An Ex Cable Cowboy on the Future of Sports

22:46David Levy:Did you, in your time at Turner, what was the closest that you felt that you were going to get an NFL deal?

22:56John:you know we had the nfl let's just make sure everybody knows you know ted turner launched tnt with a sunday night nine game nfl package um and we split it with espn so um and we had it i believe for six years um and uh when i went to run international for turner we ended up not renewing that deal when i came back i wanted to renew that deal every year i tried to figure out a way to get into and getting back into the nfl um the closest we came was when they decided to um sell a thursday night package not the first year that they went i think it was almost like almost every two years they they did two-year deals around thursday nights if i remember i could be wrong um but it was the second time they went back into the marketplace.

23:49John:And at that point, I think they were just selling one-year deals. And I offered to do a seven-year deal. And my explanation was I couldn't do a one-year deal because how would I hire talent, production, and all the things that you need to support an NFL package and tell everybody I only could sign you for one year? So the only way I could do it was do a seven-year deal. So, you know, I spoke with Roger. We spoke with Robert Kraft, a few other of the owners. I think they thought our production capability was great, but they just did not want to provide us with a seven-year deal. So, unfortunately, we never could figure out a way to bring the NFL back to Turner.

24:30John:But I'm very close with Roger, you know, very close with Robert, but we just couldn't get a deal done.

24:38David Levy:That is, by the way, that's your career. Like you went to international. They lost the NFL. If you had stayed there, David, if you didn't go to international, Turner would still have the NFL right now probably. I'm not saying that.

24:50John:I'm not saying that, but that's what happened.

24:52David Levy:No, no, I'm saying it. It's the same thing about the NBA. If you're still a Turner, there's no way that we would still be watching inside on NBA. Yeah. David, the NFL is going to take billions of dollars out of the market. I've been talking about the sky is falling like chicken little. Like, you know, this is going to be really harmful for the middle class type of, I think, smaller properties are going to be fine. Bigger properties are going to be fine. It's a middle class that's going to get hurt on this. Other people have said to me that the networks still have plenty of money to spend and that I'm being too reactive.

25:36David Levy:How do you see this all parsing out?

25:44John:It's a great question. You know, we don't control the marketplace. The marketplace controls itself, right? So I would say that the tier one sports and I would say NFL, NBA, Major League Baseball, even NHL are going to find homes. People are going to, they have built in fan bases. They'll find homes, they'll find distribution platforms, and they'll be relatively happy with their licensing deals. Then you get down to the second tier and that's where they're going to find and readjust of where their platforms are. The good news is that there are a lot of platforms that need content you just may not be on nbc anymore or fox you may end up being on youtube or on paramount plus or on peacock or on uh roku or on tubi or on pluto you know i mean there's just going to be um different platforms in different ways for people to find your content and to be paid for it.

27:01John:And so, you know, these second tiers are going to have to rethink where the opportunities are, what platforms are needed, and where they're going to be able to get the biggest bang for their buck. But, you know, sports to me, and always has been, is the last, you know, appointment viewing on television. It's the best drama on television. I think sports betting is going to continue to grow. The one area that we haven't really spoke about, which I think a lot of opportunity is for women's sports. Women's sports is priced relatively cheap compared to some of the other sports. And that's only because of the infancy of where they are.

27:43John:But it's a great ROI business. Ratings are growing. Fan bases are growing. Brands are shifting dollars to it. So there's even going to be more sports content because women's sports now are growing and leagues are growing like an unrivaled or like professional hockey women's, you know, professional women's hockey league. The NWSL, volleyball, softball. These are growing sports with growing fan bases that are going to look for distribution platforms and licensing fees. So I still believe there's a big future for sports. And the most important thing is you can spend a lot of money developing a scripted drama, but you have no idea whether it's going to be successful or not.

