Any Given Streamday

0:04Congratulations! You made the Varsity podcast. My name is John Aranda and I'm Puck's sports correspondent and the host of this pod. And today, my friend and colleague from Puck, Dylan Byers, joins the pod. And just at the right time, ESPN and Fox 1 have launched direct-to-consumer services. The NFL is playing games on YouTube. And because it's Dylan, our conversation is sure to wade into soccer and tennis at some point. Here's the deal. Dylan is great on the news beat. Puck subscribers will love his private email in the room. And I always like talking shop with him. For those of you expecting Pablo Torre, we had to reschedule that conversation.

0:47And that is now scheduled for Wednesday. And now, before we get to Dylan Byers, today is Sunday. September 7th, the first NFL Sunday of the year, and here's what I'm watching. It's actually what I watched Friday night, or at least tried to. YouTube carried its first NFL game, the Chiefs and the Chargers from Brazil. Everyone is obsessing over viewership numbers, which we should get a sense of early in the week. I'm sure they're going to be huge. Others, they're spending a lot of time on the tech behind the game, whether the picture is lagged or the video is pixelated. And now I'm interested in those stories too, but they've all been played out before.

1:28The NFL has been streaming games for a decade. Yahoo carried a Bills Jaguars game in 2015 that in retrospect seems like it was shot in the 1950s. The fact that a streamer is carrying an NFL game in 2025 really kind of has a dog bites man feel to it. But I am interested in YouTube's approach to the game, which seems so much more focused on influencers and alternate feeds than the main game itself. But I am interested in YouTube's approach to the game, which seems so much more focused on influencers and alternate feeds than the main game production itself. I was surprised to see Roger Goodell act in a promo video before the game with people like Mr.

2:13Beast and Dude Perfect. YouTube promises a younger fan base. All streamers promise younger fan bases. It's interesting for me to see the NFL lean into this too. But it's also worth noting that the NFL is only really dabbling with streaming at this point. I mean, the YouTube game, that's just one game. Netflix, it only has two games. Peacock's going to have an exclusive one too. Amazon, of course, it has a Thursday night. By comparison, two broadcast networks, both Fox and CBS, are going to produce 101 games this season. 101. So despite all the coverage over YouTube's NFL game, the NFL is still committed to a legacy media platform that has turned the sport into the world's biggest.

3:02But it's also important to remember that the NFL does what's best for the NFL, obviously. And it's clearly considering its options for the next media rights deals. And that 18th game that everyone thinks is coming, that's likely to be made up of international games. And YouTube, with its global audience and deep pockets, would seem like an obvious choice to get those games. Okay, now let's get to Dylan Byers. So Dylan, I just mentioned this in the intro. A couple days ago, YouTube had their very first NFL stream that was coming out. You're somebody that just, you've covered the news business. You've been a part of the news business.

3:49You have a great perspective on this. What are some of the things that you, Dylan Byers, are looking for in terms of the results that are coming from this? Does it go beyond like, I mean, everybody's looking for viewership and stuff like that. Like, does it go beyond that? Well, look, it's a really good question. I mean, the NFL strategy, which I think is increasingly an NBA strategy, everyone's strategy, if you are the commissioner of these leagues, is how do you broaden the reach? and in many ways, how do you keep the legacy guys happy and how do you broaden the reach with the new players? How do you make the most money, obviously?

4:35And so I don't know. You can look at ratings and, my God, I mean, I imagine that the ratings are only going to continue to go up and up, but I'm not looking for that so much as just trying to understand the pace at which the pivot away from legacy brands is going to happen, right? And one thing that's really nice is because if you're an institution like the NFL, you want everybody, you want as much reach as possible, and everyone wants and frankly needs to be in bed with you, you are going to be able to find ways to give games, to keep your relationships with ESPN, with CBS, with Fox, with NBC, while also giving games to YouTube and Amazon and Netflix.

5:28I don't foresee that changing. I don't think anyone would question the reach and power that a YouTube has. I don't think anyone would question the longevity of any of these new players, nor do I think I would question how much of an advantage it is for all parties involved. So, you know, the ratings will come and go, and I'm sure we'll see some that will be like incredibly impressive. I forget what the, you know, I think generally like the fever pitch around live sports, whether you're no matter the platform, has never been stronger. I know I forget what the stats were for that Ohio State game, but I think it was something like 16.6 million.

