Big games showing up on cable is nothing new. Nowadays, those games aren’t just limited to ESPN or FS1. There’s a reason for that according to a new column from Variety.
TBS has added more baseball games. TNT added the NHL to complement its NBA schedule. NBC shifted the Premier League, motorsports, and golf to USA after NBCSN shut down last year. Starting in 2023, FX will get back into sports, airing XFL games.
“The core reason for all of this is that they need to slow down cable erosion,” says Daniel Cohen, Octagon’s Executive VP of media rights consulting, told writer Brian Steinberg. “How you do that is through live sports.”
Former FOX Sports executive Patrick Crakes told Steinberg it is largely a no-risk play. Sports will draw a bigger audience, which will see promos for the network’s other programming. Plus, there is no risk of alienating the current audience, because sports are being added to the current programming, not replacing it.
The prestige programming that cable thrived on in the early 2000s still exists, but audiences now demand that it be available to stream on-demand. That has lead to Netflix and Disney+ subscriptions replacing cable entirely in some households and the demand for services like HBOMax in others. Cable networks can not rely on those shows to generate the ratings they used to.
Not only do live sports benefit the networks, but the networks’ need for event programming is also benefitting leagues. Multi-billion dollar investments in the NFL, college football, and soon the NBA, likely do not happen without the shifting media landscape that has segmented audience and diminished live viewing.
