Colin nerds out with Mike Mulvihill, the President of Insight and Analytics at Fox Sports!
They start with Fox broadcasting the MLB Tokyo series between the Dodgers and Cubs and the business of baseball broadcasting rights and creating big “events” out of regular season games (3:00), and discuss whether the MLB becoming a league of “have and have nots” has actually been good for the sport overall (6:45).
They talk about the importance for networks to own the broadcasting rights to the biggest events in sports like the Super Bowl and World Series and the importance of creating lifelong memories during one of their broadcasts (12:30).
They discuss the future of cable television in the era of streaming , how networks are trying to adapt, and whether cable will become unviable as a business (15:30). They also look at the state of the streaming business where multiple companies are losing money and whether some streamers could consolidate or shutter (25:30 and the future of sports broadcasting on streaming platforms (31:45).
They dive into college football and the Big Ten and which brands are the most impactful outside of Michigan and Ohio State, why Nebraska could be a sleeping giant if the program rebounds and why the Big Ten has been able to garner the most media revenue of any conference (33:30).
They discuss whether the WNBA is a viable television product on its own, or if the addition of Caitlin Clark’s superstardom is the only factor propping it up and why the lack of globalization has women’s basketball on a growth trajectory (40:45).
Colin argues the TV networks create a far better television product for NFL broadcasts compared to the streaming platforms and whether streamers would be best served in partnering with the networks to produce the broadcasts for streaming. They also discuss why it’s so important for games to remain on broadcast TV and the importance of the NFL to the TV networks (52:30).
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
The volume all right, once a year. Because I don't
like to pester people I work with, I bring on
one of my favorite people, Michael Mulhill. So you know
you're insightful when you're the president of Insight and Analytics
(00:24):
at Fox Sports. Who doesn't want to be insightful. So
Michael knows I'm a bit of a junkie for this stuff,
and he's always been really open and he just knows
I could sit and talk about this all day. So
it's very wonky, but I always get tremendous feedback. Michael,
and I want to start with something that's kind of
fascinating to me, and I don't know the answer on
(00:46):
ninety percent of these questions. So we have added at
Fox the Cubs Dodgers opening series in Tokyo, obviously driven
by two things Sho Hee o Tani and the remarkable
success of those brains. Those are big baseball brands. Throw
the Yankees in. They're probably the three biggest brands. But
it's interesting when I see that, I wonder how Fox
(01:08):
management thinks. Does Fox look at it and say, listen,
we're not gonna make money on this. I mean to
do a remote expensive to go to Tokyo's all diffootball game.
But it kicks off our baseball season, which we had
such a just a remarkable national legue, playoffs in the
World Series. I mean it just baseball. Probably the best
baseball ratings in a decade in terms of outside of
the CUB season overall performance. So is this something that
(01:31):
a company looks at and says, hey, listen, great momentum,
let's keep it going, biggest brands, We're going to lose
some money on this, it's just good for the business.
Or can you go into a series and it can
be viable? And I'm just I'm this is again so
wonky in this probably private information, but give me the
(01:54):
most honest answer you can.
Speaker 2 (01:56):
Okay, that's a good place to start. First of all,
thanks for having me. I always enjoy these conversations. I
love coming on the pod. It can be a little wonky,
but we're going to try to make it as interesting
as we can for a technical listenership. Look, this is
our thirtieth season with Major League Baseball, and I think
that they are a cornerstone of the Fox Sports brand.
(02:17):
They're a cornerstone of the Fox network and we value
that relationship tremendously, and we want to look for ways
to be creative partners, be innovative partners, and over a
one hundred and sixty two game regular season, you know,
I think that means looking for novel, exciting different locations
(02:43):
to have a game. And over the last couple of
seasons that has meant Field of Dreams. It's meant rick
Woodfield in Birmingham, Alabama, a great tribute either the Negro
leagues last year. This year it's going to mean Bristol
Motor Speedway. We'll do a baseball game within the interior
of a NASCAR racetrack. It has meant London, and now
(03:04):
this year for us, it's going to mean Tokyo. And
I'm like, we can make a dollar on those two games.
I think it's a great way to start the season.
It's a great way to bring some excitement and novelty
to what is a very long regular season. I think
not just we at Fox, but everybody in the Commissioner's
office is looking for ways all the time to develop
(03:26):
tent polls and develop sort of interesting events for the
regular season. This is a great way to start it,
and we want to send that message that it's an
important season for US. It's a milestone season. This is
an incredibly important partner. We value the relationship enormously and
we want to start the season in kind of a fun,
exciting novelty and particularly acknowledge the intense popularity of the
(03:51):
game in Japan, Like clearly we're sending the right team there,
and I think it's going to be a great way
to start out the season.
Speaker 1 (03:57):
Yeah, you know, and I've said this, I've always been
seen sort of as a football guy. If you ask,
you know, the average person what's calling like, he'd be
college football, NFL. That doesn't mean I don't like the
World Cup. I go to UFC fights. I'm an NBA fan.
I grew up with it. Love you know. I like
March madness. I think sometimes outside of the NFL sports
(04:18):
is cyclical. Boxing used to be bigger. UFC squashed it.
Horse racing was bigger, They had controversies. NBA was bigger.
Now it's more international, not really a face of the
league Baseball and when the kind of regional networks were
sold at Fox, they don't have the same gravitas, they
(04:40):
don't have the same economic pull and what it's created
through no fault of anybody is the haves and the
have nots. There's a bigger gap there. Well, that's not
necessarily bad for a television network because the best teams
are Atlanta, Los Angeles, Houston, the two New York teams.
The cub has made a huge pick up with Kyle Tucker.
(05:01):
So it's interesting. I don't know the health of the sport,
you know, you and I that's not our concern. But
there is a moment now where it does it not
feel like baseball? Through through Otani driving up the I five,
Soto actually leaving the Yankees going to the Mets, which
(05:22):
makes them a villain to half of New York, does
it not feel like baseball? Is probably the healthiest it's
been from a television product since the Cubs year.
Speaker 2 (05:36):
Look, I think the structure of Major League Baseball is
fascinating because there is a gap between the haves and
the have nots, and that always has been. You know,
I think you could go back through fifty sixty seventy
years of baseball history and it's always been that the
New York teams are the highest revenue teams. That used
(05:56):
to be based on gate revenue. Then it became based
on regional sports network revenue. But it's always been true
that in baseball, brands make stars, right, And you could
sort of contrast that to the NBA, where I would
say in the NBA, stars make brands. Like a player
like Steph Curry can go to the Warriors and take
(06:19):
a franchise that was always sort of an afterthought in
that league and turn them into the most valuable franchise
in that league. That's Lebron going to Cleveland, it's Curry
going to the Warriors. That's a pretty well established dynamic
in basketball, whereas in baseball it's really hard to become
a national star unless you're playing for one of the
(06:41):
big brands, right. I mean that's true going back to
Roberto Clemente.
Speaker 1 (06:46):
And like I said for years, if Derek Jeter was
the Kansas City Royal, he would have been a hell
of a player. But most of his dramatic moments were
in October and frankly against the Red Sox or in October.
And I think this is a great point. There is
a distinction between the NBA and baseball, and it's brand first,
(07:07):
and that's a Rod and Otani seem like complete outliers
to me big enough. Now, now Otani is a bigger
star with the Dodgers, but he was still Babe Ruth
esque fascinating. But you consider that stuff right when as Fox,
you consider how the player makes the brand, when you
(07:28):
schedule games based on player movement.
Speaker 2 (07:30):
We absolutely do. And I think the dynamic that's been
set up in baseball is that there's certainly there's a
correlation between payroll and regular season wins. And so when
you have this divide between the haves and the have nots,
it favors the big brands. The big brands are more
capable of developing superstars and national household names. And we're
(07:52):
probably headed to another season where the Dodgers, the Yankees,
the Phillies, the Braves, the Mets are going to be
ninety plus win teams and all going to get into
the postseason. And so in the regular season you have
that advantage that were the benefit of CRUs to the
bigger markets and the bigger payroll teams. And yet the
postseason acts as a little bit of a leveler and
(08:14):
an equalizer where Baseball has created this format in which yes,
those big payroll, big market teams get in, but they
also get in alongside Arizona, alongside Cleveland. A team can
get into the tournament and get hot and get to
the World Series. So you've got a little bit of
an imbalance in the regular season that we do try
(08:37):
to take advantage of. But then that equalizes a little
bit in the postseason and you can end up with
the World Series that is Dodgers Yankees, or you can
end up with the World Series that we had two
years ago, which was Diamondbacks Rangers. When the World Series
is Diamondbacks Rangers, that's obviously not optimal for our ratings
in the short term, but I think it creates a
(08:58):
perception of competitive backs balance and a belief across all
the fan bases that they do have a chance to
get journaman and maybe get to the World Series, even
if their payroll is one hundred million dollars less than
a Dodger payroll or a Yankee payroll. And I think
that's a quality that's unique to baseball.
Speaker 1 (09:15):
I think one of the things, and not like I'm
giving away any secret sauce, but I watch our management team,
and I've said before, the place I used to work
was a massive hotel chain. Fox is smaller, although certainly
not boutique chain we have. It's easier for me to
(09:37):
communicate with management at Fox simply because you're right upstairs.
I don't feel like we're swimming in a sea of games.
I think we're very intentional with our league contracts. And
I'll give you an example. I think, and this is again,
this is not a revelation that we're becoming more of
(09:58):
an event society. Due to the social platforms, we're a
distracted society. It's more frenetic TikTok. It's harder to get
people's attention. But I look at Fox and we have
the World Cup an event, ANFL event, college football event,
indie racing an event. This is really smart to me,
This is really smart programming. I think Death Valley is
(10:21):
Monday through Friday league programming hockey, NBA, to some degree
Baseball as well, that it's very difficult to grab the
attention in non event times. We are becoming. Olympics still
rates World Cup clearly, Dana White, Saturday Night Fight Cards
(10:42):
still rate that. It looks like it has been very
intentional by Fox, that you've been about you've been ahead
of this, that you are thinking about how the culturally
we become more an event society. Now, is this coincidence
or is this stuff you and Shanks and all the
big wigs talk about.
