What to watch for with a new NFL season; Getting closer to a 24-team CFP; ESPN Unlimited gets integrated into YouTube TV

0:00Coming up on the pod, week one, the NFL is here, the latest on expansion around the college football playoff. And Atlanta Falcons president and CEO Greg Beadles joins the show.

0:17Welcome in to the SBJ Sports Media Podcast. I'm Austin Karp. And I'm Josh Carpenter. Austin, we are in week two of the college football season. We've been talking about this matchup between Tennessee, between Georgia Tech for weeks, if not months, if not years at this point. The Vols and Faison, Brandon, Josh Heupel walking into Bobby Dodd Stadium. I think nearly a two-touchdown favorite on Saturday night on ESPN. You are a two-touchdown favorite, and that's expected coming off week one for us. We were at home. We were favorites. We dropped that game against Deion and Ralphie. We looked pretty sloppy.

0:51It looked like it was still preseason or camp for us. But, Josh, I'm still confident I'm going to put lunch on the line. The finest of barbecue establishments here in Charlotte, whatever lunch you would want at one of those places. That's my bet. You willing to take that? I don't know. I was thinking if Tennessee wins or even just covers the spread, you should be doing your best Dolly Parton, Osborne Brothers, Rocky Top rendition to open the show next week. That's what I would put on the line. And I'll sing whatever you want me to sing. Oddly enough, due to a girlfriend in college, I do know the words to Rocky Top because I lost the bet to her one time and she was from Knoxville.

1:27So I do already know the words to Rocky Top. Ain't no smoggy smoke up there. Well, let me think about all that. Let's get to some more college football. Plenty to talk about after week one. Let's get into the latest with college football. Yeah, I mean, really, but even ahead of week one, Austin, let's talk about kind of the big topic around the sport right now. And that's college football playoff expansion. And there's talk of expansion to 24 teams. the leaders of the college football playoff have now kind of triggered a 30-day negotiating window with ESPN to look at the potential of this. What are we looking at in the future?

2:01Well, first, I think this is the closest that we've gotten to the inevitability of a 2014 college football playoff. We've been talking about it all offseason. This isn't anything new, but it was the Big Ten was the only one originally that was really pushing for that 2014 playoff. Then you saw kind of the ACC and the Big 12 want to get on board because they saw more opportunities for their schools in that sort of effort. But why do we need to get to 24? Why is there now this broader effort? The CFP itself, if it's going to really raise the value from a media rights perspective of its property, it needs to get to 24.

2:33Just getting to 16 or that 20 model that ESPN and others may have been proposing where you have some playing games, that wasn't going to do it. You want to bring in multiple bidders, multiple networks for a broader college football playoffs. That's how these schools, these conferences, the CFP itself is going to raise its media value. So what does that mean? Yeah, ESPN has this exclusive negotiating window. You have to figure ESPN is going to be part of whatever solution a 2014 playoff looks like. But this now creates an avenue for Fox Sports. They've always wanted to find a path into a college football playoff scenario.

3:06ESPN had only been sub-licensing those games to TNT. They're going to want to bid for these games. But it's not just that. There have been various reports out there during this offseason that maybe it's a Netflix or an Amazon or some other network that wants to maybe also be involved because this is a very lucrative property. An expanded football playoff, we talk all the time about how college football has separated itself into the second best sport. By the NFL. You have that expanded playoff, but there are so many tentacles to this, Josh, in terms of what it's going to do to the complete season.

3:36We already knew they were going to be starting of week zero. Now you're stopping around after the games on Thanksgiving. That's going to have a lot of impact on what happens to those conference championship games. What is going to happen to Army Navy? Does that game even have any implication on the regular season or the playoffs anymore? Or is it just sort of like exhibitions? Yeah, to me, this expansion is something that we should really be careful about. I know everyone wants more games and all that, but to me, it will continue to water down the product. To me, you already have a watered down playoff, but the number we're at But now, a lot of these first-round games are pretty formally contested games, to be frank.

4:12It was a pretty bad slated game. I know I'm talking about the Georgia Tech-Colorado game, but at least that was a close game. You look at the AP Top 25, everything except for that Michigan game, or maybe one other, they're blowouts. And you're speaking about week one in college football. I'm speaking more specifically about week one of the first round of the playoffs. This past season, they were not good. To me, the entire season is being watered down as a result of this. And so I just think that we really have to be careful about what we're looking at. Let's talk about access for a second. Let's look at some of the pro sports that have expanded playoffs.

