Trillion-dollar tech giants are furlongs ahead in the race to capture cord-cutting sports fans, but Disney and other conglomerates are not going down without a fight as they leverage multi-platform portfolios to maintain pole position.
Etsuo Hara/Getty Images While NFL broadcasts are by far the most expensive among U.S. sports, Sunday Ticket isn’t the only major sports deal set to close this year. Media companies last week were invited to bid on U.S. rights for the Union of European Football Associations (UEFA). For comparison, NBCUniversal’s 2021 deal for English Premier League rights, which includes live games on USA Network, Peacock, NBC, and Telemundo, was worth $2.5 billion over six years. There’s a lot more where all that came from: Below is a look at the biggest live sports players, with who’s stealing share and who is getting picked off in the latest streaming-wars skirmish.
Netflix
After a long, public, never-live-sports stance, Netflix lost out to ESPN on the auction for Formula 1 racing rights. (Remember Reed Hastings’ long, public, never-commercials stance? We’re noticing a pattern here.)
Otherwise, Netflix’s drive to overcome its subscriber slide doesn’t seem to include other sports-rights plays. Netflix is not among the reported suitors for NFL Sunday Ticket. Adam Glanzman/Getty Images
Apple
There’s also Apple’s 10-year, $2.5 billion Major League Soccer deal, which begins in 2023. Apple will craft a new MLS service within the Apple TV app, making every single one of the league’s games — no blackouts — available along with other content (for an additional monthly fee).
Comcast
Comcast CEO Brian Roberts says he wants the NBCUniversal portfolio to “remain one of the premier” destinations for sports content. He can make a pretty good case that it will: NBC and Peacock have the Olympics through 2032 as well as TV’s top show, “Sunday Night Football” (and three Super Bowls — the top telecast of the year, every year), through 2033 at NBC. Select NFL games also stream on Peacock. Peacock also gets Sunday morning MLB games. And the streamer effectively bought WWE Network, the home to the world’s top pro-wrestling league, for $1 billion last year.
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Disney
The Disney sporting empire stretches from ABC to ESPN to ESPN+, giving the legacy player a fighting chance against disruption. Its new NFL contract means ABC is back in the Super Bowl rotation; regular-season games that air on ABC and ESPN, like its “Monday Night Football” package, can also stream on ESPN+. Disney also has flexibility to stream or broadcast NHL and MLB games and MMA fights as part of recent contracts and ESPN+ now serves as the exclusive destination for out-of-market hockey games. No wonder ESPN+ is getting so expensive: The cost of a subscription will go up in August, from $5.99 to $6.99 a month, or $69.99 a year. Disney took a loss earlier this year with its failed bid to hold on to Indian Premier League cricket streaming rights; they were a driver for Disney+ subscriptions in India, one of its largest markets. Paramount Global’s joint venture Viacom18 was the victor, paying $2.62 billion for a five-year deal. ESPN’s contract with the NBA ends with the 2024-25 season. It was signed back in 2014, eons ago in the media landscape, making basketball broadcasts the next streaming target. Sports rights represent just a fraction of Disney’s overall content spend. The company plans to spend $32 billion on content across all platforms in 2022.
Fox
Fox’s “America’s Game of the Week” has been a ratings juggernaut for 13 years — and counting, under the terms of its contract extension with the NFL. The re-upped deal is a win for Fox’s free streaming service Tubi, which launched 10 channels of sports following the deal, employing a nontraditional formula of “near-to-live” and highlights. The streaming-light Fox also owns exclusive rights to the MLB World Series and All-Star Games, in addition to Saturday doubleheaders and other games in a deal that expires at the end of the 2028 season. The broadcast network also airs “WWE Friday Night SmackDown” as part of a five-year deal that expires in 2024. WWE
Paramount Global
In addition to Paramount’s continuation of its Sunday-afternoon NFL package on CBS and Paramount+, the company’s broadcast network also holds rights to college football, March Madness, the PGA Championship and Tour, and the Masters. Paramount+ was an early streaming investor in soccer: It currently has U.S. rights for UEFA Champions League and Europa League, among others. It also offers NFL and NCAA games, thanks to its parent company’s rights portfolio.
Warner Bros. Discovery
The NBA’s current contracts with ESPN and Turner Sports expire at the end of the 2024-25 season. Like soccer, basketball’s younger audience makes it a strong fit for streaming and the NBA has been a major draw for TNT. But B/R Live has been a weirdly utilized sports-streaming hub, and HBO Max has almost no sports presence — yet. Before its merger with Discovery, WarnerMedia poached NBCU’s rights to air NHL games on cable, a deal that skates through the 2027-28 season. The agreement also includes the rights to stream games on HBO Max beginning at a to-be-announced date. Another possibility for HBO Max comes from Turner’s pact with WWE competitor AEW. Last month, Warner Bros. Discovery tapped former Univision executive Luis Silberwasser to lead its sports effort. He’s got his work cut out for him: CEO David Zaslav said he plans to be disciplined about content spending, but the cost of sports programming is not. Sign Up: Stay on top of the latest breaking film and TV news! Sign up for our Email Newsletters here.
