Live Sports Media

The What, How and Why of Sports Broadcasting

Dennis Deninger

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2022
• ISBN:
  9781000512007
• Edition: 2
• Topic: Betriebswirtschaft
• Subtopic: Sport- & Bewegungswissenschaft

In Live Sports Media: The What, How and Why of Sports Broadcasting, Dennis Deninger provides an all-encompassing view of the sports television industry from his own perspective as an Emmy Award-winning producer at ESPN, at a time of seismic shifts in the industry. Technological advances and the proliferation of sports content across multiple media platforms have increased accessibility to sports events of all kinds across the world. Shifts in viewing habits and audience preferences are changing the dynamic of sports media and the sports industry as a whole. The result: more power for some sectors and diminished power for many others, to which professionals in the field need to rapidly adapt.

This second edition has been substantially updated to explore the impact of COVID-19 disruptions on sports and the growth of women's sports broadcasting and evolving sports, as well as political statements made in sports: Black Lives Matter, and "taking a knee." It illustrates the origins, impact, reach, economics, production, and presentation of sports on video media – including, but not limited to, television. It takes the reader behind the scenes to describe the forces and processes that have shaped and continue to change sports content, its delivery, and how it connects with fans. Dennis Deninger draws from his experiences as an expert in the industry to expose how the choices and decisions that are now being made affect the programming, content, storytelling, production, advertising, and delivery of the sports broadcasting that we will see next season and how it will evolve in the years to come.

This practical, entertaining book provides insights into sports broadcasting that sports management, media, and journalism students and learning practitioners will not find anywhere else.

Chapter 1 The Sports and Media Partnership

DOI: 10.4324/9781003165590-1

Live sport in the 21st century is part of the ever-broadening spectrum of entertainment available via the electronic media, sharing bandwidth alongside dramas and comedies, news and information, reality and game shows, musical performances, and every new iteration of documentary, commentary, cooking, home improvement, or automotive programming. Think of sports events as the original reality television: unscripted entertainment playing out live before your eyes with unexpected plot turns, spontaneous moments of elation and disappointment, and often surprise endings. Television shines a powerful spotlight on star performers and successful teams, enhancing the magnitude of their rivalries, milestones, and the importance of their stories during a game, a season, or a career.

Sports organizations and the electronic media are partners in delivering events to the public. The organizers stage the competitions, and the media promote and present the content with all its messaging to the public. Together they share the advertising, sponsorship, and subscription revenue, which amounts to billions of dollars, euros, and various currencies every year. It is a symbiotic relationship with both parties benefiting from their joint efforts. Rights payments by the media fuel the economic engine of sports.

The electronic and digital media benefit from sports because the games and events attract a proven, loyal audience of millions who will buy subscriptions to sports television and digital services. These fans are the target for sponsors and advertisers who pay the media dearly for the opportunity to communicate their sales messages to so many potential customers on such popular platforms. The media convergence of the 21st century has made it possible for a content producer to distribute video, information, stories, and promotion via every medium and channel, including streaming and social media, direct to consumers. The greater the cross-platform, cross-promotional power of these media producers, the greater the benefit derived by their sports team, league, and organizer partners. Big money and massive audiences create power for the sports industry and the media: economic, social, cultural, and political power.

The Sports Audience

In the first two decades of the 21st century, the top 20 most-watched television programs in the United States were all Super Bowls. The Nielsen Company reported that the most-watched single program in the history of American television was Super Bowl XLIX on February 1, 2015. An average of 114,440,000 viewers per minute watched the New England Patriots defeat the Seattle Seahawks on CBS, with an additional 973,000 streaming the live game and another 368,000 watching the Spanish language feed. The game was also transmitted live with commentary in more than 30 languages to over 170 countries and territories, adding several million more international viewers to the total audience. By comparison, the most-watched American entertainment program during that 20-year period was The Oscars telecast on March 2, 2014, which averaged 43.63 million viewers per minute in the United States, less than half the audience of any Super Bowl from 2001 to 2020. In the years since 2015, the number of television viewers for Super Bowls has declined slightly, but the number of viewers streaming the game has grown geometrically. The US television audience has dropped below 100 million for a few Super Bowls, but when the streaming numbers are combined with the total “out of home” viewers and those watching on Spanish language channels, the “Total Audience Delivery” (TAD) for the Super Bowl is still the largest draw in the entire video entertainment spectrum with an audience each year of around 90–100 million viewers per minute.

