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

0:00Coming up on the pod, Netflix gets in on the Men's World Cup, the latest on rights to a 24-team CFP, and will viewers find this year's WNBA Finals?

0:17Welcome into the SBJ Sports Media Podcast. I'm Josh Carpenter. And I'm Austin Karp. Josh, my Yellow Jackets finally got that first ACC win. My New York Giants are in first in the NFC East. 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'd 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-Tennessee game. Personally, I think Bama's going to come into Knoxville and blast us.

0:52So I don't think I'll be missing much. But nonetheless, I think a wider discussion needs to be had about birthday parties at Charles Entertainment on Saturday afternoons in the fall. We got to talk about that a little bit. Now, if you can put Chuck E. Cheese in a bright orange uniform, I think that's the only way you can make it acceptable. But yeah, that should be a fireball offense there by that man. Yeah, for sure. But Austin, let's get into a media deal that's a little bit off the beat, Pat. It's around some big properties. It's around World Cup. It's around Netflix. Some news earlier this week.

1:20What 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 Endura. But 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 U.S.

1:50is 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 DAZN got the tournament, sub-licensed it to TNT as far as a linear TV option there. If Netflix wanted to go after all of the U.S. 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 they might be able to do in the market.

2:36Yeah, again, Austin, 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 gain 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, Austin, 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.

3:12What's the latest around 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? Now, 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 sub-licensed to TNT there. This is about, is the portion that is new, those new games, that potential first round of games in an expanded 2014 format, is that going to go out to market?

3:57Does ESPN, can they make the economics work of paying for that? Jimmy Pitaro is going to be fiscally 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 Ten to get to 2014 because they see that as their only potential way to get into a college football playoff. But another player I really want to keep my eye on is Amazon Prime Video. I know there are powerful commissioners that would be OK with Prime Video coming off for those first round of games.

4:27Again, that first round is taking 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 are those games? We've already seen with the current expanded playoff, those 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.

4:58even a friend of mine who's a long-time Georgia fan said this week ahead of the Alabama game he was like hey like I used to be in knots about this type of game and now it's like oh okay if we lose no big deal we just move on 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 and I'm not going to care about college football until we get deep into October November because those are the games that have playoff implications. Scarcity is one of the most important things to football in this country.

5:32And yet 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 college basketball until December 1st. 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? It felt like that 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 24 teams? I don't know.

6:00I think like you say, though, it has just a little less importance because Alabama knows, okay, we can still bounce back from that. Yeah, Tennessee loses to Texas earlier this year, a couple weeks ago. 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 a number of wins down the stretch. I'm pretty sure Georgia Tech's lost to Stanford. That's a disqualifier. 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 Valkyries. Who you got? What do you think it's going to do on TV?

6:32Yeah, 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 and 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 Caitlin Clark. You don't have the New York Liberty. You don't have the Aces. with, you know, but you do have Angel Reese, who I believe is a draw, regardless of whether you're for or against Angel Reese and the dream. They are a draw. And then you've got the Golden State Vaphyries, which only in their second season, pretty popular team.

7:05Whether they can draw a television audience, that remains to be seen. But overall, I would think network executives are maybe hot and cold headed into those finals. I believe there's going to be a drop for the audience coming off of what the numbers were last year. You go from ESPN to USA. 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 simulcast is on CNBC. Games five, six, and seven, those could again be on USA and CNBC.

7:40I'm not sure even if it goes seven games. This is the second year the WNBA has had that seven-game format. I'm not sure it's going to deliver what ESPN and ABC were able to do in 2025. five. Probably not, but I think that USA and NBC still have to be feeling okay heading into these finals. Austin, 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.

8:15I think that topped out around 15 million viewers. With some of these remaining markets outside of L.A., it's going to be hard for Fox to top some of those numbers from last year. I mean, they've 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 Diamondbacks, and that game was a five-game series again, only north of 9 million viewers.

8:45Fox really hoping the Dodgers pick it up and win 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, 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 classic. Yeah. And having the Guardians there wouldn't hurt, right? Trying to break that curse, but I don't know how many casual sports fans are really paying attention to the Guardians trying to break a streak.