6:12We're not even talking about the NFL there. You know what's so funny about that? Just as a quick digression, I think I'm going to stop reporting viewer numbers because Nielsen keeps changing the way that it counts the numbers and always seems to benefit. All of a sudden, it's a blowout Super Bowl, but hey, it was the biggest audience that we got. And so the comparisons to make about this is the biggest sense, they're just kind of meaningless now. I totally agree. And I also think if you want to look at a number that is telling you about the value that NFL games, college games, any sports right games have.

6:53And the number is the one with the dollar sign in front of it, right? How much are they paying for it? Because YouTube, you know, the other thing that we have to remember, you and I talk about this all the time. These guys are all running on very different business models, and they have very different metrics for success. Like the old adage that, you know, the reason that Amazon went into the streaming business was to basically sell you like paper towel or toilet paper. They are judging success in viewership based on entirely different metrics, right? How many prime memberships can they sell? And what are you really selling if you have a Prime membership.

7:35How are your sports rights, if you are a Netflix, how are your sports rights helping you reduce churn or drive engagement across other aspects of the app? So there are all these sort of considerations that I think, to your point, render these already fuzzy viewership metrics. I don't want to say irrelevant. I think it would be a problem if those numbers started to go down significantly. But I just, I think you and I both know the nature of live sports and the, and the interest in live sports right now and how much that is the sort of coin of the realm in this business, whether you're talking about legacy or streaming.

8:12And, and, uh, I don't think anyone's too worried about it. I have a question for you. Cause like one of the themes that I've noticed and on, on your great private email is, um, the democratization of news. So, you know, you, uh, you no longer have Walter Cronkite sitting there delivering a message to, to the entire country. You, you, it's going out everywhere. And so one of the things that we've seen with that is, you know, you no longer have these anchors that are actually, you still do, you're still winnowing away from them, but that, that are commanding, you know, eight figures, uh, in order to be what the, the Brits lovingly call news readers.

8:57Um, and what, what YouTube is doing now, I was talking about this with John Kelly just today, uh, who was a previous podcast guest on both of our pods and, you know, the, the play by play people who are making a ton of money are almost like those anchors as you look at the, uh, at what YouTube is doing with, you know, you can watch it with all these influencers or, you know, I think about Monday night football and how much money Jimmy Pitaro spent on, uh, Joe Buck and Troy Aikman. And I only watch it through the Manning cast, you know, so like, so I'm just, it's an alternate programming. Is this something that you see as a trend line perhaps hitting the sports, uh, sports media?

9:45Yeah, certainly. And, you know, our partner, Julie, and I have talked about these sort of interesting at a much smaller level, these like influencers who are like buying rights to like 20 Bundesliga games so that they have the right to manning cast their Bundesliga games. the the thing that you the only thing that really matters i think jimmy patar would say the same thing is like the rights themselves right i mean that is that is in a league of its own outside of that what you can do around sports what you can um monetize and then who sort of wields the influence i think that's a i think that's a really really open question right and and i think that that is as subject to, um, God, what I was about to use the term influencer.

10:33It's the last term I want to use. We got to come up with something better for it. But like, if you look like, look, we talk in this business a lot about what, what works and what works is, um, authenticity. And like, it's like the reason that Dave Portnoy's work, right. It's the reason that Joe Rogan's worked on McAfee's, um, as I wrote recently, cause I've been thinking a lot about Barry Weiss coming to CBS. Um, If you can create a brand and an aura around yourself, then you can create a following that can be significantly monetized. And that is what, just in the sports space, that will work there too, right?

11:15There's a reason ESPN got McAfee and Fox got Portnoy. and the age-old challenge for everyone who's in the sports game is you can get the rights you can get or you can get the rights you can afford and then you got to figure out how to program everything around that again going back to different strategies for different companies for some people that's college game day or sports center for some people it's um you know it's like Netflix. It's like, you know, the F1 drive to survive, right? There are all these different ways to sort of monetize around sports. It can be live, it can be experiential, it can be, it can be documentary, it can be whatever it is.

11:57But that is open season in the same way that in the space I cover, John, the new space, there are all sorts of points of entry into this game that are not just clawing your way up the org chart until you get like an anchor job, right? Or until you get the like, you know, senior White House correspondent. Like there are myriad ways into this. There's the Barry Weiss route. There's the Emily Sundberg route. There are, it's open season. And I think that's as true in sports as it is in news. Lester Holt left NBC. I should know this off the top of my head. Who replaced him? Oh, Tom Yamas. Tom Yamas.

