Welcome to The Varsity, where I just heard the news that the Commanders are finally
retiring John Riggins’s No. 44 during a November 8 game this season. My first reaction: They hadn’t done that yet?
Pod alert: The sports media industrial complex is going to be bouncing up and down I-95, Mike Wilbon’s least favorite corridor, for the next few weeks. The MLB All-Star Game is coming up in Philly, and then the World Cup Final will descend on the Meadowlands; but the most Beatlemania-esque event of all may be Fanatics
Fest, which starts in New York next Thursday—the day after the ESPYs, also in midtown Manhattan. Lance Fensterman, the C.E.O. of Fanatics Events, and Michael Ratner, the C.E.O. of Fanatics Studios, will join the Varsity podcast this weekend to disclose how they turned this relatively nascent event into a full-blown phenomenon.
Today’s issue offers a preview of the media rights negotiations around the 2030 and 2034 FIFA World Cups. Sure, the TV
and streaming numbers for this year’s event are through the roof. But mediacos have a boatload of questions about what’s ahead. Also, news and notes from Allen & Co.’s annual Sun Valley shindig. As always, my Thursday send is exclusive to Puck Inner Circle subscribers. Upgrade here, if you haven’t yet.
Also mentioned in this issue: Kawhi Leonard, Mike
Morris, Gary Bettman, Brian Rolapp, Steve Ballmer, Roger Goodell, Dylan Byers, Derek Chang, Eric Shanks, Andy Jassy, Bob Kraft, Brian Roberts, Mike Angelakis, Mike Cavanagh, Steven Cahall, Mike Mulvihill, Federico Garza,
Pelé, and more. |
Player of the Week: Eric Shanks
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When I opened an email from Nielsen this morning, every last entry among the 25
most-viewed telecasts for the week of June 29 was a FIFA World Cup match (17 on Fox, seven on Telemundo, one on FS1). A week earlier, World Cup games took up 24 of the 25 slots. The beautiful game has been very good to the Fox Sports C.E.O. this summer. |
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A MESSAGE FROM OUR SPONSOR |
MLB All-Star Week in Philadelphia will continue the celebration of America’s 250th birthday with a schedule
that includes fan events, a free drone show, themed merchandise and uniforms, and the continuation of a national volunteerism effort. Prior to the Midsummer Classic, baseball’s best will walk the Red Carpet at Independence Mall, footsteps from where the Declaration of Independence was signed 250 years ago. Fans can catch all the action when Netflix hosts its first T-Mobile Home Run Derby on Monday, July 13, and the MLB All-Star Game presented by Mastercard will take
place on Tuesday, July 14 on FOX. For more information, visit AllStarGame.com. |
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Down to the
J.V.: Steve Ballmer
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The Aspiration scandal lives. The NBA essentially hit pause on the would-be
blockbuster-ish trade of Kawhi Leonard from Ballmer’s Clippers to the Raptors until its investigation into the team’s alleged salary cap malfeasance is concluded. The Clippers organization said on Thursday that the trade can only be finalized if the Raptors agreed to take on liability for any future potential penalties related to Leonard’s contract. “We were victims of a fraud,” the Clippers announced in a statement. |
- The NBA
drag: In a report released yesterday, Guggenheim analyst Mike Morris estimated that WBD network advertising dropped 21 percent in the second quarter of the year—largely the result of TNT’s first season without the NBA in decades. The decline, which wasn’t surprising, was nevertheless depressing because Turner carried this year’s NCAA Final Four and championship game. On the plus side, Morris wrote, “associated cost savings from the NBA absence should provide some
offset to profit pressure.” But that silver lining probably won’t matter to the executives and staffers fearful of their futures once CBS Sports gets its hands on this puppy.
- The NFL hurricane: The NFL’s media rights renegotiations were the elephant in the room during separate CNBC interviews with NHL commissioner Gary Bettman and PGA Tour C.E.O. Brian Rolapp at this week’s Allen & Co. conference in Sun Valley. Neither
commissioner broke any news on their own outfit’s negotiations, but both men were clearly and intensely interested in figuring out how the market will look after Roger Goodell extracts his ransom from various partners via renegotiations that would extend the durations of their deals. As everyone reading this newsletter knows, Paramount’s change-of-control provision has opened up the CBS deal for renegotiation. “The NFL is one-of-one,”
Rolapp said. “You can't really plan your rights around what they'll do. …Our deals go through 2030. We may go early. We may not. We haven't really had those discussions yet.” For his part,
Bettman said he doesn’t feel “pressure” to get a media deal done before the NFL, but he also noted that, “other properties are—or will be—in the marketplace.” Good luck to everyone!
