The Business of HockeyDiscuss the financial and business aspects of the NHL. Franchise sales, valuations, TV contracts, ratings, expansion, relocation, the CBA and work stoppage discussion goes here.
As a public service (and I believe they discontinued it, fwiw) on an alternate channel. NBC Sports has no such remit and I doubt they'd spend that kind of money just to see what would happen. It'd make much more sense to try it on Telemundo.
I see NBC and CBS are finally going all in with cable sports networks but is it too late? ESPN/ABC is so big now they can outbid the others on anything they really want. It's hard to believe it took CBS and NBC so long to get in on such a profitable business.
NBC will have to combine their "sports networks" and get more carriers for it to matter. Right now, they have the rebranded Versus/NBC Sports. That essentially is their NHL channel, so I have very little interest in it most of the year. There's some college football during that season, but little else. That one gets decent carriage. They shunt the Olympic sports to Universal Sports, which has atrocious carriage. Until they get rid of Universal Sports and put all of their cable sports on the rebranded Versus, they can't possibly compete with ESPN/ABC. They just have a poor business model.
I have watched CBS College Sports, but only rarely. I don't think CBS has enough in the way of contracts to have a sports-only channel. They have some college contracts, which makes CBS College Sports feasible. I still watch very little of it, because they're focused primarily on the SEC, and I just couldn't care less. Their only other contact is the NFL, and there's no way they're shunting any of that coverage off to cable.
I think ESPN is safe. These challenges will go the way of CNN/SI and Fox Sports' attempts to have a truly national presence.
To quote where the guy says that "ESPN/ABC are so big they can outbid anybody"
That's so wrong..because Comcast is so much richer than Disney. ESPN is Disney's most profitable asset. Where Comcast
is making money left and right: on you're telecom bill, on your business's telecom bill, on other networks they own, etc.
Now the question is, will Comcast spend?
This scenario reminds of a very similar situation many Canadians would be familiar with where ESPN=Yankees;Disney = Steinbrenners and NBCSN=Jays; Comcast= Rogers
Rogers can outspend the Steinbrenners all they want, but choose not to because it wouldn't be profitable. Will the rights to MLB, more college games, etc. be profitable to Comcast? I would imagine so.
Last edited by IU Hawks fan: 02-05-2012 at 11:43 AM.
To quote where the guy says that "ESPN/ABC are so big they can outbid anybody"
That's so wrong..because Comcast is so much richer than Disney. ESPN is Disney's most profitable asset. Where Comcast
is making money left and right: on you're telecom bill, on your business's telecom bill, on other networks they own, etc.
Now the question is, will Comcast spend?
This scenario reminds of a very similar situation many Canadians would be familiar with where ESPN=Yankees;Disney = Steinbrenners and NBCSN=Jays; Comcast= Rogers
Rogers can outspend the Steinbrenners all they want, but choose not to because it wouldn't be profitable. Will the rights to MLB, more college games, etc. be profitable to Comcast? I would imagine so.
Comcast isn't that much larger than Disney ($50B vs $41B in annual revenues) but ESPN generates more revenues and profits than any component of Comcast - due to it's unmatched ~$4.50-$5.00 per subscriber per month subscriber fees (2-3x higher than any other cable channels other than RSNs and premium channels like HBO).
Disney/ABC can bid high for programming and still generate profits. Comcast, at this point, cannot. Unless they find away to generate revenues from it's sports properties, or convince it's other customers or shareholders to subsidize losses, they simply cannot compete in general head-to-head against ESPN. They may be willing to take on a loss leader for prestige - ie, the Olympics - but unless they can find a way to generate ESPN type revenues from their sports properties you will not see broad based competition.
There could be baseball on the horizon as well. As NBC looks to add compelling content to its NBC Sports Network, ESPN’s deal with Major League Baseball ends in 2013. Lazarus, who did deals to carry Atlanta Braves baseball at Turner Broadcasting for years, called baseball a premiere property and one that would eat a lot of innings to help fill the schedule of a 24-hour, 52 week sports networks.
MLB’s current rights holders include Fox, ESPN and Turner Broadcasting. NBC’s regional sports networks currently televise games for the New York Mets, Chicago’s White Sox and Cubs, and the A’s and Giants in the San Francisco/Oakland market.
Overall, the newly branded sports network is down 21% over Versus.
OLN was a successful niche play. They attracted viewers that no one else went after. Then it became a little more mainstream as Versus. NBC is trying to make it that much more mainstream in order to make it attractive to the same advertisers that spend on ESPN. As a "me-to" product now, it will be an up hill battle for NBC SN, since it doesn't yet have fully developed mainstream alternatives to challenge the ESPN juggernaut.
the article glosses over the most obvious fact... people know where NBCS is and they go there for games and outdoor content that's unavailable elsewhere but when it comes to original programming they're drawing flies.
Two possible reasons for this: 1. people would rather get their news and analasys from more established ESPN programs, talk radio or the internet and 2. NBC has done a poor job of promoting it's off-ice/field series. They've spent majorly on ad campaigns that highlight the NHL and MLS, but have any of their ads hyped up Costas or Florio or anyone else from their crew? What they need are some higher profile defections from the WWL and better promotion for their regular series using all means available to them.