If the only people who watched Super Bowls were the fans of the two teams playing in that game, the total audience would be much smaller. Clearly, the game’s power to bring family and friends together for Super Bowl parties helps build the audience as does the attraction that Americans have for big events like the Olympics, The Oscars, and championship games. As a result, Super Bowl Sunday has become the most important advertising day of the year in the United States. An audience of millions for every minute of a live program means there will be plenty of commercials sold to advertisers keen on increasing awareness and sales for their products and services. The audience is so large, and demand is so high that the asking price for a single 30-second spot in the Fox telecast of Super Bowl LIV in February of 2020 was $5.6 million. Kantar Media estimated that Fox collected $435 million for the advertising it sold during Super Bowl LIV. Fox also sold commercials during their five hours of pre-game programming and the post-game celebration, which brought the network’s revenue total to almost half a billion dollars for that one day.

The network televising the Super Bowl in any one year is by no means the only network covering the event or using it to generate revenue. For example, ESPN originates several days of “surround” programming for its television networks as well as ESPN.com, ESPN+, and ESPN Radio each year from the site of the Super Bowl. The NFL Network loads up its schedule the week before the Super Bowl with up to 100 hours of content related to the game. NBC has hosted The Today Show and other regular series from the Super Bowl site, plus a variety of networks create and produce programs that connect with fans and/or the host city. Sport and general interest websites, apps, and publications cover all the Super Bowl week activities as do radio networks and local stations.

All these platforms sell advertising, and all those dollars piled together represent a major economic impact from this one televised NFL football game. The economic impact of live sports is even more impressive when you add the billions of dollars spent on media rights and advertising for every regular season professional and collegiate football, NBA, Major League Baseball, National Hockey League, and international soccer game, plus every tennis, golf, auto racing, skiing, figure skating, and other sports event staged worldwide.

Sharing the Wealth

Sports is big business in the United States and around the world, providing a livelihood for millions of people far beyond the few thousand celebrity athletes who have multimillion-dollar contracts and endorsement deals. Research by PwC showed that in 2019, before the coronavirus pandemic, the total spent on sports media rights, gate receipts, sponsorship, and merchandising in North America alone exceeded $73 billion. If you add the $95.9 billion in sales of sports apparel and footwear, sports equipment purchases totaling $25 billion, and the billions more paid by Americans to buy bicycles, snowmobiles, motorcycles, pleasure boats, and RVs, the importance of sports in the creation of jobs and income is abundantly clear.

It would be impossible to extrapolate what percentage of that money is attributable to the fact that live sports are available across a variety of media every day of the year reaching millions of consumers who buy the shoes, hats, jerseys, and equipment that they see their favorite athletes wear. They consume the sports drinks and foods that athletes consume. They pay the monthly fees charged by the subscription video, cable, digital, or satellite providers who deliver the live programs to their homes and mobile devices, and they buy tickets and travel packages for future games to be played by the teams they follow.

The promotional value of dramatic sports events and the inspiring, amazing sports stories shown live on television and digital services cannot be underestimated. In the early years of television, many leagues and teams feared that live television coverage would result in fewer people attending games in person because they could choose to sit home and watch, never having to open their wallets. That did happen in the early 1950s when television was in its infancy. But since television and sports have become so universal, the reverse has proven to be true: a lack of television exposure can consign a league or team to anonymity and red ink.

The economics, advertising, and power of sports in the media are major topics that will be covered in depth later in this text. When the stakes are measured in the billions, the pressure on everyone involved in the production, programming, promotion, and sponsorship of live sports media events is multiplied. We will examine each of these functions in detail and identify the sets of skills and attributes required of these professionals in the coming chapters.

A Matter of Identity

Each year I have assigned my students to write a short “self-portrait” to reflect upon how televised sport has influenced who they are, their perceptions of races other than their own, how they spend their time, what they wear, even the expressions they use in everyday speech. Their “self-portraits” have been most revealing both to me and to the students who take the time to think about what defines them as individuals. Live sports available on every screen accessible to these young people are far more pervasive and compelling than ever before, which has shaped them differently from their parents or grandparents.

“My life would be considerably different if I didn’t have televised sport in my life,” wrote one 21-year-old male. “Actually, I can’t even imagine what my life would be like. I ask my dad from time to time what it was like when he was growing up when there was far less sports on television.” The young man said his father responded by saying that he “didn’t really know,” but that it must be like remembering how we all existed before there were cell phones.

