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WELCOME BACK!
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Welcome back to The Varsity, my twice-weekly private email on
everything that happens in the owner’s box. Our thoughts remain with all of you impacted by the deadly and life-altering fires in Los Angeles. We hope that this private email provides a brief distraction as you work through it all.
I am coming to you today from my hometown of Washington, D.C., a city that has now logged a grand total of three NFL playoff wins in the last quarter-century.
Break up the Commies!
In all seriousness, the Commanders’ success demonstrates the value of ownership and executive decision-making at the highest levels of professional sports. Apollo co-founder Josh Harris bought the franchise, hired a new coach and leadership team, and then drafted a quarterback who, at least as of this moment, seems likely to direct the club for the next decade. Once
Harris gets the team out of the Maryland burbs, he’ll truly be able to run for mayor (not that he wants that job, but…).
Anyway, the resurgence of the D.C. football club is also another reminder that few things have united this city more than the deep, bitter, bipartisan vitriol for Dan Snyder, currently the sole investor in Marchand’s new petting zoo concept.
(Andrew, please stop whining about the temperature in the stables. Those Newfoundland ponies don’t clean their own damn manes…)
🚨🚨 The golf revolution will be televised!: Make sure you check out Mike McCarley’s appearance on yesterday’s edition of America’s favorite sports business podcast, The Varsity. As the co-founder of TMRW Sports, McCarley
spoke candidly about the good, the bad, and the ugly regarding TGL’s maiden voyage telecast. On Wednesday, Axios’s Sara Fischer rejoins the show for a news debrief. Subscribe here and
here.
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The Brady Meter: Wild Card
Playoff Round
Eagles 22, Packers 10
Grade: B-
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We got a glimpse of Playoff Tom Brady yesterday as the
GOAT delivered his strongest performance to date in the broadcast booth. Brady offered viewers a nice balance between semi-scripted playfulness (“Same push… different tush”) and insight. At one point in the first half, Eagles quarterback Jalen Hurts changed the play call three times at the line of scrimmage, and Brady translated the audibles as they were
unfolding.
There were also a couple other interesting moments of rare Brady humanitas, which has been lacking this season. Late in the game, he half-joked that he would not have slid, as Saquon Barkley did while running for a first down in the fourth quarter, to avoid running up the score while running out the clock. Secondly, Brady seemed mildly apoplectic about
Jordan Love’s slightly inaccurate throw to the flat on fourth down during the closing minutes of the contest. Most analysts would have blamed the receiver for an inability to get his feet down in bounds, but Brady laid the blame on the QB, expressing disbelief that Love had ever so slightly missed his target.
So, why is Brady only getting a B-? Well, dear reader, let me tell
you a story about Jason Witten, the former Cowboys tight end who spent a single season as a Monday Night Football analyst in 2018. To this day, Witten is known for mangling idioms, Yogi Berra-style, like the time he said that Aaron Rodgers pulled a rabbit out of his head or his analysis that the 49ers were kicking themselves in the foot. The gaffes really weren’t that bad, but they took on a life of their own and eventually
became the defining narrative of his brief tenure in the booth.
I recalled Witten’s year of magical thinking several times yesterday, like when Brady referred to Packers running back Josh Jacobs as Brandon Jacobs (the old Giants back who defeated Brady in two Super Bowls) or when he misidentified Hurts as Love (or was it a two-time divorcé’s subconscious cry for
help?) or when he mistakenly referred to the Eagles as the Phillies (too many avocado smoothies, Tommy?). Sure, they’re small mistakes, but my social feeds and texts blew up with each one of them. Knowing Brady, I expect he’ll watch the film, be as critical of himself as he was about Love on fourth down, and clean things up. As for now, he’s on to Detroit with a gentleman’s B.
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- Lasry’s value investment: I found Marc Lasry’s appearance on CNBC’s Squawk Box this morning fascinating, especially when the Avenue Capital Group C.E.O. spoke about up-and-coming sports that are ripe for investment. (During the decade that Lasry owned the Bucks, the team’s valuation grew by 7x.) Just like nearly every other P.E. and V.C. executive that I’ve spoken with over the past two years, Lasry is interested in women’s sports. He
argued that those investments would begin to pay off when more men start watching; he also believes younger fans will continue supporting them much more fervently than older folks.