28:33John:You don't know what the fan base is. You don't know whether they're going to tune in. You have no idea. You kind of know the fan bases and what ratings are going to do by sport. I mean, John, you could pretty much tell every sport what the rating is going to be within 10 to 15 percent, depending on the teams and who's playing and who's winning at the time. And that's that's comforting. And if I'm if I'm a programming head, I am programming sports on my channel, no matter what channel I'm running.

29:05David Levy:David I'm worried having you on here people are going to know that we talk a lot because that's that's exactly what I almost word for word that's what I I say out there it's like you know what the NBA regular season game is going to do in Los Angeles on a national basis within a couple thousand viewers I think pretty much right you are so so if you're going to decide

29:29John:whether I'm going to do a billion dollars in new content around entertainment or a billion dollars in sports, you're probably more likely to understand what that billion dollars return is going to be in sports than you are going to be in entertainment. And let me say, too,

29:45David Levy:you've been talking about this for as long as I've known you. So this has been your mantra. And it was through the rise of cable. It was through the rise of streaming. It hasn't really changed it all. In fact, one of my first big story when I was with Sports Business Journal, they hired me in June of 2006. And I think in August, maybe September, you announced what I thought was just a crazy deal. Major League Baseball is going to put its championship series on cable television. I couldn't possibly conceive that. And as it turns out, I was the perfect person to write that for sbj because i had come from the cable trades you know so i i i came in on that earlier early i well i didn't think you were crazy i thought mlb was crazy uh earlier in this pod though you talked about the march madness as being sort of the defining uh uh but mark you couldn't have done march madness if you hadn't done that baseball deal first yeah that's true um

30:52John:But the reason why I thought March Madness was more of, I mean, baseball was certainly a landmark deal, getting postseason baseball on cable, which was.

31:01David Levy:Yeah, not just postseason, the championship series. You had to subscribe to cable.

31:06John:We did. Yeah, we did. We did. Everybody thought we were crazy and spent too much, but it turned out it was the right thing for us and the right thing for baseball at the time. But the reason why March Madness, I think, was was probably more of a landmark deal is that in the history of cable, at least for Turner, I would say, history of Turner and maybe even cable. No one had actually crowned a champion. Right. You didn't get the you didn't get the Super Bowl on cable. You didn't get the finals of the NBA on cable. I remember I asked Adam and David Stern so many times, how can I get the finals?

31:44John:And they just refused to let the finals go off broadcast. World Series was not on cable. So to be able to crown a national champion on Turner, which we did in 2000, I believe it was 16 or maybe 14. I forgot. 14 or 16, we crowned a champion. And maybe it was 14. And that was big. And the other part about it was, you know, taking two different cultures, media cultures, CBS and Turner, which were very different cultures, how we produce studio shows, our talent all across the board and be able to share that and work with Sean and David to make that work and and and have it work to the point where we shared everything.

32:35John:We shared producers. We shared talent. We shared sales organizations. We shared trucks, everything. And they were union and we were non-union and working through all of that. The most important thing we did is we focused on the consumer. And every time we came into an argument, rather than saying what was better for Turner, what was better for CBS, we said, what's better for the consumer? And let's do it for the consumer. And that's how we had Jim Nance say, leave CBS and go to TNT. There's a better game on TNT or vice versa was because everything was shared. And and it really was a landmark deal.

33:13John:And we alternated the finals and the semifinals every other year. So, you know, it was it's pretty special. And I remember when we crowned that champion and it was an incredible Villanova shot over North Carolina to win that game. It was a very big moment in Turner Broadcasting history. And that's why I call it a landmark deal. Chris Jenkins at Gonzaga High School.

33:38David Levy:Greg, got to give Gonzaga a little shout out here, David, of course. there's all this talk about expanding the field of the of march madness if you were still in your position overseeing turner broadcasting is that something that you would support but do you think it's it's good having just an exclusive group of teams as much as 68 is exclusive or do you think that the march madness is so great let's put 92 teams there are 96 teams in there. It doesn't matter.

