Got to chat all things football today with Fox Sports' Joel Klatt, who is a guest on this week's SBJ Sports Media Podcast that will drop Wednesday morning. Klatt and I got to talking about the future of the ACC, and what it would mean if Florida State and Clemson depart. Klatt had an interesting perspective on what sort of media value FSU and Clemson could bring to a conference like the SEC in terms a re-opened ESPN rights deal.
Check out an early look at that segment here. -- Austin Karp
Attendance. Ratings. Merchandise. Caitlin Clark is helping grow business across the board for the WNBA, the Indiana Fever, media partners, licensees and more. The latest sign of her move into rarefied air among athletes comes on the ESPN app. Clark is now third among all athletes in terms of app alerts on ESPN, behind only Tiger Woods and LeBron James (she recently passed Steph Curry, who is now No. 4 on that list, followed by Kevin Durant at No. 5).
ESPN introduced player-specific alerts around six years ago, something that Nick Loucks, ESPN’s senior director/audience engagement, says was meant to serve die-hard fans on the app. But given the unique nature of Clark, ESPN for the first time designed a special campaign within the app just to promote Clark’s notifications.
Taking off
The genesis for it all started at the beginning of college hoops season, when Loucks’ team found that alerts for the Iowa women’s basketball were soaring (eventually doubling during the course of the season). Iowa even passed UConn as the app’s most-favorited women’s hoops team (and helped app alerts for the NCAA Women’s Basketball Tournament actually match those for men’s March Madness).
Once the NCAA Tournament wrapped, and Loucks knew Clark’s move to the WNBA would be across ESPN airwaves, his team got to work on thinking about how to supercharge Clark’s app alert numbers via an in-app campaign. Once fans were made aware that there was a one-click step to get those alerts, it didn’t take long for Clark to rise to the top five among all athletes.
Clark isn’t the first female athlete to see this sort of pop within the app alerts, but she is the first to crack the top five (Serena Williams saw a big rise during her final run at the U.S. Open in 2022). Among teams, there was a noted in-app push during the FIFA Women’s World Cup last summer (the USWNT is among the most-favorited teams on the app). Among newer sports, ESPN also introduced team alerts for women’s college softball a few years ago, as well as college lacrosse recently.
“I want to have the ability, so that when you come into our app, you are seeing your favorite sport first,” Loucks said. “Tell us who you want and who you’re a favorite of. And that’s the advantage we have of on the app vs. the web, which is more anonymous with people coming by once a month. The app is for die-hards, with people coming by multiple times a day.”
What’s next?
“College baseball is a sleeping giant,” Loucks said. “We have so many of the games on ESPN+, so you have to buy ESPN+ to watch the games, which means by definition you have to register with us. And we’ve seen some growth there.” Given the tonnage of soccer on ESPN+, Real Madrid and FC Barcelona are also big for alerts.
Right now, Loucks’ team is working more closely with editorial, but he’d love for the data his team is pulling to be part of what the rights acquisition teams are using in talks with properties. “I’d love to get more of that going, because I like to think our team is uniquely positioned.”
Loucks expects the Olympics to be big for ESPN app alerts. There are also big in-app campaigns planned for August when soccer and football seasons get started.
Mike Joy, Fox Sports’ lead NASCAR play-by-play announcer, says he intends to return to the booth next year as the network starts the sport’s new media rights cycle.
Joy has been the voice of Fox’s NASCAR efforts since the network began airing the sport in 2001. But Fox Sports, part of the publicly traded Fox Corp., is making several changes to its coverage for next year as the new seven-year media cycle through 2031 begins. That has raised questions about the future of the network’s NASCAR talent.
Joy’s deal with Fox is said to be up after this year, and it was unclear whether he had signed a contract extension, but his wishes would likely carry some weight with Fox executives given his tenure and prominence.
Asked about his status for 2025, Joy wrote in a text message: “Looking forward to next year.” Fox Sports, which has yet to formally announce its booth for 2025, said it doesn’t comment on contract negotiations.
Joy is part of a three-man booth with former drivers Kevin Harvick and Clint Bowyer. Harvick just began a multiyear deal with Fox Sports this year and is set to return next year. Bowyer’s status with the network after this year was unclear.
Joy called his 45th Daytona 500 this past February, and he’s been covering NASCAR since 1977.
NASCAR will have five media partners starting next year, a dramatic increase from just two under the current rights deal. The two incumbents in Fox and NBC renewed but for fewer races while The CW, Prime Video and Warner Bros. Discovery will be part of the next cycle.
NASCAR will make $7.7 billion in total from the deals, a 40% increase from the last cycle, SBJ first reported in November.
Fox’s final Cup Series race of the 2024 season is this weekend at Sonoma Raceway in California. Next week, NBC Sports will take over by airing the first-ever Cup race at Iowa Speedway.
Mike Joy intends to return to the NASCAR broadcast booth next year
The USL Championship is pushing for more national visibility and awareness than ever in the first year of its new media pacts with ESPN and CBS. That manifested on April 6, when the league had its first network TV appearance on CBS. A Louisville City-Indy Eleven match drew 362,000 viewers. While not a huge number, during that same weekend, the USL soccer match outdrew what LIV Golf was able to draw on the CW, as well as what MLS got on Fox (yes, those were games simulcasts, with Apple TV+ having primary rights).
