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The area of the tennis court halfway between the baseline and the net is called “No Man’s Land” and is an area where players normally don’t want to find themselves. Too far to easily volley, too close to deploy a groundstroke on a hit return. .
That might be a rough description of where sports TV consumption and fans are. So he’s stuck between two competing poles: the world of traditional, expensive cable TV and the fresh world of increasingly costly streaming. Fans are missing or forking more money than ever before because these options are drawn from the same sport, sometimes the same event, or even the same match. To get there, it’s not clear whether you should rush to streaming, stay with traditional cable and broadcast TV, or do a combination of the two.
Companies like ESPN (ESPN+), NBC (Peacock), CBS (Paramount+) and the need to satisfy consumers paying hefty cable bills and the billions of dollars these conglomerates have spent (and lost) It’s balancing out the shift to streaming. It is believed that there will come a day when everyone can enjoy streaming, but that day is not today and sports fans are stuck between the old world and new world paradigms.
“There is as much art as science,” said Lee Berke, a sports media consultant, on how sports broadcasters decide what is behind streaming paywalls and what is on traditional linear TV. says. “I don’t want to be too ahead of the curve, and I don’t want to be too behind.”
Deciding how to divide sports and tournaments between online and TV may be an art, but the results are undeniably ugly.
Take the ongoing Australian Open, for example, which is causing social media howls from tennis fans and players about how ESPN will stream the match between linear ESPN2 and its streaming app. In the past, Australia’s nightly matches, which ended at breakfast on the east coast, were shown on regular TV, with tennis viewers eagerly awaiting the end of the match. This year, ESPN coverage will end at 2:00 AM ET, and the remainder will be pushed to ESPN+ until the final day of the tournament. From Andy Murray coming back from his two set downs to beat Australia’s Tanasi his Kokkinakis to America’s Koko his Gauff beating his champion Emara Dukanu at the 2021 US Open, it’s thrilling. The match has been streamed. Even ESPN3.com, which used to stream games available to cable subscribers, only had ESPN+ games.
Levi Young, 39, a tennis fan living in Los Angeles, said, “In the last eight days, it’s incredible how many social media users have taken to Twitter and Reddit to express their frustration about this.” So many tennis fans in this country will have to wait until July when Wimbledon starts to see the full tournament.” Wimbledon needs more linear coverage in ESPN deal .
Attention to the tennis world. Ajla Tomljanovic, who reached the quarterfinals at last year’s Wimbledon and US Open, and former ATP Tour pro Jesse Levine also complained about Murray’s comeback.
How can this match not be reported in America🤯🤬
— Ajla Tomljanovic (@Ajlatom) January 19, 2023
Why isn’t tennis on TV in the US? yes espn + ok but one of the biggest tournaments in the world you can’t even watch!!
— Jesse Levine (@jesselevine7) January 20, 2023
ESPN said it’s airing more hours of the tournament in linear this year than last year, but there’s no getting around it. Fans of tennis and other sports should expect more content to move online as cable bundles shrink and streamers demand it. make money in the end.
Patrick Craigs, former Fox Sports executive and now media consultant, said: They “must be distributed to all platforms… twisting dials, looking for the right calibration, looking for the right frequency.”
This frequency of putting sports behind a streaming paywall ensures that it catches and captures more than just a late-night tennis match. Football already has major events like the UEFA Champions League (Paramount+), not to mention his Apple TV+ debut pending Major League Soccer, almost everything is streaming. Even the NFL streamed Week 8’s Broncos vs. Jaguars game in London exclusively on ESPN+ (other than the two teams’ local his markets).
How do networks decide what to stream and what to air on traditional TV?
“A lot of it has been around for years,” replied Rick Cordella, president of programming for NBC Sports and Peacock Sports.
If the game is not contractually limited to one platform, the network must decide where it will be distributed (broadcast, cable, or streaming). And sometimes all three at once.
According to Cordilla, the obvious big events will remain on the national linear broadcast network, but there are discussions about games and matches that aren’t top-level events.
At NBC, which owns the U.S. rights to the Premier League, programmers consider factors such as how long a team has been on a particular platform, Cordella said. And now, Premier League games get about the same ratings on Peacock as they do on cable, he added.
Timing is also a big factor. Do you have a broadcast window available? This can not only stream the event, but offer perks like full coverage of press conferences, highlights, stats, and other elements not possible with traditional broadcasting It’s more limited on linear television than on digital distribution.