- Speaking of Sun Valley…: My Puck partner Dylan Byers has decamped to the
billionaires’ retreat this week, and a couple of items from his dispatch last night caught my attention. First, Dylan reported that Liberty Media C.E.O. Derek Chang ditched a private chauffeur so that he could drive his white Toyota Tacoma straight to the lodge! Then Dylan spotted Amazon C.E.O. Andy Jassy dining with Patriots
owner Bob Kraft and having, as Dylan wrote, “a conversation that may portend an expansion of Amazon’s relationship with the NFL, or could merely be one of the hundreds of check-ins that take place here between existing business partners.” Oh, and Comcast’s Brian Roberts, Mike Angelakis, and Mike Cavanagh are meeting “with all prospective dance partners, including Disney and Netflix.” If you’re at the conference, Dylan’s usually hanging out at
the Konditorei all week. Say hi and tell him your deepest and darkest secrets.
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And now for the main event… |
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With the overperforming World Cup headed into its final (and probably
thrilling) stretch, FIFA is seemingly in the catbird seat in negotiating rights deals for 2030 and 2034. And while there is no shortage of suitors, there are surprisingly few details, and a time-zone penalty that makes viewership and rights fees next to impossible to predict. |
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It’s easy to see why so many media companies—Fox, Netflix, Disney, YouTube,
etcetera—would be interested in bidding for the rights to air the World Cup tournaments in 2030 (Morocco, Portugal, Spain) and 2034 (Saudi Arabia), respectively. U.S. television viewership from this year’s tournament has thus far rivaled the NFL playoffs on a per-match basis. England’s win over Mexico on Sunday drew 44.8 million U.S. viewers—21.7 million on Fox and 23.1 million from Telemundo/Peacock. Numbers for the U.S. national team’s disastrous loss to Belgium were even bigger: 46 million
viewers—33.1 million on Fox and 12.9 million on Telemundo/Peacock.
Right now, all of the usual suspects are having internal chats about whether, and how, to formally engage in the bidding process when it opens later this year—even though they’re largely in the dark on the next steps in the negotiations. A half dozen really good sources say that there’s been no real communication with FIFA on the topic, beyond the expectation that bids could be submitted in late fall or early
winter. “FIFA hasn’t even put out anything official yet in terms of what they’re looking for,” one executive told me. Another said, “Everybody’s thinking about it. We’re thinking about it. But nobody’s focused on it. And certainly nobody has any idea on how much this is all going to cost.”
The price tag, of course, will ultimately determine who winds up with the package. Fox paid around $485 million for English-language rights in the U.S.; Telemundo forked over $600 million for
Spanish-language rights, which they locked down in 2011 on the heels of the 2010 World Cup Final (Spain vs. Netherlands)—whose 24.3 million viewers made it the most-watched soccer game in U.S. television history to that point. Given the success of this year’s tournament, it would make sense that those fees would nearly
double for the next two World Cups, but there are still way too many unknowns about the next two tournaments. “I guarantee you, nobody who’s bidding has any idea what they think it’s worth,” said a third executive who will, indeed, be bidding.
For starters, nobody knows if FIFA will continue to have hydration breaks during each half—an ad sales opportunity that probably adds at least $200 million or more to the overall rights fee. And there’s uncertainty regarding whether the 2034 Saudi
games will be played during the summer or moved to November and December, as was the case with the 2022 World Cup in Qatar, which would compete with the NFL and drop the rights fee considerably. On the other hand, there’s the potential for more games. The tournament expanded to 48 teams this year, and there’s been talk of making it even bigger, which might ratchet up the final sale price. |
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A MESSAGE FROM OUR SPONSOR |
MLB All-Star Week in Philadelphia will continue the celebration of America’s 250th birthday with a schedule
that includes fan events, a free drone show, themed merchandise and uniforms, and the continuation of a national volunteerism effort. Prior to the Midsummer Classic, baseball’s best will walk the Red Carpet at Independence Mall, footsteps from where the Declaration of Independence was signed 250 years ago. Fans can catch all the action when Netflix hosts its first T-Mobile Home Run Derby on Monday, July 13, and the MLB All-Star Game presented by Mastercard will take
place on Tuesday, July 14 on FOX. For more information, visit AllStarGame.com. |
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And, equally important, there’s the time zone question. A couple of sources suggested
that ratings for a European World Cup could drop viewership as much as 30 or 40 percent from this year’s American edition. It’s hard to come up with a good comp, since the event from four years ago played out during NFL season. U.S. viewership fell by more than half in 1998 when the World Cup moved from the U.S. to France. This year, through the round of 16, Fox’s average audience is up 128 percent from Qatar.