4:42A lot of those teams have closer to almost like 35, 40 plus percent of their teams making the playoffs. You look at FBS and the access to the playoff system right now, it's less than 10 percent of the teams that have access. With NIL, and NIL has really changed this conversation. all these major schools like a texas tech or it's down the line investing in those rosters 50 million plus 40 million plus whatever it's going to be if you're going to invest in that and you're a coach and you're getting paid all this money and you don't want to be firing your coaches all the time because you're investing all this money in the rosters you want access to the postseason you don't want one loss or two losses over the course of the season to knock you out of that conversation in a limited playoff so access is incredibly important as teams continue to invest in their rosters.

5:27Certainly important. And Austin, speaking of investing in rosters, we've got week one of the NFL upon us. I mean, there's a ton of things we could talk about from a media perspective. We've got the debut of Mike Tomlin with NBC. Again, that came to being played Wednesday night before we record this. But Mike Tomlin making his debut. We've got Netflix getting in the game more so with that Australia game. There you've got Noah Eagle on the call. You've got Luke Keekly, someone who's a really quickly rising analyst in the game who could be among the top in the game in the next few years here. Red Zone's another thing that everyone's going to be watching on Sunday afternoon.

6:03Last year, that ad load was a huge talk. First time they had that level of ad. It was a lot. It was a lot. And so everyone's going to be watching, like, what does that ad load look like? Last year, sort of toward the end of the year, Red Zone was running about eight of those 15-second double-box ads throughout the broadcast. So, like, what does that ad load look like going into this season? Well, we're recording this on Wednesday before that NBC kickoff game on a Wednesday night. This isn't the first time they've had a kickoff game on Wednesday night, by the way, either 2008 or 2012. Obama was giving his delivery at the Democratic National Convention, and they moved that game was a Giants opener to a Wednesday night.

6:38So it's not unprecedented. But we're also going to have that Thursday night game, first NFL game ever in Australia, and the first week one game that Netflix has had. It's the first NFL game they've had outside of a Christmas day. what does that experiment look like? What does the broadcast look like? NBC also producing this one. Let's also remember, NBC has really made some significant dollars by being a mercenary in terms of production here. They're producing this Netflix game for the last few years, since Amazon Prime took over Thursday Night Football. They have done that, but this is the last season of that.

7:11Next season, Amazon's going to be doing their own production. We've seen some of the efforts they built out there in Culver City in California around the NBA. They're going to be taking most of that in-house because they are really, really invested in sports. Does Netflix do that down the line? Five games a season, probably not enough to invest in your own production facilities around sports just yet. But if they get a season package down the line for any sport, you might see them try to take that prime video approach and really invest in their own infrastructure there on the production side. So pay attention to how deep Netflix gets into the sports side.

7:41But yeah, I like Luke Keekly. I think he's done a decent job on the shows that I've seen him do. How is he doing the NFL side for Netflix? He's going to be on one of those CBS boots during the NFL season. He's done some college work. He's really developing as an analyst. He was actually runner up to Russell Wilson for that spot on the NFL today. So I think he is and continues to be a rising star. Pay attention to Luke Keekly as an analyst. Beyond that, this weekend, you got a really big Giants-Cowboys game. That's in the Sunday night window. Monday night football. No doubleheader. Traditionally, ESPN had a lot of those week one doubleheaders.

8:15They're not doing any this season. For the last couple of seasons, you saw some of those overlap games. They tried. Those are done. That was part of that NFL Network sale. They got rid of that. We're just doing one game, one week, one game. I think fans are going to like that. Broncos Chiefs in that game. And it makes it more an event. Like Monday Night Football is that game, that one event. Totally agree. I'm paying attention to that development. And two final things that I'm paying attention to, Josh, NBC. switching over to using Nielsen measurement for those Sunday night football games this season, all NFL season.

8:46It's going to be using that except for that lone Peacock game. Why is that a big deal? 10 years ago when they started using just Adobe Analytics internal data for their streaming, it wasn't only 1 % or 2 % of their audience, but as streaming has grown and more people have adopted it, last season streaming accounted for 11 % of the Sunday night football audience. Nielsen is going to now be verifying that. A lot of advertisers really wanted to see NBC use that. I like that they're really making this move. And finally, we don't have any announcement on what the future of NFL media rights are going to look like.

9:13So much talk in the off-season is about, is CBS going to now go early because they had that change of ownership? Well, they have this whole thing going on, trying to acquire Warner Brothers Discovery. That's not happening. Fox and Lachlan Murdoch came out and said, well, we're not going to go early. We're going to wait and see. Nobody has really done that yet. I don't think we get a deal done, no deals, renewed or anything like that during this NFL season. That all is going to carry over into 2027 and beyond. Austin, speaking of the NFL, Arthur Blank and many of his top executives flew up to Charlotte this week, spent some time with us at the Sports Business Journal headquarters here.

