NFL’s New TV Order

22:37Ben Strauss:You just go through the top rights that are out there and you become a sports network that doesn't have the NFL. I brought that up to a couple of people who I really respect in the business and they laugh. You're a John Skipper model, right? Yeah, totally. Totally is. And I guess people laughed at that as well when he tried. uh but but even even they really they can't conceive of a of a traditional tv network or traditional linear uh media business going without the nfl well you know this better than i do like

23:13John:what would happen to their like retrans fees like are they going to like are they going to become you know instead of like that ten dollars or whatever are they going to charge less because they don't have live nfl games they they would have to pay a little bit less almost certainly

23:26Ben Strauss:There was, back when I was at Sports Business Journal, it was a story that they finally got those out of the affiliate deals. And so my thinking is, look, if you're ESPN and you have the SEC and you have the Big Ten, like if they get the Big Ten and you have other big time college football, you're already covered in the fall. What cable operator is going to drop you in the fall? They don't want to go without big-time college football or potentially, who knows what happens, but potentially postseason baseball or whatever.

24:03John:I mean, I guess on paper, you could make a case, right? Especially if you're going to double the two-point whatever they're paying now. I don't think that the people running ESPN would give this any thought. But I think if you showed this spreadsheet to somebody, they would be like, okay, you've made this case, right? I'm going to look at this spreadsheet and you can make this case. I don't think that you could go to the upper echelons in Bristol, Connecticut, and I think they'd laugh you out of the office.

24:40Ben Strauss:I did get laughed at when I brought it up. But if you think about it...

24:43John:But I think if you made the spreadsheet, right? Like you could... If it was just a spreadsheet... All of a sudden, it's like another billion dollars.

24:50Ben Strauss:It's like ESPN is a declining business, right? And it's a billion dollars right off of that for the same programming.

24:57John:What's interesting though, you would do one of those blind tests, right? Like the baseball reporter will do this. They'll show you player A, player B, and they'll show you the batting average and the OPS or whatever. And you try to guess. And then I think if you did this the same way, right? Like you said, this is the rights. These are the ratings. This is the cost. This is how you fill up programming. And you didn't have any league or whatever associated to it. You could look at it and be like, that's the better business, right? But then once you wrote NFL on one of them, they would just be like, that's the business.

25:31Ben Strauss:Are we about to invent the NFL or ESPN's war stat here?

25:38John:it is like but i would say it's also like pretty interesting a guy has any like rights negotiations centered on less about like what am i worth versus like what can you pay

25:54John:no because it almost doesn't matter what the nfl is actually worth it just matters like what a company not wants to pay, but like could in theory pay. It's apocryphal now, but CBS went without the NFL like a lifetime ago.

26:11Ben Strauss:This is back in the mid nineties. What is that? 30 years ago. And they'll never forget it. They'll never go without the NFL again. NBC went without the NFL. They'll never forget it. They tried, that was the original incarnation of the XFL that they tried to use as a replacement there. But in both cases, and it's a different lifetime. There's a lifetime with a sending cable. You know, there was no such thing as streaming. It was a totally different lifetime. But it sticks with all these executives. And even more than that, I mean, look at the top 100 shows. Look at the ratings that come out. I mean, you want to run a TV business and not have the NFL?

26:52Ben Strauss:Good luck.

26:54John:I don't know. You've sort of intrigued me. like this would be a good story like put together the business plan okay what's your uh i don't have a job so i can't do it but somebody should give me give me uh so you talk to people give me your prediction my prediction i think my prediction is it looks fairly similar and that's like a boring prediction but i think it i think like they do something fancy with like the international package. But I think they keep Sundays on broadcast television. I think that there's still enough money in those companies to the accessibility of it, the reliability of it.

27:42John:I think they keep Sundays on broadcast TV. And the experiments come with international, and they come with the one-offs that they've been doing. I think one more package, like whatever this next one is, looks much more similar to what exists now. And it's the one after that, that like might be unrecognizable to football fans today.

28:06Ben Strauss:Yeah, that was a totally boring prediction, but it has to be the most likely one. I mean, imagine Amazon coming in and taking over Sunday night football and NBC doesn't have it anymore. NBC would be a lame duck for four years with a prime package of games. And you know, because they're a lame duck, they would get worse games. And because they're a lame duck, they would produce them much more on the cheap. And so they would spend four years trying, basically, you can't kill Sunday Night Football, but at least deflating it somewhat. So even though it's a boring package, I can't foresee. If they open early, they open early for everybody to renew.

28:53Ben Strauss:And the main question is just at what price?

28:57John:Yeah, it's actually a good point. Why would you undercut these deals that you just signed? And if you sort of blew it all up next year, you're actually undercutting the deals that you already signed. In some ways, it definitely doesn't make sense.

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29:52Ben Strauss:What about the idea of the streamers and the streamers getting more involved with the NFL? The NFL has been talking. Roger Goodell said it in his opening press conference, sort of, you know, that there's a new way to look at reach. You know, reach has always been the byproduct of broadcast TV. and he's like, now Netflix is going international, YouTube is going international. And so the reach maybe for a US video audience, maybe not, isn't as big as it typically is. But in general, if you look at international or global, I guess, it is big. And so there does seem to be a shift in the way that the NFL is viewing the streaming companies, which I found to be particularly interesting this year.

