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Anti DAZN Boxing fans still insist that people prefer cable when in reality the goal for companies was how/when will the transition get stronger. DAZN been doing it globally for 5 years and it has paid off.
Disney chief executive Bob Chapek has warned the National Football League (NFL) over ESPN’s willingness to pay huge fees to secure a rights package in the upcoming round of TV deals.
During Disney’s quarterly earnings call, Chapek indicated that ESPN is not going to pay any price to keep its football rights and that the sports network might be looking to move away from its cable channel positioning towards the direct-to-consumer (DTC) streaming arena.
2021 Super Bowl nets lowest rating since 2007 as 96.4m tune into CBS
The NFL is reportedly seeking around US$100 billion in total value across its new eight to ten-year domestic broadcast contracts.
“We’ve had a long relationship with the NFL. If there’s a deal that will be accretive to shareholder value, we will certainly entertain that and look at that,” Chapek said during Disney’s quarterly earnings call. “Our first [priority] will be to look and say ‘does it make sense for shareholder value going forward?’”
ESPN’s Monday Night Football (MNF) package is worth US$1 billion a year and expires at the end of the 2021 season, while the NFL’s other deals end at the conclusion of the 2022 campaign.
It is largely thought that the incumbent linear broadcasters - Fox, CBS, NBC and ESPN - will retain their existing main packages, with the potential for a new name with the Sunday Ticket out-of-market contract currently held by DirecTV. ESPN+, Disney’s dedicated sports streaming service, is one of several digital platforms linked with Sunday Ticket, including DAZN, Apple and Amazon.
Amazon currently has a digital-only Thursday night NFL package.
Steve Tomsic, the chief financial officer at Fox, recently said the network could look to move on from its Thursday night linear broadcast deal. Fox currently pays US$660 million per year for those games, but the deal expires at the end of the 2023 season, a year after the network’s US$1.1 billion broadcast partnership for the main NFC rights package.
Chapek also revealed that Disney’s approach to the NFL rights would be taken with a view to “the long-term trends in sports viewership,” with a reference to “our own prospects of a potentially more true ESPN DTC service”.
The Disney chief executive’s comments come amid reports that the NFL is looking for a speedy resolution to its rights talks. CNBC reports that the NFL wants to ‘finalise frameworks’ of the new TV deals before locking in the 2021 salary cap in March.
After a disappointing Super Bowl from a ratings standpoint, the NFL has received better news regarding its esports efforts around the Pro Bowl. The all-star game’s pandemic-related pivot into competitive gaming has become the most-viewed event in Madden NFL history on digital platforms.
The event was streamed on Twitter by 27 NFL teams, the league’s social channels and EA Madden NFL on Twitch. Across digital, the Pro Bowl generated 3.5 million live views with a combined average minute audience of 121,000, while the Pro Bowl also brought in younger fans to NFL Network with the re-run of the event up 36 per cent in 18 to 34 viewership compared to last year.
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