Sports Media Watch presents thoughts on recent events in the industry, starting with looming split between Major League Baseball and ESPN.
Are ESPN and MLB done for good?
Nothing may better encapsulate the current relationship between ESPN and Major League Baseball than the contested nature of their split. Rob Manfred said in the memo announcing their parting of ways that the decision was mutual, but sources told SMW and several other outlets that it was in fact ESPN that made the decision to opt-out. Given the tone Manfred struck in his memo, it is perhaps only the feelings that are mutual.
Yet bridges are burned and restored all the time in sports media. Keith Olbermann returned to ESPN on two separate occasions (three if one counts a stint on ESPN Radio) after not just burning his bridges, but famously ‘napalming’ them.
Major League Baseball and ESPN have even been down this road before, with MLB terminating the network’s contract in 1999 — three years early — because it preempted Sunday Night Baseball in favor of Sunday Night Football. (ESPN sought permission, MLB denied it, and ESPN preempted three games in ’98 and three more in ’99 anyway.) ESPN sued, MLB countersued, and eventually the sides reached a settlement that extended the network’s contract for six years through 2005 — with sharp increases both in rights fees and game inventory.
Go back a handful of years and MLB had an ugly split with “The Baseball Network” broadcasters ABC and NBC. After the 1994 strike-shortened season, both networks announced that they would exit the unique arrangement, and neither minced words.
“I can’t imagine being involved in baseball the rest of this century,” said NBC’s Dick Ebersol in a joint 1995 statement with his ABC counterpart Dennis Swanson. “This isn’t a ploy. Neither of us will be involved next year.” NBC was back in baseball the very next season and would carry games through 2000.
Needless to say, there is precedent for MLB taking their television relationships to the brink and somehow finding a way to salvage them. It certainly does not seem like MLB will remain with ESPN going forward, but there is technically nothing stopping the sides from reaching a new deal.
There was no small irony in Manfred assailing ESPN and cable as declining properties unfit for Major League Baseball just hours ahead of ESPN averaging 9.3 million viewers for a hockey game. Indeed, while Manfred’s statement is broadly correct — any cable network is bound to be a “shrinking platform” in 2025 — ESPN has delivered several blockbuster audiences in the past year, from the aforementioned hockey game to Caitlin Clark-led Iowa against UConn and LSU in last year’s NCAA women’s basketball tournament (14.4 and 12.2 million respectively).
Any of those games would have surely done better on ABC, but it is hard to look at those viewership figures and suggest ESPN held them back.
(Also, how exactly is Warner Bros. Discovery supposed to feel after the comments Manfred made about cable? Losing the NBA is survivable if one holds onto other rights, but losing the NBA and MLB would put WBD in an unenviable position — and call into question its future with the NHL, which is up for bid the same year as MLB, 2028.)
Putting the Four Nations viewership in perspective
As for the hockey game, Canada’s overtime win in the Four Nations Face-Off final delivered the largest official NHL audience on record, with the usual caveats regarding out-of-home viewing. (Game 7 of the 2019 Blues-Bruins Stanley Cup Final almost certainly averaged more viewers all things being equal.)
Finding an appropriate comparison for the Four Nations tournament is a difficult task, as it is not entirely clear what this was. These were the most-watched NHL games of the season, but is it really accurate to list them with Golden Knights-Bruins or Wild-Red Wings? The tournament was a replacement for the All-Star Game, but is it really accurate to call Thursday’s final the most watched All-Star event in all of sports since the 2017 MLB All-Star Game? This was surely no exhibition.
Can one judge by the standards of international competition, and if so, are Olympic comparisons fair game? On the hockey side, those comparisons are flattering. Because NHL players have been excluded from recent Olympics, one has to go back to the 2010 final to find a larger audience. Outside of hockey is a different story; as recently as August, the United States-France Olympic men’s basketball final averaged over 20 million (Nielsen + Adobe Analytics).
As a non-Olympic international competition, perhaps a more apt comparison might be to the World Baseball Classic — which in its most recent iteration averaged about five million for a United States-Japan final — but other events in that genre (ex. the World Cup of Basketball) rarely get quality television coverage.
Ultimately, the midseason, league-sanctioned, international competition is a bit of a first. For the NHL, it is hard to imagine it will be the last.
Will the Four Nations momentum carry into the rest of the NHL season? There is little precedent for international competition having a meaningful impact on subsequent games (one need only ask anyone associated with domestic soccer leagues). The NHL did not get a noticeable boost coming out of the 2010 Olympic gold medal game, which averaged considerably more viewers than Thursday’s final with nearly 28 million.
Plus: Four Nations media rights, NBA blowouts, NFL lead-ins
— There is no guarantee that the NHL will run back its Four Nations tournament in future years, but if it does, it seems like exactly the kind of one-off, big-event spectacle that would be perfect for a Netflix. Much like the NBA Cup, which the league was able to include in its rights deal with Amazon, the Four Nations tournament could be a valuable addition to any future media rights contract.
— Complaints about the quality of play in the NBA have gotten out of hand this season, but the league’s cause is not helped by nationally televised blowouts. In all three ABC games over the weekend, a team led by at least 24 points — and while Lakers-Nuggets was nonetheless compelling due to the Luka Doncic storyline, Knicks-Celtics and Mavericks-Warriors left something to be desired.
— If anyone ever questioned the power of an NFL lead-in, a January 12 Formula E race that aired following the Broncos-Bills Wild Card game averaged 2.77 million viewers on CBS — a figure that surpasses all-but-one college basketball game this season. The exception also had an NFL lead-in, Illinois-Arkansas on CBS Thanksgiving Day.