34:09John:What people may not know, we may be breaking a little news, but I think some people knew. Originally, when we were closing that deal in 2010, we were closing for 96 teams. And a week before we were signing contracts, we've got a call from Greg Shaheen that the men's basketball board turned down 96. And now they only wanted 68. They were going to do the play in games, but not bring it. So we literally shook hands on 96 and then reverted back to 68. So we were willing to do 96 back in 2010. Why wouldn't we do it now? What I'm more concerned about and what's very different when we were negotiating those deals is NIL and what NIL is doing.

35:01John:and are there going to be a situation where Xavier and the Butlers of the world are not going to be able to play in this tournament at some point? Or will they get boxed out because of the revenue streams? Will the SEC and the Big Ten not play in this tournament and form their own tournament? I don't know. These are all questions. I'm more concerned about I think this is unique and needs to stay. I think what makes this event so great is the Cinderella stories and the ability for some of these teams. And it's a lot of money, by the way. The way the money gets distributed to the Butlers and the Xaviers and the Albany's of the world and the Loyola's of the world.

35:48John:If they make it to the Sweet 16, there's a lot of money that goes to those conferences and those schools that are far more dominant than what it means to Duke or to Kansas or to Ohio State. You know, the dollar percentage of what it means to their overall funds is enormous. And I'd hate to see that go away.

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37:50David Levy:David, I want to go into some of the work that you're doing at Horizon. Of course, you've mentioned Unrivaled several times. You did a unique deal with Together, a women's sports distribution company as well. Earlier in this pod, you talked about women's sports and the potential for growth of women's sports. The ROI isn't nearly where it should be, which is what people in your position have been telling me for at least five years, maybe 10. And we're still, We're in 2026, and we're still sort of talking about the promise of women's sports. In your mind, is there a marker where that segment is going to be here?

38:38David Levy:It's no longer going to be a promise. It's actually going to be a bona fide business that people are going to continue to invest in, or are we there already?

38:51John:Great question. We're here. I mean, it's here. It's happening. The growth of women's sports from revenue perspective is like a hockey stick, from viewership like a hockey stick, from a social perspective like a hockey stick. I mean, all the metrics are pointing up. When Chris Weil, my partner at HSNE, and I formulated this three years ago, one of our key focal points was women's sports. We thought there was a real true opportunity and we put our money where our mouth is. We we invested in the Women's Champions Classic, which runs on Fox, our partners at Fox. And that's taking the biggest brand names in women's college basketball and putting them in an early season games that count at the Barclays Center live on Fox Broadcasting in primetime.

39:44John:This past year we had Connecticut, Iowa, Louisville, and Tennessee. We're making an announcement very soon, tomorrow, of who the new teams are going to be. For our third installment, Unrivaled, you mentioned and I mentioned a few times, we're also involved in World Sevens, a seven-on-seven women's soccer tournament that happens two to three times a year. We're involved, as you just mentioned as well, with our friends and partners at Together. We formulated a new media podcasting live event content company called Nine to Five, nine being associated with Title IX. So we are very focused and investing our time, effort and money around women's sports because we think it's an incredible growth opportunity and an incredible ROI opportunity.

40:34John:And it's not just me. You heard ESPN is now launching Sunday night, women's night. You see Ion focusing on women's sports. You hear that Versant is looking at women's content. It's affordable and brands are shifting money towards it. If you can do similar ratings in women's sports than you can in men's sports, that's a pretty good ROI. And brands are starting to recognize it. And so you see brand shifting dollars. You see rating points shifting over. And that's all going to be positive for the growth. so you know I don't see it stopping I think this is a huge you know social media is you know I say to every company that comes to me every launching of new you know new leagues new teams anything around it I say to them do you have a social strategy because if you don't you shouldn't be launching you know you every league needs to have a social strategy needs to get into the creative community, the influencer community, because people just don't watch it on TV anymore or on their phones.

41:44John:They live and breathe it on social platforms 24 hours, seven days a week.

41:50David Levy:You go in to a network executive's office selling Unrivaled. Take me through that. What's that like and how is that different from selling other properties that you have?

