E180: The Bundle #12

This is episode 12 of The Bundle, our regular deep dive in to the media rights market with regular co-host Yannick Ramcke and our guest is Murray Barnett, ex ESPN, World Rugby, F1 and current founder of D2C Sport.

If you like the podcasts you’ll love the Unofficial Partner newsletter, that goes direct to the inbox of thousands of senior executives across the global sports business every Thursday. 

To join them, sign up via unofficialpartner.com 

Here’s ten things we talked about:

1. Amazon is beginning to look like just another sports broadcaster. 
2. There’s fun to be had over-interpreting the basket case that is the French sports rights market. Amazon price structure for Ligue 1 suggests the end of cross-subsidization, which could be good news for rights owners; increases potential for future rights acquisitions. 
3. The Bundle price inflation: ESPN just announced their second rise in 2021. 
4. Does ESPN have an international vision, or it just an American thing? I live in the UK and never think of subscribing and I wonder if that’s significant. 
5. Does corporate memory shape strategy? ESPN got burnt from their experience with Premier League a decade or more ago, picking up scraps from Setanta and then losing them to BT Sport four years later. Does that experience still shape the company’s strategy, even though the people at the top are different?
6. The reason Big Tech and football don’t fit seems too obvious: Football is a market by market thing whereas tech platforms are about breaking down that structure, like music, films and shopping. Note, Netflix is going after gaming not sport.
7. Amazon’s NFL deal is an enormously expensive anomaly. 
8. DAZN x YouTube x Women’s Football: Globalization driving increased sponsorship opportunity; Limited downside, unlimited upside; UEFA’s recent deal for the Women’s Champions League could be the most significant of the year.
9. When does a rights holder become a betting company? DraftKings new MLB deal includes live games alongside odds. The US discovers betting (streaming) rights, already a constant (and significa

Unofficial Partner is the leading podcast for the business of sport. A mix of entertaining and thought provoking conversations with a who's who of the global industry.
To join our community of listeners, sign up to the weekly UP Newsletter and follow us on Twitter and TikTok at @UnofficialPartner

We publish two podcasts each week, on Tuesday and Friday.

These are deep conversations with smart people from inside and outside sport.

Our entire back catalogue of 400 sports business conversations are available free of charge here.

Each pod is available by searching for ‘Unofficial Partner’ on Apple, Spotify, Google, Stitcher and every podcast app.

If you’re interested in collaborating with Unofficial Partner to create one-off podcasts or series, you can reach us via the website.