Young men and women from small towns in New Hampshire, Delaware, and upstate New York have all described how live sports on television provided their first opportunity to learn about African Americans, Hispanic Americans, and athletes from foreign countries and witness their remarkable accomplishments. They said it helped broaden their understanding of humanity and prepared them for the diversity on campus and in the world outside their hometowns.

Kate from outside New York City explained that “the sports media has been crucial in shaping my social beliefs and values, especially in today’s society.” She said that “because athletes have the ability to use social media to spark social change, it has encouraged me to become a stronger ally with those in support of racial equality.”

Aidan was born in England, but his family moved to the United States when he was a child. He explained how access to live coverage of English Premier League games has created a powerful bond for his family. “Every single member of my immediate family follows a different football club,” he said.

As you can imagine, game days are pretty heated in my household, everyone constantly watching games in different rooms with their reactions to a goal or a mistake being heard throughout the house. There have even been a couple [of] arguments because of something that has happened during a rivalry game. But this dynamic is not something that I would change for the world. Without the beauty of sports media and broadcasting, we wouldn’t even be able to have this family dynamic.

A senior from Seattle echoed the observations of many when he wrote that, “televised sport has provided me with the ability to connect and share experiences with others, even absolute strangers.” He said, “I truly believe sport in any form, but especially at the collegiate and professional levels, is a form of social currency.”

These first-person accounts clearly demonstrate the multilayer effects that the partnership of sports and the live sports media have had and continue to have on the social and cultural development of young people. Similar self-portraits from students in any nation within the reach of the sports media would no doubt speak of many if not all the same results.

Facing Challenges Together

The live sports media provide a stage upon which Americans and people around the world have dealt with the most important social issues of the day. Over the years, sports have both reproduced and challenged stereotypes, myths, and prejudices about ethnic groups, nationalities, age groups, gender, and orientation. That was never more evident than in the year 2020 following the deaths of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and many other Black Americans at the hands of police. Representing the diversity of their players and the cities and nations they call home, professional leagues established social justice committees, coalitions with their players’ associations, and initiatives that they supported with millions of dollars. The NBA, NFL, and many other leagues in the United States and abroad are working with their media partners to develop additional programming and funding sources to promote racial equality and social justice. The ability of sports organizations around the world to connect with people via the media is a powerful tool to denounce racism and spread messages of equality and justice for all.

No world crisis or event has had a greater impact on organized sports than the COVID-19 pandemic that swept the globe in the year 2020. The effects are perhaps most comparable to World War II, which forced the cancellation of the Olympic Games in 1940 and 1944. The 1940 games had been scheduled to take place in Tokyo, and the host city that had been selected for 1944 was London. The pandemic forced the postponement of the 2020 Summer Olympics along with its hundreds of hours of live media coverage until 2021. Ironically, Tokyo again was the host city affected.

However, during World War II, even after the United States entered the hostilities at the end of 1941, the Major League Baseball, National Football League, and National Hockey League seasons were all played as scheduled each year. So were all three Triple Crown horse races, the US Open tennis tournament, and collegiate basketball and football games including the annual New Year’s Day bowls. The sports organizers took their lead from President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s “Green Light” letter to Baseball Commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis in January of 1942, a month after the attack on Pearl Harbor. In response to a letter from Landis asking if baseball should continue while the nation was at war, Roosevelt wrote, “I honestly feel that it would be best for the country to keep baseball going.” He made the point that the millions of people who were working longer hours and harder than ever “ought to have a chance for recreation and for taking their minds off their work even more than before.”

These sports continued as scheduled in the United States during World War II, but they were disrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic. Seasons and events were time-shifted, abbreviated, or canceled, played in “bubbles” to reduce the risk of spreading the virus, and/or contested in stadiums or arenas with no fans allowed in the stands. It also forced the cancellation of entire seasons for millions of high school athletes across America who had hoped to play a variety of scholastic sports.

The impact of World War II on the televised coverage of sports was minimal because the medium was still in its infancy. Scheduled television service had begun in 1939 with only a handful of transmitting stations in East Coast cities, and very few homes equipped with TV sets. By comparison, 75 years later, the effects of COVID-19 on the live sports media were unprecedented. The sheer volume of sports content that had normally been available year after year, and for which the media conglomerates had committed massive sums of money for live broadcasting rights, was dramatically reduced. When the Major League Baseball season was cut from its regular 162 games to a 60-game schedule in 2020, that meant that only 37 percent of the normal live event content would be provided for the league’s media partners. Pushing the opening day of the season from March 26, 2020, forward to July 24, 2020...