David Stern started it. It was January 22, 2002 — a date that should be remembered as the start of the disappearance of sports on network television.
Four years and six days later, on January 28, 2006, Paul Tagliabue kept it going when the NFL announced that it would air live, regular season games on the NFL Network.
On January 22, 2002, the NBA announced a new six-year television deal with Disney and Time Warner that would put the NBA All Star Game and both Conference Finals on cable. After years of near saturation on network television (at that time, NBC), the NBA seemingly condemned itself a lack of network television exposure. Several analysts viewed the move as dangerous to a league already suffering in ratings.
The NBA deal occurred in a no man’s land of sports television contracts. The next Big Four contract would not come up until 2004, and it would involve the NHL. The NHL was already a primarily cable sport, so its short-lived deal with ESPN and NBC, which would involve most of the playoffs and two Stanley Cup Finals games airing on ESPN, neither truly followed nor set a trend.
The NFL and Major League Baseball would provide validation for David Stern’s move to cable. In 2005, the NFL signed lucrative new contracts with FOX, CBS, NBC and ESPN. ESPN bought the rights to network television staple Monday Night Football. The move of MNF, one of the NFL’s crown jewels, to cable, turned the NBA’s move from an isolated deal into the start of a trend. In 2006, Major League Baseball made a major move, sending all Division Series games and a League Championship Series to cable network TBS. By 2007, the idea of airing marquee events on cable was no longer considered dangerous, but instead part of a new sports/television landscape.
The moves of the NFL and Major League Baseball, compounded with the NBA’s move years earlier, has caused a massive decline in the amount of sports on free TV. In 2002, both NBA Conference Finals, both baseball League Championship Series and Monday Night Football were on broadcast television. By 2007, only two NBA Conference Final games and one League Championship Series will remain on TV, freeing up approximately one month of combined airtime.
The dearth of sports on free TV is only one part of a larger trend; the move to cable is just one step in the move of sports to specific niche networks. The NFL’s decision to air games on the NFL Network will have a bigger impact on professional sports than the NBA’s cable deal; NFL Network joins The Golf Channel, The Tennis Channel, NBATV and the upcoming NHL Network as sport-specific niche channels that televise league events. Already, several NBA Playoff games, the French Open, and the vast majority of early round golf coverage airs on niche networks.
If the NFL Network is able to achieve the distribution goals it has in mind, that is, eventually having the reach of ESPN, then it might be advantageous to the league to move more games in-house. It would not be out of the question to see Monday Night Football move to NFL Network in 2014, when the current contract with ESPN expires.
Assuming that David Stern is still Commissioner of the NBA in the near future, the NFL might be beaten to the punch. Stern is trying to get either Disney or Time Warner to buy a stake in NBATV (and NBA.com) in the current television negotiations. This could lead to increased distribution for NBATV and, eventually, an increased amount of games. Already, the network airs close to 100 regular season NBA games per year, and several first round playoff games. But NBATV does not have its own announcing teams, outside of postseason, relying on local announcers. If NBATV is able to get the money and distribution that a Disney or Time Warner could provide, it might be able to afford better production and, in time, actually be rated by Nielsen. More importantly, the network could be used as a bargaining tool in future television negotiations — maybe even supplanting what ever cable partners the NBA has by the time the network is competition-ready.
Certainly, the NBA and NFL won’t be making major moves to niche networks during this decade. The NFL is locked up until at least 2011, and the NBA is likely to extend its current television deal another six years. But within the next fifteen to twenty years, the sports/television landscape will continue evolving — to the point where a Superbowl might be airing not only on cable, but on the NFL’s own network.
