When Warner Bros. Discovery-owned TNT Sports last November announced it had reached a seven-year media rights deal with NASCAR beginning in 2025, the company was preparing to telecast the final rounds of the NBA’s inaugural In-Season Tournament while producing its weekly Wednesday-night NHL doubleheaders  — not long after the division produced 14 Major League Baseball postseason games.

Many TV sports executives would find managing the above scenario daunting at
best. For Luis Silberwasser, chairman and CEO of TNT Sports, it’s par for the course. 

Silberwasser, the former Univision Television Networks Group and Telemundo president who took over TNT Sports — the overall Warner Bros. Discovery Sports business, including the U.S. piece known as Turner Sports under prior ownership — in 2022, oversees one of the deepest and most diverse portfolios of live premium sports content rights in television. The TNT Sports lineup includes games from three of the four major U.S. sports leagues, as well as the U.S. women’s and men’s national soccer teams and the NCAA men’s March Madness college basketball tournament, in a partnership with CBS Sports. 

Add five summer NASCAR races to the mix next year, and Silberwasser, who grew up in Colombia as an avid soccer player, has quickly established himself as one of the busiest executives in sports TV. 

“Luis has seamlessly stepped into his new role at WBD Sports and brought to bear his many years of experience in media and business,” NBA commissioner Adam Silver said. “Additionally, he has embraced our longstanding partnership with enthusiasm and a forward-thinking vision for the future.” 

Under Silberwasser’s watch, the TNT Sports portfolio — which distributes most of its live sports content on WBD-owned linear cable networks TNT, TBS and truTV — increased viewership across its premium sports properties in 2023, amid what the programmer called an otherwise challenging television marketplace:

• TNT posted its most-watched NBA regular-season and postseason coverage in five years;

• Live NHL on TNT telecasts on Sundays delivered a 52% increase in average audience in 2022-23, compared to the prior season, and TNT Sports delivered the most-watched Stanley Cup playoffs coverage ever on cable; 

• TBS’s coverage of baseball’s National League Division Series and National League Championship Series averaged 4.6 million viewers, up 8% over its 2022 coverage of the American League playoffs.

• Men’s March Madness games on TBS, TNT and truTV were up by double digits in 2023 compared to the year prior, and TNT Sports and CBS sold out advertising opportunities for the tournament for the 12th straight year, according to WBD Sports.

“Since joining WBD, Luis has moved quickly and decisively to transform and grow our world-class sports business for the future,” Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav said. “Simply put: He is a true All-Star.” 

Silberwasser also ushered TNT Sports into the streaming arena in October with the launch of the Bleacher Report Sports Add-On tier on Max. The free service, which will convert to a subscription-based offering later this year, offers simulcasts of TNT, truTV and TBS live sports events, and will offer exclusive content from NASCAR next summer. 

“Luis and his world-class team at TNT Sports have a proven track record of creating engaging content for each of their sports properties,” NASCAR president Steve Phelps said. “Joining TNT’s portfolio of premium sports content is a huge win for NASCAR fans, and under Luis’s leadership, we know NASCAR broadcasts across TNT on linear television and the B/R Sports Add-On on Max will offer fans innovative and interactive viewing experiences.” 

Even with all of its acquired sports portfolio, Silberwasser remains bullish on TNT Sports’s homegrown sports properties, including The Match exhibition golf events. Since The Match launched in 2018, it has drawn high-profile participants from the world of sports celebrity, including Tiger Woods, Charles Barkley, Aaron Rodgers, Travis Kelce, Rory McIlroy, Peyton Manning, Tom Brady and Patrick Mahomes. The ninth iteration of the series, which teed off February 26, will feature the first female participants in LPGA players Lexi Thompson and Rose Zhang. 

“Luis Silberwasser is a smart and passionate executive and a terrific person who genuinely cares about the people with whom he works,” NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman said. “He has assumed the leadership of WBD Sports and reorganized the company with remarkable speed. During that short time, we have developed a great relationship and he has been an excellent partner.”

In 2024, Silberwasser will lead TNT Sports through the NCAA Men’s Final Four and Championship Game, to air on TBS, and the U.S. men’s and women’s national soccer team friendlies leading into the Paris Summer Olympics. (The 2026 FIFA World Cup TV rights in the U.S. are held by Fox and Telemundo.) Also on the horizon are negotiations to retain its NBA TV rights, which expire after the 2024-25 season. 

Zaslav believes Silberwasser is more than up to the task. “Luis is a fantastic leader and a uniquely thoughtful executive whose drive, passion and ability to build and lead strong  teams with heart I have long admired,” he said. 

Silberwasser, who is the B+C Multichannel News Sports Executive of the Year for 2024, discussed the TNT Sports strategy of offering premium sports programming to both hard-core and casual fans across multiple platforms. (Silberwasser was interviewed before WBD Sports, ESPN and Fox announced their joint sports app. For more on that development, see Lead-in, page 4.) He also looked at the future of the TV sports business in a lengthy interview, presented with edits for clarity and space.  

B+C: TNT Sports is coming off a year where all of its major sports franchises — Major League Baseball, the NBA, the NHL and men’s NCAA March Madness — posted year-to-year ratings gains. How were you able to accomplish that in an otherwise turbulent television landscape? 

Luis Silberwasser: In many ways, it’s our No. 1 priority. The strength of this group and division is that we are not playing the volume business. We don’t have a 24-hour sports channel. We don’t have to have 1,000 hours of sports. We really focus on a few very big things, including the sports you mentioned in baseball, basketball and hockey, as well as U.S. soccer. In many ways, it allows us the bandwidth to really focus on making those productions the best they can be. 

So when we talk about what the goals are for the division, No. 1 is that we want to serve the fan. By fan, I mean not only the real fan that knows everything about sports but also the casual fan. We believe that we can do a better job than anybody else with the casual fan to bring more diverse and younger people into the fold. So our production, marketing and digital teams are all focused on making our events bigger. That’s how, in a challenging linear environment, we were able to increase ratings. We were also able to increase our partnership with the leagues to make these events better and more exciting. While there’s no magic bullet, it’s really a philosophy of taking care of these events and doing the best job of storytelling.

B+C: You came from an entertainment background, so did you have any perceived expectations about how a sports-based organization should run, and did your first year at TNT Sports meet or exceed those expectations? 

LS: It has more than met my expectations. Even though my background wasn’t 100% exclusive to sports, as someone who had experienced managing networks, sports was a big part of my portfolio in other companies, so I knew the value of sports. In an environment like today which is more challenging, the value of live programming and live sports is immense. So coming in, my philosophy was to let them go and create and I’ll support them. 

At the end of the day, probably what I added to the table is the idea of empowering the team to move faster. A lot of the changes that we did as a division were to become more agile and lean and trust the people we have to make the right decisions and support innovation. We’ve done a lot of things over the last year that were different for the company, whether it was to make Bleacher Report and the linear TV group work more together, or to try some different marketing approaches to our content. I think part of our MO for the last year was to really embrace what we do and just have fun. 

B+C: In 2023, you added a seven-year NASCAR racing package to the TNT Sports portfolio, and before that the company picked up U.S. National Soccer Team rights. While not as broad as the NBA or Major League Baseball, how do those properties play within the TNT Sports brand? 

LS: Our strategy is to offer premium-tier sports. With U.S. soccer, even though the volume of matches compared to maybe some of the other leagues is not there, from a premium standpoint, having the U.S. men’s and women’s national team’s games is tier one, and it captures the imagination of the people in the United States as they get behind those teams. 

I think it’s the same thing with NASCAR. 

The audiences behind NASCAR are very passionate and very large. We used to have NASCAR and now it is a huge sport. We don’t have the volume of races that some of the other distributors have, but we wanted to become part of the NASCAR ecosystem and add our value from the production side, how we market the sport and the way we talk to our viewers. 

Also, NASCAR was a little different because it provided us with sports during a time of year in the summer that was light for us besides baseball. With the NASCAR deal, we were able also to get programming for TNT, which is where the five big races are going to be, but also for truTV, where we’re going to have a high volume of practices and qualifying races. We’re going to have something exclusive for Max, which we’ll let the market know later. 

B+C: Another big move for TNT Sports in 2023 was the launch of the Bleacher Report Sports add-on service on Max. How does the introduction of live sports programming to the streaming platform balance with linear distribution? 

LS: Being able to create a viable and significant digital strategy for us was a major objective. We need to have a really strong digital strategy for us to be able to reach consumers, but also for the partnership with the leagues. So the internal debate was, ‘OK, how do you do it?’ Max is a fantastic, entertainment-focused platform that has incredible penetration, about 50 million subscribers or more in the United States. So do we add sports in the same way that other people are doing it, where you basically splinter your rights and have some content on streaming and then some other content on linear, which in many ways is frustrating for the viewer because they don’t know which platform my favorite team is on? 