“When we sat down with our owners a year and a half ago, we were looking at the marketplace and really discussed the fact that sports business is a very simple equation: The more eyeballs and reach that you have, the greater you can affect your brand and also even relevance and revenue of your club,” noted USL Chief Commercial Officer Court Jeske. “At that point, our vision was very simple, and that was to be the most widely available league, from a soccer standpoint, in this country.”
And USL has kept pushing, rolling out plans last week to have CBS air an Oakland Roots-Sacramento Republic match on July 21. Why that match? Beyond an imminent future where the Roots may be the most high-profile team in the East Bay, the USL squad has some star power with its ownership group, including former NFLer Marshawn Lynch, Mavericks coach Jason Kidd, Green Day frontman Billie Joe Armstrong and rapper G-Eazy.
“When we talked about a place that we could tell the USL story, and worked with CBS to identify who would tell a great USL story, the Northern California Derby with Oakland what they’re doing and the historical significance of Sacramento was a very easy choice.”
All politics is local
Beyond a push at the national level, Jeske noted that USL worked with media rights consultant Octagon to “carve out that very important third leg of the stool” -- local media deals, so that fans could have that accessibility in those home markets.
Jeske told my colleague Alex Silverman back in February that he expected 80-90% of clubs in USL Championship (24 teams) and League One (12 teams) to have local broadcast deals signed by the start of the 2024 season. That figure is now at 100%.
To date, USL’s largest markets -- Detroit, Sacramento, Orange County (Calif.), Indianapolis, Phoenix -- have grown ratings 24% year-over-year, helping the league to a 57% uptick for local games across all clubs. Jeske also pointed to the fact that many of these clubs are seeing a higher tier of exposure, meaning more high-profile affiliates in their local markets.
Looking ahead
Jeske also noted the ESPN and CBS deals, which run through 2026 and 2027, respectively, offer opportunities to really take advantage of the run-up to the FIFA World Cup coming to North America in 2026. “Soccer fandom will probably double or triple in this country,” Jeske said. “So how does our men’s league -- and women’s league that starts in August -- get well-positioned to make sure that new soccer fans, or casual fans, understand that they’ve got a brand option with USL.”
So what’s next for Jeske and the USL? “How high can we take this?” he said of the league. “We’ve got the building blocks in place. I think there’s been a clear transition of USL in the last five years to having an awareness in the marketplace of what is happening with our brand of soccer.”
Indy Eleven-Louisville City FC was the first USL match to get a CBS window
It’s a quiet start to the week for the marquee events on the sports calendar, as both the NBA Finals and Stanley Cup Final don’t begin until Thursday and Saturday, respectively. That void early this week gives other sports and networks a chance to shine, with several potentially benefitting from eyeballs looking for something to watch.
The NBA hasn’t played since May 30, when the Mavericks beat the T'Wolves in Game 5 of the Western Conference Finals. The NHL wrapped its last game of the conference finals Sunday evening, with the Oilers defeating the Stars.
So, what sports could benefit as the NHL and NBA rest?
The biggest winner could be the Women's College World Series. Oklahoma this afternoon lost to Florida in Game 1 of the semifinals, which was OU's first NCAA Tournament loss in 20 games. That sets up a winner-take-all game on Tuesday for college softball's most-popular team. What's on ESPN in prime time Tuesday? A couple of documentary features. One is the premiere the "30 for 30" titled "I'm Just Here for the Riot," which looks back at June 15, 2011, when the Canucks’ Game 7 Stanley Cup Final loss to the Bruins sparked a massive riot in downtown Vancouver. ESPN also has an "E:60" feature on the 1994 N.Y. Rangers' Stanley Cup win.
ESPN is waiting to decide the time for that Oklahoma-Florida game Tuesday, holding off until it knows the results of tonight's Texas-Stanford semifinal (another game that should do well in viewership). Game 1 of the WCWS finals is still slated for Wednesday (with little TV competition).
TBS may also benefit on Tuesday night with the Yankees on its MLB coverage (against the Twins). That game, however, is subject tolocal blackout restrictions in N.Y. and Minneapolis-St. Paul.
While the WNBA is off Monday, Tuesday will feature three WNBA Commissioner’s Cup games, but the matchup on NBA TV is the only one of those games that will see any sort of viewership number. Wednesday has two WNBA games (again, only one nationally rated on NBA TV).
- The Bulls, White Sox and Blackhawks will have a new RSN home -- Chicago Sports Network -- starting in 2025. That means the end of NBC Sports Chicago as the dominant RSN market. Jason Coyle, who had been president of the digital outlet Stadium, will shift into the same role for the new RSN, which is a joint venture between the three teams and Standard Media.
- Transforming the PWHL's media distribution from a significant expense to a revenue generator in Year 2 will also be a challenge for SVP Amy Scheer and her team, writes SBJ's Alex Silverman.
- My boss Abe Madkour in his Forum this week lists a number of recent industry hires worth watching, and included is John Dahl, NASCAR's new SVP/content. "The creation of NASCAR Studios and the new production facility in Concord, N.C., were two huge steps accelerating the company’s hope of better and broader storytelling across the sport. Landing Dahl to lead content and oversee the operation was further indicative of the sport’s big ambitions. He’s the real deal, with 11 Emmys and the co-creator of ESPN’s '30 for 30' series. Bottom line: NASCAR set itself up very well to significantly increase and improve its content."
- In the Closing Shot for SBJ this week, my colleague Tom Friend remembers the uniqueness that was Bill Walton, the Deadhead hoopster-turned-broadcaster who celebrated life like few others.