9:19I don't know. We'll see. We'll see how the World Series fared in a couple weeks on Fox. Austin, for this week's interview, you spoke with John Kozner at Dessert. 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 e-readers from two executives with decades of experience in this space. I'm talking about Ed Desser and John Kosner. Their new book is 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.

9:59Gentlemen, welcome into the SBJ Sports Media Podcast. Great to be here. Thank you, Austin. Let's get into it. You've described this as neither a traditional textbook nor some sort of complete history of sports media, anything like that. So I got to 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, to understand it better. And, and so we, we wrote it really with, uh, with younger people in mind, those in colleges and universities that are studying sports management and sports business.

10:43So 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 the 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.

11:28And Ed and I, for better and 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, Bruno Arlov, David Hill, Pete Rozelle, and of course, David Stern. I want to ask you both specifically about David Stern. You 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 its, what became, you know, constant growth through the 80s and 90s to become what it has today.

12:25And so I appreciate that he saw something in me that said to him, hey, this guy can really help. And, you know, in retrospect, it was quite an honor and something that has, you know, truly transformed my life and career. What I found remarkable with David, and I had the good fortune to work with him twice. Ed worked with Dave for like 23 years and actually had worked with David when he was at the LA Lakers prior to coming to the NBA. I worked with David twice, once during the Dream Team era when I was in charge of U.S. 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.

13:16Many of these have been written up in the SBJ, like Whoop 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 primetime sport. And many people contributed to that, but it never would have happened without David's sort of ferocious energy and intellect. Working with him was unlike anything I think either of us experienced the rest of our careers. And you go over this next question a little bit in the book, but I want to go and talk about some of, what are the prospects for some of these big, even legacy media companies out there, but also, you know, there's streamers like Amazon that have gotten into sports.

14:13What is going to be their future in terms of playing a larger role in sports? Like, who's going to emerge from all this? Who's going to have maybe an ominous future? Ed, I want to start with you on that. We believe that, you know, 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. Um, YouTube hasn't been a big player yet in, in purchasing sports rights, but with, as the dominant platform in viewing, it has the potential of being a huge player in the business going down the line.

15:00We 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, you know, we don't see them going away. You know, we believe that one of the first things that that the Warner Brothers Paramount merger will will hasten, you know, David Burson is going to 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.

15:51But 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 going to do sports and they weren't going to do advertising, now they're doing both. We expect them, along with Amazon and YouTube, to become bigger players.

16:36The other thing we would throw out is that, and this was a big point David 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, changed broadcast television. We foresee in the next decade AI LLMs potentially being rights holders. We foresee companies like Walmart not necessarily allowing Amazon to have sports rights to themselves. So it's going to 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 going to get commoditized, and put it into sports.

17:32I got to say, the NBA on NBC has a different ring than the NBA on Walmart or the NBA on OpenAI. 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 want to stick with you on this next one. We've talked about YouTube and I agree with Netflix. I believe they're going to be players.

18:09But does Apple ever really go for it? We've seen what they've done with MLS. They're already getting out of that deal. They have F1. I don't believe any of the numbers that they kind of put out there publicly. So what is their future? Are they going to 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.

18:49That 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 going to become a bigger player in sports rights anytime soon. Possible, but not clear. I would just add, you know, Eddie Q, a big friend of John's, 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.

19:40And 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 want to differentiate themselves, they're going to need to expand their menu. I mean, the numbers bear that out. If you look at those Nielsen Gage numbers every month, Apple TV's not even on there. And I agree. Like, I watch 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 going to make any sort of strive in adding subscribers, they're either going to have to buy another streaming service or they're going to have to get deeper into one of these bigger sports properties.

20:18Correct. It would seem logical. And of course, you know, they have the ability to buy most anything, you know, assuming they can get it 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 what constitutes and makes a tier one sports property, like the NFL, for instance, versus the others.

21:05And 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 are getting squeezed. And with evidence like the NFL Reopener, 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 Burson 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.