Speaker 2 (11:00):
Well, it's not coincidence, and we're certainly not the only
ones that are doing it. I mean, I agree. I
think the sports business is becoming more reliant and more
driven by the tent pole events. I think that your
brand tends to be defined by your very best. Right,
there are eighty seven hundred and sixty hours in a year.
(11:20):
We have to think about how to fill eighty seven
hundred and sixty hours of cable programming. We have to
think about how to fill several hundred hours of broadcast programming.
But we're not really defined by the eight thousand hours.
We're defined by the Super Bowl, and we're defined by
Freddie Freeman hitting a Grand Slam in Game one of
the World Series and the World Cup Final, the moments
(11:43):
that are really resonant and memorable, and that's what we're
selling to our advertisers. That's also what we're selling to
our audience, that we are a place that you can
come and share an experience with somebody that's important to you.
And we talk a lot about the social connectivity of
sports and how that sort of underlies our entire business.
(12:05):
But we want to be a place where you can
come and share an experience and maybe have a memory
with somebody that matters to you that you have for
the rest of your life. And to have that, you
really do have to be focused on the big events,
the Super Bowls, the World Series, the things that might
create a lifetime memory. And now that for us, that
also means the Indy five hundred. You know, we want
(12:27):
to continue to look at ways to develop events that
could potentially create a once in a lifetime memory for somebody.
Speaker 1 (12:34):
Yeah, well, I mean Fox has always had I mean
FS one was the speed channel, if I recall, I
mean FS one. Fox has always had auto racing as
part of their brand from a long time ago. So
it was a natural fit. You know. Obviously, I joke
with my wife all the time, I'm in radio and
cable TV. Your husband's careers are going the wrong way, honey.
(12:59):
We may want to move into a fixer upper in
a smaller neighborhood, but there are ways to stem losses
and relationships. We have a streaming venture coming up. Relationships
with YouTube. Fox News is obviously a juggernaut in an
(13:20):
industry that is regressing. But The New York Times still
makes money in newspapers, and Delta and Southwest Airlines in
that in the aviation field, which has been under great
financial duress many times in my life, they're still industry leaders.
You can make money in industries that shrink. How do
(13:44):
we view cable now? I mean, I've said this to you.
I'm sixty, Michael. I can't give cable up because I
like college football and I'm not giving it up. And
it's and by the way, I also like news and politics,
so I'm not giving it up. I mean it's like,
I like streaming, but if I want to watch you know,
(14:05):
political stuff live CNBC, Fox Business Channel, that's that's. As
I get older, I kind of watch news, sports and
politics more. How do you view cable? How viable is it?
Is it a five year runway, eight, ten or three?
Speaker 2 (14:23):
Well, that last part of the question is really interesting,
right because I think you and I, unfortunately are both
getting to the age where you know, we can think
in terms of the rest of our careers, and that
might only be a ten fifteen year horizon, right. So
when I think in terms of the number of years
that I expect to continue to be doing this. I
(14:44):
think I think cable is going to continue to be
certainly viable, very profitable. It's funny we we have a
lot of conversations in this business about cable as a
declining part of the business. Sometime it's put in even
more negative terms than declining, and yet when companies like
(15:05):
ours come out with their quarterly earnings, you often find
that it's still the cable networks that are driving a
huge percentage of the earnings. Right Like WBD owner Brothers Discovery,
they just had their most recent earnings call, and on
that call, it was all the traditional linear cable networks
that are driving billions and billions of dollars in earnings
(15:27):
for a company that is still varies significantly in debt
and trying to climb out of that debt, and their
cable earnings are a powerful engine to try to get
them out of that situation. So the earnings on the
cable side are still extremely significant. It may not be
a growing part of the business, but it's still a
(15:49):
very profitable part of the business. I do think there's
been in the sports world a little bit of a
movement toward taking some of the best events from cable
and putting them back on the podcast where you potentially
have more reach. And I think there's something special about
being on broadcast. But the idea that cable is going
(16:10):
to disappear, cease to exist, stop being profitable, I think
that's a long way away. You know, you still have
tens of millions of people who are comfortable with the
cable bundle. Maybe there's some inertia in play there. They
like the ease of use, they like knowing where to
find everything. They like knowing that your show if they're
(16:32):
a Direct TV subscriber is on Channel two nineteen, and
they know where they can find Monday night football. They
know where they can find the NBA Playoffs. There's a
simplicity to it that is really compelling, and I think,
particularly for older consumers that grew up with cable, they're
not moving away from it anytime soon. I think we're
a long way from the end of the bundle.
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Speaker 1 (18:16):
You see this. I remember having a conversation years ago
with a friend of mine who's in the financial planning industry,
wealth management in New York, and we were talking about
the private jet industry, and there was I had to
take a private jet somewhere, and I said, you know,
how safe are these? And he said, well, just sign
(18:37):
up for the Warren Buffett company. That one will be viable.
He said. At some point, you know, there'll be about
three of those companies, maybe two. Like everything else. You know,
you know how the world works, right, people gobble up
smaller companies. And I look at streaming. Everybody has Netflix first,
in better rates, better production, cash heavy, asset heavy. They're fine.
(19:03):
I look at Disney. It still feels a little wobbly
where they're now churning a profit, but they lose seven
hundred thousand subs on their on their plus, so I
mean it's it's still not quite there. Amazon's fine. They
have a revenue, a reservoir. Amazon has a reservoir of money.
It's a It's the retail giant globally, right or at
(19:25):
least domestically. But I wonder when you look at streamers,
there was this thought five years ago streaming winds, everything
else loses. And I look at it today and I
see a lot of red, and I see a lot
of people watching television. There was a sense five years
(19:47):
ago streamers were taking over the world. At some point,
you have to make a profit. Do you do you
still feel like the dread of we're all under this
streaming dark cloud and it's about ready to strike us down.
Speaker 2 (20:02):
Not at all. And I think, if anything, what the
last five years have established is that Fox and our
management team, people at higher levels than may have done
probably the best job of any legacy media company of
navigating the challenges of the transition to streaming and the
(20:23):
increased adoption of streaming. I think the two companies that
obviously have a biased opinion, but the two companies that
have done the best job of navigating the last five
to seven years are Netflix and I think us. You know,
I think we've been able to navigate that as well
as anyone because we didn't over invest in what I
(20:46):
would call an independent streaming platform. We remained committed to
the cable bundle. Were still committed to the cable bundle.
And I think being patient and not getting into that
streaming arms race has served a really well. Streaming means
a couple different things, right, and we sometimes talk about
it as if it's a monolith, as if it's all one.
Speaker 1 (21:07):
Right.
Speaker 2 (21:08):
Streaming means independent streamers like Netflix, Apple, Amazon, behemoth tech
companies that have trillion dollar market capitalizations. And that's one
version of streaming. Another version is the streaming arm of
traditional media companies like Peacock, like Paramount, like Max, which
(21:30):
useduld be called HBO Max. And then the third type
of streaming is streaming that sort of replicates your cable
bundle like Hulu Live and YouTube TV and a place
where you can go to get a package of networks,
but rather than it being delivered via a cable in
(21:50):
the back of your TV set, it comes through your
in home Wi Fi. So I think when we talk
about streaming, we have to be careful to define what
kind of streaming are we talking about. We are getting
ready to go into the direct to consumer business. Our
chairman Blachlan Murdoch has been very open about saying we
intend to have a direct to consumer offering ready by
(22:14):
this coming football season. It changes the way that we
think about certain aspects of how we program. We now
have to think in terms of having twelve month a
year strength so that we can keep a subscriber dialed
into us all year. But I think we're really comfortable
with the way we've managed this evolution, and I don't
(22:36):
think that we're in a situation where streaming is necessarily
going to take over everything. I mean, I think there
will be a continued incremental migration of some properties or
fractions of properties moving to exclusive streaming. But I think
we're also seeing a lot of success in properties staying
on broadcast, and that's the NFL. We talked about the
(23:00):
World Series ratings being at a seven year high. We
have done this deal with IndyCar where we're now going
to put every IndyCar race on broadcast and try to
take advantage of the power of the broadcast platform. And
I think what they're what we're finding is that there
is a path to coexistence, right that we want to
have strong, viable broadcast television I think there are very
(23:24):
compelling reasons why that's important, not just for sports, but
it's just important for communities to have strong broadcast TV.
I don't think the cable bundle is going away anytime soon,
and I think there's still room for streaming to continue
to grow its audience and to add more exclusive sports rights.
But I think it's a little simplistic, and I think
(23:46):
there've been some lazy takes out there suggesting that everything
is going to go to streaming. Not everything is going
to go to streaming. And when it goes to streaming,
as I say, that means different things. That can mean
that you are going to a huge tech company, or
you're going to streaming, but you're still within the Fox family,
or the NBCU family, the Paramount family, or it just
(24:09):
means that fifteen to twenty percent of your audience is
watching via a bundle of networks that's delivered via the
Internet rather than delivered via cable. But I never bought
into that more apocalyptic idea that the entire business is
going to streaming and we're all doomed. There's a migration
there and there will be a new equilibrium, and I
(24:30):
think we're getting close to it already.
Speaker 1 (24:32):
Well, I mean, listen, I'm in. I started in AM radio,
then it became AMFM, and then it became like audio
and streaming, and then it became podcasts. And my takeaway
is it's like saying newspapers are dying. No, the delivery
system was outdated, but I still have the Wall Street Journal,
I still have the New York Times. I've never read
(24:56):
more in my life. So I mean, and maybe I'm just,
you know, an an old guy, but I've never read more.
You know, I'm always bouncing around adding subscriptions. I mean,
you know the old cliche content is king. It really
is true. Like if you have good content and good
games I watch. I think it's interesting. You know, my
love for college football, and so I like all the
(25:19):
new moves. I like NIL though it's imperfect. I like
transfer portal, though again there needs to be you know,
there needs to be a fence around in a little bit.