12:37like, was he a natural for that? Like, were people clamoring for that job? Is that still a job that people want? I think Tom Yamas was, you know, but like, I apologize to Tom for not knowing his name. No, no, no. I mean, it's, but, but I mean, Jesus, like how telling, right? How telling it's not, um, no, those aren't, those aren't the jobs anymore. I don't want to say they're not meaningful or significant in those worlds, but as you and I both know, those worlds are getting smaller. I think that's a really key distinction between sports and news. And actually, not to go too off-piste here, but going back to the live rights and the significance that live rights have, if you have rights to, say, college football, the people who you actually build right around that are going to be really significant, like cream of the crop.

13:35You're going to, you know, you'll have a Lee Corso leaving, but then you'll bring in a Pat McAfee, right? Those guys still matter a lot in the world. In the world of news, no one owns the rights to news. News is a commodity. It's accessible to everyone. And just because you put it up on TV, like my God, like the New York Times is moving into video, right? You don't need to be CNN or CBS to have video. So again, there are just a thousand ways into covering news and to distribute it to people. And so by virtue of being the guy sitting at the desk at 6.30 PM or 6 PM every night does not somehow make you more special than anyone else out there who's talking about it on podcasts, like sort of creating their own platform or is like substacking about it.

14:32You might have a built-in advantage by virtue of the sort of legacy brand and legacy reach, but that is changing extremely fast. And so in many ways, because sports is like that one thing where you can still have exclusivity, you can still, on the talent side, being adjacent to that still matters in a way it just does not matter in news yeah i i think it was like around 17 years ago not quite 20 years ago that sean mcmanis he made his uh uh all his money in sports and they were like wow cbs sports is doing so well we want you to oversee news and so i did a story on him and uh and i was like he expressed some frustration he's like i just want to buy the exclusive rights to a party convention like how hard can that be that's right that's right that's right you can't do it it's what you're saying exactly i mean even if you get it like even if you get a presidential debate you still got to share that you know like you get to moderate a presidential debate that's still broadcasted on every single network and increasing on every single streaming service it's just a totally it's it's funny as you asked me this i realize i've never thought in depth about this but but that is that is the radical difference between sports and news is the exclusivity piece.

15:50And again, like you have to find a way in news to create exclusivity. You can do it around talent. You can do it around a product offering. That's just better. Again, I've been thinking a lot about the New York Times this week. So you can say, okay, our games, our product recommendation, you know, the athletic, our cooking app is better than X. Or we have Maggie Haberman, we have Ezra Klein, we have whoever. But you don't get to do it around the news itself. It's not like the New York Times are the only people covering the Gaza conflict, whereas the only people who are going to show me Monday Night Football are ESPN.

16:33So true. I'm a proud Washingtonian, and I spend about a half hour every morning drinking coffee and doing the New York Times games in order to wake up. That's exactly what you're talking about there. I have to ask you a question about your Washingtonian-ness. I'm seeing an Orioles cap. I know you're Orioles fandom. Is that a Villanova fleece? A Villanova fleece. I have a daughter that goes up to Villanova. So not quite Philly. And the Orioles cap, I do have to say, when I grew up, we did not have a team. So that was my only team was the Orioles. I just don't know what you... We've been colleagues now for however many years.

17:13I don't know who your football team is. you know what? I'm going to break some news here. I don't really, I'd like, it's my fantasy team.

17:22I'll tell a really quick story. So I, I, like I said, I'm a proud Washingtonian and like my grandfather is from Washington and he loved the Redskins. He loved them to, to, uh, with every fiber of his being. My, my dad was the oldest and he was a rebel. And so he hated the Redskins and he rooted for every team that played the Redskins. And so when I, uh, when I was a kid, I wasn't a rebel. I was like, I guess we're an anti, uh, Washington football team house. I have to say, speaking, speaking of exclusivity, I know, I know your, your reputation in the world of sports business precedes you. Um, and just to know that there are people out there who could like buy your fandom or some NFL team out there should really be pitching.

