Comcast chairman and CEO Brian Roberts focused his comments at the virtual Goldman Sachs Communacopia conference Wednesday on the future, adding that the company’s performance over the years is proof that “scale matters.”

“The last couple of years demonstrates we’re in good businesses, but also how scale matters,” Roberts said. “So if one business is going down with some temporary hit from COVID, we have others that are surging. We have a great team of people, a culture that has been decades in the making, and I think we execute at a high level.”  

That may or may not have been a reference to Comcast chief financial officer Mike Cavanagh’s warning at the Sept. 14 Bank of America Media, Communications & Entertainment conference that broadband growth appeared to slow “a little bit” faster than expected in August. That comment drove Comcast stock down 7.3% that day, costing the cable operator about $20 billion in market capitalization and driving down other stocks in the sector.

Roberts instead pointed to the success of the cable unit’s broadband business, which has grown to about 31 million subscribers, and its 60 million customer relationships. 

“We’re really a broadband company,” Roberts said, adding that the strategy is to deepen those broadband relationships with consumers through innovative products and new ways to distribute them. 

Roberts said the announcement Wednesday of its XiOne product  is the latest example of its “develop once, deploy everywhere” strategy, which includes whole-home WiFi via its Xfinity Pods, its Xfinity Flex broadband-only service, its Gigabit gateway and even a feature that tells Peloton owners via text message that their exercise bike needs to be closer to their WiFi pod for better reception.

Also Read: Comcast Introduces XiOne Streaming Device to Rule Its Entire Global Footprint

“We’re building a moat around the most important part of the company, and we’re innovating and we’ve shifted the whole technology focus to broadband in homes and I think it’s really paying off,” Roberts said. 

Comcast also is focusing on streaming, adding that its Peacock service has about 20 million monthly users and 54 million signups a little more than a year after launching the service nationally. Roberts noted that Comcast also has its eyes on international streaming, with Peacock coming to its Sky subscribers later this year, and its August partnership with ViacomCBS for streaming content in Europe.   

“We’re looking at other partnerships like that around the world,” Roberts said.

Regarding sports rights, Roberts said what NBC Sports does best are big events like NFL football and the Olympics. While Roberts conceded that the recent Tokyo Olympics was “tough,” he pointed to the 120 billion minutes of programming that were consumed by viewers and was optimistic about future games in Beijing (2022), Paris (2024) and Los Angeles (2028).

“It really makes our company super-relevant for those 17 days, and no one quite can compete with advertisers for attention in the way an Olympics can every two years,” Roberts said. “We’re not that far away from Beijing, and we’ll get right back at it, but we’ll get to a normal rhythm as we go out and we look forward to Paris and we look forward to LA. We love our association with the Olympics.” 

With other sports, Comcast and its Sky satellite unit have the ability to “pick and choose,” pointing to earlier decisions not to get into a bidding war with streaming sports service DAZN for rights to Italy’s Serie A league and last year’s deal for rights to Germany's Bundesliga that resulted in a reduced fee. Sky recently extended its rights deal with the Premier League to 2025.

“These are really hard calls,” Roberts said. “You don’t always want to prevail, and sometimes you’re right and sometimes you're wrong, but I think the sustainability of sports is a critical part of what our company does well.” 

Being outbid by upstart streaming sports company DAZN for Italian rights to Serie A soccer wasn’t a sign of weakness for Comcast’s European satellite TV juggernaut Sky, but rather another hint that the company is focusing more on returns on invested capital (ROIC) rather than merely chasing growth, Bernstein media analyst Peter Supino said in a note to clients.

Sky Italia, Sky’s Italian satellite TV arm, has held exclusive Serie A rights in that country for years, but lost out to DAZN, which bid €2.5 billion over three years to carry the games. Shortly after, Sky Italia said it would reduce its workforce by 25% over the next four years, part of a restructuring that would save about €300 million.

“The decision to not pay over the odds for sports rights in the midst of a pandemic, will likely cost Sky subscribers and revenue growth, but is evidence of a more prudent mindset and a test of Sky's role as a content aggregator,” Supino wrote. 

Whether that strategy extends to English Premier League rights, currently under negotiation, is still up in the air. But Supino pointed out that both Sky and British Telecom have “reduced their willingness to pay inflated fees for sports content” over the past few years. The U.K. segment of EPL rights sold for about £4.5 billion in 2018, down from its peak of £5.1 billion in 2015. While that downward trend could continue, the potential of other players like DAZN, Amazon, Netflix entering the bidding could drive up prices. 

Supino and other analysts have been cautious of Sky ever since Comcast bought the British company in 2018 for $40 billion, a pseudo-consolation prize after it dropped its bid for Fox programming assets, which were eventually won by The Walt Disney Co.  Most analysts were worried at the time that entering the traditional satellite video business in Europe, when the rest of the world seems to be focusing on streaming, was a risky move. That stance hasn’t changed.

