NFL manager/scheduling planning analytics Max St. John discusses the league’s Sunday afternoon slate; SEC commissioner Greg Sankey believes that its media rights are “undervalued” relative to what the conference is delivering; and MLB ties a salary cap and floor to ending TV blackouts in its CBA proposal. Plus news on the NBA, Scripps-DirecTV, Sports Illustrated and the CFL.
NFL “always trying to be cognizant of” Sunday afternoon schedule quality
Appearing on the latest “Sports Media Watch Podcast,” NFL manager/scheduling planning analytics Max St. John described the league’s 1 PM ET Sunday window as “the lifeblood of our league,” adding that the risk of devaluing the Sunday afternoon slate is “definitely a concern” that the league is “always trying to be cognizant of” as it expands its schedule with standalone windows.
St. John: “You do sometimes end up with a few less games than we’ve historically seen on Sunday afternoon, but that’s where you need to be strategic … maybe we have less games at 1:00 that week, but we have a really, really big game that we can point the entire country to.”
The NFL has created more standalone windows across its schedule — including games on the night before and day after Thanksgiving — leading to questions about the quality of its Sunday afternoon slate. The league has also steadily increased the quality of its Saturday slate, including a now-annual Week 15 doubleheader on broadcast television that per St. John will not be tied to any specific network in future years. Between those changes, some of the highest-profile games of the season are now taking place outside of the Sunday afternoon windows.
The Sunday slate is also affected by increased flexible scheduling, with each of the league’s primetime windows now able to swap games at the league’s discretion. When asked if the league would consider expanding flex scheduling to include Christmas games — coming off of a year when Christmas viewership declined due to disappointing, injury-wracked seasons for the participating teams — St. John said “never say never,” but added that he would be surprised if it happened.
Sankey: SEC rights are “undervalued” relative to what conference is delivering
SEC commissioner Greg Sankey said that he believes the conference’s media rights are undervalued relative to what it is delivering when asked directly at a press conference Wednesday. “To be big picture, everybody would say they’re undervalued,” Sankey said. “I think ESPN has continued to work with us and Disney and Jimmy [Pitaro] and his team in a healthy kind of way. Kickoff times aside, relationally, we’ve continued to make progress.”
Sankey added that he would “much rather be overdelivering than underdelivering” and declined to address whether he would talk with ESPN about renegotiating.
The current SEC figure of $710 million/year trails that of the Big Ten, which reportedly receives $1 billion/year through its deals with CBS, NBC and Fox. The conference averaged 4.9 million viewers during the regular season and routinely outdrew most Big Ten games, though the Big Ten football championship finished as the most-watched game of the regular season. Sankey said at the press availability that the SEC led all conferences in viewership last season.
The SEC and Big Ten conferences commissioned a study in March arguing that conferences pooling college football media rights would not lead to increased revenue. New bipartisan legislation introduced Wednesday, known as the “Protect College Sports Act,” would amend the Sports Broadcasting Act of 1961 to expand the antitrust exemption to college sports and collectively pool media rights. It would also extend the protection window for college football by two weeks, require local outlets to televise CFP/CBB games for free and introduce new requirements for those selling rights.
MLB ties instituting salary cap and floor to ending TV blackouts in CBA proposal
Major League Baseball owners are asking for a salary cap and floor and an even split of revenue in their first collective bargaining proposal to the players union, with MLB spokesperson Glen Caplin saying in a statement that the proposed economic system would allow the league to “address another top fan concern of local TV blackouts.” The proposal would also centralize local media revenue to be distributed equally to its 30 teams.
MLB commissioner Rob Manfred recently described discoverability of regional game broadcasts as “a huge issue” for the league, citing lucrative payouts some franchises previously received from RSNs. Manfred, who made an appearance on a special edition of “The Pat McAfee Show” on ESPN Wednesday, explained that cord cutting has resulted in the traditional RSN model to “fray and fall apart around the edges” and that the league needed to figure out a way to bring fans local games in a manner that is “easy for them to find, affordable and discoverable.”
Manfred lauded ESPN’s digital interface as a hub for the league’s local inventory, although that only applies to out-of-market games accessible through MLB.TV at the moment. While ESPN has the in-market streaming rights for teams who produce and distribute games through the league, that option is not expected to take hold until next season. “[W]e have to get to the biggest possible audience we can get to, and fans need to know how they can find our games,” Manfred said. “That’s why I like the ESPN+ platform for our local broadcasts.”
MLB is in the first season of new media rights deals with ESPN, NBC Sports and Netflix. While some teams continue to have broadcasting contracts with external outlets, nearly half of MLB teams are working with the league on production and/or distribution of games. Manfred has previously said that he expects rights for all of its teams to be available in 2028 as he tries to introduce a centralized local option.
Plus: NBA, Scripps-DirecTV, CFL, CBS Sports
- The NBA has hired Matt Volk in a new position of general manager/local media, the league confirmed to Sports Media Watch on Thursday. Volk, who has been working as the COO of NESN and SportsNet Pittsburgh for the last several years, will begin his new role that involves local production and programming oversight on Monday, June 22, per Austin Karp of Sports Business Journal, who was first to report the news.
- More than 50 television stations owned by the E.W. Scripps Company may soon go dark on DirecTV upon the expiration of a carriage agreement, several of which were recently unavailable on Comcast Xfinity for five weeks before the two sides reached a new deal. In a statement provided to Sports Media Watch, a DirecTV spokesperson said that Scripps was looking for “a major rate increase” for access to programming that airs “free over the air and often online.”
- Sports Illustrated writers Greg Bishop, Michael Rosenberg, Stephanie Apstein and Mike McDaniel were among 10 to 15 people who lost their jobs with the publication due to layoffs this week, according to a report by Ryan Glasspiegel of Front Office Sports. Kyle Koster, the editor-in-chief of The Big Lead, was also part of layoffs that Meir Orbach of Ctech reported are affecting 12% of the workforce at SI publisher Minute Media.
- The Canadian Football League has signed a six-year media rights extension with Bell Media and is introducing DAZN and YouTube into the fold as well, the league revealed on Thursday. Bell-owned TSN, which first broadcast CFL games in 1986, will air the Grey Cup in addition to Thursday and Friday night football matchups as part of its package of 60 regular-season contests. Starting in 2027, DAZN will broadcast Saturday night football games in prime time and gains global rights to all CFL games (outside of Canada and the United States). YouTube will have live CFL preseason games, more coverage of the league’s combine, an all-access series and a new creator sporting event.