We decided to be more consumer-friendly and focused on providing it on both platforms. We adopted what we call a simulcast strategy — we didn’t want people to make a choice based on whether you had the game or not. It was more of a choice of a platform. If you were comfortable in a more portable environment with Max and being able to watch it on your phone, or on your iPad or on connected devices, that’s the right platform for you. But you get the same level of sports as somebody who is watching TNT or TBS or truTV as well. 

So we launched the Bleacher Report Sports add-on in October of last year, which is basically a section inside Max that has all the sports that we have. 

B+C: You mentioned that TNT Sports might develop an exclusive package of NASCAR content for Max. Could we eventually see more exclusive content for the streaming service outside of what’s airing on the linear channels? 

LS: It’s TBD. I think we’re all learning in this new environment and we want to follow the audience. It’s very important for us that we don’t stay behind. We’re really happy with our strategy right now because we don’t want to compromise a level of reach on one platform just to grow another platform, so that’s the right strategy for the rights that we have. In the future, we may have different rights or something that is more niche-oriented, which may become more exclusive to one platform because we know there may be a passionate audience that will follow that where reach may not be as important. 

So again, it’s TBD … I think it’s too early to say. 

B+C: Let’s expand this topic to the broader television universe. Clearly sports continues to be a main viewership driver for linear television, but now we’re seeing a large migration of live sports to streaming services. Do you see this trend continuing and if so how much does it hurt the linear television business? 

LS: I think streaming will continue to be a very big part of the landscape, and I think more and more people will feel even more comfortable watching it on the digital platform. There’s no doubt that streaming television and sports included will become a big part of it, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that you will have a reduction. I think you’ll have an environment where cable and the traditional bundle continue to be available, and at the same time, sports through other bundles or on different platforms will continue to be available. That’s why it’s so important that we keep committed to a healthy, traditional linear environment, but at the same time have our sports very present and available in a streaming environment where people can access the same amount of sports.

B+C: The TNT Sports NBA deal expires after the 2024-25 season. There’s been a lot of noise about other distributors bidding for the league’s television rights. How important is the NBA to TNT Sports and how aggressive will the company be in trying to secure those rights?

LS: The NBA is a premier, tier-one set of rights. It is an integral part of TNT. We have a more than 30-year history with the NBA. We love the NBA and we love what we do with them. We partner with them in producing the NBA TV channel and we partner with them on NBA.com and NBA League Pass. The NBA is a fantastic partner for us, so we’re very committed to being aggressive and retaining those rights. 

We recognize that there are other people who are interested in those rights — who wouldn’t be? — but we feel good about our proposition, what our assets are and what we can do with the NBA. All the decisions that we made last year to strengthen our production capabilities, to strengthen our talent capabilities, to hire new talent, to retain talent, were made with the objective to make ourselves invaluable for a league, and in this case, the NBA is the one that’s up for renewal. 

But I’ll say that for every league that we are partnered with, we want to be a preferred broadcaster. We may not have other things that other partners may have, but we have other things that others don’t have. And I think we’ve been very deliberate about what we do with Bleacher Report, what we do with [social media network] House of Highlights, what we do with our decisions in terms of personnel and talent and our investment in production, as well as our move to Max. When you look at all those things, it is in many ways strengthening ourselves to continue to be a preferred partner to the NBA. 

B+C: One of the things that has come out of your long relationship with the NBA is Inside the NBA, which has really transcended basketball and become more of a cultural phenomenon. How does content like Inside the NBA help TNT Sports position itself with its league partners? 

LS: It’s interesting. When I go back to when I was about to enter Warner Bros. Discovery and take this job, I’d watched basketball before, but I wasn’t an expert. I’m not saying that I’m an expert now, but I know more now than let’s say a year ago. [Laughs.] You don’t realize the impact that a show like Inside the NBA can have in the marketplace. People would tell me, ‘Whatever you do, don’t mess that up.’ [Laughs.] Then once I was inside and started working with the team and started getting the feel for how special that franchise is and how magical the production and the talent behind the franchise is with EJ [Ernie Johnson], Shaq [Shaquille O’Neal], Kenny [Smith] and Chuck [Charles Barkley]. We’ve had a lot of internal conversations about what the show is and it’s not just one thing — it’s a multitude of factors that create that show. 

You can see us now taking that show’s DNA and trying to apply it to other things we do, like the new [NHL on TNT pregame] show once we got the NHL franchise. I think that show today is a fantastic show and it’s on its way to becoming as important for the NHL as Inside the NBA is for the NBA. I also think that the DNA of talking to the casual fan as well as the super-informed sports fan is in every show we try to do. Sometimes we get it, sometimes we don’t, but I think more times than not, we are distinctive in the marketplace because people say, ‘Hey, the way you do it, it’s different.’ 

B+C: TNT Sports also created The Match charity golf tournament exclusively for TNT. Will you continue to look to create exclusive sports events in the future? 

LS: Yes, it’s one of our objectives. We like the fact that The Match is our own event. We own it, we’re able to customize it and we’re able to try different things. It allows us to reach a different audience. We want to develop more of our own [intellectual property] because I think it’s important — not to replace what we have, but to add to the equation and to make sure that we’re tapping into sports we don’t have now or to bet on things for the future. So we really love The Match and we love it for what it does, but also for the fact that it’s our own thing. 

B+C: This year TNT Sports has the March Madness Final Four and championship game. How has your partnership with CBS for the tournament benefited both brands and built a sports franchise that dominates the sports calendar for a month in March and early April? 

LS: I’ve been a fan of March Madness for a while, but when you are inside the world of sports, you see the importance of March Madness on a national scale and how the whole country stops for three weeks to see who makes it to the Final Four. Every game is a do-or-die situation. It is such a special tournament that our team is extremely proud of and looks forward to it every year. 

I don’t want to be repetitive, but we do it the way we do it. We try to add our expertise, we try to make it special, we try to talk to the casual fan — all the things that I’ve said before. The one thing that makes it also very special is our partnership with CBS, which, at the end of the day, putting the business terms aside, we’re both focused on the fan. We’re all focused on that person enjoying the tournament from the MML [March Madness Live] app or through the linear channels, whether it’s CBS, truTV, TBS or TNT. We have that commitment to that fan, and we work seamlessly with CBS to make sure that the tournament is bigger and better every year. 

B+C: The March Madness tournament is also a huge draw for sports betting. What is TNT Sports’s philosophy and strategy towards sports betting content? 

LS: We are involved in many ways because we have a very strong partnership with FanDuel and with DraftKings. But I think the idea of becoming what they call a sports book is not something that we’re that keen on doing, at least not at this point in time. We do think that betting is an integral part of sports and the sports ecosystem. Bleacher Report, for example, has a very big betting vertical where we do a lot of things revolving around sports betting, so we embrace it. 

A lot of the things that we’re focused on is creating unique content in partnership with the betting companies to be able to give something to the consumer that is looking for something really, really targeted to his or her betting experience. If you watch Inside the NBA, Charles actively participates and gives out picks during the show, so we see it as part of the content that we need to provide. We did something interesting for the [NBA] in-season tournament where we had an alternate cast really focused on betting. So, you could watch the game on TNT and you could go to truTV and see the same game, but with commentators who were really looking at the game through the eyes of somebody who’s betting. We want to do more of those kinds of things, because it’s part of what today’s sports-watching experience is all about. 

B+C: Is there a sport that you would love to have in the TNT Sports portfolio? 

LS: It’s hard not to say that you would love to have the NFL and that you would love to have college football. Those are two big, big sports that capture the imagination of the viewer when they’re on. I personally love soccer as well — that’s where I grew up. We love our partnership with the [U.S. Soccer] Federation, but there may be some soccer tournaments out there that we at some point take a look at. 

TNT Sports’s new seven-year multimedia deal with NASCAR, reached in November, capped off a slam-dunk year for the Warner Bros. Discovery-owned division’s chairman and CEO, Luis Silberwasser. 

The NASCAR agreement added the popular stock-car racing circuit to an already impressive portfolio of domestic pro and college sports-media rights under Silberwasser’s tutelage that include the NHL, NBA, the NCAA March Madness men’s college basketball tournament and the United States Soccer Federation airing across several WBD-owned cable channels including TNT, TBS and truTV.

On the distribution front, Silberwasser in 2023 helped spearhead TNT Sports’s expansion into the live sports event streaming platform with the fall launch of the Bleacher Report Sports add-on tier through streaming service Max. 

Silberwasser also leads WBD’s sports priorities overseas, including TNT Sports in the United Kingdom and Ireland as well as Eurosport, which controls European rights to the 2024 Olympic Games, English Premier League and UEFA Champions League soccer, combat sports including the UFC, boxing and WWE events and Premiership Rugby.

