Cord-cutting is accelerating. Deep-pocketed Big Tech (Amazon, Apple, Google) are scooping up marquee sports rights in an effort to add value to their services businesses. Linear TV viewing is collapsing. Consumers' attention is fragmenting as myriad social media and other activities beckon for eyeballs.

As Colin and I discuss on this week’s episode, ESPN finds itself at the center of this storm, as the venerable TV network gets squeezed from all sides. Adding urgency to the problem, and as we also explore this week, Sinclair's Diamond Sports Group, which owns Bally Sports, a big collection of Regional Sports Networks (RSNs) acquired from Disney as part of its Fox deal, is edging toward declaring bankruptcy.

While Diamond’s demise is closely tied to the debt it incurred by overpaying for the Fox RSNs in 2019, it raises more consequential questions about the health of the sports TV ecosystem - and therefore the value of sports broadcasting rights themselves. These rights have been funded primarily through the “sports tax” on pay-TV subscribers who are not sports fans (see “Not a Sports Fan, Then You’re Getting Sacked for At Least $2 Billion Per Year,” which I wrote back in February, 2011). Non-sports fans are getting soaked for far more than this in 2023, with huge - and mostly unknown - sums embedded in their monthly pay-TV bills (partly contributing to escalating cord-cutting).

Net, net, the delicate equilibrium in the sports TV ecosystem is under major pressure. With respect to ESPN, newly reinstated Disney CEO Bob Iger has a pressing - yet until recently unimaginable - question to address: long-term, is ESPN still a good business? And if it’s not, should Disney keep the network anyway, or seek to sell it off?

Listen to the podcast to learn more (30 minutes, 18 seconds)

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Please save the date for VideoNuze’s third annual Connected TV Advertising PREVIEW: 2023 (virtual) on Tuesday afternoon, February 28th.
 
Connected TV is the hottest sector of the advertising industry, forecast by eMarketer to grow 27% in 2023 to $27 billion in the U.S. alone, despite significant economic headwinds.

VideoNuze’s Connected TV Advertising PREVIEW: 2023 (virtual) will feature senior industry executives sharing their thought leadership perspectives and insights on the year ahead for CTV advertising. PREVIEW is a one-of-a-kind virtual event, exclusively focused on CTV advertising.
 
The program will include a mix of cutting-edge research, keynote interviews, high-impact panel discussions and case studies (lots more news on the program and speakers soon). For attendees, CTV PREVIEW will be a must-attend afternoon of high-impact learning about what’s ahead for CTV in 2023.

Many thanks to our partners Beachfront, PadSquad, Roku and Wurl (with others to come).

If you’re interested in sponsorship information, please contact me.

Sign-up is complimentary!

In this week’s podcast, Colin and I do a deep dive interview with FuboTV’s CEO and Co-Founder David Gandler. FuboTV, which reported having 1.6 million subscribers at the end of Q3 ’22, has differentiated itself primarily with sports, which, as we discuss, has its advantages and disadvantages.

Specifically in the podcast, we dig into escalating and fragmenting sports rights, what impact tech giants like Apple, Amazon and YouTube will have as they stream more sports on their platforms, the role of FAST channels and regional sports networks (RSNs) for pay-TV providers, the decision to shutter FuboTV’s nascent sportsbook, how FuboTV is pursuing AI for cutting-edge user experiences and much more.

Listen to the podcast to learn more (42 minutes, 45 seconds)

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