From AdWeek
Review by Steven Golob in KIN 332
The article I chose to review and critique is titled “Crazy Like a You Know What” and can be viewed on Adweek.com. I chose this particular article because it begs the question that I have been wondering, personally, for years now; why is there no sports network on television that even comes close to rivaling the coverage that ESPN gets? This article introduces not an answer to this question, but a definitive step in the right direction. The new network titled Fox Sports 1 is introduced and explained further.
Fox Sports 1 is Fox’s newest network that they plan to unveil at the end of the summer in the month of August. It is set to become the “rival” network of the ever-famous ESPN networks. It is set to take over the spot that is filled by the “Speed” network, which is broadcasted nationwide in roughly 81 million homes. With the contracts that they have obtained with different sports and leagues in America and worldwide, Fox is increasing these viewing numbers to 90 million households in the country. They have obtained contracts with the MLB, NCAA basketball conferences of the PAC-12 and the Big 12, Nascar, UFC, and FIFA. The largest of these will be the deal with the MLB, and over the span of the entire deal, it will earn them $4.2 billion.
The Fox Sports 1 network hopes to put “pretender” networks in their place, and hopefully, make a statement to the public that ESPN is not the only sports provider on television. Although they will not make much of a dent in ESPN’s physical earnings, they are still looking at things in terms of being a successful network. Success (not necessarily being the absolute best) is what is important to the owners.
Friday, February 15, 2013
Wednesday, February 13, 2013
The Timeout with Mike Barber, Richmond Times-Dispatch
Cara Yaworske, an SRM 334: Introduction to Sport to Sport Media student, sat down with Mike Barber from the Richmond Times-Dispatch. Mr. Barber is the beat writer for Virginia Tech athletics.
"ESPN to televise college playoff"
From ESPN.com and Sports Media Watch
Review by Will Taylor in SRM 334 (section 3)
The BCS has always been criticized for how it picks the teams for the National Championship Game and people used to think that the teams that weren’t in the game didn’t receive a fair chance to prove themselves. Finally, they implemented a culture change in college football; the BCS playoff system. Now there is a much fairer shot for all the teams represented by the BCS to reach the championship. ESPN of course was the one to sign the media deal with the BCS to cover all the playoff games, the national championship, as well as other bowl games. It was a twelve year deal, from the 2014 season on to the 2025 season.The deal was worth over $7 billion dollars, and it covered all facets of media; TV, radio, mobile TV, ESPN Deportes, as well as all international media outlets of the game. The deal is huge, and could bring over $1 billion dollars in revenue. Another way that the BCS playoff system affects mass media is in the advertising before, during, and at each event. The amount of ways to advertise around this event is sure to bring ESPN as well as the BCS a huge amount of revenue. This topic is relevant to this class because it deals with stakeholders; like the universities, the BCS, and the fans. It also deals with mass media outlets, like television, the internet, and radio. It also deals with this class because we’re all avid sports fans, and this deal could revolutionize how we view college football, and sports in general.
---
Review by Ben Edsall in SRM 334 (section 3)
The current event Will and I chose to present to the class was the new college football playoff system. It has been talked about for years and will finally be implemented for the 2014 season. The playoffs will consist of four teams that are chosen from a 15 member committee. This eliminates the old system of the computers calculating what two teams would be in the championship. Hopefully the new system will diminish a majority of complaints from the old system, which made some controversial decisions of which teams played in the championship. There will now be six major bowl games which consist of two groups, the contract bowls and the host bowls.
One major influence for the new system was the potential revenue from media rights. ESPN signed a 12 year deal worth $470 million which gives them rights for TV, radio, mobile TV, games in 3D, ESPN Deportes, and internationally. This contract is projected to generate annual revenues ranging from $600 million - $1.5 billion. That amount of revenue will attract other networks to join the contract which will raise the bidding price. The increase in revenue is a positive impact, but there are also other pros and cons.
Additional pros to the new playoff system are that it provides more advertising opportunities, teams that are not powerhouses now have a shot at reaching the championship, and it removes an easy schedule that forces teams to make the championship based on performance. A few cons are that there could be some preferential treatment towards the bigger conferences, other bowl games will be viewed as less important, and it takes away revenue for teams that do not reach the playoffs. Even though this system is not perfect it is a step in the right direction and hopefully will continue to improve in the future.
This topic is relevant to the class because it plays a major role within the broadcast media. We discussed in class how television is the most dominant way of providing content to the public, and this is clearly demonstrated by ESPN signing a huge contract to control the market. Another investment was in social media to help them expand and generate revenues from other areas. Social media is taking over society and with major investments into the market it will benefit the networks and companies tremendously.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)