Marchand, Round 2!

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1:03Andrew Marchand:Congratulations! You made the Varsity, the podcast. My name is John Aranda and I am Puck's sports correspondent and the host of this pod. And today, my old friend Andrew Marchand joins the pod. You all know Andrew is a great sports media reporter for The Athletic, which is a position that he held for a long time at the New York Post too. And we're going to hash out a bunch of sports media topics from baseball's new media rights deals to Netflix's sports ambitions. I think most of you know that Marchand and I hosted a podcast together a couple of years ago, and he now hosts his own twice weekly sports media podcast at andrewmarchand.com.

1:42Andrew Marchand:So make sure you give that a listen. It's great to have him back on here. But before we get to Andrew, today is Wednesday, November 26, the day before Thanksgiving. And here's what I'm watching. It's actually all about Thanksgiving, or more specifically, about the NFL games on offer this Thanksgiving. Packers-Lions, Chiefs-Cowboys. These are glamour games that the NFL has put into their most visible regular season window. And what I find interesting is that it represents something of a change for how the league and the networks approach this holiday. There used to be a debate about how to schedule these games.

2:21Andrew Marchand:One school of thought was that it doesn't matter who play these games. There's a built-in audience that guarantees a huge viewership number no matter what. Lions in the early game, Cowboys in the late game. Who cares who they play? Save the good matchups for other dates on the regular season calendar. But there was another school of thought that wanted the best matchups. True, any game would get a big number, but what about a great game that would approach NFC and AFC championship level viewing. And the NFL has experimented with both. When Washington wasn't good, it was a regular Thanksgiving opponent for the Cowboys.

2:59Andrew Marchand:In fact, Washington has played Dallas four times on Thanksgiving since 2016. But the one year that the NFL scheduled the Giants, representing the biggest media market in the United States, well, that's the game that set the viewership record for regular season NFL games. 41.2 million viewers in 2022. With these matchups this year, it appears that the league wants to put its best games in its biggest window, all of which points to the reason why everyone I know is predicting a record-setting number for the Cowboys and the Chiefs. It's a big game, it's marquee franchises, but it's also going to benefit from the changes that Nielsen made this year and how it counts viewers.

3:46Andrew Marchand:Changes that benefit sports leagues and networks. Not to get too in the weeds, but Nielsen now counts more out-of-home viewers. And it incorporates big data. And what you need to know is that those are two reasons why you see so many ratings increases across all of sports this year. So we've established now Chiefs Cowboys on CBS will set a record. But here's my real prediction. The Packers-Lions on Fox, that's going to wind up as the second most watched game in the NFL's regular season history. And for the same reasons, two popular teams playing under the new Nielsen rules. Add in the fact that Fox is going to carry the game on Tubi, and that should result in a monster number.

4:30Andrew Marchand:Tubi is the name of Fox's streaming service, and in February, it added 13.6 million viewers to Fox's Super Bowl audience. But really, all I'm hoping for is just some competitive games. Okay, now let's get to Andrew Marchand. Andrew Marchand, thank you for joining the Varsity. I know you heard my essay at the beginning where I'm talking about Thanksgiving football and all of the ratings predictions. I generally hate talking about ratings, but if it's going to set a record, I brought it up. As you're looking at Thanksgiving and the NFL, what are some of the things that are standing out at you? Well, I think it was really deliberate what they did.

5:15They make a huge deal about putting the schedule together, and it's at the time of year in the spring where people are very hungry for the NFL. But when you saw the full schedule, I try not to overreact to the schedule. This network did well. This network didn't do well. But the one thing that you could circle was if the Cowboys, if the Chiefs were at least 500 or above, you might be looking at a record. You have Patrick Mahomes, who's the biggest draw in the NFL in terms of an individual. And he might have been, I think, if you look at the last 20 years in terms of individuals, which isn't as big a deal in the NFL.

5:54because the teams carry so much weight. But he's the guy that people want to watch. And then the Cowboys, they're number one in terms of people tuning in to watch the Cowboys. So you put those two together, 4.30 game, you think you're going to get some records. And they lucked out a little bit. Chiefs come back, beat the Colts the other day. Cowboys, incredible comeback against the Eagles on Fox, a 4.30 game. So they got some nice momentum. them. So the game means something. Both teams lose. I think it does hurt the rating a little bit. Not as much interest. Now the Cowboys look like they could be a playoff team.

6:31The Chiefs, they're just kind of stalking there in terms of they right now, you know, are just on the cusp of the playoffs. And, but if they get in, you kind of feel like they might make another run to the Superbowl. And so I think you could see what the NFL was trying to accomplish. And I think that they will accomplish their goal.