Under Silberwasser’s watch, TNT Sports continued to influence sports media with original sports event content in 2023 such as its long-running exclusive The Match golf tournament featuring both pro golfers and celebrities, as well as Emmy Award-winning studio stalwart Inside the NBA. 

In recognition of his stellar efforts in the television sports arena, Broadcasting+Cable Multichannel News has named Luis Silberwasser its 2024 Sports Executive of the Year. Read more about him in the upcoming February issue of B+C MCN available in late February.

In the aftermath of Lionel Messi and Argentina’s thrilling FIFA World Cup win over France this past December — ending arguably the greatest tournament in the history of the sport — no one would have begrudged Fox Sports from taking its own victory lap. Fox Sports’s successful coverage of the international soccer tournament wrapped up one of the most successful performances in the 28-year history of the organization.

In a year in which live sports programming firmly secured its position as the foundation for the struggling linear television universe, Fox Sports was the category’s North Star, led by its CEO and executive producer Eric Shanks. In 2022, the company’s live sports programming — which ranged from the World Cup and Major League Baseball’s World Series to Big Noon Saturday college football games, Fox NFL Sunday “America’s Game of the Week” coverage and NASCAR races — aggregated an industry-high 265.3 billion minutes of live event consumption this year. It’s the fourth straight year Fox Sports has led all sports distributors in minutes viewed while continuing to embrace the traditional TV bundle for distribution of the majority of its marquee events.

“The thing that’s worked very well for Fox Sports and for Fox is their increased emphasis on broadcast,” TV sports consultant Lee Berke said. “They’ve placed most of their major events on broadcast, buttressed by [cable networks] FS1 and FS2. Sports is a growing percentage of primetime programming on broadcast in general and Fox early on has taken a leadership position on that.”

Fox Sports programming was so prevalent on the Fox network, particularly in the fall, that more than 90% of all the broadcaster’s viewing from Labor Day to New Year’s Eve was attributed to sports. The remarkable amount of consumption was bolstered by Fox Sports’s World Cup coverage. The morning and afternoon telecasts — which aired in November and December, instead of the typical summer, due to host country Qatar’s desert heat — averaged 3.6 million viewers across Fox and FS1, up 30% over Fox’s 2018 World Cup coverage from Russia.

Shanks, the former DirecTV programming executive who joined Fox Sports as CEO in 2010, continued to fortify the division’s portfolio in 2022 by reaching long-term TV rights deals with several important properties. Under Shanks’s tutelage, Fox Sports worked alongside the Big Ten college conference to negotiate a new, seven-year rights deal with Fox, NBC and CBS worth a reported $7 billion. 

Fox Sports in October renewed its Big 12 TV rights as part of a reported $2-billion deal that also includes ESPN and keeps the conference on Fox through the 2030 season. Fox also renewed Major League Soccer in a four-year deal, shutting out ESPN and ABC, which had aired MLS games since the U.S. league’s inception in 1996.

Fox Sports also forged a league of its own with the April 2022 launch of the United States Football League (USFL), the spring league it owns and manages. 

Industry executives said Shanks’s ability to build strong relationships with content partners has helped Fox Sports lock down most of its high-profile sports properties through the latter part of the decade.

‘A Moving Force’

“Eric is a moving force,” MLB commissioner Rob Manfred said. “He’s always coming to us with ideas about things that we might consider rather than him just being receptive to ideas that we have. That’s what makes for a good partnership.” 

NFL commissioner Roger Goodell commended Shanks for being a key member of the team that has helped foster the three-decade relationship between Fox and the league. “Quite simply, Eric has made the NFL better,” he said. “He’s been an incredible partner who’s never afraid to challenge us, which is something I really appreciate.” 

Under Shanks, Fox Sports has also helped evolve the way viewers watch live sports content through technological innovations that have added to the enjoyment of fans rooting for their favorite teams. Whether it’s aerial drone usage and virtual production technology in its NASCAR productions to the introduction of a helmet cam for its USFL telecasts, sports executives said the company’s on-air technical innovations are second to none. 

“Working with Eric Shanks and Fox Sports has been nothing short of phenomenal,” NASCAR president Steve Phelps said. “We love how Fox Sports is willing to push the envelope from a technology and production perspective when it comes to covering NASCAR.”

Not one to rest on laurels, Fox Sports in 2023 will air a second season of the USFL, new baseball and NASCAR campaigns and the FIFA Women’s World Cup. First up this month is Super Bowl LVII, the network’s first telecast of the Big Game since the pre-pandemic 2020 contest. 

“Eric thrives in constantly innovating while consistently executing at the highest levels,’  News Corp. executive chairman and CEO Lachlan Murdoch said. “From launching the new USFL this past spring to the epic fall calendar consisting of the best coverage of college and NFL football, the World Series, World Cup and preparing for the Super Bowl, Eric and his team have performed masterfully in bringing our audience the best in sports.”

Fox Sports on-air veteran Kevin Burkhardt will call his first Super Bowl after succeeding the ESPN-bound Joe Buck as Fox’s top NFL play-by-play announcer. Burkhardt said the Fox culture under Shanks’s direction is to remain aggressive and innovative in its approach to working marquee events.

“We go after things that we want and get big properties and hire good people to work on those properties,” he said. “It’s a message and attitude of being loose, having fun and embracing being on the big stage.”

Shanks, who is the B+C Multichannel News Sports Executive of the Year for 2023, spoke about Fox Sports’s phenomenal 2022 performance and discussed the future of the sports TV in a wide-ranging interview, presented here with edits for clarity and space.

B+C: Put Fox Sports’s 2022 campaign into perspective. Did it meet your
expectations?   

Eric Shanks: Clearly, we couldn’t have predicted such an unprecedented year. When we set our budget in 2021, we couldn’t have predicted that we were going to have probably the greatest sporting event of all time in the World Cup final. The performance of everything that we’ve put on the network just validated the strategy that Lachlan Murdoch and [Fox chairman] Rupert Murdoch put in place, which is to be very focused on being the leader in live television, whether it’s sports or news. It feels to me like we’re unique in that there’s no doubt that we know who we are, and we aim to be the leader in live sports and news every day. By any metric, whether it’s total consumption or whether it’s the individual performance of our events or our leagues, that’s the case. And in the areas where we’re not quite No. 1, I mean, that’s the challenge that we have going forward. 

B+C: You mentioned the World Cup. Fox Sports had some daunting challenges going into the tournament, including an unprecedented fall start plus unfriendly time differences with Qatar. How was Fox Sports able to overcome those challenges? 

ES: It really is all about planning. We were in Qatar two and a half years before the World Cup to start setting all of the pieces in place for the planning. So when that month [of the tournament] comes on the air, it’s the result of this amazing team that we have here to put a plan in place and to execute it. Of course, we can’t predict that an event will unfurl where the biggest stars in the sport actually show up and are the key components of the event at the end. So that’s what kind of paid off: the planning was there and then the stars showed up. 

B+C: Fox Sports continues to offer all of its marquee sports events, whether it’s all 64 World Cup games, the Super Bowl, or even USFL games, on linear television. In a TV environment when more content distributors are moving to streaming, why is Fox Sports so invested in the traditional television platform? 

ES: I actually look at it a little bit differently. If you look at the big rights deals that have been done, there might be media companies that are trying to move things into their streaming services. But if you look at what the professional leagues are doing, the NFL deal had clear priority on broadcast. There are more games on broadcast now for the NFL than ever before. If you look at the Big Ten deal, it’s a move away from cable to three broadcast entities. You look at the MLS deal that we just did. While they did a streaming deal [with Apple TV Plus], they really wanted to have games on broadcast every week. The biggest events from the biggest leagues are still on broadcast television. So our focus is there because we know that being a leader in news and sports is the driver of value in the bundle. 

B+C: So what is Fox Sports’s streaming strategy going forward? 

ES: A big chunk of our consumption comes from streaming — it’s just not direct-to-consumer streaming. We still have great products and availability for people to watch on any device, anytime. So we’re not against streaming; we just aren’t in the business model of direct-to-consumer. For the World Cup, we did a unique deal with Twitter, where we showed the first few minutes of every game live, which set social records for us. We used [Fox Corp.-owned streaming service] Tubi for highlights and on-demand replays which help set streaming records. When the games ended there was a message to go to the Fox Sports App, so the conversion of those fans was tremendous for us. 

B+C: Having said that, could we see a Fox Sports direct-to-consumer streaming service in the next five years? 

ES: We have the rights and the flexibility if we ever wanted to jump in and go DTC. Whether it’s the NFL or Major League Baseball, we have the same rights as everybody, so it’s our choice what to do with them. We can look at our crystal ball and know some of the things that will happen in five years. We know in five years that Fox’s [NFL] ‘America’s Game of the Week’ is still going to be the No. 1 one show on television. We’re still going to have the NFC package and the Super Bowl. We’re still going to have the World Series. Those are the core properties that drive our business. There are a lot of things outside of our strategy that can’t be predicted, such as how many streamers will be around in five years and how many direct-to-consumer offerings there will be in five years. There are things that we have already solidified while letting others help us make future decisions without us having to make the investments. 

