I am always pro-innovation and evolution. When a new network or station launches, I root for their success. I am also a realist, so while it is exciting for our industry that Amazon is diving head first into the sports content space, I have ZERO faith any of these forthcoming studio shows will make an impact.
So much of success in the content industry is about changing and creating habits in your audience. Amazon isn’t just working against longer-established brands like ESPN and FS1. It is also working against history. People aren’t flocking to streaming services for any sports content that isn’t live games.
Now look, I get that every journey of a million miles starts with a single step. Those viewing habits will not change until there is a chance for them to change. Someone has to step up and offer an alternative before the audience thinks about abandoning traditional TV to get its “embrace debate” fix.
Look at the names being thrown around as potential fits and targets for Amazon’s sports studio shows though. The Big Lead’s Liam McKeon published a piece last week naming Kyle Brandt, Jenny Taft, Andrew Hawkins and Bomani Jones as good targets.
No offense to anyone listed, but aside from Jones, do any of them move the needle? Are you going out of your way to launch an app and stream a show featuring Kyle Brandt or Jenny Taft? They’re good at what they do, but they are reporters. What about Hawkins? He is a former player and analyst. If that is what you are building a show on, you don’t have something to compete with First Take or Undisputed. You have another in a long line of SportsCenter imitators.
If you’re going to compete with Stephen A. Smith, you better be coming with a real flame thrower of a talent. It needs to be a big name and that person needs to strike a cord. There is no in between on people like Smith or Bayless. You either love them or hate them, but you absolutely react to them. No one on McKeon’s list does that.
The goal of Amazon has never been to be a network or even a store. Jeff Bezos has eyes on being Galactus, Devourer of Worlds!
He wants that company to be unavoidable. Like a Bond villain, the goal is to profit from everything. If you want to do that, you need to be as inoffensive and generic as possible. You cast the widest net by risking the least. Have you ever heard of a sports media brand that has found success with that strategy?
Look, Amazon is going to have success in the sports media space. It will have an exclusive NFL game every week beginning next season. That includes a playoff game. We are a football-addicted nation. The audience will be there for the live games, but I find it hard to believe it will be coming to Amazon for anything else.
Streaming services create hits when they deliver something incredible on their audience’s schedule. As a nation, we stop for new episodes of The Mandalorian because there is nothing else on TV like it. We share theories about each new season of Stranger Things because it is a masterclass in monsters and mystery.
What is Amazon going to offer exactly? What can you do in the realm of sports debate or other daytime programming that the audience won’t say “yeah, we’ve seen this before”?
In the quest to become an industrial bully, Amazon has become good at several things and great at nothing. I don’t know how you get the kind of wins the company is seeking if that is how you operate. Good sports TV can find a path to survival. If you are on the right channel lineups across the various cable/satellite/digital platforms, you can find an audience by converting those that stumbled upon you into devotees. With streaming though, you are asking people to put forth effort. They have to either love you or be curious enough to make a conscious decision to seek you out.
Live streaming content is very different from batteries or pants. You can’t just make a cheaper version of what your competitors do and expect to survive. Amazon has become so used to being able to bend the market to its will that I don’t think the company has the stomach for a fight where the only way to win is to change the fanbase of an industry it hasn’t even introduced itself to yet.
Demetri Ravanos is a columnist and features writer for Barrett Media. He is also the creator of The Sports Podcast Festival, and a previous host on the Chewing Clock and Media Noise podcasts. He occasionally fills in on stations across the Carolinas in addition to hosting Panthers and College Football podcasts. His radio resume includes stops at WAVH and WZEW in Mobile, AL, WBPT in Birmingham, AL and WBBB, WPTK and WDNC in Raleigh, NC.
You can find him on Twitter @DemetriRavanos or reach him by email at DemetriTheGreek@gmail.com.
