced channel that I can just pay a certain fee for the entire year, and I know exactly where I'm going to watch them every night. You realize what all of your old man talk on this podcast? People are going to think that you have like a decade on me in terms of age. You realize that's what people think. They might think that old man. I hope they don't need that discussion to happen. All right, Austin, we do need to get into this Paramount Skydance WBD merger.

9:44We know it's been postponed. There's a TRO against it. You're our kind of resident attorney. What's the latest on the impact of this from a media perspective, from a sports media perspective, from a sports perspective? Like, what are we looking at here? Well, first off, you know, I don't want to get too bogged down in the legalese and all that. And I definitely want to embarrass my law school professors. It's a long time ago. You're looking back about 30 years since you were in law school. But let's talk about their legal strategy here, Paramount Skydance. They saw that the state's attorneys general had the temporary restraining order, right?

10:15So it was holding up the deal. And Paramount Skydance is looking out over the course of the next year and like, we got to get this thing done. If we try to fight this in a certain way, we may get hosed, screwed, for lack of a better term, legally. So what are they saying? We want to go to a jury trial as soon as we can, because that way, if we do lose in the Ninth Circuit, which is very left leaning and this seems to be a little bit of a political football, we can go to appeal sooner because there are some important dates to remember on this whole thing. You've got September 30th. At that point, Larry Ellison has to start paying WBD shareholders money that could add up to around a billion dollars.

10:51And if this thing goes deep into the spring, you're talking about a date on June 4th, and that's one to really pay attention to in 2027. If that comes and there isn't some sort of deal made, if this hasn't closed or anything, David Zaslav and WBD, they have a contractual right to walk away from this transition and take home$7 billion termination fee. I think I'd walk away from that if I were up. They want to get this deal done. I think that's first and foremost is everyone kind of wants to get this done. But I'm not sure that Paramount Skydance realized how much of a hurdle and how much of a political football this was going to be.

11:21But the Ellisons, they kind of got themselves in lockstep with President Trump and his administration and Democrats. These are the state's attorneys generals that are kind of going after. But let's tie this back to sports a little bit. Like, let's get away from the legal side of this. What does this mean for a lot of the properties that are on specifically WBD? A lot of them that I've talked to in conversations, some of them are like, hey, like, yeah, we'd love the potential to have maybe a simulcast on CBS, take advantage of a broadcast network as part of these deals. If you're NASCAR, like, not that I've had a specific conversation with NASCAR, but maybe you wanted to try that in 2027.

11:52But if this case is going on, you don't know that it's going to happen. You got to, you can't plan for 2027. You've got to make plans for next year. Who's one of the bigger properties on WBD right now? That's the NHL. And there are only two seasons left in that deal, which means they're going to be talking to them soon. I'm sure there's some sort of exclusive negotiating window. How are you negotiating that deal without knowing my future parent company is still locked up legally? And perhaps most importantly, we got the NFL extensions that we've been talking about over and over again. When were those going to get done?

12:20CBS was likely going to be the first because of that original Paramount Skydance buying CBS deal. That change of ownership meant that the NFL had a right to kind of renegotiate that deal. And CBS was going to be that first domino to fall. Does that get held up and does that hold up a lot of these other NFL deals that would maybe buy out those looking years after 2029 into 2033? That all could be on pause here. Certainly something we're going to be watching in the coming weeks and months, Austin. Real quickly, WNBA, you reported this week All-Star Weekend, second best All-Star game ever. First half of the season, viewership-wise.

12:59Up 12%. Up 12%. And is that big data? is that like why is is the wnba up because 12 we know like big data is kind of in that 10 to 12 percent range so it's a little less i mean i'd say you get an automatic five percent off the bat from big sure but 12 is not nothing a lot of it has to do with this new media deal people remember this season one for the wnba as well what has that meant a few games so far on nbc and those numbers have been a big lift like we've seen we saw for nba we see for major league baseball Getting things on broadcast, whether it's Sunday night or otherwise, NBC has been a boom.

13:33Caitlin Clark, though, she continues to be the star attraction. You look at the top telecast, the Fever have the top seven games in terms of audience size this season to date. And they have put around 29 telecasts, over 1 million viewers for the regular season so far. Half of those are Fever games. Well, and too, I want to just point out, like, yes, this is clearly Caitlin Clark has an extreme ability on the court. But I think like a lot of this, like I'm not tuning into the WNBA every night, but I'm still seeing the WNBA every day on my social feeds. And it's because a lot of this drama between Caitlin Clark and the officials and, you know, vitriol with other players and the situation around Kathy Engelbert and what is her future.

14:12It's got some of that NBA drama that people talk about. It's got some of that NBA soap opera type drama that's going on and seeing Sophie Cunningham pointing at people. And to me, that's got to be a big part of what's driving someone. There was a period there where you couldn't go on Twitter or social media for five seconds without seeing that Sophie Cunningham meme. Right, but I'm saying like years ago, like there was no talk about the WNBA. And now that's all I'm seeing. And I would think based on my feed that I'm like a WNBA diehard fan. I think women's basketball and WNBA and college basketball to a degree, they are the tip of the spear in terms of women's sports and media rights.

14:47Women's basketball has so far separated itself. You can't really lump all these sports together like men's sports. There are varying degrees of what women's sports are able to return in terms of viewership. WNBA, up front. And that's not where something like the NWSL is. I don't think that they've been able to generate. They don't have the personalities that the WNBA has. They don't have that yet. That is something you really need to pay attention to. That star power, that attraction. Because their media rights deals are coming up too. Or are they going to get an increase that they want? The rivalries.

15:17Like think about Angel Reese and Caitlin Clark. You can rattle off casual sports fans, male sports fans can now reel off five, 10, 15 WNBA players. That was not the case even five years ago. Yeah, it's been a huge growth for that league and for their media partners just this year. Austin, that'll do it for this week's SPJ Sports Media Podcast. Thanks, as always, to our production team of Chris Mason, Reginald Walker, and A.C. Wyatt. And finally, thank you for listening. Please make sure to like and subscribe to the pod wherever you get your podcasts. For Austin Karp, I'm Josh Carpenter. We'll talk to you all again next week.