9:47And one of those executives is Greg Beatles, who you caught up with this week on the pod. We have with us Greg Beatles, president and CEO of the Atlanta Falcons. Greg, appreciate you taking the time to talk. Thank you, Austin. All right. We're in full swing. NFL season finally here. We've only been talking about it, well, 364 days or so, 365, whatever you want to call it. But I got to ask you, you're in a new role this season. How have your roles and responsibilities changed? It is good to be back to football. It seems like the offseason takes forever and then all of a sudden whams just right here.

10:16So we're excited to be in game week one. So this year I added the CEO role. I've been the president for the last few years and with organization for quite a while before that. So in the new role, I'm really responsible for being sure that we tie together football, business and community. make sure that all aspects of our business are aligned. And when we do that, it's when we have the best results. Well, I guess one of the biggest things that you have had to do is add a new president of football. Now you grab some random guy off the CBS set. How is Matt Ryan settling into the new role? Yeah, it's been wonderful.

10:53It hasn't been a big change in the offseason. So creating that role along with Arthur and deciding that's what we needed for a higher level of vision, direction, accountability has been really good. And then, of course, Matt is just a natural fit. We've known him since he's 23 years old, so we can't say that we didn't know what we were getting in a lot of ways. But he hasn't been in a role like this. And just to watch him step into it and maybe a little cautiously at first just to be sure he was thinking about things the right way. And then just for his natural instincts to take over as a leader of people and just, you know, his emotional intelligence, his IQ, everything, his experience about the game has been great to watch.

11:39Weeks three, four, and five. You guys have three consecutive weeks of primetime games this season. We do. Is that something that you went to the NFL with or was it something that the NFL was like, hey, are you comfortable with doing that? Neither. We get a little bit of control in the preseason on who we play and when it is. But the regular season, we get it a little bit earlier than you guys do, but we're really there just waiting to see. We, of course, know who we're going to be playing, but when is really up to the league. And as you know, there's so many different permutations that go into that that Mike North and others at the NFL do.

12:14But we're surprised by how it all lays out just like everyone else. You are also playing a game in Madrid this season, the second NFL game ever in Spain. How do you plan to take advantage of that game in that market? We're really excited about Madrid. We played in Berlin last year. We had a great experience. One of the things is that the league and all the teams now that we have repetitions on playing these games international, it really has become just like a slightly longer road game. And so very smooth from that standpoint. But just to help grow the game, both for us, grow fans. And so we'll do a flag clinic.

12:53We're one of the top clubs in the league on promoting flag football. We'll do that for the youth in Madrid. And just to keep expanding, you know, across the globe. We're super excited about being there and playing well and have a big global audience in one of the greatest sports cities in the world. So NFL media writes a lot of talk about the future of that. Do you hear from fans or do you have any opinions on like, are there too many packages for the NFL? And it's not just an NFL issue. You see, we've had we've heard these sorts of responses from fans around the NBA or NASCAR. But the NFL, obviously, there are so many.

13:28It feels like every media company, every major media company has some sort of affiliation with the NFL. Does that create any issues for fans? I think that it can. It all depends on the level of fandom. So if we're here in Charlotte or in Atlanta, if I'm a local fan, I can see all of my team's games, you know, on my local partner. And that's a great aspect of what we have. Now, if I'm the super fan and I want to see every single game, then there are multiple packages that you're going to have to go out and get. But I think making those options available, even if you have to add them on and buy them, if it could all be in one place, that would be fantastic.

14:06But as we've all seen, the television landscape is so fractured just overall. And so to try to meet the fans where they are on all these different platforms that are just growing like crazy. The number of people that are on Netflix now and YouTube, YouTube TV. 90 million U.S. homes. This is no slouch. That's right. So a lot of it is us just trying to meet the fan where they are. And right now they're in a lot of different places. Falcons have also done a uniform redesign this season in conjunction with Nike. What's been some of the early fan response to those changes? I think the one overwhelming response is the excitement about the red.

14:44So bringing back the red, which is really at the heart of who we are. You look back in our history. Most of the years the Falcons have played really well, we've been in red. So I think about our great friend Steve Barkowski in red and Matt Ryan in red, Mike Vick in red. So we've had a great history in red, and we're super excited about that. You also sit on the NFL Flag Football Committee. What is the future of that, both in terms of it being a participatory sport at the youth level, high school level, even college level potentially? And also, what can a professional league potentially get to in the United States?

