Weekly Roundup – March 19th, 2024

"ESPN boss Jimmy Pitaro was keeping a big secret.
In January, Pitaro and executives at ESPN-parent Disney hosted a contingent of top NFL officials—including Commissioner Roger Goodell, and team owners Robert Kraft and Jerry Jones—at Disney’s Burbank, Calif., headquarters to discuss a potential deal.
On the table was a strategic partnership that would involve the NFL taking an equity stake in ESPN and coordinating streaming and TV efforts, said people familiar with the talks.
What the league didn’t know: Pitaro’s team at ESPN was quietly working on a totally separate deal to join forces with rival media companies on a sports-streaming service. When that venture was announced in February, the league was blindsided—and furious at being out of the loop.
As he gathered a few days later at the Super Bowl in Las Vegas with his team and a gaggle of sports celebrities, Goodell complained to one associate, “Why would Disney treat a partner this way?”
An NFL spokesman denied that Goodell made the comment."

"People in North Carolina may have a little more riding on this year’s NCAA men’s and women’s basketball tournaments, as they will be able to legally bet on the games through their smartphone apps and computers for the first time.
For the sixth straight year, the number of states allowing legal sports betting has expanded since the last rendition of March Madness. A total of 38 states and the District of Columbia now allow some form sports betting, including 30 states and the nation’s capital that allow online wagering.
That’s up from one state, Nevada, where people could legally wager on games during the 2018 college basketball tournaments, before the U.S. Supreme Court cleared the way for expansion.
The rules for sports betting vary by state. Some states prohibit bets on home-state college teams or the performance of specific players. Others allow bets not only on the outcome of any college games but also on a variety of other things, such as the number of points, rebounds and assists that a particular player will tally."

"Since three media titans announced a new sports-focused streaming service last month, key details of the project have been shrouded in mystery. How much would it cost? Where would it be based? And who would lead the new company?
Now, some of the particulars are beginning to come into focus.
On Friday, the companies behind the service — Fox, Disney and Warner Bros. Discovery — said it would be led by Pete Distad, a former executive at Apple who had been in charge of distribution of the tech giant’s Apple TV+ streaming service. Mr. Distad, 50, will be responsible for strategy, distribution, marketing and sales of the new venture once it is formally established, working out of Los Angeles.
By selecting Mr. Distad, an executive with a mix of tech and media experience, the companies behind the service signaled that the new service needs a leader who understands the old-school economics of cable television and the promise of the rapidly unfurling streaming business. Before he joined Apple, Mr. Distad helped start Hulu, the last major streaming joint venture."

"Minute Media, the sports media company that owns The Players’ Tribune, landed the publishing rights to Sports Illustrated — coming two months after a financial crisis at SI’s former publishing partner led to mass layoffs.
ABG had previously licensed the rights to publish Sports Illustrated the magazine to a company called Arena Group — but after the Arena Group missed a recent $3.75 million payment, in January, ABG revoked the license, leading the Arena Group to institute major job cuts at the publication.
New York-based Minute Media said it plans to continue publishing a print edition of Sports Illustrated, which Arena Group had told staffers would cease this May, and hire back some of the employees who were laid off under Arena Group’s stewardship."

"Democrats are doing the most awkward TikTok dance.
The House’s Wednesday vote to force TikTok’s Chinese parent company, ByteDance, to sell the social media behemoth to an American entity has put Democrats from President Biden on down in a tough spot. Most are now on record backing a bill that could shutter a fast-growing platform that’s most popular with the young voters they so badly need.
TikTok users aren’t just kids mindlessly scrolling dance videos. Roughly one-third of Americans aged 18–29 regularly get their news from TikTok, the Pew Research Center found in a late 2023 survey. Nearly half of all TikTok users say they regularly get news from the app, a higher percentage than for any other social media platform aside from Twitter.
Almost 40 percent of young adults were using TikTok and Instagram for their primary Web search instead of the traditional search engines, a Google senior vice president said in mid-2022—a number that’s almost certainly grown since then. Overall, TikTok claims 150 million American users, almost half the US population; two-thirds of Americans aged 18–29 use the app."

"MrBeast is headed to Amazon.
The hugely popular YouTube star has struck a deal with Amazon MGM Studios for his first traditional TV series: A competition described as “the biggest reality competition series in television history.”
The project is based on his YouTube show and titled Beast Games. It will feature 1,000 contestants competing for a $5 million cash payout. The prize is touted as the biggest single prize in the history of television and streaming.
Sources say Amazon outbid at least one major streaming rival to make the deal with MrBeast, a.k.a. Jimmy Donaldson, who is the most popular content creator on YouTube. Donaldson also negotiated the right to retain creative control of the production."

"Tired of forking over hundreds of dollars for cable channels that aren’t always available? DirecTV may have a solution, albeit a controversial one.
The satellite content distributor said Sunday it would give its subscribers the choice to “opt out” of receiving the feeds of local TV stations “for as long as they want,” and get a discount for doing so. Customers who choose to do so will reduce their bills by $12 per month, or $144 per year. DirecTV said subscribers could test out the feature by cutting local stations in the summer, when most TV networks show repeats in primetime, and start watching them again in the fall — coincidentally, when the NFL season kicks off."