Also Read: Italian Soccer’s Secret Weapon 

Former Sky CEO [now executive chairman] Jeremy Darroch had a plan to boost EBITDA at the Sky unit to $4 billion over the next few years, and Supino believes that new CEO Dana Strong should achieve that goal and then some. Strong had been CEO of Liberty Media’s Virgin Media units in the UK and Ireland and according to Supino, “earned her spurs” while she was head of Comcast’s Consumer Services unit, boosting margins from 39.7% in 2018 to 42.1% in 2020, and reducing capital intensity by 300 basis points during that period. 

The loss of Italian soccer will likely result in a loss of subscribers, but will also dramatically reduce its sports costs. Sky Italia is currently negotiating with Serie A for non-exclusive rights to about 30 % of games, so it won’t be entirely without soccer. Those rights will cost about €100 million per year, instead of €780 million, Supino estimated.

Even if churn doubles to 1.5 million customers at Sky Italia over the next three years, the satellite company can still increase EBITDA. Supino estimated that customer losses would result in a £690 million hit to revenue compared to 2018, but not having to pay for soccer would still result in a 14% increase in EBITDA to £391 million in 2024 from £342 million in 2018. 

The analyst added that the subscriber losses probably won’t be that dramatic because Sky Italia customers will still be able to access the games on the DAZN app, which is available on the satellite company’s Sky Q streaming platform. An increase in churn from 10% to 15% (about 700,000 customers) over the period would result in EBITDA rising to £605 million in 2024, according to Supino. 

 In that Xfinity Flex-like scenario, more Sky Italia customers are happy because they can still access the games via the DAZN app, and the distributor is happy because as an aggregator, it doesn’t have to weather the fees. 

“Under this scenario, margins widen significantly despite top line contraction,” Supino wrote. 

It’s pretty rare when a team owner gets called out -- positively -- when a TV sports rights deal is announced by a league and a programmer, but that’s what happened in ViacomCBS’s three-year deal for exclusive U.S. rights to stream games from Italian soccer league Serie A. But then again, Rocco Commisso isn’t just any team owner.

ViacomCBS made good on its promise to double down on soccer rights on March 25, agreeing to a three-year deal to carry the league on its fledgling streaming service Paramount Plus as well as CBS Sports and CBS Sports Network. While the terms of the deal weren’t announced, reports have put the value at about $200 million over the three years.

In announcing the deal there were the usual niceties -- both sides praised each other’s foresight in agreeing to the transaction -- but further down in the release, Serie A CEO Luigi De Siervo personally thanked the league’s American club owners, specifically pointing out Mediacom Communications chairman and CEO Rocco Commisso, who also owns the ACF Fiorentina team, for his help in landing the agreement. 

“Today it is not a point of arrival, but rather the beginning of a process of investments in human resources and editorial contents to support the continued growth of Serie A in the North America territory,” De Siervo said in the release. “This is the result of the work of the last 18 months and of the increasing number of American owners who have decided to invest in our teams. Finally, I would like to thank the President of Fiorentina Rocco Commisso for his important contribution to achieve this agreement.”

Rights Cost Went Up 30%

The deal that Paramount Plus signed was a 30% increase over the league’s last TV contract with ESPN Plus. ESPN was a late round bidder along with one other unnamed company,  but ultimately decided that the price was little too rich for its tastes.

ViacomCBS has been ultra-aggressive in snapping up soccer rights. In addition to the Serie A deal, the programmer has signed rights deals with the UEFA Champions League, Europa League, next season’s Europa Conference League, the National Women’s Soccer League (NWSL), Brasileiro Série A and Liga Profesional de Fútbol (the top leagues in both Brazil and Argentina), and various Concacaf matches. 

At ViacomCBS’s Feb. 24 Investor Day, CBS Entertainment chief George Cheeks said the programmer was “doubling down” on soccer rights, adding the sport presented the best opportunity to grab young eyeballs for both the linear and streaming networks.

“As we look to the future, we are making soccer a core pillar of sports exclusively available on Paramount Plus,” Cheeks said at the Investor Day. 

According to reports, Paramount had initially bid around $142 million for the rights, but bumped up that offer considerably in later rounds. 

While those reports didn’t offer an explanation for the increased offer, probably just chalking it up to normal bidding dynamics, Commisso may have provided a subtle nudge.

As the head of the fifth largest cable operator in the U.S., Mediacom obviously has a long-time professional relationship with Paramount Plus parent ViacomCBS and its CEO Bob Bakish. But Commisso and Bakish’s connection goes a little bit deeper. Both are graduates of Columbia University, and both left that Ivy League institution with degrees in industrial engineering and MBAs.   