30:48John:So I think the international strategy of the NFL is kind of interesting, right? Like, clearly there's popularity in South America, in Europe, or wherever you think. And you're going to tap out these American media companies, certainly the media companies, if not the streamers at some point. but I was having a conversation with somebody about you know in Europe for example like soccer rights are flat or on the decline and so you know that's why the Premier League and La Liga and these these entities are desperately coming to the United States for their growth but like there's not enormous television deals necessarily to be had in the UK or like Germany or Spain because most those countries essentially have one telecom company.

31:42John:So you can't go and build up the popularity of the NFL and then sell those rights to people in Europe and get the same bump that you get when those soccer leagues come here. And so to your point, the growth is you have to convince Netflix or YouTube that that is their avenue to growth. And I always wonder what is is the sort of like how much more money is the international package ever going to be worth? And I guess it's who wants to bet against the NFL, but I wonder if the, the international package will never be worth as much as they would like it to be. Yeah.

32:28Ben Strauss:You know, I was talking to various executives about that and the international package. I just wanted to see how they package it. Cause like, Oh, you'll have a game in Australia. Oh, and the next week you'll be in Germany. And it's sort of all over the place. I literally, but it's hard to develop a business around something that feels so disjointed like that. Is it going to be six games, six weeks in a row? Is it going to be, oh, you'll get a game every three weeks? Does that fit in with the whole eventizing strategy of Netflix or Amazon. And I think that there are serious questions to ask there about how this comes up because when Netflix looks at a big event, it's looking at Christmas Day.

33:23Ben Strauss:It's looking at Thanksgiving. It's looking at the opening day. It's not necessarily looking at Jaguars game in Berlin or something like that. I like this.

33:37John:we are going to come up with a business plan for espn to get rid of the nfl and we're going to sell on the nfl's international package oh i'm not selling on the international package somebody's

33:50Ben Strauss:going to come in and buy it and somebody's going to pay a ton of money for it yeah yeah hey uh then let me take a quick break and then i i'll come back i want to talk about uh You actually, you watched the telecast, right? The Super Bowl. You weren't in the stadium for it. I did.

34:10John:I watched the telecast.

34:12Ben Strauss:All right. We're going to come back. We're going to talk. Most of it. Most of it anyway.

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35:26John:I mean, I think NBC usually does a very good job with these things. They are particularly good at sort of these big events and it was great. Even though the game was just really boring. I don't really know how else to say it. I mean, isn't the most interesting thing that Mike Tirico calls the game and then he hustles down to the field and then he's broadcasting live primetime Olympics coverage. like, you know, seamlessly. I mean, I'm not like one who's like, oh my God, the announcer is going to be in three places in like three nights. Like, let's all like throw a party for, you know, the announcer is flying private to all these games.

36:05John:But it seems like a notable, impressive thing that Tariqo did that.

36:09Ben Strauss:Yeah, and then the guy got on the plane to, over to Italy right afterwards, which surprised me. How did Bad Bunny perform on TV? It was a little odd in the stadium because he took up the whole field. It's not like there was one concert stage where he's singing to the fans. So he obviously was telling a story that, at least in the stands, was hard to follow.

36:37John:I think that that's... I've been to one Super Bowl, so I've watched one halftime show. And I remember thinking, like sitting up in the press box and just going like, this is made for television, right? like it's not for the people at the stadium it's for the people watching TV I recall

36:55Ben Strauss:I keep bringing this up I was there for 2007 the Prince Super Bowl and he got up on stage and just delivered a concert but yeah recently you've had just storytelling and special guest stars and things like that

37:14John:yeah the difference a different age john uh concert i mean like i think it was clearly the game was not good and so like really it was just waiting to see like what bad bunny was going to do and what was he going to say and you know everybody was going to have their bad bunny takes but um i mean it was it was like my takeaway was that it was like a deeply deeply like hispanic halftime shows like it's like he took you to puerto rico and to miami and like the props like with like the paleta stand and the wedding and it was it was like you know i don't think it was an accident but it was a deeply deeply hispanic performance and i i sensed that that was the

37:55Ben Strauss:point and that yeah you sense that was the point uh that was also the point for the nfl i mean we just got through talking about the the international rights and i mean it was a total nod to you know going to Spanish-speaking countries and just kind of taking the NFL brand beyond the states. And that seemed, it seems pretty obvious that that was, I mean, Bad Bunny is a hugely popular international star. So that's one reason they brought him in. But another main reason, it fits right in with the NFL strategy of wanting to go international.

38:37John:I think it was Lucas Shaw and Bloomberg had a litany of anybody who doesn't understand just how popular Bad Bunny is, is sort of missing the point. It's like Taylor Swift and Bad Bunny. And so you wonder why the NFL is happy to weather the storm of volleys from various corners of conservative media and the White House too, sort of over Bad Bunny. He's bigger than they are.

