Abe Madkour:
We're ready for two very informative yet fun days at the CAA World Congress of Sports, and this is your Morning Buzzcast for Tuesday, April 18th. I'm Abe Madkour. I'm joined by a special guest today on the Buzzcast as SBJ's media reporter, John Iran joins me as we preview the CAA World Congress of Sports. John, it's going to be quite a couple of days.
John Ourand:
Abe, everybody is going to be here. We have league commissioners, we have the most influential people in sports business, team owners. It's going to be a good couple of days.
Abe Madkour:
And we have Bill Simmons on Wednesday and that should be a lot of fun. Today, we have some one-on-ones and they're very, very high profile names. We've got first, your interview with NBA Commissioner Adam Silver. What do you think the message is that Adam Silver's going to share with the attendees?
John Ourand:
Well, I have a couple of things that I want to ask him about the RSN business, of course, with the NBA, the upcoming media rights deal that they're doing, but Adam's coming right off of signing a CBA so we're going to really dive into that as well.
Abe Madkour:
John, there hasn't been a lot of public comment yet on the CBA. I don't think it's signed yet so we'll see how far he'll delve into it, but a lot of issues he hasn't talked about publicly such as the new luxury tax tier, such as the new... They did something to try to ease load management. They also did not touch the age entry for the NBA, so there are a lot of things in there that you could get into with him.
John Ourand:
Don't forget the in-season tournament too that they're going to start up.
Abe Madkour:
That's fun because that's right up your alley, because they'll take that to the media rights holders because that'll be a new media package that they take to the market.
John Ourand:
Some more money coming in for media rights. Absolutely.
Abe Madkour:
Let's stay with the NBA because I've got Steve Ballmer, and after you watch the game on Sunday where the Suns and the Clippers played and the Clippers squeaked out game one, it was fun to see his emotion and reaction to the game in such a close game. He is so fun on stage because he wears his passion on his sleeve. He's so excited, and of course, John, we're going to talk a lot about the Intuit Dome, which is under construction just about 10 miles from where we will be at LA Live, and you could see it when you flew over to land at LAX.
And again, I'm the media reporter so I'm stuck on media rights. Who else do I want to hear from other than Steve Ballmer in terms of the local media rights scene? He's been trying to take control of those media rights for quite a while, and his perspective on what's going on and how he can profit from it is something that I definitely want to hear.
We also have someone who's really going to probably talk to you a little bit in the Green Room before he goes on stage, MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred. And what a time to speak to him because a couple weeks in the season, the rule changes are playing to great reviews. I went to Dodger Stadium on Sunday and it was noticeable to see the pace of play, but you continue to be on top of this RSN story because you wrote about how Cincinnati is now the market that people should really be paying attention to when it comes to the RSN issue.
While the Reds own part of Bally Sports Ohio, and so because that's a joint venture, it's not part of this diamond bankruptcy. It's sort of separate from it. So Diamond has told the Reds that they're not going to pay on time. They still have 15 days to make a payment. If they don't, and I got to say, right now it looks like it's likely that they won't, MLB believes that the rights are going to revert back to the team. They're going to go to MLB, and this will be potentially the first time that MLB will take over the local rights and start to produce games as an RSN. And I know you talked a lot about this on your great Marchand and Ourand Sports Media podcast, but for listeners of the Buzzcast, that means that the Reds or baseball would go out and they would rehire really the contractors who do those games. They would have the same production crew. It would probably look and feel and sound pretty similar.
John Ourand:
People that I talk to within baseball, they insist that everything is ready to go, Abe. The people that produce the games are freelancers and so they'll be able to come over easily. Their trucks, companies that have the production trucks in there, they'll be able to get them. The announcers, increasingly, they're being hired by the teams so they're not even set with the RSN either. So if you're a fan of the Cincinnati Reds, you're going to be able to tune in and see what looks almost like the identical telecast except for it will be on a different channel position. And to your earlier point, that is baseball's vision and really best hope that they get these rights back and that these games are offered by them or the individual teams rather than a third party.
And here's the problem. The money that they're going to be able to get is not nearly going to be as much as the RSNs have been paying. I'm dying to get to know more about the deals. I hear that MLB has rights in place with DirecTV, with Spectrum, which is the main cable system in the Cincinnati area. I want to see what those deals look like because there's no way that they're spending as much on these games as they do on a traditional RSN.
Abe Madkour:
And for the listeners, that means that if you're team, it could mean 30 to 50% less, could be, in terms of your local media right. And I don't want to speculate, but it certainly means less.
So let's move on because you have a good interview. This afternoon, you'll be talking to Nick Kahn, and Nick Kahn, of course, you and I both know him, one of the most charismatic people in all of sports business coming off a big deal between the WWE and Endeavor valued at $9 billion. This will be an interesting interview.
