Weekly Roundup – March 12th, 2024

"After several years on the sideline, North Carolina became the 30th state -- in addition to Washington, D.C. -- to offer legal online sports betting Monday. The basketball-wild jurisdiction gets its online sports betting infrastructure up and running just in time for March Madness.
...
The eight operators and their partners are as follows:
• Bet365 / Charlotte Hornets
• BetMGM / Charlotte Motor Speedway
• Caesars / Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians
• DraftKings / NASCAR
• ESPN BET / Quail Hollow Club (PGA Tour)
• Fanatics Sportsbook / Carolina Hurricanes
• FanDuel / Carolina Panthers and PGA Tour
• Underdog / Sedgefield Country Club (PGA Tour)"

"Warner Bros Discovery (WBD) will establish a permanent sports block of programming on TruTV, making the cable channel more attractive to pay-TV providers and a greater part of the planned streaming joint venture (JV) with ESPN and Fox.
TruTV is currently home to reality television shows and reruns. However, it has been used as an overflow channel for sport, most notably WBD’s coverage of the men’s March Madness college basketball tournament.
The plan is for TruTV to host simulcasts of WBD’s National Hockey League (NHL), Major League Baseball (MLB) and National Basketball Association (NBA) coverage on TNT and TBS, along with a suite of news, magazine and documentary content."

"Netflix’s foray into sports is going in a new direction. Today, the streamer announced that its next major event will be a fight between YouTuber-turned-boxer Jake Paul and former heavyweight champion Mike Tyson that will stream live on Netflix. The bout will take place on July 20th at AT&T Stadium in Arlington, Texas.
The move is part of a steady expansion into sports from Netflix. So far, that has meant going all in on sports documentaries — including a doc about Paul’s fledgling boxing career — as well as a handful of live events featuring golf and tennis. But two headline (if controversial) names duking it out in an NFL stadium that seats 80,000 marks arguably the biggest bet from the company yet. (And it comes at a time when other broadcasters have largely gotten out of boxing.)"

"Sports news and commentary Deadspin has been sold again — and its entire staff has been laid off.
Deadspin, once owned by Gawker Media, became part of G/O Media in 2019. In a memo to company staff Monday, G/O Media CEO Jim Spanfeller announced that Deadspin was sold to European firm Lineup Publishing.
With the sale, the staff of Deadspin is getting pink-slipped. “Deadspin’s new owners have made the decision to not carry over any of the site’s existing staff and instead build a new team more in line with their editorial vision for the brand,” Spanfeller wrote in the memo. “While the new owners plan to be reverential to Deadpin’s unique voice, they plan to take a different content approach regarding the site’s overall sports coverage. This unfortunately means that we will be parting ways with those impacted staff members, who were notified earlier today.”

"What has 5G done for the average internet user? It's let them fire their cable provider.
That's the takeaway from Leichtman Research Group stats that show a boom in 5G home internet services from carriers like T-Mobile and Verizon (aka fixed wireless) in 2023—at the expense of traditional cable and phone-based connectivity.
T-Mobile saw the biggest gain in raw numbers, with an increase of 2.13 million fixed-wireless customers, bringing it to 4.78 million total. Verizon, however, more than doubled its existing fixed-wireless subscriber total, adding 1.54 million to reach 3.07 million (with its wireline broadband accounting for another 7.65 million).
Meanwhile, the top cable providers covered in LRG’s study lost a combined 63,000 subscribers. Altice USA, which does business as Optimum, lost 114,000 and fell below T-Mobile in size at 4.52 million broadband customers, followed by Comcast’s Xfinity, which lost 66,000 subscribers but retained its title as the nation’s largest broadband provider with 32.25 million total. The second-largest, Charter, reported an increase of 155,000 subscribers to its Spectrum broadband, finishing 2023 with 30.59 million subscribers."

"Meet the new boss. Same as the old boss.
Despite years of talk about a multi-currency TV measurement world, Nielsen has done a good job of ensuring it remains the dominant player in the U.S. market, even if it has meant cutting more favorable deals for networks that long labored under onerous multi-year contracts.
...
Even so, other players such as VideoAmp, iSpot.tv and Comscore continue trying to steal Nielsen’s market share. And they may have a better chance of that as the market gravitates toward connected TV and trading on advanced audiences.
As one measurement industry veteran noted, marketers don’t have decades of legacy Nielsen panel databases around buying audiences of people actively in the car market, or buyers of pet food, like they do for conventional age-gender demos. That in itself makes the advanced audience market a more even playing field for challengers of Nielsen."

"Apple was fined almost $2 billion by European Union regulators for setting what the bloc deems to be unfair rules for developers of music-streaming apps, in what could be a wider battle between the EU’s antitrust watchdog and the tech giant.
The European Commission, the EU’s executive body, said Monday that a yearslong investigation into the iPhone maker’s app-store practices found the company violated the bloc’s antitrust rules by restricting app developers from telling users about alternative ways to subscribe to music-streaming services. The commission said it ordered Apple to remove the provisions that prevent developers from telling users about other ways to subscribe."