15:17This is one of the things I'm most excited about, Austin, is, you know, four years ago, if we just look at girls flag, for example, in high school, there were 16 ,000 girls playing high school flag football. This year, there's going to be over 100 ,000. So just in that small four to five year period, the way that it's grown has been amazing. And so we think about the accessibility for girls now to the game to go from youth to high school, colleges. We're talking to, you know, Division I schools about adding programs, and they're very interested in that. To have this pathway that goes all the way through the Olympics representing your country is not much better than that.

15:57And then pro. Before 2028, we'll have six women's pro teams and six men's pro teams. So to be able to have that whole pipeline from, you know, age five or six all the way up through being a professional for women is a great thing for us. All right, Greg, we'll get you out of here on this. 2026 NFL season, what is the biggest business concern for the Atlanta Falcons? We need to play well on the field for our fans. And we're in such a great market. We have a great stadium. I think that our fans are ready. Our team is ready. And, you know, we're building. We're building every single year and getting better.

16:35And so just to have a great year and be competitive on the field is what we want to do this year. Well, Greg Beatles, president and CEO of the Atlanta Falcons. Good luck in week one against the Steelers. Appreciate you chatting with SBJ. Appreciate it. Thank you, Austin. All right, Josh, let's get into some other things before we get to who won the weekend. What do you got? Obviously, I cover golf along the sports media for us. And the bankruptcy filing by Live Golf was a big topic this week. Always interesting to kind of dig into these hundreds of pages of notes in these filings that we see. And there was a pretty interesting revenue breakdown around Live Golf.

17:08and within that revenue breakdown, it spoke about Liv's media rights and how much that contributed to their overall revenue. Let's talk about Fox real quick. When Liv signed this deal with Fox Sports ahead of the 2025 season, it was kind of widely reported that they had a modest rights fee. We had heard the same. And so now with this bankruptcy filing, we have an actual detailed look at what that revenue looked like. Within that filing, it said that basically Liv We've had over 20 media partners globally spanning 200 territories globally. And the rights revenue from those deals made up only 5 % of Liv's total revenue, which is a very small percentage.

17:45You could kind of do the math on the rest of their revenue. They were bringing it somewhere north of$200 million last, we're talking 2025 fiscal year in revenue for the full year. So you can do the math, 5 % of that. You're only talking around$10 million across 20 partners. Let's just be honest, this wasn't a media property here in the United States. Whether it was CW, Fox, or otherwise, the media revenue you were talking about was reflected in the audience metrics. But I think if you look at it and just compare that, and again, it is hard to compare Live to the PGA Tour. Live's only been around for five years.

18:17PGA Tour's been around for a long, long time. They have a lot of history to build up. But the PGA Tour, their media deals that kicked in in 2022, they made up between 65 % and 70 % of the tour's overall revenue year to year, around$700 million per year. So, again, it's always interesting to look through these bankruptcy filings and kind of just see some of the ins and outs of these companies and how they operate. And so it was interesting to get a look at that media rights value of Live and what they're kind of dealing with in their current state. Austin, let's quickly pivot away from golf to the ice.

18:49You had a report this week around the PWHL and a new media partner for that league. Well, it's not, I guess, technically a new media rights partner. They got into business with Scripps Sports and ION last season. But this is the first season long media rights deal for the PWHL here in the United States. so you will have a Saturday game each week during the season. Also, it kind of has a unique element there for the two expansion teams in Detroit and Las Vegas. They'll also carry the games locally there, almost like not an RSN deal, but like a local rights deal. We've seen with some teams in markets like that.

19:22So very interesting. There is a rights fee involved, so it's a big win for the PWHL to have that sort of consistency heading into year four. Also on the women's side, ESPN going to be continuing that Women's Sports Sunday initiative. What was that? Over the summer, you saw basically taking the spot of what Sunday Night Baseball had done. Now, the numbers aren't the same. You had around 1.8 million viewers for Sunday Night Baseball last season. These women's sports events weren't really getting to that. Maybe some of the WNBA games, but even a Caitlin Clark game, which was the best of these women's sports Sunday events over the summer, only got around 1.6 million.