Another up-and-coming sport, per Lasry: bull riding. Lasry noticed that TV ratings for the sport have increased for three straight years. “I’m not investing in things where ratings are going down, and people aren’t watching,” he said, likely a veiled dig at baseball. “What we’re trying to do is
find sports that are undervalued and invest in those so that five years from now, as they get their new media deals, that’s when you’ll capture the upside.” The commentary offered some validation for Ari Emanuel and Patrick Whitesell, whose Endeavor purchased Professional Bull Riders in 2015.
- A CFP reschedule: College Football Playoff executive director Rich Clark is already
signaling the need for the tournament to alter its postseason schedule next year so that its games don’t compete head-to-head with the NFL. Alas, the TV numbers for the semifinals are coming in smaller than expected, and Clark may need to consider additional tweaks.
On Thursday, two popular national brands, Notre Dame and Penn State, played an exciting game that was decided in the final minute. But the game’s 17.8 million viewers on ESPN, ESPN2, and ESPNU ranked as one of the five
smallest audiences for a CFP semifinal dating back to 2005. The following day, two more college football blue bloods, Ohio State and Texas, drew an audience of 20.6 million. Sure, those audiences are still significant, but they probably suffered from the fact that the games were scheduled on random Thursday and Friday nights in January. Last year’s semis, which both enjoyed higher numbers, were held on New Year’s Day. Another possible reason for the relatively tepid numbers:
coverage of the California wildfires and their impact on the country’s second-biggest TV market.
- The Tiger effect: Ever since bursting onto the national stage with a resounding win at Augusta, in 1997, Tiger Woods has been a TV ratings magnet. When he’s on the leaderboard, viewership soars. When he’s not, it doesn’t. That’s why I was surprised that Tiger and Rory McIlroy sat on the
sidelines for the TGL debut on ESPN last week.
When TGL co-founder Mike McCarley joined The Varsity yesterday, I asked him why he didn’t have his most popular golfers compete on day one. “Did you watch Tuesday night? Okay. Are you going to watch this coming Tuesday night when Tiger plays, too?” McCarley responded. “I remember the first Sunday Night Football game on NBC was the first Manning bowl, where Peyton and
Eli were playing in Giants Stadium. I always thought that it would be better to have that game for week two, as opposed to week one. People are going to tune in week one because it’s new. But the reality is, there’s a different story every week. There are different casts of characters every week. Our first week set the scene with our two youngest teams. And then this week we got Tiger’s debut. Every week there’s going to be a different scenario. I had never wanted to put Tiger
on opening night. I think it would always be better to save him for later on.”
I asked McCarley about the boisterous crowd last week that booed some shots and counted down the 40-second shot clock incorrectly to mess with the golfers. McCarley said he wasn’t expecting the boos, adding that the crowd didn’t react that way through six weeks of rehearsals. It turns out the producers suspected the crowd might count down the shot clock, but didn’t anticipate they’d actually mislead the golfers
on how much time was left. “We’re going to have to deal with that, because you can’t do anything that’s going to get in the way of the competition,” he said. “We knew that the crowd, if done right, would be a character in the overall drama.”
- The NBA passes the marketing torch: NBC is still nine months away from carrying NBA games again, but that didn’t stop the network from marketing its upcoming package during last night’s NFL
wild card game. Interestingly, the 45-second clip does not star any of the old guard, like LeBron James, Steph Curry, and Kevin Durant. The premise is that a new generation of superstars—Giannis Antetokounmpo, Victor Wembanyama, and Jayson Tatum, all wearing their team jerseys—are part of a group touring an NBC sound stage. Jack McBrayer, of 30 Rock fame, is leading the
tour. The spot ends with the tagline: “This fall, the NBA is coming home to NBC and streaming on Peacock.” Watch the whole thing here.