B+C: In an era where sports rights are seemingly moving from network to network or to streaming services, Fox Sports last year was able to secure TV rights to such marquee properties as the Big 12, Big Ten and Major League Soccer. How have you been so successful in securing rights deals in such a competitive marketplace?

ES: From a non-business standpoint, we pride ourselves on being a good partner in terms of promoting, cross-promoting and producing content. If you look at our core rights for football, including the NFL, Big Ten, USFL, Pac-12, and also the core rights of NASCAR, Major League Baseball and FIFA international soccer, we really focus on promoting them on-air and being good partners which drives value for us and for them. Our core partners are not commodities; they’re not interchangeable. So I think we’re good partners and because we have identified our core rights, we know that they’re a part of our value equation. I also think one of our success stories was getting more upstream in the rights process, whether by starting our own league or acting as a true partner to the Big Ten as a media rights consultant and playing that role that we did with securing the rights. That’s another thing that we feel sets us apart this year, other than our distribution strategy. 

B+C: Do you see a more competitive marketplace over the next few years as Google, Apple, Amazon and other digital/streaming companies negotiate for sports rights? 

ES: Every time you think that it’s going to be less competitive, it’s always more competitive and a competitive marketplace doesn’t drive prices or costs down. That’s a good thing: You want your partners to be successful if they’re driving value for you. Just like earlier when we talked about our crystal ball, I don’t know in five years if there’s going to be more people bidding for rights or less, but I think they’re in that mode right now. You have companies that aren’t in the sports business now looking to be in the sports business. We’ve always been used to competition, but this is the first time that we’ve competed against $2 trillion companies that aren’t even in our business for rights. So it’s yet to be seen in this competitive environment what will be a success for them and whether they’ll keep going or revert back to their traditional business. 

For us, we’re in the sports business. It’s existential to us. To our newest competitors, it’s not existential; it’s kind of a toe dip in the water to see where it goes. That’s why I’m not sure if there will be more competition or less. History says there’s never less. Even with that, they really can’t impact our business in the next six years because we’ve wrapped up about 80% of our core rights deals, and I think we’re in a really good position to renew those other contracts like NASCAR when it comes up. So at least from our position, the window for them to really impact us has closed. 

B+C: One way to protect rights fees is to create your own league, which Fox Sports did with the USFL last April. Given spring football’s failed history, what made you confident that you could pull this off? 

ES: Well, it was a big jump into the deep end, and I credit my bosses here who believed in the vision. We were born to do football and we believe that in America there is demand out there for more high-quality football across more parts of the year, and we knew that we could make the media part of it a success. In year one, it performed as well as any longstanding sports event in that second and early third quarter. We have a long-term plan for growth. We took our media expertise and put a group together that actually was able to do the football operations, health and safety protocols for the players, ticket sales and marketing for the whole league. We even sold rights to another media partner at NBC. One of the most unique things we did in 2022 was having a media company actually run a league. The crowning of a champion, for the first time since the ’80s, of a spring football league was definitely a unique moment for Fox Sports. 

B+C: Fox Sports is televising Super Bowl LVII. The last time Fox had the big game was in February 2020, just a month before the pandemic. Are you approaching post-pandemic Super Bowl coverage differently than in 2020?

ES: The other thing that was interesting for our last Super Bowl was that it was the NFL’s 100th anniversary, so the content, pregame and everything that the NFL wanted to accomplish along with us was totally different than this year’s event. That being said, every year the network is really responsible for making the Super Bowl bigger than the one before, so we work hand in hand with the NFL on what moments to discuss, what we want America to remember from the event and making the event as big as possible.

B+C: Will we see any new technological innovations during the game?

ES: We’re trying to do some things to get fans closer to the game, whether it’s with audio or new cameras. We usually end up doing some really interesting things from a graphics perspective or data perspective. I think this year, obviously, the thing that’s on top of everybody’s mind is the continued improvement of Damar Hamlin, so we’ll be figuring out how we could celebrate his recovery or improvement. Whatever that ends up being is going to be a great moment. 

B+C: Fox Sports has been aggressive in creating content around sports wagering. Do you believe that such content will inevitably have a major influence on the overall sports television marketplace?

MS: I think we were really aggressive moving into the wagering space, not just as a vehicle for advertising or taking advertising dollars. I’m pretty sure we’re the only media company that has an investment in horse racing wagering, with our 40% ownership in [the New York Racing Association]. We have Fox Bet, and we have our 18.66% [purchase] option in FanDuel. We’re in poker and iGaming and we’re the leading free-to-play app. We’re the only media company that is really invested from an ownership standpoint. So yes, wagering is having an impact and will have an even bigger impact as more states roll out [legalized sports betting]. 

I would say that specific wagering-only content is probably less important because that’s speaking to a niche of a niche. Rather, what’s happening is, in every NFL pregame show and college pregame show, someone is talking about odds, spreads, odds to win a championship or even prop bets. It really has become integrated into the mainstream. I think that’s the biggest impact — everybody feels more free to talk about and use wagering in an event. People now understand odds, so I think those things have the biggest impact today, but we haven’t been able to figure out yet whether wagering is having an impact on viewership. 

I think that the amount of sports on television clearly impacts wagering, because the more sports that you have and the bigger that you make those events, the more [bets] there are. But we don’t really see any evidence yet of wagers impacting viewership.

B+C: In 2019 Fox Sports exited the regional sports business. Given the recent upheaval and evolution within the category, do you see any value in potentially getting back into the regional sports business?

ES: I think there’s a lot of forces that will cause it to evolve, whether it’s a new business model for consumers, whether it’s technology, whether it’s owners and leagues having an expectation of economics that they eventually use to pay players and to put a product on the field. So there’s no question that it’s going to evolve. 

I feel like it will create opportunities for us at Fox, because I’m not sure that the … volume of games will still be played on what we consider to be an RSN. There still may be some, but there may also be the ability to put more games on broadcast television that used to be on an RSN. Look at what [Los Angeles Clippers owner] Steve Ballmer did out here with the Clippers — he just took more games off of his RSN to put them on a broadcast platform. When you’re in 210 markets around the country with a broadcast station, that gives you the opportunity to do a few local over-the-air pro game telecasts and take advantage of our structure, our broadcast nature and our broadcast reach. That might be the evolution of some of that RSN product.

B+C: What’s on your wish list for Fox Sports in 2023? 

ES: As we look at 2023, we have another really unique event in the Women’s World Cup, which is something that we’ve been planning for for years. It’s an event where you really root for the U.S. women’s national team to bring home another World Cup. It’s exciting for us to be able to serve as the flagbearer for women’s sports in this country at the highest level. I don’t think there’s anybody that invests more in the success of women’s sports. Also for us, it’s the beginning of the new NFL contract next year, so working with the NFL on some of the new rules around scheduling and what games we get.

I also want to continue to be the leader in holiday sports fare. It used to be that the holidays were not a great time to put sports on television, but now it’s the best time. Owning Thanksgiving, Christmas, and being around with sports content on New Year’s and Thanksgiving Friday and Saturday is really exciting for us, and that’s only really come around in the last three years for the most part. ￭

CBS Sports chairman Sean McManus has seen and worked through just about everything in his more than four-decade career as a TV sports executive, including a 25-year run as head of CBS Sports that started in 1996.

Yet no depth of experience or executive pedigree could have prepared McManus — or the television industry for that matter — for the unprecedented pandemic that has changed the face of the sports business and the world over the past 17 months. Yet McManus and CBS Sports absorbed the pandemic’s initial body blow in March 2020 and since then, he has steered the division’s ship through relatively uncharted waters. 

“I don’t care how experienced a workforce may be, they still take their lead and any resulting calm from shifting sands from their leader,” said James Brown, the Emmy-winning host of CBS’s The NFL Today. “As part of the calm that Sean works with, he had [pandemic] plans so well-articulated, detailed and executed, that he gave all of us a sense of calm in what was a very fluid environment.”  

Indeed, under the tutelage of McManus — and with great focus on safety protocols for employees and on-site production adjustments — CBS aired the PGA Tour’s Charles Schwab Challenge in Fort Worth, Texas, in June 2020, just three months after COVID-19 shut down all pro sports events. In doing so CBS Sports became one of the first major TV sports distributors to offer live programming, and it would go on to televise nearly a dozen consecutive weeks of golf events that provided a sense of normalcy to a very uncertain marketplace. 