At the Indiana University National Sports Journalism Center, Michael Bradley advises NBC Sports Network to stay the course and not panic in the wake of low ratings out of the box.
The media company raised eyebrows last year when it bid $4.4 billion to broadcast the Olympic Games. Turns out the cable guys have a plan - and they're just getting started.
Quote:
So Comcast is doubling down on sports. It has relaunched its Versus channel as the NBC Sports Network. ("Versus" not ringing a bell? Originally named the Outdoor Life Network, it was best known as the channel where Lance Armstrong used to race, deer were shot, and the NHL disappeared into the witness-protection program.) And Comcast has folded the new network and its other sports assets -- Golf Channel and its regional sports networks -- into the NBC Sports Group, a powerhouse with existing long-term contracts with the NFL, the NHL, and PGA golf events. Starting this summer in London, the company plans to blanket Olympics coverage across all its digital platforms and existing channels. Most of the sports group will soon be based at a new, $100 million sports production facility in Stamford, Conn., some 50 miles closer to New York City than ESPN's headquarters in Bristol, Conn., which should attract current ESPN talent.
If Comcast's big bet on sports pays off -- if it can woo viewers and advertisers, boost the fees its rivals pay to carry NBC sports, and come up with a slew of interactive services that keep consumers from cutting the cord -- the rest of NBC can expect to follow suit.
There has been a lot of confusion I've seen on MLS sites where people just sort of assumed that "NBC Sports" meant NBC the network. I think that's a contributing factor. But something has to give because there is no way Comcast is happy with the way this is going.
The new threat from Newscorp is going to have very serious repercussions here, too.
There has been a lot of confusion I've seen on MLS sites where people just sort of assumed that "NBC Sports" meant NBC the network. I think that's a contributing factor. But something has to give because there is no way Comcast is happy with the way this is going.
The new threat from Newscorp is going to have very serious repercussions here, too.
Yeah, I'm sure after seeing those numbers Fox is just chomping at the bit to get in on this action.
There has been a lot of confusion I've seen on MLS sites where people just sort of assumed that "NBC Sports" meant NBC the network. I think that's a contributing factor. But something has to give because there is no way Comcast is happy with the way this is going.
The new threat from Newscorp is going to have very serious repercussions here, too.
I doubt that MLS ratings are bringing the network down. It's the fact they don't have anything on during the day. Guess all the people that were watching OLN for the OLN programming they have on during the day have stopped watching.
I think it's just more of a factor that the old Versus found itself something of a niche audience, so people that wanted to watch the sports that they had available really only had Versus to turn towards them in regards to national broadcasts.
Now that it's trying to be like the next ESPN though, people just aren't interested right off the bat in their various analysis shows and stick to ESPN for that sort of stuff.
I'm sure that, in a few years, their ratings will rebound in a big way, especially once they really find their groove, get more programming, and word of mouth starts to spread, but as of yet it's just a network that has lost its niche status and is trying to get mainstream along the lines of ESPN. That'll take time.
I never said MLS viewers were bringing the network down, I said that their promotions were clearly not doing a good enough job of letting people know that NBC Sports was a network and not just NBC showing sports. I already covered the outdoor thing above that.
And yes, it will take time. But do they have time? How long would Comcast really be happy with this before they decide to make some changes? What if they lose that MLB bid and decide it's not worth it to compete with ESPN and then scale the network back? Not saying it's likely, but these numbers could have serious repercussions for the NHL.
And Fox has seen those numbers... hence the decision to kill Fuel in favor of network that could aim higher. I think those plans are conditional on winning the rights to the MLB game, but it should still worry NBC Sports because Fox has way more properties than they do and just as much cash backing them up.
MLS on NBCSN is going to be a rough ride and nearly impossible for NBCSN to "grow" the game yet.
Seattle is averaging 38,000K a game and is apparently going to have three games get 68K total sell out vs Portland(rival), and 50-60K vs two other teams. That is amazing for domestic soccer. Yet, no one cares. Literally outside of the market during home games with no national tv, the sounders footprint might be a thousand or two with a pool of hundreds of millions.
It's quite an amazing thing the MLS is becoming with such solid attendance, but without built in popularity for out door domestic soccer or a 5-10 generation and running sport that continues to build it's footprint American's outside of MLS cities and many inside, do not care to accept it or fall for it.
Thats what it's all about "care". I think the NHL improving so much on "versus" is that the NHL in so many US markets was again turning over generation number 2 or 3, or 5 and 6 for LA, Pittsburgh, St. Louis. With so much expansion and relocation the last 45 years the NHL went from 6-12 in 1967, that is not that long ago. The NHL had 21 teams in 1990.
The NHL will continue to grow and grow until something stops it.
MLS is not there yet and is coming into a far far far more saturated market.
As far as the station, it really needs a big sports property like Nascar, major golf, baseball, basketball, football and soon
Didn't they struggle thus far?
I think they used to do a "Live" show on sports in the AM and in the PM.
Now I only see one new highlight show, the evening.
