SBJ Media: Big Ten Network getting West Coast lift

The Big Ten's new West Coast contingent of schools is helping Big Ten Network to a 9% viewership gain this season, BTN President Francois McGillicuddy tells me. That would be the best gain for any college football media partner behind only ESPN/ABC, which added the SEC broadcast TV package this season .

“Our consumption in the Pacific Time Zone has definitely changed this year,” said McGillicuddy.

Among BTN's five best audiences this season, Washington shows up twice. The Huskies' game against Eastern Michigan in Week 2 (1.1 million viewers as part of a regionalized window alongside Michigan State-Maryland) has been its best audience on BTN to date, and the cable network's third-best game this season. At No. 4 this season for BTN is Washington-Indiana in Week 9 (1.07 million).

BTN essentially gets two football games for each member institution, and inventory has increased with the addition of Washington, UCLA, USC and Oregon. BTN gets Oregon-Maryland this weekend, and at least one more Ohio State game is on the way (potentially against Northwestern at Wrigley Field). Those games come on the heels of its best game of the season in Week 9 -- Michigan State-Michigan at 1.73 million viewers -- which also is BTN's best prime-time CFB game ever.

In addition to the year-over-year viewership increase, McGillicuddy said the demos are “telling a pretty substantial story.” BTN is up 22% among men 18-49, and women 18-49 have jumped 17%.

“What are really two key demos for advertisers, we’re just seeing very strong growth versus last year,” said McGillicuddy. “Clearly, expansion is a part of it, and a fact that now we’ve got our games being paid attention to in the Los Angeles market and the Seattle market and the Portland market.”

Gridiron + hardcourt = big November lineup

Last year, BTN aired 66 events during the month of November. This year, that number is 92 (up nearly 40%). Most of that is due to the addition of some late-night basketball, as BTN gets a number of men’s hoops tripleheaders.

BTN also will have the most inventory of women’s basketball it’s ever had -- along with USC phenom JuJu Watkins. “We really want to try and do everything we can to build on the excitement from last year,” said McGillicuddy, referencing Iowa and Caitlin Clark. “Don't know whether we'll be able to continue at that level, but we think we can continue to grow interest in the sport. ... What we were able to be a part of last year in terms of women's sports, both for volleyball and basketball, was tremendous."

FIFA today invited media companies to bid on the rights to carry the 2027 and 2031 Women’s World Cups in the U.S. and Puerto Rico. It marks the first time the broadcast rights to the women’s event are being sold separately from the men’s World Cup rights in the U.S.

Fox and Telemundo have held the rights to both the men’s and the women’s events in English and Spanish, respectively, since the 2015 women’s edition, with their deals set to expire following the 2026 men’s World Cup in the U.S., Canada and Mexico. Bids are due to FIFA by Dec. 3.

FIFA said the tender process is “primarily focused on the 2027 edition” -- which Brazil has already won the rights to host -- but invited media companies to also submit an additional offer for the rights to the 2031 Women’s World Cup. U.S. Soccer said after  withdrawing a joint bid  with the Mexican Football Federation to host the 2027 edition it plans to pursue the 2031 event. The event being held in the U.S. would likely make the media rights more valuable to domestic broadcasters.

Viewership for the 2023 Women’s World Cup, which was held in Australia & New Zealand, was challenged by early-morning kickoff times and a Round of 16 exit for the U.S. women’s national team. English-language coverage of the event averaged 669,000 viewers across Fox and FS1 (down 60% from 2019), while Spanish-language telecasts averaged of 167,000 (down 44% from 2019). The national team’s 1-1 draw against the Netherlands was the most-watched English-language group stage telecast ever with 6.4 million viewers on Fox. The final between Spain and England was down sharply from the U.S.-Netherlands final in 2019 but still drew more than 2 million combined viewers across Fox and Telemundo at 6am ET.

The Yankees and the Dodgers matchup gave Fox the  most-watched World Series since 2017 , an audience that Mike Mulvihill, Fox Sports president of insights and analytics, said performed ahead of the company’s expectations (even after readjusting for having L.A. and N.Y. in the Fall Classic).

“It was one of those magical Octobers that you get periodically,” said Mulvihill. “It was a demonstration that baseball can still capture the attention of the whole nation. We see every year the baseball season can outrate everything on TV except the NFL, and we saw that even more emphatically this year.”

Fox Corp. CEO and Executive Chairman Lachlan Murdoch told analysts on an earnings call this morning that the five-game Dodgers-Yankees matchup delivered “a record amount of revenue” and outperformed Fox’s budget and expectations.