18:13John, John Arand is a free agent. Yeah. You know what though? He can be acquired now that, now that I'm like established, I feel weird about it. I, I, I, and Dan Snyder's gone. I, I, I'm the, the, the commanders are starting to pull me in a little bit, but we'll, we'll, we'll see. Uh, Dylan, we got to pay the bills. Let me take a quick break, come back. And I want to talk to you about a couple of big stories that we've both been writing about a lot.

18:44All right. Anybody who reads Dylan, listens to Dylan, knows Dylan, knows he's a big tennis fan. And since ESPN has launched its app, don't call it flagship, the US Open has been going on. Just a simple question. How have you been watching the US Open? All right. I have a dirty secret here. As you and I are talking, if you're seeing my eyes drift off to the side, it's because I'm using my son's iPad, my seven-year-old son's iPad. He's at school right now. To watch the men's, I don't know when this post, but as you and I are talking, to watch the men's semifinals. So I have been doing it at great risk to my job because I'm trying to strike that work-life balance of taking in what is just, like, by the way, absolutely top-tier, like, top-caliber tennis.

19:49I know, as my readers know, I really love this, and I can't help but talk about how much I love it, even if it has nothing to do with what I'm covering. Oftentimes it does. But this event, both as a sporting event and as a media event, and then again, going back to what we were talking about, about how you monetize around sports, about things adjacent to sports, the US Open, the energy around the Open is hitting an absolute fever pitch with that, both in terms of what's happening on the court and off the court. And I'm watching it through the ESPN app. So yes, Jimmy still has my money. So the newfangled app, how was your watching experience any different watching it through the app?

20:31I'm aware of the ways in which it could be different. I'm aware of the ways in which I could incorporate the layered stats and data or the betting or the merchandise or all of those things. I have to say, it's not what I come to ESPN for. I had Andrew Rosen on my podcast the other day, who's a former, I was going to say former Paramount executive at the time, former Viacom executive. And he had a sort of very sort of controversial and thought provoking piece about what he didn't think was ambitious enough about ESPN's new app. And, you know, for me, again, going back to this question of live rights, if you have the rights, I will come to you.

21:17now theoretically i could do that through youtube tv or whatever i just find it to be a better experience through espn because i can get the games without advertising um so i i i do it that way and it's also sort of like the the entirety of it is there and it's on demand in a way it's not for me if i'm going through my cable subscription or through youtube tv you see as a media reporter i have all of these things um but it's great it's great and i'm sure that for those people who do want that sort of more interactivity, who want the betting or want to be able to drill down on the stats or the fantasy element in football, I'm sure it's working for them.

22:00I have not, fortunately, run into any of the friction that I've seen other media analysts, the sort of rich greenfields of the world write about, which is that it's hard to log in or you You can't find what you're looking for. For me, it's so far been pretty seamless. Oh, yeah. I am a Hulu plus live TV subscriber. I should be authenticated in order to get it. And I spent about 20 minutes the first day. I couldn't figure it out. And I still haven't got dives back in. It's the worst thing in the world. I will. I will at some point. Your pod with Andrew Rosen was, to me, a fascinating pod because his voice is probably the most pessimistic voice that I have heard regarding the ESPN app.

22:45A lot of what he said made sense. Some of it I didn't quite see. I mean, it seems like Disney and Disney Plus and ESPN are jumping in with both feet. But he said they still have a legacy mindset. What did he mean by that? I think what he means is, you know, it was a very thought-provoking piece. And there were aspects of it that I so felt that he sort of oversimplified that I felt the need to sort of contextualize it on my own podcast. But I think he's thinking really, really far ahead. And I think what he's thinking is, I think the broader point he's making, if you take away the sort of criticism he has of the ESPN app and all of that, I think he's making a broader point, which is not wrong, very significant, and I think pinpoints what the real challenge is for ESPN here.

23:40And it's something that you could see coming down the line long before we ever even started talking about the flagship app, which is you know what a powerhouse ESPN was in the heyday of cable, right? Because it was the greatest tax in the world. if you have a cable subscription you're paying at one point i think it was like eight or ten or twelve bucks for espn even if you didn't care about sports even if you hated sports even if you just had the cable subscription so that you could watch i don't know your reruns of whatever on the proverbial little old lady down the block was uh helping to subsidize my sports addiction yeah it was it is the greatest business and when cable is in a hundred million plus homes that that is in that business is invincible as we all know it is the leitmotif of what i write every single week like that business is coming down and it's coming down faster and harder day by day and to their credit jimmy pataro bob iger they knew that there was going to have to come a time when they were going to have to make the jump to streaming.

