Early entrants - Vol. XIX – fanatics expresses interest in StubHub, may be too late

This article first appeared in John Wall Street.

Vivid Seats, KKR and Booking.com have all been reported to be sniffing around a potential StubHub acquisition, but one industry insider tells JohnWallStreet that it appears as if Fanatics “just threw their hat into the ring”, too. Michael Rubin’s e-commerce giant presumably sees an opportunity to leverage the wealth of consumer data that the secondary ticketing marketplace controls. Fanatics’ bid is said to be backed by Silver Lake Partners, who is motivated to “keep [StubHub] away from [competitor] KKR.” Fanatics may have missed the boat, though. Our source believes Vivid Seats is “close to a deal.”

NFL ad pricing up in 2019 – just not to level touted during upfront

NFL ad pricing has rebounded this season – just not to the level touted during 2019-2020 upfront. AdAge reported that “the average unit cost of a 30-second in-game spot was up between 5 percent and 10 percent compared to the year-ago bazaar”, but the director of media at one prominent buy-side agency suggests the real number is between “three percent and five percent.” He explained that the “networks are bullish during upfronts, but as negotiations go on [brands] get to where they need to be.”

Reason for the increase? Brands have realized there’s simply no place else to capture an audience of 25 million people. The influx of non-traditional advertisers buying primetime in-game spots (think: Facebook, Amazon, Netflix, Hulu) and a tempered political climate (as it relates to player protests) have also helped to change the narrative just one year after the networks experienced steep declines.

Expect NFLN to retain exclusive live rights

In week 1, Thursday Night Football on NBC averaged over 22 million viewers. In week 2, NFL Network (NFLN) had the exclusive broadcast rights to TNF and viewership declined -70% to an average of 6.6 million fans. The NFL’s media strategy is predicated on reach and the league’s cable channel is in just 41 million homes (Nielsen counted 119.9 million  for the ’18-’19 season), so it’s worth wondering how NFL Network fits into the upcoming round of media rights negotiations.

EVP of media Brian Rolapp says NFLN will continue to play a prominent role come ’23 and expects that the network will retain exclusive live broadcast rights. “The NFL Network is very important to [the NFL] for a lot of reasons. We still believe the NFL fan is somewhat underserved and NFL Network helps [us to] fill [that] need. NFL Network and the RedZone channel are great properties, but also all of our digital content is produced out of that infrastructure and [the network is] really valuable to us in [terms of] how we engage our fans. The [exclusive] games are an important part of [the NFLN content strategy], so I don’t really see that changing.” Thursday night’s Tennessee – Jacksonville game (9.19) will again be exclusive to NFLN.

MLB moves to new publishing platform, NHL may not be far behind

Major League Baseball has announced that Deltatre’s Content Management System, which powers 25 of the largest sports leagues in the world (including the NFL), is now hosting their +/- 300 digital destinations; MLB had an in-house tool, but the publishing platform went over to Disney as part of the BAMTech sale in 2017. The decision to settle on Deltatre came after a global search and is not surprising with WWE, PGA TOUR having recently made similar moves. It’s the ability to customize and develop on top of a platform that reached 750 million unique visitors in ’18, that makes ‘Forge’ particularly attractive to MLB.

The NHL is the last of the major leagues (save MLB.tv) still running on BAMTech with the Disney entity focused on building out its own well-publicized streaming services. Insiders tell JohnWallStreet that the league will likely make a move when their current rights deal expires in 2021-22 and speculation already exists that the company will look to follow MLB’s lead.

NLL looking to raise profile through digital storytelling    

The National Lacrosse League made headlines in late August when it named NHL executive Jessica Berman as the league’s deputy commissioner. This week the NLL will take another positive step forward when it hosts a business summit for its players. The event, which will take place in Philadelphia on Wednesday (the day after the 2019 NLL Entry Draft), is designed to educate players on best business practices and social media guidelines. The hope is that the digital-first league can continue to raise its profile with captivating storytelling and the support of a media partner (Turner) that has committed to creating more print and video (see: highlights) content around the NLL.