For a standard World Series, the media partner needs to hit five games to break even in advertising. Sources told SBJ that demand was high enough from the two major markets that Fox broke even after Game 4, and Game 5 was considered “bonus.”

Dodgers-Yanks also posted record viewership in Spanish, with my colleague Austin Karp noting Fox Deportes and Univision averaged 504,000 viewers, which is the best Spanish-language Fall Classic audience yet. Fox Deportes alone also had its best MLB postseason audience ever (281,000 viewers).

For Mulvihill, the World Series is only part of the 2024 story, pointing a season that included the first MLB at Rickwood Field game and an  audience increase for the All-Star Game .

“Sometimes we make too much of the World Series viewership, because really the power of the sport is that it  dominates local ratings in every major city of the country for six months out of the year ,” said Mulvihill. “They put 70 million people through the turnstiles every year, and it's just part of the fabric of the American culture for half the year. ... When you're assessing the health of the business of baseball, I don't think you start with the World Series. I think you actually start with the regular season."

Best of the rest

We’re also one day out from the election, and political advertising has taken over the sports airwaves, including on Fox. “I apologize to anyone who was enjoying their football over the weekend and was bombarded with political ads,” Murdoch said this morning. “Sports has been the beneficiary of national political advertising.”

Fox also remains committed to Venu, with Murdoch describing it as a “tremendous pro-consumer, pro-competition platform.” Should Venu not launch due to its ongoing legal woes , Murdoch said Fox is “not in the business” of sublicensing its sports rights in any other substantial way.

While Deion Sanders and Colorado football aren’t producing the massive TV audiences seen during his first season coaching the Buffaloes, the numbers are still strong this season, writes SBJ’s Austin Karp.

In its first season back in the Big 12, Colorado has averaged 3.7 million viewers for eight games across Fox, NBC, CBS and ESPN. That’s down around 49% from the same point last season, when a hot start for Colorado helped the team to an average of 7.3 million viewers (seven games across ABC, Fox and ESPN). Colorado in that time also had one non-rated game on the now-defunct Pac-12 Networks. 

But the Buffs are up big (+424%) from the same point in 2022 season, when the team was averaging just 706,000 viewers during a one-win season (only four games across CBS, ESPN, ESPN2 and ESPNU, as Pac-12 Nets had half of the Buffs’ games that season). 

Last season, Colorado finished the season with three of the 15 most-watched CFB games of the season (bowl games, CFP excluded). This season, the team has just one in the top 15 to date (against Nebraska). 

• Throughout his long, monumental career, Mike Aresco found himself at the forefront of groundbreaking change in college sports, from ESPN to CBS to the AAC. SBJ's Bret McCormick writes about Aresco's career in the final profile of our 2024 Class of Champions: Pioneers & Innovators. McCormick also talked to former CBS Sports boss Sean McManus about how he and Aresco used to make the calls years ago about what early-round March Madness games CBS would stick with.

• Fox Sports analyst Tom Brady will not be punished for his comments criticizing NFL officials Sunday because he didn’t meet the threshold for action, chief spokesman Brian McCarthy told SBJ's Ben Fischer.

• ABC will start airing the Grammys starting in 2027 after the live show had been on CBS for 50 years. The cost to Disney? Around $60 million annually. A sports comp? The Orange Bowl costs Disney around $55 million annually, while the Sugar and Rose cost around $80 million each (all of those bowl deals end after 2026). 

• NASCAR COO Steve O'Donnell back in February confirmed to my colleague Adam Stern that the sanctioning body was open to participating in a “Days of Thunder” sequel if the opportunity presented itself, and now Tom Cruise is reportedly talking to Paramount about a follow-up to the 1990 racing film.

• FanDuel, which recently took over the naming rights for the Bally Sports RSNs, believes the states where those RSNs exist are a far better match to its vast footprint than it was to Bally’s spotty one, writes SBJ's Bill King.

• Some NFL viewership numbers after Week 8: the league is up around 1%, with NBC, Fox, CBS and Prime Video each seeing gains. ESPN/ABC/ESPN2 is down 12% for "Monday Night Football" as a number of early games did not have an ABC simulcast like they may have had last season. 

• There were 55 credentialed crew at the World Series for the upcoming documentary about the Fall Classic from Ron Howard, including eight film crews and a production trailer outside Yankee Stadium, notes SBJ's Mike Mazzeo. The film also will be able to use the Fox game broadcasts, as well as social media footage, providing a comprehensive and unique view.