ESPN Should Apply Mid-Major B-Ball Approach to Football

Spurred by increased media coverage, some talent dilution at top programs from players leaving school, and a run of NCAA tournament upsets mid-major hype hit new levels in college basketball the past decade. It led to an increased national platform, more money, improved recruiting, and overall, a more level playing field with the big boys. [...]

NBA Cinches Critical Cable Carriage Deals

Rumors surfaced last year, following the NBA partnership with Turner about a compromise of lower affiliate fees for expanded coverage on Time Warner Cable. It made sense given the Turner relationship, and as I continue to harp on, is critical as league-owned networks near a make or break tipping point.
In advance of last week’s Opening [...]

Can Fans Handle More Fantasy? Teams Should Find Out

Nobody can debate the power of fantasy sports and the value of the marketplace, currently dominated by football. Following typical economics, as customers showed their appetite for more fantasy, competitors have flooded the market with countless products, each claiming a different fantasy experience, or unique prizes. In the end, most of the products are similar [...]

Ticket Sales Problems Magnified in NHL

We have focused on lagging NFL ticket sales putting local games at risk of blackout, a recessionary indicator for what is hands-down the most profitable and popular sport in the country. Recent MLB numbers show significant year over year declines in two-thirds of the markets. Hidden behind these stories is the effect on hockey in [...]

Versus Needs Big Football Splash

If any doubts remained, football’s booming start on television leaves no doubt that it is arguably the most dominant television franchise. The NFL was up across the board during its first week, even more telling it’s meaningless preseason games ranked near the top of the weekly primetime ratings. The buck doesn’t stop with the NFL [...]

ESPN Mobile Strategy Hitting Stride

After waiting out its Verizon partnership before entering the smartphone application world with its Scorecenter app earlier this summer, ESPN is about to go full throttle with its mobile strategy. Announced this week, the Worldwide Leader will debut a Fantasy Football iPhone app and an ESPN Radio app for the iPhone and Blackberry, along with [...]

Boston Sports Web Scene Will Be Telling

Traffic statistics show ESPNChicago.com is a ringing success, blowing away its online competition in the nations 3rd largest market, though it’s unclear how ESPN attributes traffic from many of the pages shared with its local site and core ESPN.com web property. Regardless, it’s next foray, into the Boston market, proves to be more telling.
Boston media [...]

Pac-10, ACC Logical Media Partners

Here’s the lay of the land for college conference media deals: the ACC, Big 12, and Pac-10 will all vie for new contracts over the next two years, the two models are partnership [with established media networks for substantial rights fee] or ownership [of your own network].
The partnership model yields lower risk, however few options [...]

Essence of SEC New Media Policy What Content Owners Need

The SEC partnered with XOS Technologies last month to form the SEC Digital Network, and the conference didn’t execute the deal for charity purposes – they intend to generate revenue, potentially lots of it. Put aside the mega 15-year television rights packages with ESPN and CBS Sports, the SEC, as many major college conferences do, [...]

ESPN Live Twitter-Type Coverage Good Thought, But Not There Yet

After a week of many negative Twitter stories, it was great to see ESPN experiment with its use in real-time, live game coverage, which can be a sweet-spot value proposition for the microblogging tool. ESPN employed Baseball Writer’s Jayson Stark, Rob Neyer, and Amy Nelson, now legendary Bill Simmons, the Stats and Info group, and [...]