“In an industry that is constantly evolving and shifting, Sean has been a constant — always thoughtful and committed — in helping us grow our business while promoting our players and tournaments and the positive impact they make in our communities,” PGA Tour commissioner Jay Monahan said. “Sean McManus has been a tremendous partner and friend of the PGA Tour for more than 25 years at CBS and a close friend and confidant to me personally.” 

In March of 2021, McManus and CBS Sports focused attention on March Madness, the NCAA Division I men’s college basketball tournament. CBS Sports teamed with WarnerMedia’s Turner Sports to televise every game from within a bubble in Indianapolis, after the 2020 tournament was canceled due to the pandemic. 

“Sean’s influence on the sports media industry has been profound and I greatly value our relationship as we work in partnership on the NCAA tournament each year,” WarnerMedia News & Sports chairman Jeff Zucker said. 

McManus also kept his eye on the business side, expanding CBS Sports’s already vast live sports rights portfolio by securing rights deals in July 2020 for the UEFA Champions League and the Europa League that are expected to drive avid soccer fans to CBS as well as Paramount Plus, parent ViacomCBS’s streaming service. He also sought to reach out to new and diverse audiences with a March 2020 deal to televise National Women’s Soccer League games on CBS, CBS Sports Network and Paramount Plus, to go with the company’s WNBA deal for CBSSN completed in 2019. 

“They didn’t take the pandemic as a chance to stop and hold stock; they took it as an opportunity to figure out how to grow from here,” said sports analyst Lee Berke. “[McManus] had the foresight to go after content that would draw younger audiences, international audiences and tech-savvy audiences. As a result, they’ve been able to integrate and exploit streaming as part of their overall sports programming offerings.”

In March 2020 McManus oversaw a reported 10-year, $2.1 billion  extension of CBS’s deal with the National Football League. The pact keeps the NFL on the CBS broadcast network through 2033 and provides valuable content for other ViacomCBS properties, including Paramount Plus. 

As part of the deal, CBS will air the Super Bowl — the most-watched television event of the year — three times, on the heels of the network’s successful presentation of a pandemic-challenged Super Bowl LV this past February. 

“Sean and CBS have a love and respect for football and the NFL brand that spans decades,” NFL commissioner Roger Goodell said. “Sean understands our history and our partnership and recognizes the unique and important role the NFL plays for CBS, and our entire country.”

Son of the longtime ABC’s Wide World of Sports host Jim McKay, McManus’s reach and influence goes beyond the field and the rights bargaining table. During his run at CBS Sports, McManus has not only garnered accolades from the sports world, but also within his own ranks as a hands-on leader who values relationships with his colleagues and peers. 

“He’s as well-respected and as classy as anyone you’ll find in the industry,” said CBS Sports president David Berson. “Everything he does is with the utmost integrity, and he really prioritizes relationships, internally and with all of our partners.”  

Added Goodell: “Sean is always professional, and his long successful career always provides a unique and important perspective. More than anything, what has always impressed me about Sean is his focus on our partnership. He always works to construct solutions that benefit both of us.” 

McManus, who also has a five-year run as CBS News president on his impressive resumé, is the B+C/Multichannel News Sports Executive of the year for 2021. McManus recently spoke about his decades-long run in the TV sports business, the challenges of dealing with the pandemic and the future of the sports television business in a wide-ranging interview, an edited transcript of which follows. 

B+C: When the sports industry was in the midst of the pandemic last summer, did you think that we would be where we are today with regard to the return of live sports events? 

Sean McManus: In early March, when sports were first stopped, we thought we might be out of the office for three months or so. Nobody thought it was going to be 14 or 15 months later that we were eventually going to be back in the office. But during the pandemic we did some remarkable television. We were the first ones to come back with major live sports coverage with the PGA Tour in June of 2020, and we did 11 straight weeks of golf from there. It was difficult and it was costly. We have all sorts of protocols but we got it done and we were proud of what we did this year during a pandemic. We completed a full season of NFL football and college football, and we did a Super Bowl. We produced a Final Four. We did The Masters and we did hundreds of hours of live and studio programming on both CBS Sports and CBS Sports Network. 

We’ve learned a lot of lessons — we’ve learned to be very agile and efficient, and we’ve changed the way we did a lot of our programming. In all the years I’ve been involved in television sports, the run that we had really starting when the pandemic began in March of 2020 to today, I think we’ve done some of the best work that we’ve ever done. And I’m as proud of the performance of the CBS team as I have been of any team that I’ve worked with, going back to 1977 when I started in this business at ABC. It’s been the most challenging, but also the most satisfying, run that I’ve ever been able to be involved in.

MCN: Let’s fast-forward to today. How important is sports content to the legacy, success and future of the CBS network brand? 

SM: Sports is playing an increasingly more important role in the world of media. It’s the highest-rated programming; it’s the most demographically attractive programming, and in many ways it is what is holding the traditional pay TV ecosystem in place. When you own a television network, it’s almost impossible for that network to be successful without major sports — with the NFL being the most important sport — but everything else, including college football and basketball and golf, is also incredibly important. As we are continuing to fight to try to aggregate an audience, whether it be on streaming, direct-to-consumer or whether it be on traditional television, sports is driving that distribution. It’s what gives us the most leverage with the cable, telephone and satellite operators, and as we move forward with ViacomCBS, it’s going to be increasingly more important. It’s also the No. 1 driver of sign-ups and retention for Paramount Plus, which is an enormously important priority for ViacomCBS. So, sports are going to continue to be important. It’s why we completed the recent NFL deal that we did, which will take us into the next decade. You do not want to have a broadcast network without NFL football. 

MCN: Let’s talk about the new NFL deal. The content distribution landscape has changed since CBS’s previous NFL deal was struck. How does the new NFL deal reflect the market changes going forward and will we ever see exclusive NFL games on Paramount Plus?  

SM: Well, already the NFL is carried on the [Paramount Plus] main and less-expensive tier, so the NFL already plays a really important part on Paramount Plus. But I don’t foresee right now a scenario where there’s a lot of other NFL content or exclusive NFL content on Paramount Plus, but the door is always open. We’re committed to working with our partners at the NFL and with our affiliates to make sure that we protect the exclusivity in every market, but also hopefully find ways to expand that distribution onto Paramount Plus, but there are no plans right now. The exclusivity is still a very important element for all of our affiliates and all of our owned-and-operated stations.

Quite frankly, the broad distribution is important to us and to the NFL. I’ve often said one of the reasons the NFL remained so popular is that it is so broadly distributed. Every NFL game is seen live in the home markets, even when the games are on ESPN; the two markets that are involved in the game have those over-the-air broadcast rights in the individual markets. So the broad distribution is still driving the business for us.

MCN: Will we see similar sports offerings like last year’s NFL game on Nickelodeon across other ViacomCBS brands? 

SM: I will say that we’re a very different company than we were when we were just CBS. We had a great portfolio of events, but we weren’t able to program them and promote them and brand them as effectively as we are now with the incredible assets that ViacomCBS has.

The Nickelodeon game is a great example of that. We did a separate telecast in the late afternoon wildcard game last year, which was met with unbelievably rave reviews. It was enjoyed by older fans and younger fans alike.

I think that’s just the beginning of scratching the surface of how we can use the various ViacomCBS platforms to really take better advantage of the great sports properties that we have. When you look at the promotional opportunities, whether it’s to young kids on Nickelodeon, or whether it’s to a  slightly older audience on a VH1 or MTV, or to an African-American audience on BET, we have remarkable assets that I think are going to enable us to be even more aggressive in the sports marketplace going forward. 

MCN: CBS Sports has aggressively pursued international soccer rights, including the UEFA Champions League. How do those rights fit into a broader multiplatform strategy?

SM: A couple of things — one, we want Paramount Plus to be a must-have for the soccer fan in this country, and I think we are a long way towards that goal. That includes the UEFA Champions League; Serie A; the U.S. soccer games that we have rights to; the Brazilian Soccer League, where we have rights; and CONCACAF, where we have rights. If you’re a soccer fan and in this country, you’re pretty frustrated if you don’t have Paramount Plus. It shows up in the numbers in terms of sign-ups and retention. It’s been a remarkably successful strategy in retaining and attracting audiences to Paramount Plus. 

Could I see us finding other sports that would serve that role on Paramount Plus? I do, but the soccer audience is in some ways uniquely complimentary to Paramount Plus. It’s a young, very diverse avid soccer fan that will find some big-time prestigious soccer programming on Paramount Plus. So we’re very happy with the results of our international soccer properties, and it’s going to remain a high priority of ours going forward.

MCN: Also in your portfolio are women’s sports with the WNBA and National Women’s Soccer League. What value does women’s sports offer to a live sports distribution company like CBS Sports? 

