After a 38-year stretch televising National Football League games, CBS lost its television broadcasting rights to the property in 1993. The palpable loss reverberated throughout the network as FOX bid $1.58 billion over four years and established its own sports division, which included several on-air talents that had previously been on CBS. From the moment Sean McManus joined CBS Sports approximately three years later, he was obsessed with finding a way to rekindle a media rights deal with the NFL. At the same time, he was working to bolster the quality of the company’s productions and assimilating into the role of working as president of the division.
Shortly after CBS lost broadcast rights to the NFL, Major League Baseball began a joint broadcasting venture with ABC and NBC called The Baseball Network, in which it would produce the telecasts independently and engage in revenue sharing. Although the undertaking rendered itself evanescent after nearly a year-and-a-half, it ended the contract with CBS, which then tried to land National Hockey League rights. FOX ended up outbidding CBS again and started presenting regular-season matchups, Conference Finals and Stanley Cup Final matchups. CBS suddenly fell from the top-ranked network in prime-time television to No. 3 overall in the category, representing a challenge for McManus and CBS network president Peter Lund.
“The odds were really stacked against us,” McManus said. “Nobody thought we were going to be able to pull it off because everybody had seen what happened to CBS when they lost the NFL, and in my mind, nobody wanted to go through that again because it was just a devastating loss to the network.”
Over the ensuing weeks and months leading up to negotiations, McManus understood that the network was perceived as a longshot to reacquire broadcasting rights to the league. Throughout his early tenure with the company, he made a concerted effort to interact with NFL owners, such as Robert Tisch, Jerry Jones and Robert Kraft. Additionally, McManus spent considerable time with league commissioner Paul Tagliabue and outlined a plan implementing various programming, production and financial elements that he believed would benefit the NFL.
“We were fortunate in that NBC was focused more on prime time and we were focused just on the AFC package, and we spent enough money and spent enough time with the league and the owners to convince them that our deal was the best one for the AFC,” McManus said. “We paid a lot of money and a lot of people thought we were going to lose a lot of money, but we ended up making money every year of the deal despite the $4 billion price tag for the eight years.”
History in Las Vegas
Twenty-six years later, McManus was in Las Vegas, ahead of Super Bowl LVIII for the final time as chairman of CBS Sports. Over his time leading the company’s sports division, he retained the NFL during every rights negotiation, serving in a pivotal role as it built its NFL on CBS property and broadcast eight Super Bowl matchups. The ninth Super Bowl under his leadership ended up being an all-time classic that resulted in the Kansas City Chiefs defeating the San Francisco 49ers, garnering a total audience delivery of 123.4 million viewers across all platforms, including CBS, Paramount+, Univision and various digital properties.
The quantitative triumph represents the most-watched telecast ever recorded by Nielsen Media Research and was also the most-streamed Super Bowl in history as well. In addition to the traditional telecast, Paramount Global offered an alternate broadcast on Nickelodeon featuring characters from the original animated series, SpongeBob SquarePants. The first-of-its-kind Super Bowl secondary presentation implemented augmented reality and other related content throughout the week. Successfully executing both broadcasts and exhibiting the breadth of the Paramount Global portfolio required collaboration, foresight and adaptability.
“All the Super Bowls we’ve done have been amazing projects,” McManus said. “This one, we put more resources and more effort into it than ever before. We started promoting it on the Paramount platforms literally the day after Super Bowl LVII. We had weekly meetings for more than a year on everything from the production plan, the creation of our sets at the Bellagio – literally in the Bellagio Fountains – to graphics to marketing to communications. It was a division-wide, and in many ways, a company-wide initiative for more than a year.”
Throughout the week in Las Vegas, Paramount implemented several divisions of the company and presented select programming on-site ahead of the game as part of its residency. For example, Inside Edition and The Talk were in the city, along with The Drew Barrymore Show and Entertainment Tonight. Additionally, CBS Mornings and CBS Evening News with Norah O’Donnell also broadcast from Las Vegas and presented stories related to the marquee event. McManus previously led the CBS News division for five years while continuing to oversee sports, which made him just the second person in history to hold both division titles simultaneously.
For its broadcast of the championship game itself, CBS Sports utilized 165 total cameras and 19 television mobile units. The company also introduced ‘doink’ cameras located inside of the uprights, giving viewers a unique view of field goal attempts and other moments from the program. Augmented reality elements, drones and 4K zoom extraction cameras were also equipped for the game, showcasing innovation and emerging technologies that contributed to the record-breaking night.