And I like the convergence of Texas Oklahoma to the
SEC and the PAC twelve schools, four of them going
to the Big Ten. So last year is the first year.
The ratings were a bit disappointing, although I do think
(25:43):
the first round matchups were choppy. I tend to think
we're a bit hyperbolic as media critics on things like
things take time to work themselves out. I think it'll
be better in the second year when you schedule college
football and you do this every year Big Ten. It
feels obvious to me that Michigan and Ohio State are
(26:05):
the number one in two brands. If I said, now
you have Oregon and the marketing machine of Phil Knight,
big market Washington Penn State USC, although it feels again
like it's underachieving. If you take Michigan and Ohio State out,
what brand moves the needle in the Big Ten that
(26:25):
maybe I would be surprised? Is there a definitive third
I would guess Penn State? And is there a game
or a team that would surprise me?
Speaker 2 (26:37):
It's Penn State, and I don't think that would come
as much of a surprise to Yeah. I think once
you get past Michigan and Ohio State, the third most
important brand to us is Penn State. I think Oregon
obviously is an important brand, But as you know, the
way the Big Ten deal is constructed, the conference has
multiple partners. Each partner has a find window we do
(27:01):
games at noon. Eastern CBS has the late afternoon window,
NBC has the primetime window. Because we have that noon window,
it's almost inevitable that Oregon is just not likely to
be as impactful to us as schools that are in
the Eastern and Central time zone. I think again, I
don't know that this falls under the heading of surprising,
(27:25):
but I think every year we look at Nebraska as
a sleeping giant, and we hope for Nebraska to get
close to the kind of success that they had when
you and I were kids. We had them on a
Friday night last year. They got off to a pretty
good start to their season. They hosted Illinois in a
Friday night game. That game did over four million viewers.
(27:46):
That's terrific for a Friday night. That sort of hints
at what Nebraska could be if they ever got close
to the kind of success that they had years ago
under Tom Osborne. So certainly Michigan, Ohio State at the top,
Penn State next for us because we had that early window.
Oregon and SC obviously also very important, but their home
(28:08):
games are going to be in later windows, and Nebraska
kind of lurking as the brand that you always hope
might sort of reawaken and drive the kind of viewership
that they once did.
Speaker 1 (28:19):
Now, Ohio State complained, and I understand it. You know, listen,
you're a Buckeye fan. You like those late games, you
can get lubricated. You're going to the stadium at night.
I mean, it's just more fun going to night games.
There's no question. I've been to a few Husky games,
USC games. There is a special vibe playing under the lights.
But Ohio State, also in our window, is the biggest draw.
What was last year a difficult ear? Some of it's
(28:41):
just what the schedule makers give you. What do you
say to the critics of Ohio State that say, hey, man,
you're killing us. We need night games. You can't just
keep going back and forth to us. What would you
say to the critics, Well, the.
Speaker 2 (28:54):
First thing I would say is I completely understand the complaint.
Right the Ohio State finished their season last year six
consecutive noon kickoffs, and I think that's just a byproduct
of the games being allocated via a draft, right, Like,
we can only draft the best game that's available to
us each time that our selection comes up. If you
(29:16):
were creating a schedule, just on a blank sheet of paper,
you probably would not give the top team or a
top team in your conference the same kickoff time on
six consecutive weekends to finish the season. So that wasn't
by design. It was sort of just a product of circumstance.
(29:36):
And I do understand the frustration that some Buckeye fans
may have felt at the end of last year. I
want to back up a little and try to put
into some context the way that we see the scheduling
of the games and the deal that we have with
the Big Ten. Right what's the most significant thing that's
(29:57):
happening in college sports right now? I mean, I think
obviously the most significant development and the most positive development,
is that the athletes are moving closer and closer to
being fairly compensated. Right Athletes are getting paid. And you know,
when I see a story that Carson Beck is in
Miami and he's making over four million dollars and he's
(30:19):
driving a Lamborghini, like, my knee jerk reaction to that
is that's awesome, because we have decades of history in
college sports where the athletes that drive all the value
were not being compensated appropriately and coaches were getting rich.
Media executives were getting rich. Everybody was making a lot
of money except for the athletes that actually drive the value.
(30:43):
And so we're now finally in a position where the players,
the young men and increasingly young women, who really drive
the value of these properties, are getting paid the way
that they should get paid. And whatever complexity comes with
that that makes a coach's job harder or makes the
environment maybe a little bit more challenging, all those challenges
(31:06):
are secondary to the right of the athletes to maximize
their earnings. I mean, I very very strongly believe that.
And so, as in any labor market, right, top talent
is going to follow top compensation. And as the athletes
are getting paid more commensurate with their market value, there's
(31:26):
more and more pressure on the conferences and more and
more pressure on the schools to maximize revenue so that
they can go out and get the best talent. That
brings us to the media rights. The Big Ten is
the best compensated conference in the country in terms of
media rights. The reason they're the best compensated conference in
(31:46):
the country is because they have multiple partners, because they
have a deal with US and with CBS and with NBC,
I think that's what enables the Big Ten to realize
more media revenue than the SEC, which is obviously the
other power conference in college football, and they've gone exclusively
with Disney. So by having multiple media partners, it sort
(32:10):
of creates a requirement for US to have a designated window,
for CBS to have a designated window, for c to
have a designated window, for US to apportion those games
out via a draft. We don't have the freedom that
Disney has to just put the best games wherever they
want to on the SEC side, And when you have
multiple partners and the games are being scheduled via a draft,
(32:35):
you're going to get to some inefficiencies like Ohio State
playing a bunch of games in a row at the
same time, or a frustration that Penn State fans had
when they had a home game last year that a
lot of their fans wanted to be in primetime as
the white out it was a big new game. Instead,
their fans were extremely vocal. I heard a lot about it, right,
(32:56):
But those are all things that are connected to macximizing
revenue for the conference, therefore maximizing revenue for the schools,
therefore maximizing revenue for the players, and that's the most
important thing, making sure that the kids are compensated in
the right way, and that the schools can go out
and get the talent that they need to compete for
(33:17):
a national championship, which is why I think we now
have a situation where at the very very highest level,
that handful of schools that are going to compete for
a national championship in football every year. The Big Ten
is just as good as the SEC, and may even
be pulling ahead a little bit. And it's because of
that revenue generation that's largely tied to the media rights.
Speaker 1 (33:40):
I want to talk WNBA. I'm kind of fascinated by
it because I believe for its entire existence, the NBA
has subsidized the WNBA. And you may argue the moral
and there's a certain humanity to supporting women's sports. I
completely understand that. And then Kitlin Clark arrived and the
(34:04):
team flies private and the ratings are insane. Now, the
league was growing, and I think the quality over the
last ten years has improved dramatically, but Kitlyn Clark is,
as I've said, Taylor Swift and tennis shoes. It is
just a once in a generation. It's Tiger Woods, the golf,
it's Shoeo Todi. It's like, oh, it's an event. Every
game's an event. Is the WNBA a viable TV product?
(34:30):
Or is it we have a once in a generation talent?
Obviously the WNBA would not allow you to just buy
a Caitland Clark package. But is she powerful enough because
she could have a twelve to fifteen year run here, Michael,
is she powerful enough a singular star with a little
bit of a magic Larry Bird quality because of Angel Reees?
(34:53):
That absolutely helps sort as a story we could follow
us Americans. We love our stories, we love the journey.
Reese is part of this. Is that over the next
fifteen years going to be a viable TV product? Or
do we just have a megastar? And that's all it is?
Speaker 2 (35:12):
So it's both those things. And I know it's always
sort of a cop out answer when you give somebody
an either or choice and they say it's both. But
I do think in the WNDA, it's both something that
was growing and viable and becoming more viable by the year,
and then you injected into that a once in a
lifetime talent in Caitlin Clark who I think is very
(35:37):
obviously the overwhelming number one factor in the growth of
WNBA viewership last year. You know, I think when we
looked at Indiana Fever games versus all other WNBA games
last year, the Caitlin Clark games were doing triple the
viewership of the rest of the league, and that is
a Tiger Woods level of impact. I don't know that
(35:59):
there's ever been anybody in Team sports, even Michael Jordan,
where you would look at their games and see them
doing triple the average of the rest of the league.
So I do think a big part of it is
that once in a lifetime phenomenon of Caitlin Clark, and
we should just acknowledge the obvious and make it clear
that she is plainly the driving force behind the growth
(36:23):
of the league. But at the same time, if God forbid,
Kaylyn Clark had a career ending injury, she were out
of the league. If Kaitlyn Clark just were taken out
of the equation, I still think the WNBA would be
on a growth trajectory, and it wouldn't be the kind
of exponential growth that we saw last year. But this
is a product that was moving forward pretty steadily prior
(36:46):
to Caitlin. And even now, if you look at the
collegiate level, yes, seeing growth, ESPN seeing some growth. You've
still got this next generation of superstars. That's Gugi Watkins
here in LA, it's Page Becker's in Connecticut right Like,
we're still seeing progress post Caitlin. And it makes me
(37:08):
think that, like, obviously she's the catalyst, She's what drives
the explosion of interest. I think sometimes we overstate the
idea that it's more than Caitlin. But there was a
growth curve there before, yes, and I think it would
continue even if we were somehow in a post Kaitlin.
Speaker 1 (37:25):
You know what, And let me throw this at you,
Michael and pushback please, But women's basketball is a little
like men's basketball thirty years ago. It's not as international,
and the players are staying in college for three and
four years. So I watched the WNBA draft this year.