SM: We want to have as wide a funnel as we possibly can, and women’s sports fits into that strategy. The NWSL and the WNBA are very important for us. We’re the only network that does a female-hosted and produced talk show, We Need To Talk, which airs regularly, both on CBS broadcast network and CBSSN. So it’s part of our strategy to be a full service organization that attracts a large and diverse group of sports fans, including young people, older people, men and women — we’re trying to appeal to everybody and I think it’s working. We’ve been very strategic in the way we’ve gone about this plan and it’s really showing dividends right now. People are starting to notice the aggressiveness that we have in our programming across all of our platforms.

MCN: In terms of on-air talent, how important is diversity in front of and behind the camera from your perspective?

SM: It’s critical. We want our on-air talent to reflect the population of America. We’ve done a good job so far, but we have a lot more work to do for sure. I’m proud of the fact that we have some amazing female talent across all of our sports, whether it’s golf with [CBS golf reporter] Amanda Balionis or football and basketball with [CBS Sports broadcaster] Tracy Wolfson. [CBS Sports reporter] A.J. Ross is terrific, as is [We Need To Talk co-host] Katrina Adams — I could go down the list of women who really are fantastic broadcasters. We’ve made a lot of progress in the area of Black on-air talent for our shows and we’re well-represented, whether it’s JB (James Brown), who I think is the best studio host in America; Nate Burleson, who has been an enormous success on the NFL Today show; Charles Davis is now our No. 2 NFL game analyst; Greg Gumbel, who is the first Black man ever to call a Super Bowl and still has a prominent position at CBS Sports. I say that to say that we’ve made some progress but we have to do a better job going forward. 

MCN: CBS Sports over the past year or so has been aggressive in securing deals for live sports content, but recently you walked away from a potential IndyCar deal. What was it about that property that didn’t allow it to fit into CBS Sports’s portfolio?

SM: I love IndyCar racing. I grew up working on the Indy 500 and I was very involved with CART (Championship Auto Racing Teams) when it was launched on NBC in the early 1980s. We simply didn’t have room in our programming schedule for it. We have so much golf, college basketball and other programming that we just couldn’t find the windows on broadcast television that were necessary to do the deal. We never really even ended up talking economics or any other elements only because we just didn’t have the space for it. We’re committed to golf as an example on the weekend of the Indy 500 — we just can’t pre-empt our golf schedule because it’s a programming obligation we have. 

I had a couple of really nice conversations with [retired race car driver] Roger Penske who is a good friend who I’ve known since the early 1980s. It just wasn’t a deal that  we could accommodate from a programming standpoint. 

I am very excited about SRX [Superstar Racing Experience], our primetime series that recently concluded. It was met with rave reviews in the racing community. The drivers love it, and the shows were incredibly well-produced. It marked the first time that we’ve done major live car racing in a couple of decades, and it worked out really well for us. So we’re excited. 

MCN:  We talked a little about televising sports during the pandemic. How difficult was it to make the necessary adjustments from a production standpoint while negotiating the many date changes that pro sports leagues were forced to make due to the pandemic? 

SM: It was remarkable. We had to do a Masters in November — no one had ever seen the course on television in November. We had to work out a deal with the NFL to clear out a window early in the afternoon for The Masters, but it was so much fun. Since we knew we weren’t going to have any patrons, we were able to introduce some new technology that just blew people away. The fly cam on the 16th hole showed not only the 16th hole in a way that had never been seen before, but it also showed the relationship between the 15th green and the 16th hole. We had live drones flying around which, again, showed the course as it’s never been seen before.

After The Masters we went into the Super Bowl, which is one of the most difficult events to produce to begin with just because of the magnitude of it. Then we had to socially distance everything from our edit suites to our studios. We built a little city in Tampa, but it was built to the specifications of a pandemic, which was incredibly complicated. It took a lot of space, and money. Our control trucks and our mobile units had to be totally reconfigured again, and you’re not talking about two or three mobile units … you’re talking about numerous mobile units for videotape and audio and everything else. But we made it work. The only thing we didn’t get was a really good, exciting, thrilling game. It didn’t live up to expectations — if you were to ask at the beginning of the year what match up you wanted to see in the Super Bowl, it would have featured Tom Brady and Patrick Mahomes. That’s what we got, but unfortunately, we didn’t get a close game, but the production was remarkable. 

Then we went into the college basketball season and the NCAA men’s basketball tournament, which was obviously contested all in Indianapolis. Again, very stringent safety protocols for both CBS and Turner Sports, and it came off without a hitch. We had a bubble that was effective and safe for our production people and our announcers and management personnel. The [Final Four] semifinal games were as good a semifinals as we’ve ever seen. Once again, the championship game, unfortunately, didn’t live up to expectations. I worry about things I can control, and everything that we could have controlled in the NCAA men’s tournament and the Super Bowl I couldn’t be more proud of. And then we went down the following week to Augusta National with our 50 mobile units and all the different feeds. In terms of complexity of production, The Masters is probably the most complex. 

MCN: How do you see CBS Sports evolving now as we move closer to some sense of normalcy within the TV sports industry?  

SM: I think our strategy and our goal is to make sure that our content can be consumed anyway the customer wants to consume it. If he wants to watch it on broadcast television, he can do that; if he or she wants to watch it on a streaming service, they can do that with Paramount. Plus. If somebody wants to do it on a laptop or an iPad we want to make sure they can watch it on that platform also. So making sure that we’re reaching as much of the audience as we can is a high priority of ours. There’s no higher priority at ViacomCBS right now than Paramount Plus, and we’re going to continue to invest in sports to grow that platform. It’s also incredibly important for us to reach the widest possible audience that we can, and broadcast television is still the best way to do that. We are big believers in broadcast television — we think it’s a really good business from a financial standpoint and a programming standpoint. The NFL likes being on America’s most-watched network, as does the NCAA, the PGA Tour and PGA Championship. So we need to be a full-service broadcast network that is also reaching what is generally a younger and more diverse audience on different kinds of platforms. We’re trying to thread the needle. The most revenue is still coming from broadcast television, with the sale of commercial units and sponsorships, but that’s beginning to tip a little bit also, the other platforms are quickly catching up.

MCN: Is there room in that distribution model for CBS Sports Network? One of the network’s cable sports competitors, NBCSN, is shutting down after this year. How does CBSSN fit into the overall business strategy? 

SM: It’s a great companion to the broadcast network. I’m proud of the programming we put on there. We have resisted spending hundreds of millions of dollars in rights for major sports properties, but we have excellent programming whether it’s college basketball, college football the WNBA, some of UEFA games or other soccer programming. Studio programming is very successful for us — it gives us a live presence five days a week. So we’re fully committed to CBS Sports Network, and I think our strategy is the right one, which is to gradually improve the quality of the events which we are doing on a regular basis.

MCN: If we’re sitting here a year from now talking about the TV sports industry, does it look more like 2020 or 2019? 

SM: I think a lot of that depends on what happens to the country with respect to the pandemic, but all the arrows that I see are pointing up toward a return to normality. I can’t predict what’s going to happen with the virus; I’m hoping that the widespread vaccinations will continue so that we can really get a handle on moving forward in a regular way. So I think a year from now I’m hoping and I’m confident that we are going to be much, much closer to the way we’d been traditionally with our CBS Sports productions across all of our platforms.

Eric Shanks is sitting pretty as president, chief operating officer and executive producer of Fox Sports, a global sports behemoth that’s only getting bigger as it positions itself as a viable contender for the pound-for-pound TV-sports championship belt, currently held by ESPN.

As brand-building becomes more vital in a more complex TV advertising and distribution climate, Fox Sports has stepped up its game in 2015, securing rights to both marquee and fledgling sports properties that it hopes to turn into ratings gold in the near future.

The company’s decision this past February to extend its FIFA World Cup soccer rights deal through 2026 was vindicated in part on July 5, when the Fox broadcast network’s coverage of the U.S.-Japan Women’s World Cup final set a ratings record, averaging more than 25 million viewers.

Rights deals inked this year for such national properties as the National Hot Rod Association, Premier Boxing Champions, the Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show and Major League Soccer — as well as regional team and college-conference rights secured for several of its regional sports networks — have only enhanced Fox Sports’ profile within the TV sports universe.

Add the continued ratings growth of two-year-old national cable sports networks FS1 and FS2 through the addition of live Women’s World Cup games, regular and postseason Major League Baseball telecasts (including most of the just-concluded American League Championship Series), NASCAR races and Ultimate Fighting Championship programming, and its not hard to see why Shanks is among the most successful sports executives in the game today — and why he’s being recognized as the Multichannel News Sports Executive of the Year.

Shanks recently spoke with MCN programming editor R. Thomas Umstead about what made Fox Sports so successful in 2015, and about his take on the opportunities and challenges brought by new technologies altering the television landscape. An edited transcript follows.

MCN:Everyone is talking about this period as a golden age for television with regards to scripted programming, but I’m of the thinking that 2015 in particular has been a great year for sports, with a number of TV networks setting ratings records with live sports programming. From your vantage point, do you consider this a great time to be in the sports-television business?

