
#252 Peacock’s Exclusive Playoff Game Drives 23 Million Viewers And MLB’s Rule Changes Lead To Record Revenue
The Joe Pomp Show
The Future of Pay-Per-View Streaming in Sports Media
Exploring the impact of exclusive streaming events, such as a late-night football game on Peacock, on the sports media landscape. Discussing the strategies of major companies like Amazon and Paramount in investing heavily in NFL rights and shifting towards event-driven sports content on streaming platforms.
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Speaker 1
I get the overall thought process that if you're paying to watch an event, then you shouldn't have commercials like pay per view. But at the end of the day, I mean, you're paying for YouTube TV. You're paying for Sunday ticket. You're paying for Amazon. All these other things have commercials. You're not necessarily doing it just because it's pay per view. I mean, peacock has a bunch of other things that you're paying for, too. It's a subscription service. And to be honest, it's relatively cheap compared to all the other ones. Now, I would argue that just because it's cheap isn't the reason to go buy to watch this football game. It's also because you're going to set a standard, right? Now that 23 million has been hit for peacock, they're going to do more of this. They're absolutely going to do more of this. And again, the thing that peacock did really well was they were advertising other things during the game, advertising other content. Many of you saw, I saw online that Oppenheimer was advertised during the game, how it's coming to peacock, how they have big 10 basketball rights, how they have rights to the PGA tour, how they have rights to WWE, how they have rights and community, right? They showed you all of their insularity benefits so that you do not cancel. Now, that's not to say that people didn't cancel. I bet a ton of people canceled. I would love to see the numbers and we will see the numbers in the next few months when peacock reports some of their numbers. But the more interesting part to me is what this does for the future. Now, one thing that I've been a weary dimension is how this impacts games in the future. What games specifically might be behind the paywall? And what I'll say about that is that the biggest games, the Super Bowl, the AFC NFC Championship, I do not think those are going to be placed behind a paywall anytime soon. I think those are going to be free to air. I think everyone's going to be able to watch them. And most importantly, most of those rights have already been figured out over the next decade because the media rights are locked in from companies like Fox, CBS, ESPN, et cetera. So I don't think those games are going to be high. But you can't tell me, you cannot tell me that all the other streaming services. We're talking about Amazon. Amazon is already paying a billion dollars for NFL rights. We're talking about Paramount, right? Paramount Plus. We're talking about other companies like ESPN Plus. These companies are already spending their parent companies already spending billions of dollars a year on rights to the NFL. You're telling me that they don't see this number 23 million for a game, albeit, right? This was the best game of the weekend. I had the best storyline with my homes, with Travis Kelsey, with Taylor Swift, with Tuo, with the dolphins, with their inability to play in cold weather, with the weather itself, right? All the videos were coming out of the bottles, freezing and everything else. It was going to be below freezing. One of the coldest games in NFL history. The storyline lined up perfectly for Peacock. It was absolutely amazing. Everything they could have dreamed of. But even without that, a streaming exclusive game getting 20 to 23 million viewers is absolutely insane. And every other streaming service that you can imagine that has affiliation to the NFL is going to want one next. So look, we may see one as early as next year. This is an event driven business. It's the same reason why these streaming companies are willing to pay more than $100 million for a game on Black Friday. It's the same reason why we'll probably see one on Thanksgiving Day or Christmas Day or Christmas Eve or the playoffs because it's an event driven business versus an inventory business, like some of the other professional sports leagues that you guys know. The NFL is dominating the media landscape today and it's only getting stronger. It feels like all of the dollars that are in sports business are moving away from smaller sports like baseball, like basketball, like hockey, like soccer. And they're just moving towards football. Right. The way I like in this, right, is if you're a brand and you're doing a partnership, you could go out and you could go do a bunch of smaller deals with a bunch of smaller creators, right? Or you could go out and you could sign the biggest creator. And in most instances, that big creator is actually going to get you more value than all of the other small ones lined up. And it's going to be easier to facilitate because you're doing one deal versus a million deals. And that's exactly what I think we're seeing in the sports media landscape. Increasingly, the biggest companies, ESPN, CBS, Fox, et cetera, they're all positioning their money and pushing it in a pile towards football, both the NFL, but also college football. And they're doing that because they know that it demands attention more than anything else. I mean, you could literally play an NFL game. They're doing it at 9 a.m. You could do it at 1, you could do it at a 4, you could do it at 8 30. Hell, you may even be able to do it at midnight. We literally saw this with Colorado earlier this year. It was one of the highest rated college football games of the year. And it kicked off at like 11 p.m. or midnight, whatever it was on the East Coast. This is something that is exclusively relevant to football. And it's one of the things that I think media companies are going to continue to push the boundaries on. They're going to continue to push money towards the rights of the NFL and college football. And more importantly, as the cable bundle continues to decline and streaming services become more important in the overall package of media rights for these leagues, we're going to see more exclusive games that counts for peacock, accounts for Amazon, accounts for Paramount Plus. I'm sure we're going to see a game ESPN Plus and more. This isn't going away. And everyone that said they weren't going to watch it, whether they were accurate in that statement or whether they lied. The numbers indicate that many people, enough people watched it. And it's enough reason for all these other streaming companies to say, hey, that was a pretty good move by Peacup. They just acquired a boatload of customers. They got talked about online. It's going to end up being a profitable endeavor for them, whether it's today or whether it's a year from now, once we find out the lifetime value of those consumers, we should go do the exact same thing. Hey, executives at ESPN. Hey, executives at Paramount. Hey, executives at Amazon. Let's go get ourselves one of these games. I don't care. It costs $100 million. Heck, we may even pay $150 million, $200 million, depending on the game. It's going to be worth it. I think we're going to see more of that in the future. That doesn't mean it's good for the consumer. It doesn't mean that I like it. People are going to continue to complain.
This podcast breaks down the numbers behind Peacock’s exclusive NFL playoff game, including total viewership, future implications, and more. We also discuss how MLB’s 2023 rule changes led to record ticket sales and revenue. Enjoy!
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