LIV Golf signs new broadcast deal with Fox Sports for 2025
LIV Golf is aiming for the flagstick. In another sign that the three-year-old startup league is not going anywhere, the Saudi-backed tour has partnered with a major U.S. sports broadcaster.
On Thursday, Jan. 16, LIV Golf signed a multi-year agreement with Fox Sports to air its three-round matches over several platforms, starting with the season-opening tournament in February. The main rival to the PGA Tour will now broadcast half of its 14 matches on Fox or FS1. Select rounds will land on FS2, Fox Business Network and the Fox Sports App.
“LIV Golf is getting bigger and bolder, and this relationship signals the next phase of growth as our league joins the company of the nation’s premier sports leagues and conferences,” said new LIV Golf CEO Scott O’Neil in a press release. “LIV Golf is drawing a younger, more active and tech-savvy fan base, and as our players and teams prepare for LIV Golf’s biggest season yet, this agreement will take our broadcast to new heights.”
It will certainly give the league more exposure. Ratings on their previous network, the CW, were extremely low in the first two seasons. According to “Golfweek,” fewer than 100,000 people watched Jon Rahm win last season’s individual championship. For comparison, the average viewership during a PGA Tour event last season was 2.2 million.
The deal with Fox is another wedge between LIV Golf and the PGA Tour, which were hoping to reach a shared agreement with the Saudi Sovereign Wealth Fund to put the circuits under one umbrella. Negotiations continue on that deal.
ESPN, Fox, Warner Bros. cancel ‘Venu Sports’ streaming service before launch
It’s back to the drawing board for sports fans looking for a single place to watch their games. “Venu Sports,” the streaming service proposed by ESPN, Fox Sports and Warner Brothers in February 2024, is dead before it even launched.
On Friday, Jan. 10, the three companies mutually agreed to end their partnership, announcing it in a joint statement.
“After careful consideration, we have collectively agreed to discontinue the Venu Sports joint venture and not launch the streaming service. In an ever-changing marketplace, we determined that it was best to meet the evolving demands of sports fans by focusing on existing products and distribution channels,” the statement said.
Venu Sports, the proposed virtual MVPD service from ESPN, FOX & Warner Bros. Discovery, will be discontinued
The collective decision by the three companies not to move forward with the contemplated joint venture is effective immediately
The decision stems from several legal challenges to the streaming service from competitors, citing antitrust laws. One of those challenges came from Fubo TV, which earlier in the week entered into a partnership with Disney, ESPN’s parent company, ending that battle.
DirecTV and Dish Network had also filed legal challenges against “Venu Sports.”
Following Friday’s news that Venu is dead, DirecTV released a statement saying the company “remains a leader in sports, and we look forward to working with our programming partners — including Disney, Fox, and Warner Bros. to compete on a level playing field to deliver sports fans more choice, control, and value all-in-one experience. ”
Instead of re-inventing the sports streaming landscape, it now seems distribution companies are back to competing against one another for the consumer streaming dollar.
For instance, in August, Disney is preparing to launch a more robust ESPN streaming service. This plan could now theoretically, include content from Fubo TV and push Fox Sports and Warner Brothers to find their own streaming avenues.
According to the judge in the anti-trust case brought against Venu, Disney, Fox and Warner Brothers together control more than 50% of all U.S. sports media rights. How they distribute that programming to millions of sports fans is a work in progress — with no end in sight.
Sports leagues come together to combat hate in America
In a sign of true sportsmanship, eight American sports leagues have come together to back a new campaign targeting hate in the U.S. It is an idea from New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft and his foundation to combat antisemitism.
The initiative brought together the heads of the NFL, NBA, WNBA, MLB, NHL, NWSL, MLS, and NASCAR to come up with plans to curb hate of any kind in the country. The sports leaders are spending $50 million to get the word out.
The campaign, titled “Timeout Against Hate,” launched during Thursday Night Football on Oct. 10, with a commercial featuring legendary figures and current-day athletes from all sports speaking out against hate.
NFL sets record with most watched week 1, averaging 21 million viewers
The NFL had an opening week that surpassed last year’s, with a large increase of viewership across the board. Around 21 million viewers watched the games, a 12% increase from 2023.
Nielsen says 123 million people tuned in to at least part of a game, the highest total since 2019. NBC’s game featuring the Chiefs and the Ravens led the way, drawing 29.2 million viewers, making it the second most watched regular season game since 2006.
Fox also had a big week, with Tom Brady’s debut as an analyst pulling nearly 24 million viewers for the Cowboys-Browns game, and CBS had its strongest week since 1998.
There were some regional rules in play too, cities like New York, Chicago and Atlanta couldn’t air games opposite their home teams. Peacock’s Friday night Eagles-Packers game drew 14 million viewers, the second most watched live event in its history.
Even with some blackouts, Monday night football on ABC, ESPN, ESPN2 and ESPN+ still averaged 20.4 million viewers.
Rumored $76B NBA TV deal is full of streaming options. Will prices go up?
NBA on NBC could be back after more than two decades. Following months of negotiations, the NBA is close to finalizing a $76 billion, 11-year deal for broadcast rights, according to an exclusive report from the Wall Street Journal.
Here’s how it shakes out, according to the Journal:
NBC would pay about $2.5 billion annually to show roughly 100 games per season. Half of those games would be Peacock exclusives.
