Peacock reaches profitability for the first time; the Portland Trail Blazers are making changes to its broadcast team; and Jonathan Jones is joining The Athletic. Plus news on Paramount-WBD, ESPN, 95.7 The Fan and the Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference.
Peacock reaches profitability for the first time
Peacock, the streaming service owned by NBCUniversal, reached profitability for the first time in its six-year history during the fiscal second quarter with EBITDA of $189 million, up 287% year-over-year. The platform also added 2 million subscribers during the quarter, which included the NBA Playoffs, MLB regular season and FIFA World Cup, pushing its overall count to 48 million. The broader content and experiences business generated revenue of $10.7 billion (+22.9% YoY) on adjusted EBITDA of $1.33 billion (+7.1% YoY).
Peacock highlighted a strong quarter for media at Comcast, including total revenue of $5.69 billion (+25.3% YoY) on adjusted EBITDA of $708 million (+3.7% YoY). The company said that the FIFA World Cup, which aired in Spanish on NBCUniversal-owned Telemundo in the United States, was responsible for $44 million of the $2.16 billion in domestic advertising revenue (+55% YoY) and $441,000 of total revenue. The company last aired the FIFA World Cup during the fiscal fourth quarter of 2022, when Peacock had 21 million subscribers, and generated media revenue of $6.77 billion (-3.15% YoY).
Comcast registered revenue of $29.9 billion on adjusted EBITDA of $8.9 billion, both of which were down year-over-year. The company lost 280,000 domestic video customers and 167,000 broadband customers compared to last year’s fiscal second quarter.
Comcast is planning to spin NBCUniversal and Sky into a publicly traded, standalone company within the next year, and co-CEO Mike Cavanagh believes it will have the necessary scale to compete rather than resorting to continued consolidation. Cavanagh, speaking on the company’s earnings call Thursday, said the company’s sports portfolio is a “microcosm” of its broader capabilities. “We’ve built very long-standing relationships that are growing their audiences, elevate the presentation of their sports for the long term, and expand the value of their rights, frankly,” Cavanagh said. “We do that through the world-class production that we’re known for, great distribution across both broadcast and streaming, and the ability to reach fans at scale.”
Trail Blazers to alter broadcast team
The Portland Trail Blazers organization is enacting changes to its broadcast team, moving on from longtime television analyst Michael Holton ahead of the new season, per a report by Maury Brown of Forbes. Holton, who has worked on radio broadcasts with play-by-play announcer Travis Demers since the 2019-20 season, had been part of Trail Blazers coverage for 19 years. Demers’ contract is up for renewal, according to Brown, who added that the status of such is unknown. Television play-by-play announcer Kevin Calabro has chosen to depart his role “after receiving a ‘subprime’ contract extension offer,” according to a report by Joe Freeman of The Oregonian.
Trail Blazers broadcasts will also reportedly not include hosts Neil Everett and Jamie Hudson, along with statistician Tom Haberstroh. Everett, who is perhaps best known for his time at ESPN anchoring “SportsCenter” with Stan Verrett, joined Trail Blazers coverage in the 2021-22 season while still working for the national network. Hudson has been on the broadcasts since 2012, first as a reporter before moving into the hosting role. Haberstroh has continued to work for Yahoo Sports as a contributing writer and hosting “The Big Number” podcast.
“We are deeply grateful to all the hard-working individuals who have contributed to our award-winning broadcasts over the years,” the Trail Blazers said in a statement provided to Sports Media Watch. “I can’t comment on individual personnel decisions, but I can confirm that we are making changes for the upcoming season as we continue to evolve with the changes in the broadcast industry and look to become more efficient in our business operations. While plans are still being finalized, play-by-play radio broadcasts will continue in the 2026-27 season, and will not be television simulcasts.”
The Trail Blazers organization operates its own television outlet – the Rip City Television Network – which is distributed to Sinclair affiliates within the team’s broadcast territory and is reportedly diminishing the scale of its television production crew. The reported changes occur as the Trail Blazers and the city of Portland are trying to reach a new arena lease that would include upgrades to the Moda Center. There was reportedly a round of job cuts that impacted more than 70 Trail Blazers employees this past May, coming two months after Tom Dundon acquired majority ownership of the team for $4.25 billion.