39:04Ben Strauss:I want to get back to sort of the way that NBC produces the games. Would you feel comfortable, like, who does the best? Who is the network that when they come on, I'm not going to go for the worst, but when they come on, you know, it feels like a big game for you.

39:36John:I think NBC. I would put NBC at the top. You have the answer too.

39:44Ben Strauss:I think all of them, Ben. Oh, come on! Look, I'm in the bag for, I think Tirico is an otherworldly talent. As a play-by-play person, I know that Collinsworth gets a lot of grief. And in fact, I love retelling this story. I was watching an NBC once and my wife was not really a football fan. At one point was like, who is this guy? He's got to shut up and leaves the room. But I like him. I think he has a sense of humor that's really dry. I think that he has a point of view that I learned something from him, which I think is cool. so I would also give it to NBC and I'm also I think the other interesting

40:34John:oh sorry go ahead

40:36Ben Strauss:I was going to say I'm also in the bag for I think watching Monday Night Football through the Manning cast is just I just love doing that and I used to say if it's a team I care about I wouldn't do it I still do it then because I Peyton he teaches me something every time even still like he's just so smart about football. And the interviews are hit and miss. And when they miss, they're just as funny as when they hit. I want to go back.

41:07John:So, Tirico, right? So, it seems like I've read how many stories about how great Mike Tirico is in the past month or so. Our friend Andrew Marchand did a good one. There was right after the Baltimore Ravens lost to the Steelers. He He was kind of amazing, pointing out that there was a priest that had sort of blessed the end zone. And he had gave you this sort of incredible story that set up the missed field goal at the end. Are we in the age of Mike Tirico appreciation? I feel like for a while there was sort of like this general industry understanding that Joe Buck is the best play-by-play guy.

41:50John:Is Mike Tirico, like are we in the age of Mike Tirico now?

41:54Ben Strauss:Yeah, I think that we can declare that, which is no shade to Joe Buck, but I think Joe Buck is great. In fact, Joe Buck as a baseball announcer, I miss him terribly. And I think also one of the attributes of Torigo is that he's doing football, he's hosting the Olympics, he's doing basketball. and he's just, when you hear Mike Tirico's voice, it's a big game. Joe Buck used to be like that, the voice of the MLB playoffs and the voice of Fox. And now he has one game a week on Monday on some little cable channel. But I know Joe's great. I think he does a good job still, even though I just admitted that I watch Peyton on Monday Night Football.

42:51Ben Strauss:Are we in the era of Mike Tirico?

42:55John:Do you agree? I think we're in the era of Mike Tirico, yeah. I think the zeitgeist has spoken. But the other thing that I did notice is right at the beginning of the Super Bowl, there was a great commercial for Sunday Night Baseball. And it was Aaron Judge hitting home runs and balls flying into various sets of NBC. And you sort of saw the cross promotion there that NBC is going to give Sunday night baseball. And I would imagine if you're sitting in the baseball headquarters somewhere in Manhattan, you really like that commercial because it was pretty close to the start of the Super Bowl. So I imagine a lot of people would have seen that.

43:42John:And that's probably what you're hoping for when you turn Sunday Night Baseball over to NBC.

43:48Ben Strauss:Yeah, it's fun. I do think I'm dying to see how basketball and baseball do on NBC on Sunday nights because the extension of Sunday Night Football and trying to make it a year-round sports experience with basketball and baseball is we haven't really seen this before. I think actually on Thursday night, Amazon Prime is doing that with basketball and the NFL as well. And I think it's an interesting strategy that we haven't really seen before. You know, that, you know, if it works, if they're able to bring new viewers and younger viewers to watch baseball, then it's a slam dunk. I mean, anything to like.

44:35John:I'm sorry, go ahead.

44:36Ben Strauss:I was just going to say, I was in a restaurant with Marchand actually on Sunday when the Knicks and the Lakers were on NBC. And it was on every single TV in the bar. And, you know, maybe is it broadcast? Is it NBC? It just felt like a really big event to have it there. It was pretty unique and neat to see. I mean, honestly, if you can make it easier for people to find things, I think that potentially it goes a long way because nobody knows where anything is. Yeah. The only problem is I think my son and my daughters, they've never used rabbit ears. So the NBC, these broadcast channels, just another channel to them for multi-channel distribution that they don't actually subscribe to.

45:30Ben Strauss:So, hey, Ben, awesome to see you. We'll talk soon, but it was great hanging out with you last week and good luck with everything.

45:39John:Thanks, John. Always a pleasure.

45:44Ben Strauss:You know, Ben said it best. Like anybody that's been in the journalism business for the past 30 years has some sort of layoff story. and just seeing what happened to Ben in real time here in San Francisco was, having him walk us through that was really cool of him. So I want to thank Ben Strauss for joining the pod this week. 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, that's Gabby Grossman, Ben Landy, John Kelly, and the great team from Odyssey, Bob Tabador and Patrick Antonetti.

46:25Ben Strauss:And our partners at Nessun, that's Mark Merlaca. And today, Amber Gately, Greg Poth, has this episode off. 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 20 % discount. I will see you on Sunday.

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