Amazon would pay $1.8 billion per year to get in on the action with regular season and playoff games. It would also broadcast the NBA in-season tournament and playoff play-in games.
ABC and ESPN’s parent company Disney would pay $2.6 billion a year, nearly doubling the $1.5 billion it currently pays for ESPN’s portion of the rights. The new deal allows ESPN to have games on its new direct-to-consumer streaming service, which launches in 2025. ESPN would still maintain rights to the NBA Finals.
They’re going to have to grow into these rights fees and the prices. And that means the fees for these streaming services are going to continue to go up.
Bob Thompson, former Fox Sports president
But the most surprising element of the deal for former Fox Sports President Bob Thompson is what’s missing from it.
“For me, it would be the fact that it looks like Warner Bros. Discover may be out after roughly 40 years with the NBA,” Thompson said.
Current NBA partner TNT is noticeably absent from the proposed broadcast rights deal. Warner Bros. Discovery can still come to the table and outbid, but the company is facing more than $40 billion in long-term debt.
Below is an edited Q&A between Straight Arrow News’ Business Corespondent Simone Del Rosario and Thompson. Watch the interview in the video above.
Simone Del Rosario: Is there any chance for an 11th-hour deal with Warner Bros. Discovery?
Bob Thompson: My guess is Warner Bros. is probably waiting to see what the other deals look like. And I’m sure that the NBA is going to make sure those are all buttoned up from a legal standpoint before they give them to Warner Bros. Discovery, who has a right to match some form of a package.
The form of that package is the great unknown. It seems as though the Warner Bros. Discovery package from the past is being split up between Amazon and NBC, so do they have the right to match one, both, or none of them? That is the big question.
I’d be very surprised if the commissioner comes out and announces anything during the NBA playoffs. They just tend not to want to overshadow the games with business. So my guess is we’ve still got another week to 10 days before they even start talking about who’s getting what and finalizing the actual deal.
Simone Del Rosario: What about the sticker price for you? Did you expect $76 billion to be in line with what this kind of rights deal could command?
Bob Thompson: I didn’t think it was going to be quite that big. I thought maybe they get above $6 billion a year and it looks like it’s gonna be closer to $7 billion. It just shows how valuable prime real estate is in the sports world.
You had two companies, Amazon Prime and NBC, on the outside wanting to get in. And then you combine that with the fact that ESPN obviously wanted to maintain their position, maintain the finals for ABC, have enough content for their purported direct-to-consumer offering of ESPN, the main channel that’s coming up next year.
So all those things combined to raise that number to a really astounding number for the NBA, and congratulations to Adam Silver and Bill Koenig if they get it.
Simone Del Rosario: Over at NBC, there’s word of a divide over whether this is a good investment. Do you think that this is just the price to pay to boost streaming subscriptions?
Bob Thompson: I think that’s part of the price to pay. It also provides NBC with prime-time content. They don’t have to go out and develop entertainment programming, it just drops right in there. You get a certain cost. It’s not a hit-and-miss like you go through with the pilot season.
And on the streaming side, for Peacock, one thing that NBC has shown is that if you buy specific content – in their case, it was NFL games – it can be very helpful in driving subscriptions to Peacock that at this point seem to have stuck around, even though the NFL season ended several months ago.
Simone Del Rosario: Does this deal indicate that creative content that streamers are developing is not enough to get subscriptions and now we’re going to see this huge push into live sports?
Bob Thompson: Yeah, I can see that. I think that what they’re probably thinking is that so much of the entertainment aspect and scripted dramas, things like that, have already moved off network television over to the streamers. They probably feel they’ve captured that subset pretty well.
So the next great leap is, how do you get the people who are still in the original cable bundle to get over to the streaming side as well? In many cases, the reason they’re still in the cable bundle is because they want the sports.
One thing I can tell you, though, they’re going to have to grow into these rights fees and the prices, and that means the fees for these streaming services are going to continue to go up. It’s like your cable bill used to increase every year. Your streaming service bills are going to increase every year as well.
Simone Del Rosario: If you were in charge at NBC or Amazon and TNT is out for good, would you encourage those networks to make a play for the “Inside the NBA” crew?
Bob Thompson: Absolutely. I think that is really kind of a insignia show for the NBA. The talent is great. They have a great chemistry. I don’t know if you’re going to be able to get them all to come over, but certainly, Charles Barkley is the ringleader, so to speak, and I think he could probably convince some people to come along with him.
I believe it will be a sought-after product, or certainly sought-after individuals. I would probably give NBC the leg up because they’re going to end up having Sunday night NBA once the NFL Sunday night games are over. And I think it’s a very marquee position for the folks on that show.
Simone Del Rosario: What about the ripple effect this deal is going to have on other leagues? We know the NFL can pull the plug four years early on its broadcast contracts in 2029. Do you think the NFL is definitely going to do that and secure much higher prices?
Bob Thompson: It would not surprise me at all if they open the contract up in a few years. I think it gives them the advantage of jumping ahead of all the college rights deals that come up in the early 2030s. The CFP deal will be coming up again as well. So I think that it would behoove the NFL to get their hand in people’s pockets before others do.
The other thing you have to keep in mind is that, for other properties, Warner Bros. Discovery has a couple of billion dollars in their pocket that they may not be spending on the NBA. You kind of wonder what they might go shopping after. Maybe they go shopping after CBS if this whole Paramount deal comes down and the folks at Skydance and Redbird decide they don’t want to own the broadcast network.