March 28, 2024

Premier League Coverage Pays Off for NBC

“How stereotypical,” said Rebecca Lowe, the host of “Premier League Live,” referring to drinking tea as she held a full Royal Wentworth cup.

 Lowe is part of the pervasive British flavor of the NBC Sports Group’s coverage of Premier League soccer, which began last month under a three-year contract. Her tea-drinking co-analysts that day, Robbie Earle and Robbie Mustoe, former players, are also British. All the games are produced in England by Sky Sports, BT Sport or the league, and are called by British announcers. Only the analyst Kyle Martino, a former Major League Soccer player who joins Lowe, Earle and Mustoe in the studio, is American.

In addition to the analysts’ expertise, NBC might be banking on the authenticity and familiarity that British voices and productions bring to the Premier League as the soundtrack for its coverage. But the network has taken an American approach to promoting the group, with billboards in Times Square and a humorous video starring the actor Jason Sudeikis as an American coach in England who does not know the rules of the game. The video promotion has been viewed online by more than 5.7 million visitors.

Lowe was tickled that she has delivered Premier League reports Sundays on NBC’s “Football Night in America” pregame show, bringing Wayne Rooney to an audience far more familiar with Dan Rooney.

“I’ve never been with a company that has invested so much on marketing,” said Lowe, who previously worked for ESPN U.K. and the BBC.

So far, the formula is working. NBCSN’s 22 telecasts have been seen by an average of 391,000 viewers, 70 percent better than the average game last season on Fox Soccer, which carried most of the games, and ESPN and ESPN2, which broadcast about one game a week in a licensing deal. NBCSN, however, has about twice as many subscribers as Fox Soccer. More important, at least to NBC, is that NBCSN’s daily viewership from Aug. 17 to Sept. 22 swelled 67 percent, to 77,000 viewers.

That is still a fraction of ESPN’s 1.2 million in that period and fewer than the month-old Fox Sports 1’s 121,000. But the highs are getting higher. Last Sunday afternoon, 852,000 viewers watched Manchester City trounce Manchester United, 4-1, in one of the Premier League’s marquee early-season matches. That was the biggest audience so far on NBCSN.

John Guppy, a veteran soccer executive who founded Gilt Edge Soccer Marketing, said, “What they’ve done — and it’s not that Fox didn’t do it, but maybe it comes across more directly to consumers — is they’ve made the Premier League feel special and important.”

NBCSN has become the NBC Sports Group’s Premier League centerpiece, filling as many as 40 hours a week on the cable network. Mark Lazarus, chairman of the NBC Sports Group, said the kickoff times of Premier League games, as early as 7:45 a.m. on Saturdays on the East Coast, had helped. Even the day’s latest matches start before American football games begin to dominate the channel lineup.

“They’re largely in windows without live sports,” Lazarus said. “It’s not totally unencumbered, with college football Saturday afternoon and the N.F.L. on Sunday. But the beauty of this league is that it goes from August to May.”

The Premier League’s success has helped Major League Soccer, which also has games on NBCSN. Viewership of the eight M.L.S. games on the network since coverage of the Premier League began on NBCSN has jumped 60 percent, and the number of unique visitors to M.L.S. games streamed by NBC has soared 322 percent. All of that should help M.L.S. in talks to extend its contract beyond next season.

For the NBC suite of networks, the Premier League was a property to covet. NBC wanted to capitalize on the league’s popularity and to breathe oxygen into NBCSN, which will show 154 of the 196 games that the NBC family of networks is televising; NBC is showing 21 games this season, with others on CNBC, USA, Telemundo and Mun2.

Another 184 games, which are not being televised, are available free at Premier League Extra Time, a service available to cable, satellite and telephone subscribers. The entire season of 380 games is being streamed on NBC Sports Live Extra.

Lazarus is politic enough not to declare that NBCSN’s identity has quickly become tied inextricably to the Premier League. That would irk other leagues it carries or longtime properties, like the Tour de France. NBCSN also carries the Olympics every two years.

Still, during an interview here at NBC Sports international broadcast center, Lazarus said: “It’s part of our definition, but you have to put it up with the N.H.L. This adds another pillar product to go with the N.H.L., and I think Nascar will be the third.”

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/28/sports/soccer/premier-league-coverage-pays-off-for-nbc.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

NBC Gets More Than It Expected

NBC got a great deal: it paid nothing for the Cup races — the America’s Cup Event Authority bought time on NBC and NBCSN and sold advertising to its sponsors — and used the race production that was hosted by the Cup. But NBC also got lucky, televising a remarkable comeback.

On Wednesday, Oracle Team USA, which once trailed Emirates Team New Zealand, 8-1, won its eighth race in a row to finish with a 9-8 victory.

“It clearly exceeded our expectations,” said Greg Hughes, a spokesman for NBC Sports Group. “It’s been compelling, and it was extended through the last possible race.” He added, “It was a good deal for them and a good deal for us.”

The result may entice NBC to carry the next America’s Cup, which will take place wherever Larry Ellison, the billionaire behind Oracle, decides to stage it.

“We’ll certainly talk to them about it,” Hughes said. “It’s a quality event.”

He would not comment on whether the comeback story would make the America’s Cup valuable enough for a network like NBC to pay a rights fee.

Geoff Mason, a member of the America’s Cup advisory board, is a veteran observer of the race. He has been a producer, an executive producer or a director of six Cups. But rather than being in San Francisco, he was watching at home in Florida.

“The images were maybe the most exciting images I’ve seen in sports,” he said. “Compared to what we put on the air from Fremantle in 1987, it’s like comparing this year’s Super Bowl to the regional college football game I produced in 1968.”