I knew the top eight players. I didn't know any
(37:46):
of the NBA's players. So as leagues get more global,
it's not always great for all things domestic. Is that
when I watch these women's basketball players go to the
pros early they played four years Caitlyn Clark was a
three year So I heard about her when she was
a sophomore junior. It's a national story. She's a phenom
(38:08):
as a senior, and so what's happening. This is the
way people forget that you ing and Tim Duncan and
you know Chris Paul's I mean, Michael Jordan didn't come
out after his freshman year. People forget it was at
Carolina and didn't win a title. And so women's basketball
is a lot like men's college basketball was in nineteen
eighty eight. Is that the stars stayed and I had
(38:31):
a story and there were rivalries, Burden Magic, and then
they went to the draft and I had heard of them,
and then I followed them in the NBA. And so
I'm with you on this, Caitlyn's part of it, But
I think as NBA has gotten more international, the domestic
component to women's basketball actually fortifies their growth. Like sometimes
(38:53):
it's a distracted as society. Michael, I want to follow
simple stories and watch in Iowa and U con Baylor.
It's real easy I can follow. Yeah, the journey's easy
for me to follow. So maybe I'm wrong on that,
but that's just how it works for me.
Speaker 2 (39:10):
No, and the word in everything that you just said
that really resonates with me is simplicity, right, because we're
always looking for ways to simplify being a sports fan.
We want the games to be on networks where you're
familiar with seeing the games. We want the brands to
be familiar. When a player moves from the collegiate level
to the professional level, whether that's basketball or football, it's
(39:34):
incredibly helpful for the fan, the viewer to have two
or three years of history of getting to know this player.
So I agree. I mean, that's absolutely true of Kaitlin Clark,
But I was like you and you can watch the
w NBA Draft and you know, you do know Angel
Reese and you know Cameron Brink and you've seen them
(39:55):
play in the tournament. And to give some credit to
a competitor, you know, the job that ESPN is done
in growing the women's collegiate tournament is extraordinary. You know,
we like to think that we're just as powerful as
they are in women's basketball during the regular season, but
you know, the growth that the women's tournament has enjoyed
(40:16):
is incredible, and there's absolutely a direct connection between the
success of that tournament and then the success that you
saw last year in the WNBA ratings.
Speaker 1 (40:36):
This is the always been sort of the I think
Lachlan talked about this the other day about continuing to
nurture the relationship with the NFL. Obviously, if you don't
have NFL football, you can argue about what your menu
needs to look like as a sports network. We all
have to have the NFL. And I was thinking about this,
(40:57):
and I'm just going to ramble here for a minute
and a half. Amazon is a retail giant. I do
not always love the quality of their programming, but they're
getting better. Netflix is a content giant, so I tend
to think they get content. They get documentaries, they get films,
(41:20):
they get specials, but that doesn't necessarily mean they get sports.
And I have been disappointed with Netflix attempts at sports events.
This is where I think networks are excellent. I think
our production values at Fox are second to none. I
(41:42):
think NBCCBS these are tiffany experiences. These are tremendous production experiences.
I mean the Super Bowl. I mean Fox will go
eight hours live or seven hours live. But commercials to production,
they make you cry, they make you laugh. The Jimmy
John it's an aipiece. It's just spectacular. I would argue
(42:05):
that if a Netflix came in and said, all right,
we are buying a bigger NFL package, I would argue
they would be better served to say, hey, Fox, can
you produce it? You're really good at this production thing.
I'm just telling you, as a consumer, all companies do
(42:26):
things well. I don't think these streamers understand the value
and how hard TV production is. So I mean that's
just my take as a consumer. Tell me I'm wrong,
lay it out, fire holes in this, But I still
(42:48):
think network television has a role in sports, even with streamers.
Speaker 2 (42:55):
Yeah, there's a lot to react to there, right, So
why don't we start with what's the role that network
television has to play even in a world where we're
competing with tech companies that are capitalized many multiple times
greater than we are. Right, I really value broadcasting. I'm
(43:16):
sure you do as well.
Speaker 1 (43:18):
Oh, I absolutely.
Speaker 2 (43:19):
The first sort of job I had in my life
was I worked at a radio station in Pittsburgh when
I was fifteen years old. And I've always thought that
broadcasting occupies a really unique and special place in our culture,
largely because you are transmitting over public airwaves. You therefore
have a certain responsibility to the community that you serve,
(43:43):
and I think broadcasters are a little bit more ingrained
in their markets than a national cable network can be,
or than a worldwide tech platform can be. And I
think one of the reasons that it's so important for
major sports to remain on over the air broadcast television
is because of that role broadcasters play. You and I
(44:05):
are both in southern California, right we just lived through
the LA wildfires. On the night that the wildfires happened.
If you look at TV ratings here in LA, people
who had power and were able to watch TV that night,
they chose local news over national news by a margin
of almost ten to one. When something really serious, when
(44:29):
there's a serious emergency that happens in a community, people
go to their local broadcasters. That was true out here.
That's when a hurricane threatens the Gulf Coast. It's probably
true in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina last night and today.
People rely on local broadcasts. And so if the viability
of local broadcast television is dependent in part on those
(44:54):
stations having marquee sports sports that will keep people subscribed
to a cable bundle or that will keep advertisers coming
to that station. I think it's incredibly important that we
keep as much high profile sports as we can, or
at least keep a significant percentage of high profile sports
on broadcast, because broadcast and local journalism really matters a lot.
(45:17):
And I think there's something very pro consumer about making
sure that big sports events stay on broadcast TV, not exclusively,
but predominantly. And I think a lot of the power
of sports that we have talked about from time to
time is that it does bring communities together. It brings
people together. It matters to a city when the Philadelphia
(45:39):
Eagles do a sixty rating for the Super Bowl or
a fifty for the NFC Championship game, meaning that literally
fifty percent of the market is tuned in that can
only happen on broadcast TV. So I do think there
are unique qualities to free over the air broadcasts that
as an industry, we need to acknowledge that there's real
value there and that there's something special there that has
(46:00):
to be protected not just for the benefit of the leagues,
but for the benefit of the communities that these broadcasters serve.
So that's me on my soapbox about podcasting wife, it
was like the quality of production. Just to get to
the other part. I think Amazon's production of Thursday night
(46:20):
Football is awesome, right, and.
Speaker 1 (46:22):
I think it's gotten better. I think it was clunky early,
it's gotten better.
Speaker 2 (46:25):
But a lot of the people who are behind that
are people that used to work here, right, and they've
moved out to Amazon, and they've hired talent that worked
at Broadcast Networks. And I think they do a really,
really good job. And I would never criticize the way
that somebody else produces the games. I will say that
at a company like ours, sports is just so vital
to our business. You know, you look at the Fox
(46:46):
Broadcast network. Over eighty percent of our viewing this year
will be viewing of sports. Over fifty percent of our
viewing is going to be viewing of the NFL. If
we don't do a great job on the NFL, if
we don't do a great job producing it, we don't
do a great job selling it, we don't hire the
right talent, we don't have a company. And I think
(47:07):
that is very different from some of these other companies
you're describing, where I think Amazon does a great job
with Thursday Night Football, The reality is that the revenue
that they generate from Thursday Night football represents a tiny,
tiny fraction of one percent of the revenue that Amazon
will do this year. Same thing is true with Netflix.
(47:27):
You know, Apple has a more limited sports presence, but obviously,
like the revenue that they generate from sports is just
infinitesimal compared to their overall business. At a company like Fox, NBC, Disney, CBS,
sports just means more. It means more to our bottom line,
It means more to our very existence as a company.
(47:49):
We have to be great at production because if we
fail at this, we fail as a company. If the
big tech platforms fail at producing live sports, they don't
fail as a company. It doesn't really matter that much
to the future health of Amazon or of Apple. And
again I do think they produce the events really well,
(48:11):
but you just can't deny that it's a bigger portion
of our business. It's a higher priority for us company,
and it affects the people that work here, it affects
our shareholders, it affects every part of what we do.
That we have to be excellent at game production. There's
just more of a mandate and a necessity at a
(48:31):
place like this.
Speaker 1 (48:32):
Yeah, I mean I watched the Apple baseball stuff Roku.
It's not a shot at people, It's just I think.
I think to be excellent at anything, you have to
be somewhat obsessed. And money can't solve obsession, right, Like
when you watch I know how much football means. It's
(48:54):
a CBS and Fox. I can feel it.
Speaker 2 (48:57):
Right, I know.
Speaker 1 (48:58):
And I also know what storytelling means to Netflix. You know,
I can tell when I watched I watched two documentaries
this week on Netflix, and god, they know they're all
over the globe doing this stuff. So uh and like
everybody else on I'm on Amazon at least twice a
week ordering something. So I think companies let you know
(49:18):
what matters by the quality of what they do well.
And and nobody does everything well and I did regardless
of money, nobody does everything well.
Speaker 2 (49:28):
Look, I think in the linear TV world, and this
is the line that I've used a lot, uh, CBS, NBC, ABC, ESPN,
the companies that have the NFL. If you have the
NFL in the legacy media world, you're relevant no matter
what else you do. If you're a legacy media company
(49:50):
and you have the NFL, you're relevant. If you're a
legacy media company and you don't have the NFL, you're
competing to be the least your relevant. Like, that's how
dark that difference is. In the tech world, Amazon, Apple, Netflix,
these companies are relevant. I mean, they're obviously incredibly relevant
(50:12):
to the culture at large. They don't necessarily need that
live they want the live sports relationships. But Apple doesn't
need live sports rights to demonstrate that they matter in
this culture and in this country. Amazon doesn't either. Netflix
at this point certainly doesn't. We do, and I would
say the other broadcast networks do too. We need the
(50:33):
NFL to insulate us against being irrelevant. And the companies
in the legacy world that are sort of on the
outside looking in when it comes to the NFL, they
would immediately gain relevance by having it, and by not
having it, they have to look for other ways to
demonstrate that they actually matter in the culture. So I
think that's where the importance of marquee sports rights is
(50:54):
a little bit different in our legacy broadcasting, cable driven
world than it is in the world of tech giants
that are worth a trillion dollars whether they have live
sports or not.