24:57And I spent years talking about this with various media executives. You did too. And like, there's always the, you know, it's like the Titanic is sinking. What is the most advantageous point at which to jump onto the smaller boat and get away? And they were focused on this streaming app. They were focused on it for a long time. And then they chose their moment and they did it. And, you know, look, I think it's I think it's a really good app. I enjoy it. The Andrew Rosens of the world don't, and that's okay. But what is undeniable is it is a decidedly smaller boat. And I think the point that Andrew is saying is you are not going to be as big of a business.

25:40You cannot be as big of a business in the streaming space because that little old lady down the block who is paying eight or 10 or$12 a month is not going to pay$30 a month to sign up for your service. And there are a lot of little old ladies down the block, despite what ESPN's popularity and the power of its brand are. Now, a lot of legacy media institutions are coming to terms with being smaller businesses, and they are shifting their economics, and they're downsizing. And someday, Anderson Cooper won't get paid 18 million, and Gayle King won't get paid tens of millions of dollars, and that's just the future.

26:21the difference to bring this conversation full circle about what separates news from sports are those live rights. And so if you want to stay competitive in the game, if you want to have not just the US Open, but if you want to have Monday night football, if you want to have NBA playoffs, you're going to have to figure out another way to make that money. And I guess the point that Andrew was making, I think what got lost, even on some of the folks at ESPN who were notably miffed about Andrew's article, is forget about whether or not you think the ESPN app is a good experience or a bad experience, interactive or passive, whatever.

27:03Are you setting up a system here where you can make even close to as much money as you did in the cable heyday? And the answer is not with what you have now. You can't. You're not doing it. And I guess his point was, you need to be thinking much broader, much more creatively. And he pointed to the New York Times as a model where you have something like The Athletic, which covers sports, and then you use that to sell people on cooking and wire cutter and all of these services. And that's doing really well for the New York Times. ESPN and New York Times are two different businesses. And I'm sure the guys at ESPN are like, do you think we're going to go out there and like get Djokovic to launch a cooking app?

27:46Like, no, we're not going to do that. Sorry, that's not our business. And they're right. But does ESPN need to think far more creatively about how it sells subscribers on subscriptions so that it can monetize beyond the five or six or perhaps even 10 million people who are willing to pay those 30 bucks a month. It absolutely does. More creatively than the bundle. So you can bundle it with Disney Plus and Hulu. That's definitely a start. That's definitely a start. But I think what he's saying is like, the ESPN, somehow ESPN needs to not just be the people who have the rights and maybe can layer on betting or merchandise or ticketing.

28:30They need to be like, the spot that every fan wants to live in. And I think Andrew's conclusion was that it's actually, if you're a fan and you're just looking for that ancillary content or that coverage, the athletic is a much more exciting experience than ESPN is. Now, I don't think everyone agrees with him, but I do think at the very least, what Andrew succeeded in doing is highlighting the challenge that ESPN has, if not necessarily articulating what the solution might be. And I will say that Jimmy Pataro has long said that he wants ESPN to be what he calls the hub to where a sports fan will come in and then he'll happily send them over to the Fox app or to the Peacock app.

29:13But you come into the ESPN environment, you see the reels or whatever. What does ESPN call their reels? you get to see the verts and you get to chat with like some sports center hosts or whatever and then you can go out and uh to peacock and watch the premier league yeah that's right but again it's just it's just this is you know it's so funny i've been writing about media now for like 15 years i've been doing it here at puck for four it's like some of this stuff is really easy some of this stuff is just like profits and losses you know and some of this is just like How do you have enough money to buy the things you need or to invest in the things you need to make it work?

29:53And it's, I credit Bob and Jimmy with being very savvy about what they say yes to and what they say no to. You've covered this better than anyone. They're not going to let like Rob Manfred at Major League Baseball force them to pay more when other people get to pay less. they are going to hold on to Monday night football and the NBA, and they're going to be very smart about those relationships. They're not going to screw it up the way Zaslav did, but it is just harder and harder and harder in a world of Google, YouTube, Amazon, Netflix. And meanwhile, also, by the way, legacy competitors like Fox or NBC, who increasingly are just making their businesses about sports.