22:05Those are big. I mean, 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 by the 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. John, I'll stick with you. 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.

22:52So personalization is one, higher quality video feeds. I was always super interested in this concept of sub-second latency, you know, just basically eliminating latency so that you could watch broadcast live live. That's what betting houses do today. We see higher quality presentations, the expansion of businesses like Cosm and The Sphere. In general, these things we believe are going to 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 Knicks playoff run and then the World Cup, the ability to aggregate things.

23:41So this concept of one feed of a big event is probably going to be supplanted by a variety of different feeds of sports, which we also think are going to 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, you know, 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.

24:25So that's an issue, but I believe it's a solvable issue. And if you've had, you know, your friends, you know, basically text you about something that happened in a game before you're able to see it yourself, that spoiler service is something that fans would love to get out from under. Yeah, back before Janet Jackson had her famous wardrobe malfunction, you know, 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, you know, 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.

25:16And all that is technically possible. It's just a question of how much bandwidth you have available and if you provision for that. All right, gentlemen, I'll get you out of here on this. And 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? And what do we tell younger people in terms of growth areas, in terms of sports business jobs? Where should they be looking?

25:49Well, our counsel is that the place the majority of jobs are in sports and the perfect launching pad happens to be in sales, sale of tickets, sale of 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, you know, I don't want to be a salesman. I want to, you know, I want to be the assistant general manager.

26:41And you're not going to get there just out of school. So, you know, 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. And 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.

27:33And 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. Oh, there's the plug we were looking for. But it's very sincere because, you know, that's something that didn't exist when we got into the business.

28:22So 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. We appreciate the love as always. The new book is called We're Live Inside the Big Business of Sports Media. Ed Desser, John Kozner, thank you so much for the time on this pod and for your continued contributions to SBJ. Over 50 columns today. Best of luck with the launch of the book. Thanks, Austin. Thank you, Austin. Well, a fascinating conversation there with two sports media legends. We really appreciate Ed and John for stopping by.

29:00Before we wrap up, we've 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 going to go with Mike Tomlin on Football Night in America. been a big fan of his since joining that crew this season. He's very quick, very witty. Again, he's a recent coach, so he's still kind of in the thick of things. We were talking in the office earlier this week about that debacle between your Giants and the Commanders at the end of that game. I loved how Tomlin just said he was disgusted by it, and he said he threw open his mouth a little bit.

29:34There was an old coach who said that. I forget who it was, but I love hearing Tomlin 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 NFC East by what we saw there at the end of that game. But I love Tom was 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 teach Cam Scadaboo how to secure that ball. I know Tiki had some problems, and then he changed the way he held the ball there for a while. He needs to learn some of that.

30:06Can't humble that ball there. Mine was not necessarily something that happened, but news about something that is going to happen. And mine went for the week and goes to ESPN with these added telecasts they've announced for the Super Bowl. I'm talking about on ESPNU, you're going to have Field Pass with Pat McAfee. That has proven to be a really strong altcast for ESPN, especially around the CFP, some of the biggest numbers that they've had for altcasts. You're already going to have the Manning cast on ESPN2. That was already announced. Now you get McAfee involved. I also like how they're getting NFL Network involved.

30:38That could be maybe a couple million more viewers. That's going to have a next-gen stats approach, another alt-cast, but another way to watch the game. You add that to what we talked about last week with Disney +, 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. A lot of interesting alt-casts. 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 would 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.

31:13Seems like we'll have no shortage of ways to watch the Super Bowl in February of next year. But 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, for sure. And if you're Fox and NBC or CBS, you don't necessarily have those options. But Disney and ESPN taking advantage of everything in the arsenal.

31:46Yep. Can't wait to see it in February. Well, that does it for this week's SBJ Sports Media Podcast. Thanks again to our guests, Ed Desser and John Kosner. As always, thank you to our production team of Chris Mason, Reginald Walker, and A.C. Wyatt. And finally, thank you for listening. Make sure to like and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. For Josh Carpenter, I'm Austin Karp. Make good choices out there, and we will talk to you all again next week.