Speaker 1 (51:07):
The president of insight and analytics at Fox Sports. He
tolerates me. Michael mulva Hill, I love all this stuff,
and you know, what can I say? I ask questions,
you provide insight, and you do this at least once
a year. Let me look at this real quick. You
do this at least once a year, and you know
(51:30):
about twice a year. I walk up to Michael's office
and he's eating a ten of sandwich and I just
sit down and start asking questions. So I figured I'd
put it on the schedule to be less inconsiderate. They
are more considerate this time. And Michael, you know, I
just think highly of you and I really do appreciate
you taking the time.
Speaker 2 (51:50):
I love doing it. I love it when you wander
into this office. I never know what question you're going
to ask next. Keeps me on my toes and forces
me to sort of think through our positions on various topic.
And I really appreciate the invite to come on and
do this with you in front of an audience rather
than just one on one in this office. I'm happy
to do it anytime. The volume
The volume all right, once a year. Because I don't
like to pester people I work with, I bring on
one of my favorite people, Michael Mulhill. So you know
you're insightful when you're the president of Insight and Analytics
(00:24):
at Fox Sports. Who doesn't want to be insightful. So
Michael knows I'm a bit of a junkie for this stuff,
and he's always been really open and he just knows
I could sit and talk about this all day. So
it's very wonky, but I always get tremendous feedback. Michael,
and I want to start with something that's kind of
fascinating to me, and I don't know the answer on
(00:46):
ninety percent of these questions. So we have added at
Fox the Cubs Dodgers opening series in Tokyo, obviously driven
by two things Sho Hee o Tani and the remarkable
success of those brains. Those are big baseball brands. Throw
the Yankees in. They're probably the three biggest brands. But
it's interesting when I see that, I wonder how Fox
(01:08):
management thinks. Does Fox look at it and say, listen,
we're not gonna make money on this. I mean to
do a remote expensive to go to Tokyo's all diffootball game.
But it kicks off our baseball season, which we had
such a just a remarkable national legue, playoffs in the
World Series. I mean it just baseball. Probably the best
baseball ratings in a decade in terms of outside of
the CUB season overall performance. So is this something that
(01:31):
a company looks at and says, hey, listen, great momentum,
let's keep it going, biggest brands, We're going to lose
some money on this, it's just good for the business.
Or can you go into a series and it can
be viable? And I'm just I'm this is again so
wonky in this probably private information, but give me the
(01:54):
most honest answer you can.
Speaker 2 (01:56):
Okay, that's a good place to start. First of all,
thanks for having me. I always enjoy these conversations. I
love coming on the pod. It can be a little wonky,
but we're going to try to make it as interesting
as we can for a technical listenership. Look, this is
our thirtieth season with Major League Baseball, and I think
that they are a cornerstone of the Fox Sports brand.
(02:17):
They're a cornerstone of the Fox network and we value
that relationship tremendously, and we want to look for ways
to be creative partners, be innovative partners, and over a
one hundred and sixty two game regular season, you know,
I think that means looking for novel, exciting different locations
(02:43):
to have a game. And over the last couple of
seasons that has meant Field of Dreams. It's meant rick
Woodfield in Birmingham, Alabama, a great tribute either the Negro
leagues last year. This year it's going to mean Bristol
Motor Speedway. We'll do a baseball game within the interior
of a NASCAR racetrack. It has meant London, and now
(03:04):
this year for us, it's going to mean Tokyo. And
I'm like, we can make a dollar on those two games.
I think it's a great way to start the season.
It's a great way to bring some excitement and novelty
to what is a very long regular season. I think
not just we at Fox, but everybody in the Commissioner's
office is looking for ways all the time to develop
(03:26):
tent polls and develop sort of interesting events for the
regular season. This is a great way to start it,
and we want to send that message that it's an
important season for US. It's a milestone season. This is
an incredibly important partner. We value the relationship enormously and
we want to start the season in kind of a fun,
exciting novelty and particularly acknowledge the intense popularity of the
(03:51):
game in Japan, Like clearly we're sending the right team there,
and I think it's going to be a great way
to start out the season.
Speaker 1 (03:57):
Yeah, you know, and I've said this, I've always been
seen sort of as a football guy. If you ask,
you know, the average person what's calling like, he'd be
college football, NFL. That doesn't mean I don't like the
World Cup. I go to UFC fights. I'm an NBA fan.
I grew up with it. Love you know. I like
March madness. I think sometimes outside of the NFL sports
(04:18):
is cyclical. Boxing used to be bigger. UFC squashed it.
Horse racing was bigger, They had controversies. NBA was bigger.
Now it's more international, not really a face of the
league Baseball and when the kind of regional networks were
sold at Fox, they don't have the same gravitas, they
(04:40):
don't have the same economic pull and what it's created
through no fault of anybody is the haves and the
have nots. There's a bigger gap there. Well, that's not
necessarily bad for a television network because the best teams
are Atlanta, Los Angeles, Houston, the two New York teams.
The cub has made a huge pick up with Kyle Tucker.
(05:01):
So it's interesting. I don't know the health of the sport,
you know, you and I that's not our concern. But
there is a moment now where it does it not
feel like baseball? Through through Otani driving up the I five,
Soto actually leaving the Yankees going to the Mets, which
(05:22):
makes them a villain to half of New York, does
it not feel like baseball? Is probably the healthiest it's
been from a television product since the Cubs year.
Speaker 2 (05:36):
Look, I think the structure of Major League Baseball is
fascinating because there is a gap between the haves and
the have nots, and that always has been. You know,
I think you could go back through fifty sixty seventy
years of baseball history and it's always been that the
New York teams are the highest revenue teams. That used
(05:56):
to be based on gate revenue. Then it became based
on regional sports network revenue. But it's always been true
that in baseball, brands make stars, right, And you could
sort of contrast that to the NBA, where I would
say in the NBA, stars make brands. Like a player
like Steph Curry can go to the Warriors and take
(06:19):
a franchise that was always sort of an afterthought in
that league and turn them into the most valuable franchise
in that league. That's Lebron going to Cleveland, it's Curry
going to the Warriors. That's a pretty well established dynamic
in basketball, whereas in baseball it's really hard to become
a national star unless you're playing for one of the
(06:41):
big brands, right. I mean that's true going back to
Roberto Clemente.
Speaker 1 (06:46):
And like I said for years, if Derek Jeter was
the Kansas City Royal, he would have been a hell
of a player. But most of his dramatic moments were
in October and frankly against the Red Sox or in October.
And I think this is a great point. There is
a distinction between the NBA and baseball, and it's brand first,
(07:07):
and that's a Rod and Otani seem like complete outliers
to me big enough. Now, now Otani is a bigger
star with the Dodgers, but he was still Babe Ruth
esque fascinating. But you consider that stuff right when as Fox,
you consider how the player makes the brand, when you
(07:28):
schedule games based on player movement.
Speaker 2 (07:30):
We absolutely do. And I think the dynamic that's been
set up in baseball is that there's certainly there's a
correlation between payroll and regular season wins. And so when
you have this divide between the haves and the have nots,
it favors the big brands. The big brands are more
capable of developing superstars and national household names. And we're
(07:52):
probably headed to another season where the Dodgers, the Yankees,
the Phillies, the Braves, the Mets are going to be
ninety plus win teams and all going to get into
the postseason. And so in the regular season you have
that advantage that were the benefit of CRUs to the
bigger markets and the bigger payroll teams. And yet the
postseason acts as a little bit of a leveler and
(08:14):
an equalizer where Baseball has created this format in which yes,
those big payroll, big market teams get in, but they
also get in alongside Arizona, alongside Cleveland. A team can
get into the tournament and get hot and get to
the World Series. So you've got a little bit of
an imbalance in the regular season that we do try
(08:37):
to take advantage of. But then that equalizes a little
bit in the postseason and you can end up with
the World Series that is Dodgers Yankees, or you can
end up with the World Series that we had two
years ago, which was Diamondbacks Rangers. When the World Series
is Diamondbacks Rangers, that's obviously not optimal for our ratings
in the short term, but I think it creates a
(08:58):
perception of competitive backs balance and a belief across all
the fan bases that they do have a chance to
get journaman and maybe get to the World Series, even
if their payroll is one hundred million dollars less than
a Dodger payroll or a Yankee payroll. And I think
that's a quality that's unique to baseball.
Speaker 1 (09:15):
I think one of the things, and not like I'm
giving away any secret sauce, but I watch our management team,
and I've said before, the place I used to work
was a massive hotel chain. Fox is smaller, although certainly
not boutique chain we have. It's easier for me to
(09:37):
communicate with management at Fox simply because you're right upstairs.
I don't feel like we're swimming in a sea of games.
I think we're very intentional with our league contracts. And
I'll give you an example. I think, and this is again,
this is not a revelation that we're becoming more of
(09:58):
an event society. Due to the social platforms, we're a
distracted society. It's more frenetic TikTok. It's harder to get
people's attention. But I look at Fox and we have
the World Cup an event, ANFL event, college football event,
indie racing an event. This is really smart to me,
This is really smart programming. I think Death Valley is
(10:21):
Monday through Friday league programming hockey, NBA, to some degree
Baseball as well, that it's very difficult to grab the
attention in non event times. We are becoming. Olympics still
rates World Cup clearly, Dana White, Saturday Night Fight Cards
(10:42):
still rate that. It looks like it has been very
intentional by Fox, that you've been about you've been ahead
of this, that you are thinking about how the culturally
we become more an event society. Now, is this coincidence
or is this stuff you and Shanks and all the
big wigs talk about.
Speaker 2 (11:00):
Well, it's not coincidence, and we're certainly not the only
ones that are doing it. I mean, I agree. I
think the sports business is becoming more reliant and more
driven by the tent pole events. I think that your
brand tends to be defined by your very best. Right,
there are eighty seven hundred and sixty hours in a year.
(11:20):
We have to think about how to fill eighty seven
hundred and sixty hours of cable programming. We have to
think about how to fill several hundred hours of broadcast programming.
But we're not really defined by the eight thousand hours.
