Declining Viewership, Economics Could Push Premium Sports to Internet, S&P Reports
Premium sports programming could move from broadcast and cable TV to the internet within five years, S&P Global Ratings reported Friday: Internet companies will “eventually gain production experience, develop a more stable streaming platform, and win broadcast contracts from a…
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premium sports league," said analyst Naveen Sarma. NFL's Thursday Night Football TV broadcast contract is the only premium sports contract up for renewal before 2021, said S&P, which doesn’t believe the league will award that package to an internet company when it expires at the end of the 2017-2018 season. Amazon, Facebook, Google and Twitter “could offer substantially more money than the TV networks,” but S&P doesn’t believe the NFL is ready. The report cited Bob Bowman, CEO of MLB Advanced Media, saying its BAMTech streaming platform, viewed by the industry as the most advanced livestreaming platform, can stream high-quality video to fewer than 15 million viewers simultaneously. S&P believes internet companies could solve this technological limitation by 2021, when MLB and NFL Monday Night Football TV broadcast contracts come up for renewal. The latter could be an “inflection point” for internet companies to be considered legitimate competitors for TV sports, said the report. Current Monday Night Football broadcast rights owner ESPN pays a higher per game price than NBC, CBS and Fox do for NFL broadcast contracts, with the largest audience ratings declines of those partners over the past two seasons, S&P said.