Weekly Roundup – Week of November 7, 2022

"The 2022 midterm elections had the potential to become one of the biggest days in the sports betting industry, which has been experiencing years of seemingly exponential growth in the market.
But Tuesday will likely be when one of the fastest-growing industries in the U.S. gets a reality check, given that two ballot sports betting measures in California are expected to fail.
California voters will be asked to decide on Proposition 26, which would allow in-person sports gambling on tribal lands, and Proposition 27, a bill that would allow mobile sports gaming everywhere in the state.
A recent poll from the Public Policy Institute of California indicates that a majority of voters oppose neither proposition, potentially eliminating a crucial stepping stone in gambling expansion. The study found that among likely voters, 67% would vote no on Prop 27, 57% would vote no on Prop 26, and 48% of those likely voters think sports betting in general would be a “bad thing.”"

"The NBA is poised to sell a billion-dollar package of streaming-only games under its next media rights package, sources tell Front Office Sports.
The lure of an exclusive package of live games is likely to attract the world’s biggest streamers, including Amazon and Apple. Bidding for the streaming-only package is likely to start at $1 billion a year, estimated sports media consultant Patrick Crakes.
The NBA will be seeking $50 billion to $75 billion for its next long-term rights package starting in 2025. That would double or triple its current nine-year, $24 billion deal with Disney’s ABC/ESPN and Warner Bros. Discovery’s TNT that pays the league $2.6 billion a year.
Under the current deal signed in 2014, streaming comes under the league’s own media platforms, ESPN, TNT, and the various regional sports networks (RSNs) showing local games.
But the top sports leagues want to attract as many bidders as possible for their media rights — while also getting into business with the technology giants. That’s why the NFL moved “Thursday Night Football” to Amazon Prime Video under a $1 billion a year deal that runs through 2033."

"Rupert Murdoch’s proposal to recombine News Corp (NWSA.O) and Fox Corp (FOXA.O) and capitalize on sports betting has yet to convince Wall Street as the valuations in the once red-hot gambling market crumble, according to former employees, financial analysts and sports media experts.
While some former employees see the move as driven by the 91-year-old Murdoch's succession planning to consolidate power behind his son Lachlan Murdoch, CEO of Fox Corp, people familiar with the Murdochs' thinking say they are serious about the sports betting opportunity.
"The proposal is 100% based on business rationale," a spokesman for Rupert Murdoch told Reuters. "Any commentary that implies it has to do with succession planning is absurd and comes from sources with no knowledge of the strategy."
There are other factors motivating the merger including a bid to achieve greater scale in news, live sports and information, sources said. Lachlan Murdoch did not discuss the potential deal on Tuesday's earnings call, but talked up the value of scale, "particularly (in) the next couple of years, when opportunities in the marketplace will emerge.""

"White suburban women, a key group of midterm voters, have significantly shifted their support from Democrats to Republicans in the closing days of midterm campaigning because of rising concerns over the economy and inflation, according to the latest Wall Street Journal poll.
The survey, which included 297 white women living in suburbs, found that they favor Republicans in congressional races by 15 percentage points. That represented a substantial shift in recent weeks among a group that makes up 20% of the electorate. In the Journal’s August poll, white suburban women favored Democrats by 12 percentage points. It also suggests that the topic of abortion rights has faded in importance after Democrats saw energy on that issue this summer in the wake of the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade."

Voters in the United States have already begun to cast their ballots for the House of Representatives, Senate and scores of state and local offices this year. As Election Day approaches, here’s a look at voters’ issue priorities, based primarily on a Pew Research Center survey conducted Oct. 10-16, 2022.
The economy has consistently been the top issue for voters this year. In the October survey, about eight-in-ten registered voters (79%) say the economy is very important when making their decision about who to vote for in the 2022 congressional elections, the highest share saying this about any of the 18 issues the survey asked about.
Americans’ views of the nation’s economy have been overwhelmingly negative in recent months. In the October survey, roughly eight-in-ten adults (82%) say economic conditions today are poor (36%) or only fair (46%). Just 17% say conditions are either excellent (2%) or good (16%).
The future of democracy is also a voting issue for many, with 70% of registered voters saying it is very important to their midterm vote. Six-in-ten or more say the same about education (64%), health care (63%), energy policy (61%) and violent crime (61%). And more than half of voters say the same about gun policy (57%) and abortion (56%).
The coronavirus outbreak ranks near the bottom of voters’ issue priorities, with 23% saying it is very important to their vote, down from a third who said this in March.

"In the year following the March 2020 start of the COVID-19 pandemic, the number of Americans that moved out of city centers increased from the year before, as did moves into rural and suburban areas, according to a Pew report. How did these migrations affect radio listening? A new analysis from online audio aggregator TuneIn provides some intriguing answers.
The analysis compared listening to the online streams of broadcast radio stations in the period from January 2018-February 2020 (pre-COVID) with listening from March 2020 to October 2022. The data shows that even as people moved from one state to another, their radio listening habits remained more or less the same as they continued to access the streams of their favorite stations from their former home market.
TuneIn looked at data from four states with large population growth since the pandemic and found notable increases in in-state listenership to out-of-state radio content. Listening to the online streams of out-of-state broadcast stations rose 30% in Colorado, 33% in Florida, 37% in New Jersey and 23% in Texas."

"If TV news legends Walter Cronkite or David Brinkley were alive and still reporting today, you probably would be watching them on a streaming channel.
Live news and sports are keeping a substantial number of viewers tuned in to traditional TV. But the audience migration to online video has led the news divisions at the “Big Three” broadcast networks to get deeper into the 24-hour news business through free, ad-supported channels that can be accessed on internet-connected TV sets and mobile devices.
Walt Disney Co.'s ABC, Paramount Global’s CBS and Comcast’s NBC have all stepped up their investment in their services, giving viewers a destination for their reporting anytime without a pay TV subscription.
The channels — NBC News Now, ABC News Live and CBS News Streaming — were launched over the last decade without much fanfare. But they have quietly built audiences, and the news divisions presidents all say their services are profitable. Each offers a mix of repeats of network TV news broadcasts and original live reporting and documentaries.
Networks have committed their big-name personalities to daily live programs on the channels, such as NBC’s Chuck Todd, Kate Snow and Hallie Jackson; ABC’s Linsey Davis; and John Dickerson of CBS — a sign that they know where the viewers are going."

At the beginning of November, Crowd React Media conducted a survey to get an idea of who North Carolinians will vote for in the 2022 Midterm Elections. We narrowed our survey’s scope to the U.S. Senate contest between Democrat Cheri Beasley and Republican Ted Budd. We also asked voters about some of their media habits, and their past voting preferences.
In this CRM blog entry, we will walk you through our findings and methodology, and make a prediction as to the winner between Budd And Beasley.