We're defined by the Super Bowl, and we're defined by
Freddie Freeman hitting a Grand Slam in Game one of
the World Series and the World Cup Final, the moments
(11:43):
that are really resonant and memorable, and that's what we're
selling to our advertisers. That's also what we're selling to
our audience, that we are a place that you can
come and share an experience with somebody that's important to you.
And we talk a lot about the social connectivity of
sports and how that sort of underlies our entire business.
(12:05):
But we want to be a place where you can
come and share an experience and maybe have a memory
with somebody that matters to you that you have for
the rest of your life. And to have that, you
really do have to be focused on the big events,
the Super Bowls, the World Series, the things that might
create a lifetime memory. And now that for us, that
also means the Indy five hundred. You know, we want
(12:27):
to continue to look at ways to develop events that
could potentially create a once in a lifetime memory for somebody.
Speaker 1 (12:34):
Yeah, well, I mean Fox has always had I mean
FS one was the speed channel, if I recall, I
mean FS one. Fox has always had auto racing as
part of their brand from a long time ago. So
it was a natural fit. You know. Obviously, I joke
with my wife all the time, I'm in radio and
cable TV. Your husband's careers are going the wrong way, honey.
(12:59):
We may want to move into a fixer upper in
a smaller neighborhood, but there are ways to stem losses
and relationships. We have a streaming venture coming up. Relationships
with YouTube. Fox News is obviously a juggernaut in an
(13:20):
industry that is regressing. But The New York Times still
makes money in newspapers, and Delta and Southwest Airlines in
that in the aviation field, which has been under great
financial duress many times in my life, they're still industry leaders.
You can make money in industries that shrink. How do
(13:44):
we view cable now? I mean, I've said this to you.
I'm sixty, Michael. I can't give cable up because I
like college football and I'm not giving it up. And
it's and by the way, I also like news and politics,
so I'm not giving it up. I mean it's like,
I like streaming, but if I want to watch you know,
(14:05):
political stuff live CNBC, Fox Business Channel, that's that's. As
I get older, I kind of watch news, sports and
politics more. How do you view cable? How viable is it?
Is it a five year runway, eight, ten or three?
Speaker 2 (14:23):
Well, that last part of the question is really interesting,
right because I think you and I, unfortunately are both
getting to the age where you know, we can think
in terms of the rest of our careers, and that
might only be a ten fifteen year horizon, right. So
when I think in terms of the number of years
that I expect to continue to be doing this. I
(14:44):
think I think cable is going to continue to be
certainly viable, very profitable. It's funny we we have a
lot of conversations in this business about cable as a
declining part of the business. Sometime it's put in even
more negative terms than declining, and yet when companies like
(15:05):
ours come out with their quarterly earnings, you often find
that it's still the cable networks that are driving a
huge percentage of the earnings. Right Like WBD owner Brothers Discovery,
they just had their most recent earnings call, and on
that call, it was all the traditional linear cable networks
that are driving billions and billions of dollars in earnings
(15:27):
for a company that is still varies significantly in debt
and trying to climb out of that debt, and their
cable earnings are a powerful engine to try to get
them out of that situation. So the earnings on the
cable side are still extremely significant. It may not be
a growing part of the business, but it's still a
(15:49):
very profitable part of the business. I do think there's
been in the sports world a little bit of a
movement toward taking some of the best events from cable
and putting them back on the podcast where you potentially
have more reach. And I think there's something special about
being on broadcast. But the idea that cable is going
(16:10):
to disappear, cease to exist, stop being profitable, I think
that's a long way away. You know, you still have
tens of millions of people who are comfortable with the
cable bundle. Maybe there's some inertia in play there. They
like the ease of use, they like knowing where to
find everything. They like knowing that your show if they're
(16:32):
a Direct TV subscriber is on Channel two nineteen, and
they know where they can find Monday night football. They
know where they can find the NBA Playoffs. There's a
simplicity to it that is really compelling, and I think,
particularly for older consumers that grew up with cable, they're
not moving away from it anytime soon. I think we're
a long way from the end of the bundle.
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Speaker 1 (18:16):
You see this. I remember having a conversation years ago
with a friend of mine who's in the financial planning industry,
wealth management in New York, and we were talking about
the private jet industry, and there was I had to
take a private jet somewhere, and I said, you know,
how safe are these? And he said, well, just sign
(18:37):
up for the Warren Buffett company. That one will be viable.
He said. At some point, you know, there'll be about
three of those companies, maybe two. Like everything else. You know,
you know how the world works, right, people gobble up
smaller companies. And I look at streaming. Everybody has Netflix first,
in better rates, better production, cash heavy, asset heavy. They're fine.
(19:03):
I look at Disney. It still feels a little wobbly
where they're now churning a profit, but they lose seven
hundred thousand subs on their on their plus, so I
mean it's it's still not quite there. Amazon's fine. They
have a revenue, a reservoir. Amazon has a reservoir of money.
It's a It's the retail giant globally, right or at
(19:25):
least domestically. But I wonder when you look at streamers,
there was this thought five years ago streaming winds, everything
else loses. And I look at it today and I
see a lot of red, and I see a lot
of people watching television. There was a sense five years
(19:47):
ago streamers were taking over the world. At some point,
you have to make a profit. Do you do you
still feel like the dread of we're all under this
streaming dark cloud and it's about ready to strike us down.
Speaker 2 (20:02):
Not at all. And I think, if anything, what the
last five years have established is that Fox and our
management team, people at higher levels than may have done
probably the best job of any legacy media company of
navigating the challenges of the transition to streaming and the
(20:23):
increased adoption of streaming. I think the two companies that
obviously have a biased opinion, but the two companies that
have done the best job of navigating the last five
to seven years are Netflix and I think us. You know,
I think we've been able to navigate that as well
as anyone because we didn't over invest in what I
(20:46):
would call an independent streaming platform. We remained committed to
the cable bundle. Were still committed to the cable bundle.
And I think being patient and not getting into that
streaming arms race has served a really well. Streaming means
a couple different things, right, and we sometimes talk about
it as if it's a monolith, as if it's all one.
Speaker 1 (21:07):
Right.
Speaker 2 (21:08):
Streaming means independent streamers like Netflix, Apple, Amazon, behemoth tech
companies that have trillion dollar market capitalizations. And that's one
version of streaming. Another version is the streaming arm of
traditional media companies like Peacock, like Paramount, like Max, which
(21:30):
useduld be called HBO Max. And then the third type
of streaming is streaming that sort of replicates your cable
bundle like Hulu Live and YouTube TV and a place
where you can go to get a package of networks,
but rather than it being delivered via a cable in
(21:50):
the back of your TV set, it comes through your
in home Wi Fi. So I think when we talk
about streaming, we have to be careful to define what
kind of streaming are we talking about. We are getting
ready to go into the direct to consumer business. Our
chairman Blachlan Murdoch has been very open about saying we
intend to have a direct to consumer offering ready by
(22:14):
this coming football season. It changes the way that we
think about certain aspects of how we program. We now
have to think in terms of having twelve month a
year strength so that we can keep a subscriber dialed
into us all year. But I think we're really comfortable
with the way we've managed this evolution, and I don't
(22:36):
think that we're in a situation where streaming is necessarily
going to take over everything. I mean, I think there
will be a continued incremental migration of some properties or
fractions of properties moving to exclusive streaming. But I think
we're also seeing a lot of success in properties staying
on broadcast, and that's the NFL. We talked about the
(23:00):
World Series ratings being at a seven year high. We
have done this deal with IndyCar where we're now going
to put every IndyCar race on broadcast and try to
take advantage of the power of the broadcast platform. And
I think what they're what we're finding is that there
is a path to coexistence, right that we want to
have strong, viable broadcast television I think there are very
(23:24):
compelling reasons why that's important, not just for sports, but
it's just important for communities to have strong broadcast TV.
I don't think the cable bundle is going away anytime soon,
and I think there's still room for streaming to continue
to grow its audience and to add more exclusive sports rights.
But I think it's a little simplistic, and I think
(23:46):
there've been some lazy takes out there suggesting that everything
is going to go to streaming. Not everything is going
to go to streaming. And when it goes to streaming,
as I say, that means different things. That can mean
that you are going to a huge tech company, or
you're going to streaming, but you're still within the Fox family,
or the NBCU family, the Paramount family, or it just
(24:09):
means that fifteen to twenty percent of your audience is
watching via a bundle of networks that's delivered via the
Internet rather than delivered via cable. But I never bought
into that more apocalyptic idea that the entire business is
going to streaming and we're all doomed. There's a migration
there and there will be a new equilibrium, and I
(24:30):
think we're getting close to it already.
Speaker 1 (24:32):
Well, I mean, listen, I'm in. I started in AM radio,
then it became AMFM, and then it became like audio
and streaming, and then it became podcasts. And my takeaway
is it's like saying newspapers are dying. No, the delivery
system was outdated, but I still have the Wall Street Journal,
I still have the New York Times. I've never read
(24:56):
more in my life. So I mean, and maybe I'm just,
you know, an an old guy, but I've never read more.
You know, I'm always bouncing around adding subscriptions. I mean,
you know the old cliche content is king. It really
is true. Like if you have good content and good
games I watch. I think it's interesting. You know, my
love for college football, and so I like all the
(25:19):
new moves. I like NIL though it's imperfect. I like
transfer portal, though again there needs to be you know,
there needs to be a fence around in a little bit.
And I like the convergence of Texas Oklahoma to the
SEC and the PAC twelve schools, four of them going
to the Big Ten. So last year is the first year.
The ratings were a bit disappointing, although I do think
(25:43):
the first round matchups were choppy. I tend to think
we're a bit hyperbolic as media critics on things like
things take time to work themselves out. I think it'll
be better in the second year when you schedule college
football and you do this every year Big Ten. It
feels obvious to me that Michigan and Ohio State are
(26:05):
the number one in two brands. If I said, now
you have Oregon and the marketing machine of Phil Knight,
big market Washington Penn State USC, although it feels again
like it's underachieving. If you take Michigan and Ohio State out,
what brand moves the needle in the Big Ten that
(26:25):
maybe I would be surprised? Is there a definitive third
I would guess Penn State? And is there a game
or a team that would surprise me?