- Predictions for 2025: Last week, my partner Matt Belloni published his annual,
two–part column of Hollywood predictions for the new year, a handful of which are likely of particular interest to the loyal Varsity readership. Herewith…
—UFC rights will be split
between ESPN and Amazon. “Much of the UFC business is pay-per-view, and that’s a better fit for Amazon, which is very good at making retail transactions. I’m betting Amazon outbids Netflix for that second package,” he writes. (For the record, I still see ESPN and Netflix as winners on this, but my confidence level is not high about Netflix.)
—ESPN will use the opt-out in its MLB deal to renegotiate its rights. “With ESPN Flagship launching this year, and MLB games filling a
dead zone in the summer, it seems more likely that ESPN will use the opt-out to renegotiate that MLB deal down a bit [than opt out altogether],” Matt writes. (I expect these negotiations to lead ESPN to get local streaming rights from several teams, which will drive Flagship subscribers.)
—Speaking of ESPN Flagship… Matt predicted that it will launch in August, with content from Fox Sports. “Fox’s league partners would love the additional distribution via Flagship. Plus,
it would mean a fat check from Disney. And this could be just one of many nontraditional tie-ups this year as the scramble to shift linear sports viewers to digital intensifies,” Matt wrote. (I totally agree.)
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And now, on to the latest hunger squeals from the R.S.N. business…
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Greg Rigdon, Comcast’s president of content acquisition and the
architect of the dreaded “cliff path” deal for regional sports networks, turns his fire on his own sister stations.
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The regional sports network business’s fight for survival has
become so desperate that, like a civil war, it has now turned brother on brother, father on son, etcetera, all in the name of preserving the viability of the cable bundle for a few more years. At the very least (and more accurately), it’s forced a media conglomerate to eat its own portfolio companies.
In antebellum times, large cable distributors privately loathed regional sports networks because
they needed to include them in their basic packages despite the fact that they attracted paltry viewership when not airing live games. In the postwar era, however, distributors have been able to exact their revenge: As customers have cut the cord and solicited various skinny bundle options, many cable systems have relegated R.S.N.s to a higher-cost, non-basic tier, a practice that has largely imperiled their business models, forcing many into bankruptcy or extinction.
The primary architect of this cliff path—so called because the R.S.N.s are suddenly kicked up to a more expensive tier, thereby depriving them of much of their audience—has been Greg Rigdon, Comcast’s president of content acquisition. For the past year, Comcast’s final offer to its R.S.N. negotiating partners has been identical to its first one: Accept the cliff path,
or go dark on our system. (Indeed, a few less militaristic executives from other distributors offered the more tender-hearted and gradual glide path, itself a morphine drip of sorts.)
Rigdon’s scorched-earth negotiating tactics have become the stuff of legend in the R.S.N. micro-economy, and they’ve entirely upended the business. R.S.N.s, once the most profitable channels on cable, now bring in
much less revenue. David Preschlack, the C.E.O. of Main Street Sports (né Diamond Sports Group), is merely the most prominent executive to confront Comcast’s bullheaded negotiating stance. His Bally Sports-branded R.S.N.s went dark on Comcast for three months over the summer while Preschlack was trying to rescue his company from bankruptcy, hoping that Rigdon would approve a glide path deal. Nope. After those three months, Preschlack gave in and signed
a cliff path deal. Chicago Sports Network, which holds the rights to the White Sox, Bulls, and Blackhawks, met the same fate; four months after its launch, it still doesn’t have a Comcast deal.
But as Comcast has diverted R.S.N.s to the higher tier, it has largely protected its own NBC Sports-branded networks in areas like Boston, Philadelphia, and Northern California. (Comcast shuttered NBC Sports channels in
Chicago and Portland and sold the D.C. affiliate to Ted Leonsis’ Monumental Sports & Entertainment.) Now, as the industry reorients, that’s changing too. Rigdon is coming for Comcast’s R.S.N.s as their contracts come up for renegotiation.
