Basketball Local Streaming Launches, Still Missing Key Target

Earlier this year the NBA became the first league to officially hand over local digital rights to its teams and local media providers, contrary to the tight control that MLBAM has kept over local rights. After no movement last season, and a trial run by the Yankees and Padres during baseball, the Sixers and Blazers [...]

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 [...]

NHL Trip Abroad Misguided

A few weeks ago the NHL dropped the puck on its new season, which many of you may have missed. Even those who watch hockey might not know opening weekend took place in Helsinki and Stockholm. Another misguided, failed business move by the league, though I can’t say what they failed at since its not [...]

What to Make of the NHL Network

Earlier this decade starting 24-hour cable networks became the cool thing to do for major sports leagues – NBA TV, NFL Network, more recently MLB Network, and of course the NHL Network. The first three have sustained notable successes and failures, nonetheless most people are aware of the three networks and what their position 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 [...]

Create the College Football MLB Stadium Tour

The NHL crafted a regular season event with the Winter Classic, MLB and the NBA have All-Star games, the NFL and MLB have taken the show on the road to play overseas, college football has an opportunity to ratchet things up in the regular season that has started to take form.
Grant it college football has [...]

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 [...]

Don’t Blame the Cable Guy For Channel Carriage Disputes

For the past few years it’s been the NFL Network battling cable providers, now the NFL’s latest creation, the Red Zone Channel faces a similar fate, meanwhile the Tennis Channel wages war with Cablevision in NY. As fans all you want is the channel and all you hear are the networks chirping about how the [...]