Eric Shanks: More people are watching more sports than ever before, and I think the quality and the multiplatform access is driving a lot of that. The fact that you no longer are bound by being in a certain place at a certain time to watch the teams and the games you want to watch is one of the reasons I believe that sports seems to be rising above the rest, as far as it relates to media consumption.

Clearly, we’re in an age of transformation by new technologies, and the fact that consumers are in control now more they have ever been, and viewers have more choices than they have ever had, is a great thing. Sports continues to be the thing that brings communities, families and young people together, and gives us all something in common, whether it’s your favorite team or your favorite event or just the chance to get together and be a part of the community. Sports, probably unlike ever before, is the thing that holds tribes together.

MCN:To extend those sentiments to Fox Sports, how would you define the performance of Fox Sports this year?

ES: I think globally it has been a year that has been unmatched. What’s happening at Star in India is really incredible, being a leader in that emerging market and taking a leadership position in sports.

I do think that we’re coming into an era where, more than before, there will be clear winners and losers as it shakes out, whether it be through engaging in multiplatform distribution of content or the consolidation on the distribution side. The value of brands — and whether those brands deliver on their promise — will be judged by consumers in a way that we haven’t seen before. I think that Fox Sports, around the world and domestically, delivers on the promise of bringing the best and the biggest events and your local teams to you in away that creates real value.

It’s the Fox Sports brand, more so than niche brands, that is one of the things that consumers and distributors can see the value in. It’s the Fox Sports brand that brings them every game of their local baseball, NHL and NBA team; it brings you great college football, baseball playoffs; all the big events. I think that is what we believe is a winning formula going forward.

MCN:You mentioned bringing the best brands to consumers. Is that why you guys have been so aggressive with securing rights deals, certainly over the last 12 to 18 months, as well as bringing in some high priced on-air talent, such as Colin Cowherd? Is the need to define a brand much stronger in an environment that is uncertain at this point driving your acquisition strategy?

ES: Yes. I think once we made the decision to coalesce around big, multi-sport brands and Fox Sports or your local Fox Sports Arizona or Fox Sports Florida, you want to have the product to deliver on the promise of that brand. So whether it’s the Super Bowl, the World Series or the Daytona 500, we believe that having the content and the events that get people attached and engaged to your brand is delivering on the promise that we make to the viewer and to the fans.

I think we have been disciplined in our approach, but we have also been aggressive when we think it fits with our strategy. And there are segments of the sports-fan population, whether it be with the NHRA deal or whether it be with renewing the local team rights that we have done this year, that’s really delivering on the promise of the brand.

MCN:Another big acquisition was hiring Jamie Horowitz [former vice president of original programming and production at ESPN] as president of Fox Sports National Networks. Why was he the best person for that position and how has that worked out to this point?

ES: There is clearly an internal culture at Fox Sports that we believe is special and unique. Probably more so than any of the rights acquisitions that we’ve done, the thing I am most excited about is the increased energy that we have brought with the addition of Jamie and his team and the path forward.

I think that Jamie and his team fit really well because we recognized that going forward into year three, after some of the investments that we’ve made in live rights, that the next frontier for us is really in non-event programming and also in honing our big-events strategy and making our big events even bigger. And I couldn’t think of anybody that fit more perfectly with the culture of Fox Sports and the expertise that Fox Sports needs going forward than Jamie and the team that he has brought in.

MCN:Are FS1 and FS2 on pace with where you wanted them to be at this point?

ES: I think, as always, it’s not a straightforward answer. I think some of the things that we’ve done from a product standpoint and results standpoint are ahead, and some of the things are a work in progress. But we have more momentum, and I’m more energized about going into year three and with the team that we have assembled than when we launched.

Momentum is an amazing thing, both creatively and culturally, and I think we are on a path right now that is very encouraging. I think that I am more excited going into year three of our new national networks probably more so than when we launched, and a lot of it has to do with the fact that we have kept the culture of bold innovation and risk-taking intact.

MCN:You mentioned that with all these acquisitions and personnel hires, you have been disciplined in spending. Is there a ceiling that you have in mind for the amount of money you want to lay out for those particular acquisitions and are you close to that at this point?

ES: Whether it’s Fox Sports or any business on Main Street, you manage your business at the time and you evaluate opportunities that are in front of you for any number of reasons, whether it’s the growth aspect of the opportunity, or other offensive or defensive rationales.

We are the leading sports company in the world, we are always evaluating global opportunities and we are always evaluating opportunities that make us stronger and make the brand stronger and engage more with fans on any platform. That’s kind of our mindset going forward — making sure that it’s the right fit for our brand and that there is a rationale for doing it that meets with our business objectives.

MCN:The reason I ask is we’re seeing a change in the television marketplace with distributors losing subscribers and creating skinny bundles with fewer networks, and recalculating the value of existing cable networks. Can Fox Sports and the TV-sports industry in general continue to pay significant rights fees for sports content, given an uncertain future in terms of where the revenue to pay for those rights are going to come from, whether it’s from subscribers or advertising?

ES: I think that as a part of 21 Century Fox and as part of strong global brands, sports is one of the areas of strength within that portfolio, and we manage that strength and we look for opportunities. I think that this is an age of transformation, and we believe that strong brands will come through on the other side, probably stronger than ever.

Again, it goes back to a little bit of trying to predict the future, but also wanting to make sure that you’ve set the table for a business that is stronger in five years than it is today and we manage towards that. And so we have, I believe, the resources, the brands and clearly the opportunities to make that happen. So I think that’s how we look at the world.

MCN:One of the big franchises that you’ve secured long-term is the FIFA World Cup, and that immediately paid ratings dividends this past summer. Were you surprised by the enormous ratings the women’s tournament generated and did it exceed your expectations?

ES: I would say it exceeded our expectations to the nth degree. We had high expectations going in, and the script couldn’t have been written any better from our perspective. Clearly, there is a movement happening in women’s sports that has never been greater than it is today and it’s amazing to be a part of, whether it’s women’s soccer, whether it’s [UFC star] Ronda Rousey being one of the most popular athletes, male or female, on the planet — and having UFC as one of our core partners from the very beginning — or whether it’s Venus and Serena [Williams], no one can deny that this is the best time probably in women’s sports history.

Combine that with the fact that this is probably the highest point of soccer interest in this country. We believe that we are really only at the beginning of the second generation of soccer fans. So right now in this country, it’s the first time that sons, fathers, mothers and daughters have soccer in common because it really wasn’t until the ’70s and ’80s that we generated the first soccer fans in this country, and now for the first time those moms and dads that were the first soccer fans have kids of their own. So the idea that you start to see this exponential fan effect happening with soccer I think nobody can deny that it’s happening.

Being a part of those two things this past summer was absolutely incredible. It was a great experience for everybody involved at Fox Sports, and I think we’ll do everything we can to see those two things continue.

MCN:You mentioned the growth of soccer and you mentioned the UFC. What sport do you see that has the biggest growth curve in terms of audience and also just growing fan base?

ES: You know what I think the beauty is? You don’t know. I think that what we’ve done is created a portfolio of rights from the biggest events in this country like the Super Bowl and the World Series and the Daytona 500, and also in that portfolio are young, growing sports, like the UFC and soccer — both MLS and international soccer.

And the great thing about having a portfolio, whether it’s a sports portfolio that you can deliver to fans or your investment portfolio, you have that great mix. And if you’ve made some of the right investments, the entire portfolio grows — some faster than others at certain points. That is how we view our acquisition strategy, making sure that we have the right mix of growth sports and sports that deliver the consistent big events.

MCN:Continuing to look into the future, technology has been a big theme for you, from camera drones to talk about virtual reality. Why are such technological innovations so important to you and Fox Sports and what’s next on the horizon?

ES: Bringing the fan closer to the action has always been a goal for us, whether it’s our emphasis on audio and having probably invested more in audio and using audio as a means to bring fans closer to the game, or some of the new technologies like virtual reality. At the end of the day, there is a certain segment of fans that are going to want the experience of being at the event. And I think that our investment in virtual reality does that.

Being the first sports network to shoot an event with multiple drones all at once is an experiment in seeing what new perspectives we can bring to fans. There is a whole generation of sports fans watching on TV that the majority of their sports consumption has been through video games, and video games shoot sporting events much differently than we do. So, can we meld the two together? Drones are a big factor in being able to do that.

I think virtual reality is one of the things that we believe will eventually be uniquely positioned to bring fans closer to the game and the action. Then there’s simple things like our acquisition of a company called Pro Cast, which allows athletes to send footage directly to our servers here in the studio. That’s how we get our “On the Bus” segments, taking you on the bus with NFL players before they go to their game or leaving the house with a baseball player before they go to a playoff game is something that we weren’t able to do before without everybody having a camera in their pocket. The ability for these professional athletes now to connect with their fans and extend their brand through our broadcasts is exciting.

