NBCSN will be no more by the end of the year. Live sports and studio shows are a major part of the strategy to differentiate Peacock from other OTT services in what has become a crowded marketplace. On Wednesday, The Hollywood Reporter asked what other sports cable networks may soon shudder their linear operations.
HBO Max and ESPN+ are both going to stream games as part of their parent companies’ deals with the NHL. CBS won the TV rights to CONCACAF tournaments, but seems more focused on putting those soccer matches on Paramount+ than on CBS Sports Network. It makes sense then that The Hollywood Reporter is thinking this way.
The website used NBCSN’s 80 million subscribers as the threshold for what networks could be faced with uncertain futures. ESPNEWS and Big Ten Network both fall short of the mark with 62 million subscribers and 57 million subscribers respectively. The chart also highlighted Discovery’s Destination America which doesn’t even have 50 million subscribers. It has carried professional wrestling in the past, but is not a true sports network.
It isn’t hard to imagine that Big Ten Network would go away anytime soon. FOX has not put a focus on creating a streaming platform for sports the way it has for news content. Plus, conference networks are a status symbol of the bond between the most powerful college sports properties and the TV networks they are partnered with.
ESPNEWS would seem like a possible candidate for extinction. The network’s programming could easily be folded into ESPN+ especially as more and more replays tend to populate its dayparts.
The Hollywood Reporter also quotes Pete Bevacqua, NBC Sports Chairman, on what shutting down NBCSN and moving more live games to USA Network would do for that outlet, saying that sports could make it “an extraordinarily powerful platform in the media marketplace.”
That could be another key to some smaller sports networks leaving the cable landscape. Moving live games to company’s largest cable outlets could be a better play for generating revenue.
Right now, no other studios have announced plans to shut down their sports networks, but at some point it is likely. The focus on streaming rights and the abundance of games that can fit on a streaming service as opposed to linear television will make it cost-effective to move sports to those OTT services exclusively.