42:05John:it's a great question so what excited me about unrivaled was it was solving white space there was there was a problem and there was white space and that was the fact that a the wmba players were not at the time being paid appropriately and they had to go overseas in order to continue to make more money and to have new opportunities but in going overseas they had to leave their families their friends, their significant others, as well as going into foreign countries that they may not speak the language. And if they had any brand relationships with a state farm or, you know, or some other brand, AT &T, you name it, the brand relationship was separated because they were overseas playing in an overseas market.

42:53John:So what unrivaled was it was solving a problem and and solving some white space that was needed. Don't go overseas. Stay in the United States. Let us pay you similar or more dollars. Let me also give you equity in this league and be able to perform and train for your WNBA season. But stay in the United States, work with your brand, stay with your family, and own a piece of equity in the league. So, you know, what made Unrival successful, and I think it's very important when you think about this for emerging properties and emerging brands and emerging leagues, is Arrival had the names on the back of the jerseys, right?

43:39John:You didn't have – these weren't new women basketball players. These were the best of the best of the WNBA, right? So you were getting the best players, the best names, and putting those names on the back of the jersey. The second thing is the quality of the product on the floor. You know, I don't want to talk about other emerging leads, but if you look at sometimes the quality of the product and the names on the back of the jerseys are not either recognizable or the product's not good. Unrivaled has a great product on the floor, has great names on the back of the jersey, and had a tremendous social media strategy.

44:19Okay.

44:20John:And the women who play in Unrivaled have followers themselves. And, of course, the women have equity in the league. So the women and the athletes were posting as well as Unrivaled posting. So it was giving it broad reach and broad impressions, as well as having it self-contained on TNT and true TV. So everybody knows where to find those games. And I think they've built an incredible product and an incredible league in a short amount of time. Remember, Unrivaled is only two years old.

44:52David Levy:Well, the thing I love talking about you is that this is how our conversations go. Like we now have about a minute left in this conversation. And I want to I just I want to level one last question to you, because you oversee all these rights. If there was so you have to limit your answer to like one sentence. The next big thing, the next that what is a a a sport that's out there that you think is primed to take off? and I know you own pickleball rights. Please don't say pickleball, David.

45:29John:Well, at least I could say I'm having a pickleball event April 15th on ESPN. I'm having Annalie Waters, the number one pickleball player in the world, and Jeannie Pichard play Agassi and Blake in a million-dollar winner-take-all. So I think that's going to be pretty exciting. But I'm not going to say pickleball for you. What I'm going to say is I believe volleyball, women's volleyball has a huge growth opportunity and you know listen everything's relative you know i always tell every new emerging league when they come and ask me i say before i take on a project i say define success for me give me define success if you think you're going to get nfl uh you know um licensing fees we're not going to work together right so please define success and And if you define success in the right way for women's volleyball, I think it's got a very big opportunity to grow.

46:22David Levy:David, that was the exact answer Steve Bornstein gave to that question. So you're in good company there. Hey, always great to see you, my friend. Thank you very much for stopping by. And we'll talk soon.

46:33John:All right, John. Thank you. And congrats on everything you're doing.

46:39David Levy:It's great to talk to David Levy. The way he views the market is similar to the way he viewed the market in the early 1990s. It's the way he viewed the market in the 2000s. It's the way he viewed the market, views the market today. The power of sports, the power of live sports is something that anybody that's getting involved with media is going to try to profit on. So I really want to thank David Levy for joining the pod this week. It's always great to talk to him. More importantly, though, I want to thank you for listening to The Varsity, an Odyssey podcast in partnership with Puck. I also want to thank the executive editors from Puck, Gobby Grossman, Ben Landy, John Kelly, the great team from Odyssey, Bob Tabador, Patrick Antonetti.

47:23David Levy:And of course, our partners at Nessun, Greg Poth and Mark Merlaca. If you like this podcast, make sure to sign up for my newsletter. It's also called The Varsity. Head over to puck.news and use the code word The Varsity, all one word, for a 20 % discount. I will see you on Sunday.

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