Sports Media Watch presents thoughts on recent events in the industry, starting with the specter of expansion in pro and college sports.
One of the most common complaints in sports, particularly in the era of load management and torn Achilles, is the sheer number of games being played. The NBA season, it is often said, should be shortened from 82 games to something more manageable — perhaps 70, perhaps 65. It was not so long ago that the league considered shortening the schedule to 78 games to accommodate its new In-Season Tournament (which it instead managed to incorporate while preserving the 82-game format).
Yet the other 82-game pro sports league — the NHL — is reportedly set to expand its regular season to 84 games per team. That figure is not unprecedented; the league tested out an 84-game format from 1992-94. Nevertheless, it is a reminder that the business of sports is an entirely different consideration than the actual game. The season may be too long for the fans, and the difficulty of sustaining interest from the first week of October to the third week of June may be part of the reason why the Stanley Cup Final has seemed to sputter of late. But for the league’s media partners, the more games the better.
The same logic applies to the NCAA men’s and women’s basketball tournaments, which within weeks could expand from 68 to 76 teams. Expansion has been kicked around for years, and is almost always met with a borderline visceral disgust by college basketball advocates. The thought process is, ‘why mess with a good thing?’
But from the perspective of CBS and TNT Sports, it may be the case that there is not enough of a good thing. The tournament consists of 12 total days (compare that to 47 for the NBA Playoffs). Expansion to 76 would not meaningfully change that; it seems more likely than not that any such move would simply add on a couple of additional games to the “First Four.” Frankly, a larger-scale expansion to 96 or more teams — sacrilege, to be sure — would make a bigger difference for TV.
In life, quality over quantity is the right approach. In television, that is reversed. More inventory means more nights accounted for, more nights won — especially in the current era of television — and more advertising sold.
It also means more content to sell in the next round of media rights negotiations. For the NBA, the recently added Play-in Tournament and In-Season Tournament became the cornerstones of the new “C” package it sold to Amazon for nearly $2 billion a year. The NFL expansion of its Wild Card playoff round gave the league extra games to sell both in its primary media rights contracts and on the side. The expansion of the College Football Playoff to 12 teams gave ESPN so much inventory that it could sublicense fully half of the tournament and still have more games than under the previous 4-team format.
There are only so many ways to increase inventory. Eventually, one maxes out the number of teams one can allow into the playoff field, or the number of games teams can play in one year. In that scenario, how about adding new franchises entirely?
The WNBA on Monday announced plans to expand to a league record 18 teams as of 2030, bringing back franchises in Detroit and Cleveland and adding an entirely new market in Philadelphia. The NBA has long been expected to expand to at least 32 teams, bringing back Seattle and adding Las Vegas. The NHL, already at 32, has suitors lining up for even further expansion — which would make it the first of the four major sports leagues to extend to 33, 34, or perhaps even more.
The more teams, the more games from which to choose — an asset given the various mouths to feed between local and national television. The more markets one can schedule for those tricky national windows like 10 PM ET, where the NBA in particular could use a couple more Pacific time zone teams. And of course, the more the other teams can earn through expansion fees.
Frankly, incremental expansion — from 82 to 84 regular season games, from 68 to 76 participants, or from 32 to 34 franchises — is not going to completely transform any league’s business. But every little bit adds up, which may help explain why sports properties are expanding at all in an era where the general consensus seems to be ‘leave well enough alone.’ When it comes to the most valuable programming in all of television, there can never be too much.
The arguments for scaling back pro and college sports of course have merit. Who could deny that the NBA Playoffs was better off when the first round was best-of-five? When the baseball playoffs consisted of only four teams per league? Perhaps a 70-game NBA regular season would have spared Tyrese Haliburton, Jayson Tatum and Damian Lillard from serious injury, or a 154-game baseball season would help ward off the specter of Tommy John.
One can look at the NFL and see the power of scarcity, as the league with the fewest games is by far the most popular attraction in American culture. Except the NFL has without hesitation added more and more games to its schedule — and is still seeking the ultimate goal of an 18-game season.
It is hard to believe there was ever a time in recent memory that one of the four major leagues seriously considered contraction — Major League Baseball followed the good vibes of the 2001 World Series by immediately voting to eliminate the Twins and Expos for the following year.
In this industry, change only goes in one direction.
Plus: MLB-ESPN, NBA TV, Fox Fridays, summer sports talk
It was perhaps inevitable that Major League Baseball would wind up back at the negotiating table with ESPN. Swearing off the network altogether is not the kind of pragmatic move a major league should be willing to make. Playing hardball is one thing, taking one’s ball and going home is quite another — and snubbing an interested partner with the resources of ESPN makes little sense.
The prospect of Sunday Night Baseball joining football and basketball as part of a year-round Sunday night NBC Sports lineup is appealing, but Comcast was not even willing to pay $30 million/year for its Sunday morning package two years ago. If Comcast is offering little more than the $200 million ESPN reportedly offered earlier in negotiations — or even less — cutting ESPN out of talks is little more than cutting off one’s nose to spite one’s face.
The news last week that TNT Sports will no longer operate the NBA’s digital assets, including NBA TV, was no surprise. When The Wall Street Journal reported last year that TNT would continue running NBA TV as part of its settlement with the NBA, that was immediately retracted. John Ourand reported in early May that TNT Sports would continue running NBA TV, and that was walked back the following week (though the eventual outcome of the NBA taking the network in house was still described as a “stunning development”). Chalk it up to mixed signals, but it would seem clear that one side believed a deal was possible and another did not — a bit similar to the reporting throughout last year that WBD could carve out a ‘fourth’ package for NBA games, which does not seem to have ever been on the table.
Fox Sports’ decision to air sports year-round on Friday nights has resulted in some unusual milestones, the latest of which will be college volleyball getting primetime broadcast television exposure. Fox announced Monday that it is set to carry four Friday night women’s college volleyball matches this coming season, including a season-opening doubleheader on August 22 (Pittsburgh-Nebraska and Florida-Stanford), Kentucky-Penn State on September 5 and Nebraska-Penn State on October 3.
Fox has already carried rugby in primetime this year, so the bar for sports on primetime broadcast TV has already been redefined. College volleyball is growing, but this is the sort of programming move that is less about the sport than about the declining prestige of primetime broadcast television. As that continues, more and more sports will get the kind of primetime spotlight once confined to the “Big Four.”
If one wants to gauge just how quickly sports shifted into the dead of summer following Game 7 of the NBA Finals, ESPN’s “Pardon the Interruption” featured discussions about mixed doubles tennis and Barry Bonds (look him up, kids) in its “A” block last week. One cannot blame Scott Van Pelt for taking a solid two months off from his D.C.-based SportsCenter before returning in late August.