“Rocco and I have enjoyed a long and productive professional relationship,” Bakish said in an email message.  “We look forward to working with Serie A and enhancing our strong lineup of live soccer coverage on Paramount+.” 

Commisso, who was born in Calabria, Italy and came to the U.S. with his family when he was 12 years old, is a huge soccer fan: he was co-captain of his alma mater’s men’s soccer squad in 1970, helping lead the school to compete in its first NCAA men’s soccer tournament that year. The Mediacom founder has been a huge booster of Columbia University soccer, donating millions of dollars to the school for its stadium and soccer programs. In 2017, Commisso dipped his toe into club ownership, buying the North American Soccer League’s (NASL) New York Cosmos. In 2019 he purchased ACF Fiorentina. ACF Fiorentina currently is ranked 14th out of 20 teams in Serie A. The Cosmos have been on pause since the COVID-19 outbreak. 

In an interview, Commisso said he imparted some of his soccer knowledge to Bakish, who he said is “a great guy” and a savvy negotiator in his own right. Talks for the U.S. rights to Serie A lasted about 18 months and  involved several parties. 

“We had a discussion,” Commisso said, adding that the conversation was mainly around the state of Italian soccer. “I was rooting for him to win it. Did he come up with every single dollar that I thought was the right ask? No. Was he better than everybody else? Yes. It would be fair to say that through my involvement, one: he got the bid and two: he increased the bid.”

Commisso has been pretty generous with his knowledge of the soccer game. He counseled Parma owner Kyle Krause, CEO of Krause Group, when he was considering buying the Parma team. Krause Group is based in Des Moines, Iowa, also one of Mediacom’s largest markets, and owns Italian wineries and hospitality businesses, as well as real estate and more than 400 gas station/convenience stores in the Midwest. Krause bought the Parma team in 2020. 

“He picked my brain and I helped him make his mind up,” Commisso said. 

Serie A is considered one of the “Big Five'' leagues in European football: The English Premier League, Spain’s La Liga, Germany’s Bundesliga and France’s Ligue 1 are the others. So landing the U.S. rights is a bit of a coup for Paramount. It doesn’t hurt that one of the most recognizable stars in soccerdom, Cristiano Ronaldo, plays for Turin-based Juventus, the 2019-20 Serie A champion.  

Matches Due Mostly On Paramount Plus

ViacomCBS hasn’t said yet how it will parse the games between the streaming and linear services. But it’s probably a good bet that the Ronaldo connection will be played up when it starts airing Serie A games in August. There are a lot of games to watch, which should only raise the profile of the league in general. Paramount Plus, the enlarged former CBS All Access, has the rights to air 400 matches each year -- 388 Serie A games, 25 Coppa Italia matches and the Supercoppa Italiana match (where the winners of Serie A and Coppa Italia meet in a what is akin to the Italian soccer Super Bowl) -- with select matches to be televised on CBS Sports and CBS Sports Network. 

But whatever the ultimate lineup, Commisso said the exposure could only be good for Italian soccer. 

“In Italy, they give some of the bigger teams preferential treatment when there are multiple games during the day,” Commisso said. “Not always but for the most part, they’ll make the last game the Game of the Week. We have games on Friday, Saturday and Sunday. I’m sure they [Paramount] will utilize Ronaldo. If I were them I would do the same thing.”

Commisso said in Italian soccer, TV money isn’t split evenly among teams -- bigger teams get bigger shares -- but the additional cash will help the smaller clubs get better players and improve facilities. Adding to the coffers is the sale of Italian TV rights to the league, which went to streaming sports service DAZN for about €2.5 billion ($2.95 billion) over three years. DAZN bested Comcast-owned Sky, which had owned Serie A rights in Italy since 2003. Sky, according to reports, agreed to pay about €70 million ($82 million) for non-exclusive rights for a smaller package of games. 

Commisso also is encouraged by the growing number of American owners in Italian soccer. Today there are five clubs owned by Americans in the 20-team league: A.C. Milan, A.S. Roma, A.C.F. Fiorentina, Parma and Spezia Calcio. A sixth club, Bologna F.C., is owned by a Canadian.

That influx of American ownership has occurred only recently. In 2017, only one club, Roma, was U.S.-owned. Commisso said the new blood has been good for the league, bringing in a fresh perspective as well as money. Italian soccer, he added, has been held back by the condition of its stadiums, which are generally owned by the towns and cities the clubs play in and are leased back to the teams. But that means improvements have been few and far between. Commisso said the stadium where his club plays, Stadio Artemio Franchi, was first opened in 1931. And he believes as other Italian owners look to sell their clubs in the future, American businessmen should take advantage of the opportunity. Juventus's 10-year-old Allianz Stadium is one of the unusual club-owned arenas.