But despite all the question marks, U.S. media and streaming
executives have formed expectations: FIFA, like the IOC, will allow companies to make four different bids: one for English-language only rights; one for Spanish-language only rights; one for both English and Spanish combined; and one for a Spanish bid that would be contingent on winning the English bid. The various concerns would submit their bids and wait. Almost certainly, FIFA will come back to the top two bidders and have them resubmit bids for a second round. |
Fox, which has held World Cup rights for more than a decade, is
certainly interested in extending its relationship through 2034 and beyond. The same is true for NBCU-owned Telemundo. Netflix surprised everyone last year by picking up the rights to the FIFA Women’s World Cup in 2027 and 2031. Adding men's rights would be a natural way to corner the market for years to come. And it wouldn’t break the bank for Netflix, which obviously has a global platform. “This is a company with a huge content budget, about $20 billion this year,” Wells Fargo Securities
analyst Steven Cahall said on The Varsity podcast this week. “I’m just not sure they need more shows and movies at this point. Sports is certainly where you’re going to see billions of dollars of incremental spend.”
ESPN, of course, will have a look at any sports event that draws this kind of viewership, and YouTube and Apple are expected to kick the tires. (YouTube has a recent history of coming up short in these types of negotiations,
as I recently observed.) It’s worth noting that Apple and FIFA went through a rough patch in the spring of 2024 after the company pulled out of negotiations for the Club World Cup at the last minute. But the performance of these games on Fox and Telemundo are too strong not to compete for future rights, and it’s hard to imagine that FIFA would hold a grudge against the world’s
third largest company.
When we spoke this week, Fox’s president of insight and analytics, Mike Mulvihill, trotted out an enviable stat: 53 percent of people who have watched the World Cup on Fox had not watched a single minute of any soccer match in the previous 12 months. “That speaks to the idea that you really have to be on broadcast to get that casual fan who just is showing up for the big events. I find it hard to believe that you would get that kind of reach from
casual viewers if you were behind a paywall.”
Mulvihill also highlighted the audiences for several non-U.S. games—Argentina–Cape Verde, France–Paraguay, Norway–Brazil—that were comparable to NFL audiences. “That speaks to the idea that while we would love to have the upside of the U.S. or Mexico getting through to the round of eight, we’ve got great storylines. We feel pretty good about what we can do for these last eight matches.” Telemundo is telling a similar story, showing that the
total hours of games watched on its network are up 40 percent over previous World Cups. “We were expecting it to be big,” said Federico Garza, Telemundo’s head of research. “But this goes beyond what I expected.”
But the biggest risk of all may be whether America’s love affair with international soccer carries through when the games head back across the Atlantic. Yes, it’s undeniable that the game has grown in the U.S. in the 32 years since the last North American World
Cup. And yes, the U.S. Men’s National Team showed itself to be mostly deserving of a place among the tournament’s top 16 teams (that stinker of a send-off notwithstanding). Of course, the World Cup is the type of big event that Americans love, but we’ve been hearing that soccer is the next big thing in American sports since Pelé signed with the Cosmos. You’ll pardon me if I remain skeptical. |
On Russini-gate: “I hate to admit that I find all aspects of the
Vrabel–Russini story to be really interesting. Even the gossip. But Eriq Gardner’s grown-up journalism analysis was a very welcome part of a very complicated story.” —A former league executive
On Fox and Roku: “Wells Fargo’s Steven Cahall had a particularly rational take on
the Fox–Roku deal when he said the acquisition ‘doesn’t create a meaningfully different Fox or Roku.’ I feel like other recent takes have gotten way ahead of reality.” —A Varsity subscriber |
Have a great weekend. See you Monday.
John |
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