Jones joining The Athletic in August
Jonathan Jones is joining The Athletic as a senior writer next month, ending his tenure as the lead NFL insider for CBS Sports after seven years with the company. Jones, who has appeared on “The NFL Today” and the CBS Sports HQ FAST channel, will provide newsbreaking, video analyses and behind-the-scenes stories as part of his new role. Alison Cotsonika, the NFL senior managing editor for The Athletic, called Jones “one of the preeminent voices that routinely delivers substantive news to his audience with coverage that’s both accessible and moving.”
Jones, who graduated from The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 2012, began covering the league as a Panthers beat reporter for the Charlotte Observer. From there, he joined Sports Illustrated where he contributed across platforms and also reported stories for “Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel” on HBO. Jones initially joined CBS Sports as its senior NFL reporter in 2019 before later becoming the company’s lead NFL insider three years later.
The addition of Jones comes a few months after former senior NFL insider Dianna Russini submitted her resignation to The Athletic after seemingly intimate photographs of her with New England Patriots head coach Mike Vrabel surfaced online. Katherine Rosman and Ken Belson of The New York Times reported that The Athletic started “an investigation into her reporting.” At the time, New York Times Company spokesperson Danielle Rhoades Ha was unable to confirm whether The Athletic would be hiring a new senior NFL insider.
Jones joins a group of senior NFL writers for The Athletic that includes Mike Silver, Jourdan Rodrigue and Dan Pompei. Separately on Thursday, Fubo announced the creation of The Athletic Video Hub, which consists of highlights, short-form video and full-length podcasts. Some other content from The Athletic will also be streaming on Fubo Sports Network, the company’s free ad-supported streaming television (FAST) channel.
Plus: Paramount-WBD, ESPN, 95.7 The Fan, Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference
- Paramount has received approval for its merger transaction with Warner Bros. Discovery from the European Union after the company agreed to remedies related to distribution following a Phase 1 review. In a statement about the approval, Paramount said that the conclusions the EU reached “directly refute key assumptions that underpin the [U.S.] state AGs complaint seeking to block the transaction,” which will delay any possible close until Tuesday, Aug. 18 at the earliest. Paramount also still has to obtain approval from the United Kingdom, whose culture secretary Lisa Nandy said last month that she was “minded to intervene” in the transaction.
- ESPN is creating a new college football program featuring Josh Pate, Taylor Lewan and Will Compton that will air Friday afternoons from college campuses, according to a report by Ryan Glasspiegel of Front Office Sports. All three college football hosts started regularly appearing on the network last season while continuing their own ventures. Pate hosts a show for On3 and Yahoo Sports, while Lewan and Compton took their popular “Bussin’ With The Boys” podcast independent after previously being part of Barstool Sports.
- Audacy is launching 95.7 The Fan on Thursday, Aug. 13, adding another FM sports talk radio station to its portfolio. The station will simulcast programming from SportsRadio 610, which has been broadcasting for more than 30 years and is the flagship radio home of the Houston Texans. The company will continue broadcasting against Gow Media-owned ESPN 97.5 and iHeartMedia’s SportsTalk 790, the latter of which has an HD-2 presence.
- ESPN has agreed to a new multiyear media rights deal with the Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference (MEAC) through the 2030-31 academic year, it was announced Wednesday. Under the terms of the deal, the men’s and women’s MEAC Basketball Tournament championship games will air on one of ESPN’s linear networks, along with select men’s basketball games and football games in the regular season. MEAC games have aired on ESPN platforms since 2018, placing events across ESPN3, ESPN+ and the MEAC Digital Network, along with linear presence for “10 televised contests on either ABC, ESPN, ESPN2 or ESPNU.” ESPN also recently reached a multiyear agreement with the Southwestern Athletic Conference (SWAC) with games airing across linear and digital platforms.
