Weekly Roundup – Week of December 11th, 2023

"The Public Health Advocacy Institute (PHAI) and its Center for Public Health Litigation have filed a lawsuit against DraftKings on behalf of citizens in the state of Massachusetts, US, who opened an account with the sportsbook following its $1,000 sign-up bonus promotion.
The sportsbook launched in the state in March of this year and has been a part of the growth in sports betting revenue in the state. In October, alone DraftKings generated $33.5m, which was more than FanDuel and BetMGM combined.
However, PHAI is now filing a lawsuit, due to the ‘unfair and deceptive’ nature of the DraftKings promotion."

"The NBA’s current broadcast partners have to be happy with the inaugural edition of the in-season tournament.
Group-stage games on ESPN and TNT averaged 1.5 million viewers — a 26% increase from last season’s comparable windows — while local telecasts saw a similar 20% boost.
Next season, those media entities will hope for more of the same. But as the tournament grows, the viewership benefits might be seen elsewhere.
The NBA will explore selling in-season tournament games as their own broadcast package during the next set of media rights deals."

"Checking in on the U.S. sports betting landscape, Needham took a survey of hedge fund investors on the expectation for ESPN Bet's market share in November. The weighted average response came out to 7.3% market share for ESPN Bet, which would represent an impressive launch for the sports betting platform, and could be a near-term positive for shares of PENN Entertainment (NASDAQ:PENN).
"We are cautiously optimistic there could be modest upside to the consensus we observed, as we have a more bullish view of the impact of promotions and the potential for WV data to be an encouraging signal, although lots of assumptions here.""

"Google heralded the death of Podcasts a few months ago, and this week the search giant revealed the path fans of this type of media content will have to follow to keep listening to their favorite podcasts.
In a blog post published recently, Google reiterated once again its plans to discontinue Podcasts in the US as early as April 2024. To make it easier for users to transition to YouTube Music, the service that will replace Podcasts next year, Google announced it has started the rollout of a tool to help migrate subscriptions."

"Over the last year a growing number of small cable TV companies have announced that they will shut down their TV service. You can add DUO Broadband to that list. They announced that they will shut down both their traditional cable TV and streaming TV services soon.
According to DUO Broadband, they are being forced to make this change because of the “extreme price increases from programmers” that make running TV unprofitable. This means customers in Kentucky counties will soon lose access to their cable TV service.
This news comes as just last week we learned Comcast would be raising its price."

"Tucker Carlson is planning his own streaming service, the Tucker Carlson Network, TCN for short.
The former Fox News host is expected to officially launch the service Monday after teasing it over the weekend."

In this week's State of Sports Media YouTube short, Sean investigates the phenomenon of the 'Sports Fanatic' - someone who consumes more than 8 hours of sports media per day.