On Wednesday I predicted that ESPN would win the rights to the Premier League, and I added:
NBCU will retain the rights if the Premier League owners simply want the $2B, and are forgiving about Peacock's obvious and growing weaknesses.
NBCU retained the rights yesterday for $2.7B, a staggering 35% premium to the rumored price and 3x the price of NBCU's previous 2015-2021 agreement.
So what did I miss?
First, it's an unreasonable outcome:
Price was not the determining factor: The final price is higher than the rumored price of $2B, but it was not higher than the WarnerMedia/Fox bid,
Ratings had dipped because of streaming: The Athletic reports the move of "many of the top games" to Peacock "ruffled feathers back at the Premier League’s London HQ — eyeballs are important to the league’s sponsors"; but, NBCU still won despite Peacock's obvious problems.
NBCU more beat ESPN's less: The Premier League press release mentioned "NBC platforms - including NBC, USA Network, NBCSN, NBC Sports digital and Peacock – reach every home in the country with a television or the internet", but ESPN reaches the same audiences with fewer linear channels (ESPN, ESPN2, ESPN3), its website, and streaming (ESPN+).
Live Events: The Premier League press release also talked up F1-type "Premier League Mornings Live" fan festivals (which I also had predicted were an objective of Premier League owners), but there was no mention of those in the NBCU press release, which is an odd disconnect if events were a determining factor.
Second, there were four, big intangible factors that seem to have outweighed any reasonable analysis or prediction:
A Must-Win for Comcast: NBCU gave up its rights to the NHL to secure rights to the EPL, which is the last major rights deal on the table until the NBA in 2025 (the MLS is not "major") - and it has no other major deals in place beyond the NFL, so failure was not an option (and Peacock needs the EPL and its fans, too).
A Relationships Business: Comcast owns Sky - which distributes the EPL in the UK - and NBCU, so Premier League owners and management have deeper ties to NBCU than simply a contract and nine seasons of working together; and, the sports business remains very much a relationships business.
Primacy mattered to Owners: The New York Post's Andrew Marchand reported, "We were told, during NBC’s presentation, the Premier League liked that when network executives presented the only line under Comcast’s soccer programming was the EPL."
Linear > Streaming: reporter Jonathan Tannenwald tweeted, "It sounds like there will be more games on big NBC in this new deal than there have been in the past", and media analyst Patrick Crakes tweeted that "fully in-place developed Tri-Cast strategy was a factor" (meaning, NBC, USA Networks, and Peacock), where two distribution channels require a pay-TV subscription.
One other important factor to note, as observed by The Financial Times' Lex column:
NBC may well see this as a relatively cheap deal. Consider that it gets the sole rights to all EPL games in the US. In contrast, to televise American football four broadcasters have recently paid $10bn to the US National Football League to share broadcasts. No wonder it happily paid up to fight off competition from ViacomCBS and Disney’s ESPN.
But What About The Fans?
I argued on Wednesday "Comcast had a weaker story for NBCU and sports than Disney in Q3 2021", and Peacock's shortcomings with viewers during the Winter Olympics was a big part of that.
I do think ESPN has proven to be more fan-friendly than NBCU, as I wrote in Disney, Sinclair & The Sports Streaming Consumer back in June:
The screengrab, above, comes from a blog post that complained about the initial version of ESPN+’s multi-cam experiment. Disney responded to this and other consumer complaints by changing the feed layout to a new, multi-cam view, above, one week later. This response is particularly notable for the unusual operational agility and speed.
ESPN+ evolves while the Peacock User Interface (UI) and UX remain static. That will change because, inevitably, under new President Kelly Campbell Peacock must evolve towards a Hulu-like product.
That said, it is clear that NBCU has succeeded in serving fans of the Premier League across platforms, as Marchand writes:
NBC has grown the Premier League from a $60 million per year property a decade ago to a $150 million per in 2015 to now $460 million per. That is a staggering increase for the league.NBC has done it by treating soccer fans with respect. Its coverage is top notch from studio to games.
Mollie Cahillane of AdWeek reported:
This season, NBC Sports’ Premier League games are averaging 609,000 viewers in its Total Audience Delivery metric across its English- and Spanish-language windows, which the company said is up 14% from last year and is the highest viewership average through this point in the season since 2015-16.
It's worth closing on this quote in the NBCU press release from Premier League Chief Executive Richard Masters:
“NBC Sports’ Premier League Mornings programming is now a real institution among supporters in America, with fans getting up early to come together and cheer on their favourite club, week in, week out. It’s an exciting time for football in the US and we look forward to continuing to work with NBC Sports to bring our competition to even more fans over the next six years.”
Samuel Agini of The Financial Times aptly explained the significance of this quote:
The time difference means Premier League matches are screened in the morning in the US, meaning that there is less competition against domestic sports.
NBCU now exclusively owns distribution rights to a sports league and a time of day for sports consumption from a rabid, passionate fanbase.
To hit this opportunity out of the park, it now needs, very badly, to solve Peacock's many shortcomings for sports fans.
Star Trek Discovery, ViacomCBS & Fans
Last, on the topic of fans I was quoted in this smart and fun piece - "Star Trek: Discovery Is Tearing the Streaming World Apart" - by Wired's Chris Stokel-Walker on:
...a point of outrage for Star Trek fans the world over: Netflix had lost the rights to the fourth season of Discovery outside of the US, and the previous seasons too. They would now appear on Paramount+, the streaming service formerly known as CBS All Access and owned by ViacomCBS—but not until 2022, and even then, not everywhere.
I am quoted at length in the piece, including a fun quote to close it out.