19:57But you had a mix of NWSL. You had AUSL. But ESPN saw enough to continue the initiative. They're going to be doing it into the fall. You'll see 10 college volleyball matches as part of this. You'll see some of the golf that you've read about, WTGL. You'll see some women's boxing. So they see an opportunity to really highlight women's sports on Sunday in that window in the fall. What is that going to be going up against? It's going to be going up against Sunday Night Football and NBC, which is a behemoth still in terms of the numbers. But it's a good spot to highlight women's sports, and ESPN is going to continue that initiative.

20:28I like what they're doing there. For sure, Austin. Coming off week one, college football, Austin, I thought, frankly, it was a pretty lackluster week one. We saw, you know, we mentioned it earlier, there weren't many good games on the schedule. Clemson-LSU was kind of the top game. And, of course, that got delayed. And then LSU stomped Clemson. A good Ole Miss-Louisville game on Sunday. You had the intrigue around the Michigan game. But overall, I thought it was a pretty flat week one. And two last things, Josh. Yes, Carlos Alcaraz is out at the U.S. Open. but I don't think ESPN could have asked for anything better heading into the semifinal.

21:00You have a matchup of two Americans, Francis Tiafoe and Ben Sheldon. I think that's going to be an incredible matchup. I might have been watching it. I am the most casual of tennis fans. Big win for ESPN and for the USTA, getting those folks in the semifinal there. And also, if you haven't read it this week, Richard Deitch and I did a cover story on Brad Zager and what he has done along with his staff at Fox Sports in developing talent, specifically with what he's done with Tom Brady, what he has done with Greg Olson, what he's done with others there, bringing on Drew Brees and really rehab there in terms of him as a talent.

21:32But I got to talk to Tom Brady for this, and he was very candid in what Fox Sports has provided for him. There were a lot of questions heading in. He's like, is his heart really in this? He's committed. And it was a 10-year deal. A lot of people, including myself, were like, I don't know if he's going to make it through this deal. And I asked him point blank, Tom, do you see yourself being at Fox Sports at the end of this 10-year deal? And he's like, yes, I'm going to continue to do it. I'm going to continue to strive and be a good teammate. I think he is very committed, and you've seen it on TV in his effort and his development, that he is in this.

22:01He's in it to win it. He's still very competitive, and he's bringing that from the field over to his role with Fox Sports as an announcer. Yep, great story there, Austin. Make sure you go and read that. Austin, let's look back real quickly at week one for college football. Again, kind of a lackluster week from a scheduling standpoint. The LSU-Clemson game didn't come off as many hoped it would. It was delayed by weather. You had just not really many great matchups, to be honest. Well, let's look back. Who won the weekend for you in college football week one? Well, I'm not even going to give it to a viewership win for any top game.

22:33What I'm giving it to is finally getting that ESPN Unlimited, that app integration into YouTube TV. I was able to take it for a spin, and it is great. It's seamless. Seamless. It fits right there. Anything that you would have been getting on ESPN Unlimited, so it's games that were on ESPN Plus, you can put those into a double box or whatever you want to do. That's now part of your college football Saturday watching. It could be a small game, but there are a lot of exclusive games, even SEC. SEC teams are required to have one game on ESPN Plus as part of that package that they did with ESPN a couple of years back.

23:07But I love what they've done. I have access to the 30 for 30 library. Just really cool to finally—it took a while. They got kicked in the teeth a little bit for dragging that out. but seamlessly integrated into the YouTube TV app. That was my win. Josh, what was your win for the weekend? Yeah, mine was Taylor McGregor and it's a sideline reporter for ESPN. We all saw the kind of delay and the power outage between around the Florida State SMU game on Monday night. We're doing who on the weekend. This was on Monday night, but Taylor McGregor, sideline reporter for ESPN, really just nailed everything about that.

23:39Brought a lot of information to the viewers about what was going on, why it was happening. Sometimes you don't get that from sideline reporters these days, and I thought Taylor really delivered there. And then Taylor Tannenbaum was also on the desk kind of hosting. She was great. Navigating that really well on top of what Taylor McGregor was able to pull off. So Taylor McGregor was my winner from, again, a pretty lackluster week one in college football. See, I'm a big ACC guy, so I know Taylor Tannenbaum from all her years at ACC Network, so no surprise that she was a pro there. But I didn't really know much about Taylor McGregor, and she really did step up to the moment and deliver.

24:13You never know when you're going to get called for something like that. And she really, on the fly, was a pro. Sometimes you just got to step up. And she did. Well, that does it for this week's SBJ Sports Media Podcast. A big thanks to our guest, Greg Beatles of the Atlanta Falcons. And as always, thank you 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 podcast wherever you get your pods. For Josh Carpenter, I'm Austin Carp. Make good choices out there. And we will talk to you all again next week.