Speaker 2 (26:37):
It's Penn State, and I don't think that would come
as much of a surprise to Yeah. I think once
you get past Michigan and Ohio State, the third most
important brand to us is Penn State. I think Oregon
obviously is an important brand, But as you know, the
way the Big Ten deal is constructed, the conference has
multiple partners. Each partner has a find window we do
(27:01):
games at noon. Eastern CBS has the late afternoon window,
NBC has the primetime window. Because we have that noon window,
it's almost inevitable that Oregon is just not likely to
be as impactful to us as schools that are in
the Eastern and Central time zone. I think again, I
don't know that this falls under the heading of surprising,
(27:25):
but I think every year we look at Nebraska as
a sleeping giant, and we hope for Nebraska to get
close to the kind of success that they had when
you and I were kids. We had them on a
Friday night last year. They got off to a pretty
good start to their season. They hosted Illinois in a
Friday night game. That game did over four million viewers.
(27:46):
That's terrific for a Friday night. That sort of hints
at what Nebraska could be if they ever got close
to the kind of success that they had years ago
under Tom Osborne. So certainly Michigan, Ohio State at the top,
Penn State next for us because we had that early window.
Oregon and SC obviously also very important, but their home
(28:08):
games are going to be in later windows, and Nebraska
kind of lurking as the brand that you always hope
might sort of reawaken and drive the kind of viewership
that they once did.
Speaker 1 (28:19):
Now, Ohio State complained, and I understand it. You know, listen,
you're a Buckeye fan. You like those late games, you
can get lubricated. You're going to the stadium at night.
I mean, it's just more fun going to night games.
There's no question. I've been to a few Husky games,
USC games. There is a special vibe playing under the lights.
But Ohio State, also in our window, is the biggest draw.
What was last year a difficult ear? Some of it's
(28:41):
just what the schedule makers give you. What do you
say to the critics of Ohio State that say, hey, man,
you're killing us. We need night games. You can't just
keep going back and forth to us. What would you
say to the critics, Well, the.
Speaker 2 (28:54):
First thing I would say is I completely understand the complaint.
Right the Ohio State finished their season last year six
consecutive noon kickoffs, and I think that's just a byproduct
of the games being allocated via a draft, right, Like,
we can only draft the best game that's available to
us each time that our selection comes up. If you
(29:16):
were creating a schedule, just on a blank sheet of paper,
you probably would not give the top team or a
top team in your conference the same kickoff time on
six consecutive weekends to finish the season. So that wasn't
by design. It was sort of just a product of circumstance.
(29:36):
And I do understand the frustration that some Buckeye fans
may have felt at the end of last year. I
want to back up a little and try to put
into some context the way that we see the scheduling
of the games and the deal that we have with
the Big Ten. Right what's the most significant thing that's
(29:57):
happening in college sports right now? I mean, I think
obviously the most significant development and the most positive development,
is that the athletes are moving closer and closer to
being fairly compensated. Right Athletes are getting paid. And you know,
when I see a story that Carson Beck is in
Miami and he's making over four million dollars and he's
(30:19):
driving a Lamborghini, like, my knee jerk reaction to that
is that's awesome, because we have decades of history in
college sports where the athletes that drive all the value
were not being compensated appropriately and coaches were getting rich.
Media executives were getting rich. Everybody was making a lot
of money except for the athletes that actually drive the value.
(30:43):
And so we're now finally in a position where the players,
the young men and increasingly young women, who really drive
the value of these properties, are getting paid the way
that they should get paid. And whatever complexity comes with
that that makes a coach's job harder or makes the
environment maybe a little bit more challenging, all those challenges
(31:06):
are secondary to the right of the athletes to maximize
their earnings. I mean, I very very strongly believe that.
And so, as in any labor market, right, top talent
is going to follow top compensation. And as the athletes
are getting paid more commensurate with their market value, there's
(31:26):
more and more pressure on the conferences and more and
more pressure on the schools to maximize revenue so that
they can go out and get the best talent. That
brings us to the media rights. The Big Ten is
the best compensated conference in the country in terms of
media rights. The reason they're the best compensated conference in
(31:46):
the country is because they have multiple partners, because they
have a deal with US and with CBS and with NBC,
I think that's what enables the Big Ten to realize
more media revenue than the SEC, which is obviously the
other power conference in college football, and they've gone exclusively
with Disney. So by having multiple media partners, it sort
(32:10):
of creates a requirement for US to have a designated window,
for CBS to have a designated window, for c to
have a designated window, for US to apportion those games
out via a draft. We don't have the freedom that
Disney has to just put the best games wherever they
want to on the SEC side, And when you have
multiple partners and the games are being scheduled via a draft,
(32:35):
you're going to get to some inefficiencies like Ohio State
playing a bunch of games in a row at the
same time, or a frustration that Penn State fans had
when they had a home game last year that a
lot of their fans wanted to be in primetime as
the white out it was a big new game. Instead,
their fans were extremely vocal. I heard a lot about it, right,
(32:56):
But those are all things that are connected to macximizing
revenue for the conference, therefore maximizing revenue for the schools,
therefore maximizing revenue for the players, and that's the most
important thing, making sure that the kids are compensated in
the right way, and that the schools can go out
and get the talent that they need to compete for
(33:17):
a national championship, which is why I think we now
have a situation where at the very very highest level,
that handful of schools that are going to compete for
a national championship in football every year. The Big Ten
is just as good as the SEC, and may even
be pulling ahead a little bit. And it's because of
that revenue generation that's largely tied to the media rights.
Speaker 1 (33:40):
I want to talk WNBA. I'm kind of fascinated by
it because I believe for its entire existence, the NBA
has subsidized the WNBA. And you may argue the moral
and there's a certain humanity to supporting women's sports. I
completely understand that. And then Kitlin Clark arrived and the
(34:04):
team flies private and the ratings are insane. Now, the
league was growing, and I think the quality over the
last ten years has improved dramatically, but Kitlyn Clark is,
as I've said, Taylor Swift and tennis shoes. It is
just a once in a generation. It's Tiger Woods, the golf,
it's Shoeo Todi. It's like, oh, it's an event. Every
game's an event. Is the WNBA a viable TV product?
(34:30):
Or is it we have a once in a generation talent?
Obviously the WNBA would not allow you to just buy
a Caitland Clark package. But is she powerful enough because
she could have a twelve to fifteen year run here, Michael,
is she powerful enough a singular star with a little
bit of a magic Larry Bird quality because of Angel Reees?
(34:53):
That absolutely helps sort as a story we could follow
us Americans. We love our stories, we love the journey.
Reese is part of this. Is that over the next
fifteen years going to be a viable TV product? Or
do we just have a megastar? And that's all it is?
Speaker 2 (35:12):
So it's both those things. And I know it's always
sort of a cop out answer when you give somebody
an either or choice and they say it's both. But
I do think in the WNDA, it's both something that
was growing and viable and becoming more viable by the year,
and then you injected into that a once in a
lifetime talent in Caitlin Clark who I think is very
(35:37):
obviously the overwhelming number one factor in the growth of
WNBA viewership last year. You know, I think when we
looked at Indiana Fever games versus all other WNBA games
last year, the Caitlin Clark games were doing triple the
viewership of the rest of the league, and that is
a Tiger Woods level of impact. I don't know that
(35:59):
there's ever been anybody in Team sports, even Michael Jordan,
where you would look at their games and see them
doing triple the average of the rest of the league.
So I do think a big part of it is
that once in a lifetime phenomenon of Caitlin Clark, and
we should just acknowledge the obvious and make it clear
that she is plainly the driving force behind the growth
(36:23):
of the league. But at the same time, if God forbid,
Kaylyn Clark had a career ending injury, she were out
of the league. If Kaitlyn Clark just were taken out
of the equation, I still think the WNBA would be
on a growth trajectory, and it wouldn't be the kind
of exponential growth that we saw last year. But this
is a product that was moving forward pretty steadily prior
(36:46):
to Caitlin. And even now, if you look at the
collegiate level, yes, seeing growth, ESPN seeing some growth. You've
still got this next generation of superstars. That's Gugi Watkins
here in LA, it's Page Becker's in Connecticut right Like,
we're still seeing progress post Caitlin. And it makes me
(37:08):
think that, like, obviously she's the catalyst, She's what drives
the explosion of interest. I think sometimes we overstate the
idea that it's more than Caitlin. But there was a
growth curve there before, yes, and I think it would
continue even if we were somehow in a post Kaitlin.
Speaker 1 (37:25):
You know what, And let me throw this at you,
Michael and pushback please, But women's basketball is a little
like men's basketball thirty years ago. It's not as international,
and the players are staying in college for three and
four years. So I watched the WNBA draft this year.
I knew the top eight players. I didn't know any
(37:46):
of the NBA's players. So as leagues get more global,
it's not always great for all things domestic. Is that
when I watch these women's basketball players go to the
pros early they played four years Caitlyn Clark was a
three year So I heard about her when she was
a sophomore junior. It's a national story. She's a phenom
(38:08):
as a senior, and so what's happening. This is the
way people forget that you ing and Tim Duncan and
you know Chris Paul's I mean, Michael Jordan didn't come
out after his freshman year. People forget it was at
Carolina and didn't win a title. And so women's basketball
is a lot like men's college basketball was in nineteen
eighty eight. Is that the stars stayed and I had
(38:31):
a story and there were rivalries, Burden Magic, and then
they went to the draft and I had heard of them,
and then I followed them in the NBA. And so
I'm with you on this, Caitlyn's part of it, But
I think as NBA has gotten more international, the domestic
component to women's basketball actually fortifies their growth. Like sometimes
(38:53):
it's a distracted as society. Michael, I want to follow
simple stories and watch in Iowa and U con Baylor.