NBC and its cable network, NBCSN, showed 13 days of racing starting on Sept. 7. NBC averaged 1.05 million viewers on the first two days; through the next 10, including Tuesday, NBCSN averaged about 165,000 viewers — about twice what it usually attracts from 4 p.m. to 6 p.m. Eastern.

Put into context, the America’s Cup races attracted more viewers for NBC Sports Group than for Major League Soccer games (111,000) but fewer than it received for its live Tour de France coverage (287,000) or its Formula One races (203,000 to date).

More viewers tuned in to the Cup on weekends (the peak of 244,000 was reached Sept. 14).

The most viewed weekday was Tuesday, when an average of 182,000 watched Oracle win two races to tie the races at 8-8.

The America’s Cup was once a much stronger draw. The event became a late-night sensation in 1987 from Fremantle, Australia. In the final race, when Stars and Stripes defeated Kookaburra III, nearly 1.9 million television households watched on ESPN.

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/26/sports/nbc-gets-far-more-than-it-expected-from-cup.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

Analysis: A Lost Chance at Redemption for Ebersol

It was a characteristic gesture. Ebersol exuded confidence at NBC Sports. He had been a star executive at NBC for almost 40 years; a masterful press agent for NBC and for himself; a story-telling executive who loved to produce big events; and the production monarch of the Olympic control room.

So in the late spring air of Lausanne, Switzerland, it was not surprising to see him puff to a victory not yet declared, but one that he had a strong hunch that he had won. “We came to play,” he said.

And when NBC did win, it was by an overwhelming margin: NBC had bid $2.2 billion; Fox, $1.3 billion; and ESPN’s offer had been to share advertising revenue with the Olympic committee. In defeat, Fox and ESPN executives cited their fiscal prudence; in triumph, Ebersol said the bid was not wild at all, but based on “conservative figures” and a knowledge of television economics that his competitors lacked.

He was wrong. He overbid dramatically, with the backing of NBC’s parent at the time, General Electric, and the recession hurt advertising. The 2010 Vancouver Winter Games lost $223 million, astonishing for a 17-day event. Next year’s London Summer Games, which cost a record Olympic rights fee of $1.18 billion, are expected to lose at least as much, and Comcast, NBC Universal’s new owner, will have to absorb it.

Ebersol will not get a chance to redeem himself or lead NBC back to Lausanne on June 6 to the negotiation for the 2014 and ’16 Olympics. He resigned on Thursday, losing a power play with Stephen B. Burke, his boss since earlier this year when Comcast took control of NBC Universal.

Comcast named Mark Lazarus as Ebersol’s successor as the chairman of the NBC Sports Group — an exchange of an above-the-title executive star (notice the size of the letters of Ebersol’s name in the credits for “Sunday Night Football”) for a low-key, accomplished executive from the business side of cable.

Instead of Ebersol playing the Olympic maestro in presenting NBC’s plan to the I.O.C. next month, it will be his protégé, Gary Zenkel, who disdains the public profile that Ebersol embraced.

NBC will face ESPN and Fox in what could be a fascinating game of financial chicken with the I.O.C. All are preaching financial sanity publicly and privately. Burke recently said: “We’re here to be disciplined. Our job is to increase value.” Sochi, Russia, the site of the 2014 Winter Games, is considered by all three media companies to be worth much less than Vancouver, which cost NBC a rights fee of $820 million.

Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, where the 2016 Summer Games will be held, is an exotic locale, and the first Olympics in South America. It is in a time zone well situated to show the majority of events live. But will any network operating rationally bid more than the $1.18 billion that NBC is paying for London?

The I.O.C. has delayed the auction to let the economy recover from the recession.

But in that time, NBC, its best friend in television, merged with Comcast, and Ebersol, a recipient of the I.O.C.’s Olympic Order medal and its closest ally at NBC, is gone. And Comcast — a cable company and programmer — does not have the industrial assets like those that compelled G.E. to buy an Olympic sponsorship for about $200 million to sweeten the oversized Vancouver-London bid; that sponsorship led to hundreds of millions of dollars in contracts around the 2008 Beijing Summer Games. The Walt Disney Company, which owns ESPN, is considering a sponsorship, Sports Business Journal has reported.

Ebersol’s departure was not altogether surprising, but the timing was. He was expected to lead the bidding in Lausanne and oversee all the production in London. He has a deep bench to replace him in the London control room. But while Comcast viewed him as an executive who had to learn its ways, G.E. treated him like show-business talent, as it had also treated Lorne Michaels, the producer of “Saturday Night Live.”

Ebersol was admired, followed and sometimes feared within NBC. He built a core group of loyal executives and producers. Comcast had no such loyalty to him and was unwilling or unprepared to accept his penchant for behaving like a corporate king with the sort of freewheeling portfolio he had had under G.E., where he advised on decisions in news, late night and entertainment. Last year, he famously leaped to the defense of Jay Leno, whom NBC returned to his previous role as the host of “The Tonight Show,” replacing Conan O’Brien. Ebersol said, “What this is really all about is an astounding failure by Conan.”

A person who has observed Ebersol’s interactions the last few months, but was not authorized to speak publicly, said he could be dismissive, difficult, meddlesome and patronizing, and acted as if he deserved to be treated in a special way. In a statement, Ebersol said: “There were no meaningful clashes whatsoever between me and any Comcast executive. I’m not interested in responding to fiction. I’ve moved on.”

Ebersol could not have predicted in 2003 how his NBC career would end. But as he basked in winning the rights to the 2010 and ’12 Olympics, he looked ahead and said, “This will be my last Olympic negotiation.”

Article source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=05d7acabe15fe8111062bff6088506e3