Bulls & Bears: Thirst down for fans as NFL kicks off busy weekend of must-watch games
Credit to Author: Gord Kurenoff| Date: Fri, 06 Dec 2019 22:56:56 +0000
No one does appointment television like the NFL, especially given that it’s backed up by a divisional lineup and playoff format that blends geographical rivalries with wild-card chases.
That’s the bullish scenario again this year heading into Week 14 of 17. You can’t keep the must-watch games to the fingers on one hand. At the top of the charts is 10-2 New England against 8-4 Kansas City and 10-2 Baltimore against 9-3 Buffalo in the AFC, with all four teams dreaming of home-field advantage for the playoffs.
In the NFC, it doesn’t get any better than the top-seeded 10-2 New Orleans Saints against the 10-2 San Francisco 49ers, although the 10-2 Seattle Seahawks at the 7-5 Rams is equally compelling given that Los Angeles could miss the playoffs one year after going all the way to the Super Bowl.
The NBA has been the hottest league in North America for the past five years when it comes to rising television rights, overall revenues and franchise values but it’s only human, so every once in a while, it will step into a hot mess.
It did so this pre-season on the mixed messages it had about China. Now this week, NBA commissioner Adam Silver admitted the NBA’s TV model may indeed be broken.
Other leagues would love to have the kind of problem that Silver was talking about; a TV deal that pays out US$24 billion over nine years. Yet when NBA television ratings are down 20 per cent, it’s a problem not just for ESPN and TNT — the cable TV giants who are on the hook for more than $2.5 billion per year in rights fees — it’s also an uncomfortable spot for a league that dominates the millennial market of 18-34s.
That key demographic is also at the forefront of “cord-cutting,” whereby more and more fans are opting out of steep cable TV subscription fees for the likes of ESPN (more than $9 per month) and TNT (about $3) — and instead downloading video streams.
That’s where the NBA’s TV strategy has seemingly backfired. It is the only league that is exclusively available on cable. It is thereby the most vulnerable to the implications of the aforementioned cord-cutting.
The NFL does Monday Night Football on ESPN but divides up the rest of its inventory between FOX and longtime over-the-air heritage broadcasters CBS and NBC.
In Canada, four-down football is on broadcast network CTV in addition to cable leaders TSN and RDS. Nationally, Major League Baseball has ESPN and TBS, but FOX is its top-seed once the playoffs begin.
The NHL is Rogers and over-the-air CBC in Canada and NBC Universal (on the NBC network and on NBCSN on cable) in the U.S. In every one of those other Big Four leagues, fans can at least get their basic fix without cable.
At least Silver is upfront on the issue. Recognition of a problem is often 9/10ths of the way to a solution. And when he predicts the technological change of the next five years will eclipse that of the past 40 years, you can bet that he and his rights holders and other partners will strive to innovate in win-win fashion.
That doesn’t change the bear market that’s strangling cable television.
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