John Ourand:
And the WWE just did a deal with Fanatics that we just broke today where they're going to be handling their international licensing as well. We're going to be talking about the Endeavor deal, why WWE picked Endeavor and what that's going to look like moving forward. WWE'S media rights are coming up and we'll be taking a look at how he sees the market. Nick Kahn is a very strategic executive when it comes to the market and he has really good opinions about how this is all moving forward.
Abe Madkour:
He does have a good insight into pretty much every major issue in sports business, or an opinion on it that's pretty well-informed.
John Ourand:
Exactly.
Abe Madkour:
Yeah. And so also, you talked about Fanatics. We have Michael Rubin. Michael Rubin's used the World Congress, John, as almost like an annual, not state of Fanatics discussion, but to talk about where his company is going, where it is now. Because I remember a couple of years ago where he really laid out that vision and said in five years, Fanatics will be a hub for betting, for potentially tickets, for your merchandise, for your collectibles, for your NFTs, potentially even for your media coverage and media games. It maybe is getting there, but it's not there yet, so we'll get to talk to him a little bit about where he is in that process. Do you see them as a player in future media talks?
John Ourand:
That's something that's out there. I know they've kicked the tires. They're sort of a white knight for the league, somebody that comes in that they already have a relationship with, so it's something that there's potential there but I'm not ready to say that they're definitely going to be doing it yet.
But Abe, I've got a question for you. You've got Steve Ballmer, you've got Michael Rubin. You've got to have your energy up, man.
Abe Madkour:
Well, I have my energy up. As you can tell by my voice, it's one of my favorite days of the year, day one of the World Congress. As always, it's going to be a full ballroom. And don't forget, we have Stefano Domenicali from Formula One making a rare North American appearance in terms of a big sports business conference, and I bet you would agree with me, I get asked more about Formula One these days than any sport. On Monday, I was at a luncheon with some people and that's all they wanted to talk about, the Vegas race, the Miami race, the COTA Race. Formula One is pretty hot so hearing from Domenicali I think will be very interesting.
John Ourand:
In Drive to Survive, I'm always impressed by how many people that aren't really sports fans that watch that series.
Abe Madkour:
Good point, John. And we'll hear from Paul Martin and Box to Box, the company behind Drive to Survive, Break Point and Full Swing, among other sports docs on Wednesday, so a really good thread there.
John Ourand:
But Abe, before we wrap up, I have a media panel coming up at the end of the day with Fox, ESPN and NBC, and if you want to talk about where the future of sports rights are going, they're going to be the ones that are going to lay out the roadmap for that.
Abe Madkour:
Well, you have Burke Magnus, who of course is involved in every major deal at ESPN. I believe Mark Silverman, Rick Cordella. You also have WSC Sports, and they're in the mix in a lot of interesting media areas as well. And I think that media will be a major theme throughout the two days. I also think there'll still be a lot of discussion on disruption. I think women's sports is going to be a topic on pretty much every panel, because John, you and I have talked about this where that has seemed to be a growing thread across the entire sports business.
We've met with financial analysts and people that actually invest money in this. They see women's sports, to a person, they see women's sports as the biggest potential for growth in the sports business. It caught me off guard when they said it, and I'm starting to see that there's going to be some payoff on that as well.
And for the listeners of the Buzzcast, I'd just leave you with this. Los Angeles is a happening market right now when it comes to sports business. There is so much going on in this marketplace, and of course, there's a lot of enthusiasm for the World Cup, and of course there's enthusiasm for the Olympic Games. But yes, they want to bring another Super Bowl here. They just had a very successful WrestleMania here with the WWE at SoFi Stadium, and there's going to be the US Open here in June. And we also know they recently hosted the College Football Playoff Championship, so again, a very hot market, and so I think that's going to be an undercurrent too because we have a great session on Wednesday just on the LA sports scene.
John Ourand:
Yeah, I can't wait to hear that one.
Abe Madkour:
Any other takeaways or insights or predictions on what you think we may hear over the two days?
John Ourand:
I think that we're going to hear, I'm not ready to say there's disarray in the media business, but there's a lot of fluctuation and people are trying to figure out just when they should go to the streamers or the Amazon and Apple, or whether or not to stick with the traditional main media companies that bring in the biggest audiences.
Abe Madkour:
Well, we'll give you a recap of day one and preview day two for the Morning Buzzcast on Wednesday. For John Iran, I'm Abe Madkour. This is your Morning Buzzcast for Tuesday, April 18th. It is tax day. Hope everybody has a great tax day. Remember, stay healthy, be good to each other. We'll speak to you tomorrow.