6:49Andrew Marchand:I mean, you've written about this a lot in terms There have been some weeks where the NFL is so spread out. We have an international game, so they have a new game that they pulled out on Sunday afternoon that's now on a Sunday morning window. Thursday night, Monday night, Sunday night. Sometimes you have games on Saturdays later on. And you end up with some weekends where the games really aren't that great. Does it make sense to you? It still makes some sense to me to say, okay, let's take the Cowboys and the Chiefs and let's anchor it on one of those weeks. And then you can put the Cowboys versus the Jaguars or what's the team that tightens?

7:31Andrew Marchand:What's the team that brings the fewest amount of viewers in? And you know you're guaranteed more than like 30 million viewers, which is a great number. I mean, I can understand wanting to use Thanksgiving in that way as well. Yeah, the NFL is the most popular sport by far. You look at the top 100 Nielsen numbers at the end of any year. I think last year it was 72 of the top 100 highest rated games or events of anything, sports entertainment, were NFL games led by the Super Bowl at 115, 120 million people. So it's number one. And there are a couple of reasons. Number one is it's three hours. Basically, a lot of people have a favorite team.

8:14They have a fantasy team. they bet, easy to digest. But the other big advantage for the NFL is scarcity. Even though they've extended the season now to 17 weeks, you have buys, so it goes a little bit longer, it's still scarcity wins the day. I've said this a million times for baseball. If the Yankees played 17 games per year, the ratings would be incredible. Now, would they be the same as the NFL? Probably not, but the numbers would be even higher. So that's what the NFL has going for it. I do think, and the numbers haven't bored this out. They've done well in those Sunday morning windows, but I do think they have to be a little bit cognizant of spreading it too thin because someone like me, I have Sunday ticket where you can get all the out-of-market games, which you need because where I live, you get the Jets and the Giants on your local TV.

9:06You don't want to watch those two teams uh every week if you could avoid it um but you start looking at the schedule as you get down uh you know here midway you know more than midway through the season and you do you have some dog games where there's two you know teams with two or three wins and yeah nobody wants to watch that um so i think they have to be careful to protect scarcity uh so there are events uh but and and how they divvy it up i i don't know i think you know part of it is It's unpredictable. I think a lot of people going to the season thought Monday night had a poor schedule. It's not going to be amazing, but it's better than what it was thought to be.

9:44And so I think there's a lot of unpredictability with the NFL.

9:48Andrew Marchand:I will say that Thanksgiving week, where you have three games on Thanksgiving, you have Black Friday. They pull out another game there. Sunday night football, Monday night football. I mean, you're not going to use the Sunday ticket this weekend on Sunday a ton, I would think. the Black Friday game, I get so focused in viewership and seeing if it works in terms of viewership. But I think regardless of how many viewers actually watch that game on Black Friday, which is carried by Amazon Prime, Amazon seems to be legitimately thrilled with it. And I think it's more than just spin on their part. It just gets people into Prime and then they use other aspects of Prime and makes people a little bit stickier.

10:36Andrew Marchand:How do you view Black Friday? I think if you look at all the big digital players, Amazon Prime Video has definitely done the best job. They have the clearest plan. And I think if you look at what they've done on Friday, they are going to own Black Friday in terms of sports. They have the Skins game golf event in the morning. Then at 3 o 'clock, they have the NFL with an excellent matchup between the Bears and the Eagles. And then at night, they have an NBA doubleheader. And, you know, what's their goal? There's a couple of things. I mean, number one, they always talk about they want to make it so it's a prime membership that you just get it.

11:17It's not even a thought when you get that$140,$150 price tag at the beginning of the year, whenever your yearly subscription comes up. So they want that. Number two is on Black Friday, that's obviously a huge day for them going into the holidays. And so they want people on, being reminded how you can buy things and seeing all the deals you could get. And so they'll have people looking at that all day. And they want to change habits, which they've done as well as any digital company in terms of there used to be where people would line out outside the door. What I think they still do for department stores trying to get, you know, the toy of the year, whatever it is.

12:00But now a lot of people just shop online, let Amazon Prime just deliver their stuff to their door. And so you could see the strategy. I mean, is it worth a billion dollars a year for the NFL? And, you know, now more than that per year from the NBA. I mean, that's a lot of money, but they're a global company. And so you could just see, I will just say this. It's hard for us. I think you and I try to get as in-depth as we can, and I think I'll speak for you. You do a great job of getting as in-depth as possible. We don't know the exact numbers, like this brings in this, and is that tangible that this is definitely leading to this many sales?

