The Athletic’s Richard Deitsch said on his podcast, Sports Media with Richard Deitsch, he would not be surprised to see more than one streaming-exclusive NFL playoff game by as early as next year. Deitsch had Sports Business Journal’s Managing Editor/Digital Austin Karp as his guest and the two discussed NFL streaming as well as other topics such as the Daytona 500 TV ratings, the upcoming Men’s and Women’s NCAA basketball championships and more.
Last week, CNBC’s Alex Sherman reported Amazon will pay $150 million to exclusively-stream an NFL Wild Card playoff game after reports had first indicated the number would be $120 million. This past season it was Peacock who started the trend as the first to exclusively stream a playoff game, with a $110 million price tag.
“We are going to read this headline now every year,” Deitsch said. “Whether it’s Amazon or someone else, and I would not be surprised if in short order, if we move very quickly to a second postseason game behind a paywall…It would not surprise me if next year someone like an Amazon or somebody else had two of them.”
Karp agreed with Deitsch, saying, “…It has proven out that you can draw a comparable audience for the Wild Card round. As far as sports moving over to streaming with big events like this, it’s incremental. And, I agree, you’re going to see, eventually in the next year or two years, whatever it is, another Wild Card game that is going to be on a streaming platform. It just makes sense, that’s where the eyeballs are going and we have shown that the audience numbers can match what linear TV was able to produce for that round.”
One other item of note covered by Deitsch and Karp was the future of the Sports Media Podcast. Previously the podcast had been hosted by SBJ’s John Ourand along with New York Post senior sports media columnist Andrew Marchand. However, both have changed employers with Ourand now at Puck News and Marchand moving over to The Athletic.
Karp has taken over hosting duties and said, “We are going to stay, obviously, very focused on what our bread and butter is – sports business and sports media, in particular. But, maybe you will see us branch out a little more…We want to try to keep as many of the smart talk elements, and really lean in to what SBJ has been doing for close to 30 years, giving you an insiders look into sports business.”