“I think there are going to be other sales taking place in the next 12 months,” Commisso said. “Is it going to be Americans? I can't say that for sure. But the fact that you have five American owners is changing things. We bring a new way of looking at things, some people don’t like it, and we have a big push to improve the infrastructure. We all want to get things done on the infrastructure side.”

Commisso himself is in the throes of building a new state-of-the-art sports complex near Stadio Artemio Franchi, to be called Viola Park, an €85 million ($99.6 million) project that would include training facilities and fields for men's and women's senior and youth soccer teams.  The project, which began construction earlier this year, has recently hit some regulatory snags.

Still, Commisso is confident that he will eventually get the project through.

“I’m a tough guy when it comes to most things,” Commisso said. “I’m not doing this to make money, I’m doing this to give back to soccer what soccer has done for me and to give back to my native Italy. It’s very hard for other people to understand that, but it is a fact.” 

ViacomCBS has announced a new multi-year deal with Italy’s Serie A soccer league that will put more than 400 matches each season on new streaming service Paramount Plus starting in August. 

Lega Serie A is one of Europe’s “Big Five” pro leagues, along with Premier League, La Liga, Ligue 1 and the Bundesliga. It’s home to numerous top players, including Juventus star Cristiano Ronaldo. The agreement takes exclusive U.S. rights from ESPN Plus and runs through 2024. 

Starting in August, the just-launched Paramount Plus will stream 380 Serie A matches this year, along with at least 25 Coppa Italia matches, including the final, and the Supercoppa Italian. CBS Sports will handle linear coverage of the league. 

ESPN still has a lion’s share of exclusive U.S. TV rights to European soccer, including Bundesliga, Major League Soccer, Belgium Pro League and cup competitions in England. And notably, NBCUniversal’s Peacock controls the Premier League. But Serie A definitely qualifies as a “get” for Paramount Plus. 

Paramount Plus already streams UEFA Champions League and Europa League matches, along with games from the National Women's Soccer League. The service is also streaming some CONCACAF Men’s World Cup qualifiers, in which the U.S. Men's National Team is participating.

“We are building critical mass in soccer, and the addition of Serie A, Coppa Italia and the Supercoppa Italiana is another major step in the expansion of CBS Sports’ extensive lineup of live soccer coverage on Paramount Plus and across our linear and digital platforms,” said Jeffrey Gerttula, executive VP and general manager of CBS Sports Digital. “Showcasing this historic league and some of the world's biggest clubs is a tremendous opportunity to further grow the sport in the U.S. by delivering first-class coverage to a dedicated and passionate audience.”

Reelgood, which tracks what movies and TV shows are available across a vast expanse of more than 330 streaming platforms, just secured another $6.75 million in Series A funding.

The investment round, secured from Runa Capital with participation from August Capital, brings the San Francisco-based start-ups total funding to around $11 million. It was launched in 2016 with $4.3 million in seed money.

Reelgood regularly ingests massive amounts of data pertaining to service content libraries into a database, processing it with a combination of machine learning and human curators.

The result not only allows a user base of around 10 million consumers to punch in movie and show titles into an app on their iPhone or Android mobile device to see where it can be found in the streaming world, it also has plenty of value in the business-to-business world.

For example, Reelgood says that Roku, Microsoft, the New York Post and hedge funds are among those that license its data insights. This data helps these companies understand how OTT platforms and their content libraries are performing, as well as what’s attracting consumer interest.

Earlier this year, Reelgood hired Nielsen’s former senior VP of global measurement, Mark Green, to lead a division, which it calls Reelgood Insights.

“I sought out and joined Reelgood because they are poised to capture the billions in revenue spent on viewership data as viewing continues to shift towards OTT,” Green said in a statement. 

beIN SPORTS has reached a distribution deal with direct-to-home satellite-TV service Shaw Direct that makes the sports programmer available on Channel 118 (Classic) and 618 (Advanced). The network is being carried to all Shaw Direct customers now during a free preview until March 15.

Shaw Direct, owned by cable provider Shaw Communications, has more than 900,000 subscribers across Canada, according to its web site.

beIN SPORTS live-game programming includes such top soccer leagues as Spain’s La Liga, Italy’s Serie A, France’s Ligue 1, England’s Football Championship and the 2015 Copa America tournament.

“We are excited to bring Canadian sports fans the best live sporting action from around the globe along with all the highlights and expert analysis,” Yousef Al-Obaidliy, Deputy CEO of beIN Media Group, said in a release. “With beIN SPORTS’ premium international sporting content, Shaw Direct customers can rely on us to deliver the highest quality coverage presented in a dynamic and relevant manner.”

beIN SPORTS is also carried in Canada by Bell TV, Eastlink, MTS, Rogers, Telus and Videotron.