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Last week, Rigdon fired his first shot. Comcast subscribers in the
Boston area have been told that both NBC Sports Boston and NESN are headed to a digital tier this week. Now, New England cable subscribers will have to pay an extra $20 per month to watch the Celtics, Bruins, and Red Sox, per the Globe’s Chad Finn. Today, Comcast started alerting customers in San Francisco that they face the same prospect: NBC Sports Bay Area and NBC Sports California (Giants, Warriors, Kings, and Sharks) are headed straight to a more expensive digital
tier this week.
That leaves NBC Sports Philadelphia and SportsNet New York as the only Comcast-owned R.S.N.s that are not moving to a digital tier in the next couple of days. Both channels are in the middle of affiliate deals that run for several more years, which is creating potential problems in New York. YES Network’s deal with Comcast ended last year, and the R.S.N. is resisting Comcast’s
cliff path directive. Sinclair Broadcast Group, which owns 20 percent of YES Network in addition to a minority stake in the Cubs’ Marquee Sports, is handling R.S.N. negotiations as part of a larger deal that it’s trying to work out with Comcast.
Could Sinclair force Rigdon to stand down? Both Marquee and YES are hopeful. For its part, YES is loath to cut a cliff path deal with Comcast
because it recently signed glide path deals with distributors including DirecTV and Charter. If YES gives in to Comcast’s demands, DirecTV and Charter could press for the same terms. Also, YES’s previous Comcast deals all stipulated that it would remain in the same tier as SNY, which carries the Mets and happens to be partly owned by Comcast. While that affiliation may not mean much any longer in terms of preserving rights, SNY is in the middle of a long-term deal with
Comcast.
Nevertheless, YES executives know the Comcast treatment well. In 2016, Comcast blocked the network from pockets of Connecticut and New Jersey. Fox Sports, which was a part owner, ultimately used leverage from Fox News to get a carriage deal done just before the 2017 season. Ironically, politics could benefit YES Network this year, too. Hal Steinbrenner and Yankees president
Randy Levine are close to Donald Trump, leading to some speculation that they can tap into the incoming president’s deep well of animosity toward MSNBC’s former owner to help get a deal done.
To this day, Comcast executives insist that they didn’t lose many subscribers in 2016. (It helped that 2016 was one of the four seasons during the past 15 years that the Yankees failed to make the
playoffs.) Anyway, given YES Network’s ongoing negotiations with Comcast and MSG Networks’ fight with Altice, the coveted New York market has become the newest battleground as R.S.N.s struggle to stay afloat in this new media age.
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On Venu’s demise: “It was a doomed marriage—this
generation’s AOL-Time Warner.” —A cable guy
Hulu questions: “Have a question about something that’s less clear because I’m a Canadian subscriber, where we don’t actually have Hulu. (All of its programming comes through, mostly, Disney+.) Is Hulu+Live TV different from Hulu? Will Hulu still exist after the merger with Fubo?” —A brand strategist
[Ed. note: Hulu is a streaming service, along the lines of Netflix or Amazon Prime, that costs around $20 per month and will continue to exist following the Fubo deal. Hulu+Live TV is a virtual multichannel video programming distributor that has nearly 100 channels and costs more than $80 per month.]
A newsletter without Marchand:
“Wait. Where’s the Marchand joke?” —A sports business executive
More Marchand: “Thanks for letting Marchand take a break from his latte art to break the ‘Mike Keith to the Vols Network’ news. My Tennessee-obsessed husband has been speaking that into existence for the 10 years I’ve known him, so it was an exciting news day in our household.” —A true Varsity fan
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Puck sports correspondent John Ourand and a rotating cast of industry insiders take you inside the executive
suites and owners boxes where the decisions that shape the entire sports business are made. You’ll hear interviews with players, network execs, and everyone in between. The Varsity is an extension of John’s private email for Puck by the same name. New episodes publish every Wednesday and Sunday.
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Ace media reporter Dylan Byers brings readers into the C-suite as he chronicles the biggest stories in the
industry: the future of cable news in the streaming era, the transformation of legacy publishers, the tech giants remaking the market, and all the egos involved.
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