Leagues playing games with sports viewers

By David Mullen

If you watched the Dallas Mavericks on TV during the 2023-24 regular season, chances are you tuned into regional network Bally Sports Southwest, which was scheduled to broadcast up to 72 regular-season games with others occasionally on TNT and ESPN/ABC. But once the playoffs began, games moved between Bally Sports, TNT, NBA TV, ESPN and ABC.  

The NBA Finals, between the Mavericks and Boston Celtics, are exclusively on ABC.

If you watched the Dallas Stars on TV during the 2023-24 regular season, chances are you tuned into regional network Bally Sports Southwest, which broadcast 70 of 82 games during the 2023-24 regular season. But once the playoffs began, games were on Bally Sports, ESPN, ESPN2, ABC, TNT and TBS. 

The Stanley Cup Final, between the Edmonton Oilers and Florida Panthers, are being televised exclusively in the U.S. on ABC. But ABC does not have the Stanley Cup Final rights in Canada, and since Edmonton is in Alberta, their home fans are viewing the games on CBC.

If it seems confusing, it is. And sports viewing is about to get more complicated and potentially a lot more expensive.

A lucrative NBA TV contract beginning with the 2025-26 season, is currently being finalized. It appears that Turner Sports, part of Warner Bros. Discovery, home of NBA games since 1989 and network of the EMMY Award-winning “Inside The NBA” featuring Ernie Johnson, Shaquille O’Neal, Kenny “The Jet” Smith and Charles Barkley, will be a network without professional basketball in 2025.

A legacy partner like TNT, which in no small part helped build the NBA into a multi-billion-dollar business, gets left out. Essentially, the NBA owners, channeling Rod Tidwell in “Jerry McGuire,” said “Show Me the Money.” For NBA owners, it’s not about the Barkley but about the Benjamins. 

According to Forbes, the new deals would keep basketball “on ABC and ESPN through parent company Disney (which will pay between $2.6 billion and $2.8 billion annually), while giving new rights packages to NBC ($2.6 billion) and Amazon ($1.8 billion to $2 billion) — leaving out TNT.”

With Amazon Prime already broadcasting NFL Thursday Night Games, Apple TV with a Friday Night MLB package and YouTube TV paying $2 billion for the NFL Sunday Ticket rights, legacy and cable TV networks’ reliance on sports properties are weakening, and streaming services are moving in for the kill. 

“Consumers continue to have issues for all types of program discovery — sports, TV shows (new and library programs) and movies,” said West Coast Editor of MediaPost Wayne Friedman, an authority on sports properties on TV, cable and streaming services. 

In February, Disney (ABC, ESPN, ESPN 2, ESPN U), Fox (FS1, FS2), and Warner Bros. Discovery (TNT, TBS, TruTV) announced a partnership streaming platform that will primarily broadcast live sports in one location. It is set for launch this fall. 

“More disruption for consumers will come. But it doesn’t matter,” Friedman said. “New streaming/connected TV media owners and platforms is the new way for modern digital TV — despite issues over subscriber’s churns and streaming maturity. Consumers are now locked in.”   

The rationale is that since “cutting the cable” has become commonplace, a new streaming platform will allow sports fans who aren’t paying for traditional cable television packages to access thousands of sports events, including the NFL, NBA, MLB, NHL, NCAA Football and Basketball, the PGA Tour and more. Streaming is essentially becoming cable TV with a more flexible viewing schedule. 

NFL owners, who balk when a player under contract wants to renegotiate, signed a 10-year $100 billion TV rights deal with CBS, NBC, FOX, ESPN and Amazon in 2021. They now feel that they are grossly underpaid for their TV rights and have searched for other revenue streams in streaming. In May, Netflix signed a deal to secure the NFL Christmas games package for the next three years.    

When the NFL broadcast the January 13, 2024, playoff game between the Miami Dolphins and Kansas City Chiefs exclusively on Peacock, fans took to social media in outrage. “The NFL continues to be a gold standard when it comes to attracting heavy sports viewers,” Friedman said. “Fans may grumble to the NFL and the media here and there. But look for them to stay with the sport for years to come — no matter what experimentations the league may come up with to pursue growth.” 

Will the NFL’s gold standard — the Super Bowl — inevitably find a home on pay-per-view or a streaming service in the next 10 years? “No,” said Friedman. “While this important single one-day event can pull in $400 to $500 million in national TV advertising for a TV network, the NFL wants the widest possible audience possible, in part, as an ongoing major TV promotional event fans and non-fans are very familiar with. 

“They would never want to give up a broad-based annual media event by placing restrictions, resulting in lower consumer reach with presumably an out of pocket of $100 or so PPV event that only the most intense NFL fans will buy into,” Friedman said. Only time will tell.

With Bally Sports in financial trouble and national TV contracts in flux, watching Texas Rangers, Stars and Mavericks games next season may require altering traditional viewing habits. But if Friedman is right, it won’t matter to rabid sports fans. Consumers will be “locked in.”