Cordella said that streaming programming is now a less complicated process and that it has become easier as networks gain experience and services grow with content and new media rights.
“Most of them come to us and are pretty obvious,” he said of where to put the content. “It’s a bit of an easy decision.”
NBC also has Notre Dame football, which has exclusively streamed one game on Peacock for the past two seasons, and will also have Big Ten football games behind a streaming paywall as part of a new media rights deal with the conference. I’m here. Which games are streamed is decided during the season, rather than before the full schedule is released, to take advantage of storyline changes, much like the NFL reflects late-season games in its national broadcast window. is determined by
There is also a tension between showing important games on linear TV or streaming to attract new subscribers and drive revenue. Bills of rights still have to be paid, so it’s not good business to fill streaming services with low-rate content that doesn’t grow their subscriber base.
“Peacock will have a big game,” Cordella said. “Peacock is a big part of that (revenue) equation. There is no shame in playing games with Peacock. But it has to be the right mix. There is art and science. I have.”
He added that NBC’s survey of Peacock subscribers showed that the most satisfied customers were Premier League and WWE fans.
“People are relatively happy with peacocks,” he said.
At CBS, the decision to stream exclusively on Paramount+ and/or on Linear TV is typically made when media rights are negotiated.
said Jeffrey Gerttula, executive vice president of digital at CBS Sports, News and Stations.
Networks have the same pressure to find a balance between getting the largest audience for their expensive sports programming and growing Paramount+ subscription revenue, but they’re trying to do it before the season starts. doing.
“We have a clear idea of the business model that drives the business that supports royalties,” Gertura said.
“Our approach is unique. Paramount+ and CBS have the greatest of all.
Unlike NBC’s Big Ten football deal, CBS won’t wait until the season begins to decide what to stream on air and cable, and will use all three distribution modes.
Dan Weinberg, executive vice president of programming for CBS Sports, said:
If rights partners want to make changes later, CBS can switch content to streaming or broadcasting.
“We think flexibility is key,” says Weinberg. “We are always open to having those conversations.”
Disney-owned ESPN declined to comment on the strategy generally, but has vigorously defended its approach to the Australian Open.
Major championships such as the Super Bowl, World Series, NBA Finals, Stanley Cup Finals and Masters will remain on linear TV for the foreseeable future (while simultaneously streaming), but fans expect to watch the next tier can. For important shows like playoff games, move to streaming only. But when and who will take that bold and dangerous first step?
“It’s going to take a long time to get to the finals,” Burke said, but he expects early-round playoff games to start moving to streaming-only over the next three to five years.
The mass distribution model for entertainment (including sports) has evolved several times, beginning with the transition from radio to television in the 1940s and ’50s and to cable in the 1980s and ’90s. Then the rise of the internet, smartphones and social media added another layer of complexity to distribution.
Millions of households now use broadband Internet to deliver sports and entertainment instead of coax.
“The inflection point was this: when the cable TV audience became as large as the broadcast TV audience, we had to satisfy both sides,” Burke said. “We are starting to get to that with broadband delivery.
The biggest leagues are making big moves towards streaming. The NFL recently signed a deal to move the Sunday Ticket package from He DirecTV satellites to Google’s YouTube TV, and Thursday Night Football moved to Amazon Prime Video starting this season. Major League Baseball is streaming Friday night games on Apple TV. Also, the NBA’s next series of domestic media rights deals is expected to include a streaming component.
But for now, viewership is still primarily cable TV, down from 100 million households a decade ago to about 65 million households. Those who stay are paying a lot of money each month, so paying extra for what they previously had in a cable package isn’t kind.
So while paying just $10 a month to be able to watch the Australian Open on ESPN+ might seem like a no-brainer, some fans of the event took to social media to say that ESPN’s cable bills were already enough. I was complaining that I was paying for it.
refuse to pay @espn Plus in principle at this point. If enough people subscribe to watch her AO, I’m sure Wimbledon and he USOpen will be next.
— Party here (@TennisLurker) January 19, 2023
Unfortunately for @tennislurker and others in a similar situation, they will find themselves in a medium equivalent to no man’s land with no access to much of what they want to see.
(Photo of Andy Murray after his victory over Tanasi Kokkinakis at the Australian Open: Clive Brunskill/Getty Images)
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