It's real easy I can follow. Yeah, the journey's easy
for me to follow. So maybe I'm wrong on that,
but that's just how it works for me.
Speaker 2 (39:10):
No, and the word in everything that you just said
that really resonates with me is simplicity, right, because we're
always looking for ways to simplify being a sports fan.
We want the games to be on networks where you're
familiar with seeing the games. We want the brands to
be familiar. When a player moves from the collegiate level
to the professional level, whether that's basketball or football, it's
(39:34):
incredibly helpful for the fan, the viewer to have two
or three years of history of getting to know this player.
So I agree. I mean, that's absolutely true of Kaitlin Clark,
But I was like you and you can watch the
w NBA Draft and you know, you do know Angel
Reese and you know Cameron Brink and you've seen them
(39:55):
play in the tournament. And to give some credit to
a competitor, you know, the job that ESPN is done
in growing the women's collegiate tournament is extraordinary. You know,
we like to think that we're just as powerful as
they are in women's basketball during the regular season, but
you know, the growth that the women's tournament has enjoyed
(40:16):
is incredible, and there's absolutely a direct connection between the
success of that tournament and then the success that you
saw last year in the WNBA ratings.
Speaker 1 (40:36):
This is the always been sort of the I think
Lachlan talked about this the other day about continuing to
nurture the relationship with the NFL. Obviously, if you don't
have NFL football, you can argue about what your menu
needs to look like as a sports network. We all
have to have the NFL. And I was thinking about this,
(40:57):
and I'm just going to ramble here for a minute
and a half. Amazon is a retail giant. I do
not always love the quality of their programming, but they're
getting better. Netflix is a content giant, so I tend
to think they get content. They get documentaries, they get films,
(41:20):
they get specials, but that doesn't necessarily mean they get sports.
And I have been disappointed with Netflix attempts at sports events.
This is where I think networks are excellent. I think
our production values at Fox are second to none. I
(41:42):
think NBCCBS these are tiffany experiences. These are tremendous production experiences.
I mean the Super Bowl. I mean Fox will go
eight hours live or seven hours live. But commercials to production,
they make you cry, they make you laugh. The Jimmy
John it's an aipiece. It's just spectacular. I would argue
(42:05):
that if a Netflix came in and said, all right,
we are buying a bigger NFL package, I would argue
they would be better served to say, hey, Fox, can
you produce it? You're really good at this production thing.
I'm just telling you, as a consumer, all companies do
(42:26):
things well. I don't think these streamers understand the value
and how hard TV production is. So I mean that's
just my take as a consumer. Tell me I'm wrong,
lay it out, fire holes in this, But I still
(42:48):
think network television has a role in sports, even with streamers.
Speaker 2 (42:55):
Yeah, there's a lot to react to there, right, So
why don't we start with what's the role that network
television has to play even in a world where we're
competing with tech companies that are capitalized many multiple times
greater than we are. Right, I really value broadcasting. I'm
(43:16):
sure you do as well.
Speaker 1 (43:18):
Oh, I absolutely.
Speaker 2 (43:19):
The first sort of job I had in my life
was I worked at a radio station in Pittsburgh when
I was fifteen years old. And I've always thought that
broadcasting occupies a really unique and special place in our culture,
largely because you are transmitting over public airwaves. You therefore
have a certain responsibility to the community that you serve,
(43:43):
and I think broadcasters are a little bit more ingrained
in their markets than a national cable network can be,
or than a worldwide tech platform can be. And I
think one of the reasons that it's so important for
major sports to remain on over the air broadcast television
is because of that role broadcasters play. You and I
(44:05):
are both in southern California, right we just lived through
the LA wildfires. On the night that the wildfires happened.
If you look at TV ratings here in LA, people
who had power and were able to watch TV that night,
they chose local news over national news by a margin
of almost ten to one. When something really serious, when
(44:29):
there's a serious emergency that happens in a community, people
go to their local broadcasters. That was true out here.
That's when a hurricane threatens the Gulf Coast. It's probably
true in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina last night and today.
People rely on local broadcasts. And so if the viability
of local broadcast television is dependent in part on those
(44:54):
stations having marquee sports sports that will keep people subscribed
to a cable bundle or that will keep advertisers coming
to that station. I think it's incredibly important that we
keep as much high profile sports as we can, or
at least keep a significant percentage of high profile sports
on broadcast, because broadcast and local journalism really matters a lot.
(45:17):
And I think there's something very pro consumer about making
sure that big sports events stay on broadcast TV, not exclusively,
but predominantly. And I think a lot of the power
of sports that we have talked about from time to
time is that it does bring communities together. It brings
people together. It matters to a city when the Philadelphia
(45:39):
Eagles do a sixty rating for the Super Bowl or
a fifty for the NFC Championship game, meaning that literally
fifty percent of the market is tuned in that can
only happen on broadcast TV. So I do think there
are unique qualities to free over the air broadcasts that
as an industry, we need to acknowledge that there's real
value there and that there's something special there that has
(46:00):
to be protected not just for the benefit of the leagues,
but for the benefit of the communities that these broadcasters serve.
So that's me on my soapbox about podcasting wife, it
was like the quality of production. Just to get to
the other part. I think Amazon's production of Thursday night
(46:20):
Football is awesome, right, and.
Speaker 1 (46:22):
I think it's gotten better. I think it was clunky early,
it's gotten better.
Speaker 2 (46:25):
But a lot of the people who are behind that
are people that used to work here, right, and they've
moved out to Amazon, and they've hired talent that worked
at Broadcast Networks. And I think they do a really,
really good job. And I would never criticize the way
that somebody else produces the games. I will say that
at a company like ours, sports is just so vital
to our business. You know, you look at the Fox
(46:46):
Broadcast network. Over eighty percent of our viewing this year
will be viewing of sports. Over fifty percent of our
viewing is going to be viewing of the NFL. If
we don't do a great job on the NFL, if
we don't do a great job producing it, we don't
do a great job selling it, we don't hire the
right talent, we don't have a company. And I think
(47:07):
that is very different from some of these other companies
you're describing, where I think Amazon does a great job
with Thursday Night Football, The reality is that the revenue
that they generate from Thursday Night football represents a tiny,
tiny fraction of one percent of the revenue that Amazon
will do this year. Same thing is true with Netflix.
(47:27):
You know, Apple has a more limited sports presence, but obviously,
like the revenue that they generate from sports is just
infinitesimal compared to their overall business. At a company like Fox, NBC, Disney, CBS,
sports just means more. It means more to our bottom line,
It means more to our very existence as a company.
(47:49):
We have to be great at production because if we
fail at this, we fail as a company. If the
big tech platforms fail at producing live sports, they don't
fail as a company. It doesn't really matter that much
to the future health of Amazon or of Apple. And
again I do think they produce the events really well,
(48:11):
but you just can't deny that it's a bigger portion
of our business. It's a higher priority for us company,
and it affects the people that work here, it affects
our shareholders, it affects every part of what we do.
That we have to be excellent at game production. There's
just more of a mandate and a necessity at a
(48:31):
place like this.
Speaker 1 (48:32):
Yeah, I mean I watched the Apple baseball stuff Roku.
It's not a shot at people, It's just I think.
I think to be excellent at anything, you have to
be somewhat obsessed. And money can't solve obsession, right, Like
when you watch I know how much football means. It's
(48:54):
a CBS and Fox. I can feel it.
Speaker 2 (48:57):
Right, I know.
Speaker 1 (48:58):
And I also know what storytelling means to Netflix. You know,
I can tell when I watched I watched two documentaries
this week on Netflix, and god, they know they're all
over the globe doing this stuff. So uh and like
everybody else on I'm on Amazon at least twice a
week ordering something. So I think companies let you know
(49:18):
what matters by the quality of what they do well.
And and nobody does everything well and I did regardless
of money, nobody does everything well.
Speaker 2 (49:28):
Look, I think in the linear TV world, and this
is the line that I've used a lot, uh, CBS, NBC, ABC, ESPN,
the companies that have the NFL. If you have the
NFL in the legacy media world, you're relevant no matter
what else you do. If you're a legacy media company
(49:50):
and you have the NFL, you're relevant. If you're a
legacy media company and you don't have the NFL, you're
competing to be the least your relevant. Like, that's how
dark that difference is. In the tech world, Amazon, Apple, Netflix,
these companies are relevant. I mean, they're obviously incredibly relevant
(50:12):
to the culture at large. They don't necessarily need that
live they want the live sports relationships. But Apple doesn't
need live sports rights to demonstrate that they matter in
this culture and in this country. Amazon doesn't either. Netflix
at this point certainly doesn't. We do, and I would
say the other broadcast networks do too. We need the
(50:33):
NFL to insulate us against being irrelevant. And the companies
in the legacy world that are sort of on the
outside looking in when it comes to the NFL, they
would immediately gain relevance by having it, and by not
having it, they have to look for other ways to
demonstrate that they actually matter in the culture. So I
think that's where the importance of marquee sports rights is
(50:54):
a little bit different in our legacy broadcasting, cable driven
world than it is in the world of tech giants
that are worth a trillion dollars whether they have live
sports or not.
Speaker 1 (51:07):
The president of insight and analytics at Fox Sports. He
tolerates me. Michael mulva Hill, I love all this stuff,
and you know, what can I say? I ask questions,
you provide insight, and you do this at least once
a year. Let me look at this real quick. You
do this at least once a year, and you know
(51:30):
about twice a year. I walk up to Michael's office
and he's eating a ten of sandwich and I just
sit down and start asking questions. So I figured I'd
put it on the schedule to be less inconsiderate. They
are more considerate this time. And Michael, you know, I
just think highly of you and I really do appreciate
you taking the time.
Speaker 2 (51:50):
I love doing it. I love it when you wander
into this office. I never know what question you're going
to ask next. Keeps me on my toes and forces
me to sort of think through our positions on various topic.
And I really appreciate the invite to come on and
do this with you in front of an audience rather
than just one on one in this office. I'm happy
to do it anytime. The volume
Host
Colin Cowherd
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