12:40We don't know that. But in terms of a clear strategy, I think Amazon Prime, and you look at what they're doing on Friday, it's obvious, and it seems to work.

12:49Andrew Marchand:You know what I find wild about Amazon and their entry into the NFL is just their relationship with the NFL I find to be totally unique. And I go back to 20 years ago when it was plainly obvious that ESPN had what the NFL considered the cable package. And as a result, they had – I called them the Jacksonville Jaguars network because they would get the worst games consistently. And you could tell, I'm with you when you said earlier in this pod about when the schedule comes out, I try not to pay that much attention to it because like, who knows who's going to be good or who's going to be bad at the end of the season.

13:30Andrew Marchand:But you could tell that ESPN back in the 2006, 7, 8 era, even into the early teens, had a terrible schedule. And you turn it around to what is the streaming package, which it seems to be what the cable package was back then. But the amount of premier games and interdivision games that Amazon Prime carries is phenomenal. So when you see some of these numbers coming out, if I'm one of the legacy broadcast networks, I think I'm getting a little jealous of Amazon because they, and it bears out too through the, through the, through the season. Like it goes, well, they are able to take some of the games off Thursday if it's a dog.

14:14Andrew Marchand:I think they've done that once or twice, but, but it's generally, generally I think rivals a Sunday night football schedule that Amazon has. yeah so i'm gonna give you my brian winhurst let me see if i get these on the screen my brian winhurst fingers the famous jiff from uh the espn nba insider was a couple years ago he's talking about the utah jazz and he kind of gave the whole reasons about a trade so why does amazon uh excuse me why does the nfl do that uh i think it's pretty obvious they want the streamers to be successful they want amazon prime video to be successful they had a game second game of the year was youtube in Brazil with the Chiefs playing in that one and the Chargers.

15:00And so they want YouTube to be successful. They want Christmas Day with Netflix to be successful. Why? Because those companies are worth trillions of dollars. The companies that now Paramount, I'm not sure what they're worth with their new ownership, but the other ones are worth hundreds of billions of dollars. And they're not going anywhere. I don't think we've talked about this before. I don't think the NFL is just going to shift their model when they opt out of their agreements or at least threaten to opt out at the end of the decade. But they want these digital players to love the NFL, to get addicted to the NFL.

15:33And so how do you do that? Well, you don't do it with, you know, lame games. You give them some of the best matchups you can. And so they want Amazon Prime Video to be successful, make Thursday night, which is something that I think Roger Goodell has been behind since the start, to be really successful. And, you know, back in the day, the last network to have it was Fox. And part of what their strategy was is they were taking some of their better games on Sunday and moving them to Thursday, which made some sense because they had both packages. But the Amazon Prime Video, they don't have that. They don't need to do that.

16:09And now they want them to be successful. And you look at where they're going. They make already, they have 11-year deals for more than$110 billion. It's with a B, everyone listening, B for Boston, for our Nesson people. And they're going to get much more than that. Will they double it? I don't know if they'll double it. But it's going to be a feeding frenzy, in my opinion, when those deals open up at the end of the decade. Because I think it's clear that Netflix wants in. uh youtube uh has shown interest and you know they could just take over the world if they want to uh and then amazon prime has a a full um slate of games and then you still you have tnt sports which you will see where their new ownership um lands uh if that happens uh and so their players and then you have the traditionals from espn to nbc cbs and fox and so uh that's a lot of bidders and there's not going to be probably enough packages for everybody.

17:11I think they'll do things a little bit differently, but you also don't want to have too many partners because that can cause issues as well. Yeah.

17:18Andrew Marchand:All right. So a couple of quick hitters before you go to break. The NFL, they're going to open up their media deals either next year or more likely the year after. If we're going to see one new media company enter into the NFL, who's it going to be? well i mean it depends you count anybody it's youtube this is a prediction part of the podcast you said new so new john which would mean that someone who doesn't have the nfl now well i would i would consider youtube to be new and i would consider exactly that to be new yeah yeah so people are not familiar with john this is what he does he gives you a question he you know You kind of finagles it and then gets on you because you don't answer it.

18:02I mean, what do you want me to say? What was it? Quibi? What was that one that was a quick, you know, what do you want me to say? Quibi or somebody? Oh, that would be great.