So everything we do has an eye toward the fan experience and bringing the fans closer to the game and inside the game, because there’s no doubt that the more engaged fans are the more they consume not only linear media but digital media, and that’s good for everybody.

MCN:Does that also help bring what is widely known in the industry as the “Fox attitude” to sports like golf, which hasn’t been covered that way by other platforms?

ES: I think the investment we made in the USGA this year clearly gave us, with some added technology, an experience that probably attracted hard-core fans because we heard that they can’t get enough of the ball tracer technology, the added microphones and the added camera angles. Hopefully what that does is not only enhance the experience for the fans watching USGA events but — whether it’s us or another network — help break new ground technologically, which drives the entire industry forward.

The innovations happening in the industry as a whole are really exciting. I think you see new innovations happening in every sport around every big event. And again, it’s fun to be a part of that competitive environment where your peers are constantly pushing you and you’re constantly pushing your peers to make the fan experience better.

MCN:Continuing on the competition theme, what do you make of new digital OTT services that are getting a lot of press these days? Do you foresee them ever getting into the sports business?

ES: I think whether it’s here in the States or around the world, I mean, we’ve dealt with competition for a very long time and that’s a good thing. As new people consider whether or not they want to be in the sports business, I think you have to believe in sports. We here at Fox believe in sports. We’re a content company and we believe in creating value through content, and sports are a big part of that. And I think that to have a long-term view, I think you have to be in the sports business for the right reasons, and that’s keeping the fan at the top of the pyramid.

MCN:How do you see overall distribution of content on various platforms other than traditional television? What is the future distribution platform for sports content?

ES: As far as multiplatform goes, it’s amazing. I remember 10 years ago when people were at conferences saying the Internet would never have the ability to deliver highquality video in a large number of streams. Well, in less than a decade, [Fox] and others are delivering the biggest sporting events in this country multiplatform, through the Internet. And I would say that it’s a great experience.

Having said that, it doesn’t seem like it’s something that today should be talked about as being distinct and apart from the creative process of sports. I mean — and I don’t think we’re unique in this — nobody around here thinks about the different platforms as it relates to our linear product. Nobody thinks about those different platforms at all.

We produce content and it’s so seamless to go between devices and have access across those devices. It kind of goes back to our original comment: You think about the brands and you think about the promise of those brands and the product that those brands should deliver to you, and I don’t think anybody really thinks about the difference between the TV on the wall and their tablet and their phone when it comes to getting access to that content.

Now I think that all of us have distinct digital businesses, whether it’s increasing engagement on social media or whether it’s on your website or whether it’s on your app, and I think that each media company has their strategies for the products on those different platforms.

So, we have products that are produced and delivered only through social media. We have multiplatform products, like [FS1’s] Garbage Time With Katie Nolan, that is really a multiplatform show that has a television component to it. But Katie is always on, whether it’s through social media or whether it’s through YouTube or whether it’s through any of our platforms we have for those products.

So, I hope that we’re at a moment in time where going forward we, in the industry, are starting to put ourselves in the fans’ perspective. I don’t believe the fans really think about the idea of, “Oh, I’m watching on my phone so it’s different than watching on my tablet.” They have more unparalleled access than any time before. And I think that we as a company believe that again our product has never been more accessible to more fans and that sports fans in general are really in an era of unprecedented control and unprecedented value and benefit for the sports product they get.

MCN:A couple of short questions for you: Biggest accomplishment in 2015 for Fox Sports so far?

ES: I think the product we put on the air for the Women’s World Cup.

MCN:Toughest call you had to make this year?

ES: I think because it had a very personal impact to a lot of people, but evolving the programming grid so far in 2015 for FS1. Obviously making some programming decisions that affected people here at Fox Sports.

MCN:Who’s coming out of the NFC this year, going to the Super Bowl?

ES: The beauty of the NFL is, we don’t know.

Highlight Reel: Fox Sports Milestones in 2015

Fox Sports president, chief operating officer and executive producer Eric Shanks oversaw a whirlwind of activity in 2015, including these headlines:

National Football League Gains

The NFL on Fox had its second most-watched year since the network began broadcasting NFL games in 1994, with an average audience of 20.7 million viewers. Fox Sports’s five most-watched NFL seasons have all come within the last five years. Fox’s “America’s Game of the Week” is the top program in television for six consecutive years.

FIFA World Cup Marks

Fox extended an existing contract with FIFA that gave Fox Sports the next six FIFA World Cups in international soccer. Coverage began with the 2015 FIFA Women’s World Cup, hosted by Canada. The 5-2 U.S. victory over Japan in the final game was the most- watched soccer match in U.S. history with 25.4 million total viewers, according to Nielsen. The 2015 tournament averaged 1.824 million viewers per each of the tournament’s 52 matches across all networks (Fox, FS1, FS2), up 21% over 1,511,000 averaged on ESPN and ESPN2 for 32 matches played in 2011.

MLS Games Return

In May, Fox Sports agreed to an eight-year deal to televise Major League Soccer (the top U.S. professional league) regular-season and playoff games, including MLS Cup and MLS All-Star Games (divided with ESPN). MLS had been on Fox between 2003 and 2011.

USGA Tees Off

Fox began a new 12-year partnership with the United States Golf Association, airing the first U.S. Open Golf Championship on Fox and FS1. Coverage included drones and virtual reality elements. Viewing averaged 3.5 million viewers across both networks, up 40% over 2014’s combined average on ESPN and NBC (2.5 million).

FS1 Viewing Grows

Fox Sports 1 (now branded as FS1), bolstered by Major League Baseball, the addition of NASCAR Xfinity and Sprint Cup races, soccer and the USGA Championship, saw a rise of 40% in total day viewers year over year when it turned two years old in August. Viewing of live events rose 53%, to average 488,000 vs. 319,000 a year ago, per Nielsen.

UFC Rises

UFC on Fox on Saturday nights held top spots in key male and adult demographics in broadcast and cable primetime: so far this year, UFC Fight Nights and pay-per-view preliminary matches on FS1 rose 24% versus the same period last year.

Horowitz Hired

Fox Sports president Eric Shanks hired former ESPN and NBC News executive Jamie Horowitz as president of Fox Sports National Networks, hired to develop original programming on FS1 and FS2. An early move was signing on-air personality Colin Cowherd; Fox later added widely read journalist Jason Whitlock.

Rights Gained, Renewed

Fox Sports extended its rights agreement for the FIFA World Cup through 2026; signed deals for National Hot Rod Association races, Premier Boxing Champions contests and the Westminster Dog Show. It inked key regional sports network renewals, including long-term rights deals with the St. Louis Cardinals and Arizona Diamondbacks.

SOURCE: Fox Sports

KICKING SOCCER UP A NOTCH

Fox Sports’s FIFA Women’s World Cup coverage this summer propelled the sport to record-setting ratings levels for U.S. televised soccer, claiming half of the 30 most-watched soccer events thus far this year. The July 5 Japan-U.S. final (won by the U.S.) was the most watched soccer match in U.S. TV history. Most of the other top soccer events on the year were Confederation of North, Central American and Caribbean Association Football (CONCACAF) international contests.

July 5 . . . . . . . . . . .USA vs. Japan . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .22,317 . . . . . . . . . . . . . Fox *

June 30 . . . . . . . . .USA vs. Germany . . . . . . . . . . . . .8,425 . . . . . . . . . . . . . Fox *

June 26 . . . . . . . . .China vs. USA . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .5,736. . . . . . . . . . . . . . Fox *

July 26 . . . . . . . . . .Jamaica vs. Mexico. . . . . . . . . . . .5,711 . . . . . . . . . Univision +

Oct. 10 . . . . . . . . . .USA vs. Mexico. . . . . . . . . . . . . . .4,814 . . . . . . . . Univision #

June 22. . . . . . . . . .USA vs. Colombia . . . . . . . . . . . . .4,716. . . . . . . . . . . . . . FS1 *

July 19 . . . . . . . . . .Mexico vs. Costa Rica. . . . . . . . . .4,664 . . . . . . . . Univision +

July 22 . . . . . . . . . .Panama vs. Mexico. . . . . . . . . . . .4,265 . . . . . . . . . .UniMas +

July 12 . . . . . . . . . .Mexico vs. Guatemala . . . . . . . . .3,746 . . . . . . . . Univision +

June 8. . . . . . . . . . .USA vs. Australia . . . . . . . . . . . . .3,311 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . FS1 *

Figures in thousands. * FIFA Women’s World Cup + CONCACAF Gold Cup #CONCACAF Cup

SOURCE: Ratings Intelligence analysis of Nielsen live-plus-same-day figures