NFL
John Ourand
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November 15, 2024
Is the NFL Falling Hard for Amazon?
For the first time, a streaming service outdrew one of the NFL’s top TV partners in same-week viewership. Now, TV execs are grumbling that the NFL is setting up a future rights battle by giving streamers a taste of potential glory with the choicest matchups.
John Ourand
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October 28, 2024
ESPN’s Streaming Squeeze
TV distributors are struggling to play hardball with the likes of ESPN, Peacock, and Paramount+ as sports programmers move their best content to streaming. But distribution executives also realize how much ESPN needs affiliate fees to compete against the deep-pocketed tech streamers that are piling into this space. And they’ve got their own ideas for how to use that leverage to their advantage.
John Ourand
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October 18, 2024
Is Goodell Picking Favorites?
The NFL’s decision to allow ABC to simulcast six extra ‘Monday Night Football’ games from sisterco ESPN has enraged executives from rival networks, prompted some pretty vicious phone calls and accusations of favoritism, and led to animus and chit-filing. It’s also the latest example of a familiar trope in the industry: The Shield can do whatever it wants.
Matthew Belloni
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September 27, 2024
Da Saga of Spike Lee, Colin Kaepernick & ESPN
A pricey seven-episode docuseries about Colin Kaepernick, produced by Spike Lee and Jemele Hill, won’t be released for at least another year—and ESPN boss Jimmy Pitaro is open to the them shopping it elsewhere.
John Ourand
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September 20, 2024
Mahomes-Burrow vs. Harris-Trump
Early ratings suggest that, despite historical precedents, this election has zero hope of competing with the NFL for the hearts and minds of viewers. Welcome to America.
John Ourand
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September 10, 2024
Full Nielsen
After enraging the sports media community last year by attempting to integrate Amazon’s numbers into its data, Nielsen will use some first-party data in its calculations for the NFL this season. But the devil is in the details.
John Ourand
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September 6, 2024
Will NFL Media & ESPN Ever Tie the Knot?
The league’s three-year attempt to unload the entity, which controls the NFL Network and RedZone, is the latest casualty of the declining cable business.
John Ourand
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September 4, 2024
The DirecTV Revenge Fantasy
News and notes on the existential fears—both real and imagined—of distribution executives as the future of the Venu sports streamer appears increasingly tenuous.
John Ourand
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August 13, 2024
The Netflix-CBS Arranged Marriage
After being rebuffed by numerous TV networks to produce their hard-won pair of Christmas Day NFL games, Netflix finally found a dance partner in CBS. Of course, there were several key concessions…