18:10Andrew Marchand:I would clip that and it would be all over social. Please say that. So, yeah, if you want me to predict, that's tough. Look, I think I'd probably go YouTube gets in over Netflix. Again, you asked me a prediction, so I'm just being nice. I don't like making predictions about things I'm going to, you know, report on unless I really feel strongly on it. I would say that it could go either way. The one thing I would say YouTube has an advantage over Netflix is that they put it in front of their YouTube TV paywall. So it's just on YouTube and it's free. I think that's advantageous for the NFL because then it just gets, you know, if the government wants to get involved and say you're putting too much stuff on streamers.

18:55that Ted Cruz has talked about, you know, in recent months. That gets around that. So if I have to pick between one or the other, I'd probably say YouTube has a little bit of advantage over Netflix. But if it went to Netflix, I wouldn't be shocked at all. But to answer your question, I think the interesting thing for people listening, Apple TV is one that I'd really be surprised by. I think they have a lot of good shows. The technology is great. but I just don't see how the NFL would go with Apple TV in a deal unless things change by the end of the decade. Just they don't have the subscriber base as compared to Netflix or YouTube.

19:34Andrew Marchand:Congratulations. That's a correct answer. YouTube is the correct answer on that one. One more quick one. NBC, CBS, Fox, ABC, any one of them on the outside looking in after the NFL opens its rights deals? It's possible. I doubt it. I think that they all maintain. I think you look at their market cap. Fox probably has the least amount of money, but they're built all around the NFL. I think the owners love Fox. They've done a great job since they, you know, Rupert Murdoch came out of nowhere in the early 90s to get it. So I think they, I would think they all keep it in some form. Now, is it lessened?

20:17I mean, something I've, again, this is my speculation, but I think it's informed and makes sense. Could the conference championships be on a more rotating basis where other players have it? It's not just CBS and Fox, just like the Super Bowl is now on a rotating basis. I think that's a way to satisfy a lot of different entities, get the most money. That's something I could see. Could the playoffs be slightly different? Maybe even, you know, you can go a step further. in earlier rounds, and they change because I think the NFL is probably pretty confident people will find it. So I think some of those historical ways you've witnessed the biggest moments might change.

20:55But again, the other thing I will say, though, I don't think the new streamers are going to be that interested in the full package of games on a Sunday. I think they're going to want the event games. They want one a week. So could someone come in and snatch Sunday Night Football from NBC Peacock? I think that's possible. And then could NBC and Peacock turn around and say, we're going to go after CBS or Fox's package? I do think that could be something where you could have maybe one of the broadcast heavyweights get knocked out. But I don't think it's CBS getting caught surprised in the early 90s or when NBC lost it back to CBS in the late 90s.

21:41I don't think anybody's going to be caught by surprise with some kind of blitz on the outside. I think everyone's very aware how much they need the NFL.

21:48Andrew Marchand:Final question before we go to break. Cowboys, Chiefs, Thanksgiving, over, under 50 million viewers? I'll go over. I'll go 50.5. Well, it's just more fun. I really have no idea. 50.5 million. I think that's the number that's around. I think over is a little more fun. I think your point at the beginning that kind of gets lost in the world. In our little world, we're very cognizant of the ratings all being higher. So you get that 3 % to 5 % boost because of how Nielsen has changed how they do the ratings. And then you add in the fact that you have this matchup. Can I see$46 million? a million yeah i could see that as well but but i'll go 50.5 48.2 is the correct answer 48.2 okay all right we're going to take a break we're going to come back and uh we're going to hit on uh espn's mlb deal actually not just espn but netflix and nbc as well

22:54Andrew Marchand:we are live from feddy's house guests are gathering around the tv even with a big storm outside. Are we worried about the feet? Nope. They have Xfinity Wi-Fi. Get reliable fiber-powered gig Wi-Fi with Peacock included to stream the beautiful game this summer. Xfinity. Imagine that. Restrictions apply. New gig internet customers only. Actual speeds vary. Offer for Peacock premium with ads currently at$10.99 a month value and limited to Xfinity internet members with newer upgraded gig speed or faster service. Activation required to access content. Peacock must be activated within the first 90 days.

23:19Management of existing subscriptions may be required to avoid multiple subscriptions and duplicate charges.

23:23Andrew Marchand:Third-party built subscriptions continue until canceled. History That Doesn't Suck is a legit, hard-hitting American history podcast told through entertaining stories. As we approach America's 250th anniversary, now might be the time to go back and learn how we got here. With more than 200 episodes, you can bend your way decade by decade, defining event to defining event from the founding into the 20th century. Join me, Professor Greg Jackson, for History That Doesn't Suck, an Odyssey podcast available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. Andrew, you and I have gone to town for the past couple of months writing about MLB's media deals.