“We far exceeded our sales expectations and budgets,” McManus said. “The number that’s been written is $700 million, and we exceeded that – obviously the overtime helped – but I think from the time we came on the air at 11:30 with the Nickelodeon Slimetime show until we went off the air at approximately 10:30, it was an unqualified success in every way. The most-watched television program ever; maybe the best Super Bowl ever in terms of the quality.”
Beginnings in Sports Media
McManus grew up around sports television, frequently attending events with his father, sports broadcaster and ABC Wide World of Sports host Jim McKay. From being around the business, he quickly developed a predilection and verve towards producing and directing these games and began to pursue such a career path. While McManus attended high school and during his years at Duke University as an undergraduate student, he performed freelance work for ABC Sports and was hired by the company out of college.
“It was my father who taught me so much about the quality of broadcasting and the importance of storytelling,” McManus said. “He was one of the best storytellers of all time, and he really laid the foundation. He also would often say to me, ‘Your word is your bond, and if you have a handshake deal, you have a deal whether it’s been signed or not,’ and so the importance of integrity and morality and all that was really instilled in me by my father.”
After working as a production assistant and associate producer for two years alongside industry veterans such as Roone Arledge, Chuck Howard and Dennis Lewin, McManus decided that it would be better to work at a network without his father. As a result, he landed a job with NBC Sports as an associate producer where he contributed to broadcasts of the NFL, PGA TOUR, and Wimbledon among other events. Three years later, he became the youngest vice president in network history, responsible for overseeing program planning and development at the age of 27.
“I was a little bit scared to be honest with you because I knew that I was going to be in situations and in meetings where I was the most inexperienced person in the room, but I’ve always worked really hard,” McManus said. “I’ve always prided myself on turning the lights on in the morning and turning the lights off in the office, and I just doubled down and worked incredibly hard.”
McManus had the backing of several bosses, including division president Arthur Watson and executive producer Don Ohlmeyer. NBC was broadcasting MLB games, including the World Series every other year, and was part of the Super Bowl rotation with its lead announcing team of Dick Enberg, Merlin Olsen and Bill Macatee. Throughout his time with the company, he was part of key rights negotiations while also remaining involved in managing productions.
“Since I had grown up watching what all the networks were doing and I was so familiar with the programming schedules at the different networks, it wasn’t as challenging as I thought it was going to be,” McManus said, “and I found out that I had a knack of programming and negotiating deals, which I thoroughly enjoyed.”
Mark McCormack, founder and chairman of International Management Group (IMG) asked McManus to join his company in the midst of sustained growth to help run the television division as its senior vice president of U.S. television sales and programming. The sports marketing firm provided him with the chance to work with athletes and gain more knowledge surrounding sales in the industry.
One day outside of a restaurant in New York City, McManus happened to run into CBS network president Peter Lund and had a conversation that later resulted in a job offer to serve as president of the company’s sports division. Shortly after he accepted the role, he immediately got to work in focusing on production quality, relationships with rightsholders and reacquiring the NFL.
A Changing Media Landscape
Twenty-five years later as signs of change permeated within the television industry, McManus was involved in negotiating a new deal with the NFL to continue broadcasting games. Conversations surrounding the endeavor included Paramount Global president and chief executive officer Bob Bakish, along with CBS president and chief executive officer George Cheeks.
“It was critical to the network to retain the NFL,” McManus said. “In many ways, sports, and specifically the NFL, are really holding the traditional bundle together, and without the NFL, striking deals with the distributors would have been, if not impossible, very, very difficult, so it was even more important during this last deal; even more so probably than 1998, that we retain the rights to the NFL. There’s no higher priority or no more important partner in all of Paramount – I won’t just say CBS, but all of Paramount Global – than the NFL.”
Although CBS is an over-the-air network, Paramount Global has felt the effects of hastened cord-cutting rates and altered consumption trends over the last several years. Approximately 73.9 million U.S. households were recorded as not having cable, satellite or telcoTV service in 2023, according to recent data from nScreenMedia, leading media conglomerates to innovate and build means of digital distribution.
Nielsen Media Research measurements attributed 93 of last year’s 100 most-watched television broadcasts to the National Football League, including 48 out of the top 50. While the Super Bowl ranked No. 1 overall, the NFL playoffs proved to be a ratings success with an average of 38.5 million viewers across the wild card, divisional and championship rounds with a 53.3% share. CBS Sports collected an average of 45.6 million viewers for its slate of playoff games ahead of the Super Bowl, one of which was the AFC Championship Game between the Baltimore Ravens and Kansas City Chiefs. The matchup ended up being the most-watched iteration of the matchup in history with an average of 55.473 million viewers.
“There’s nothing that comes close to it in terms of consumption or in terms of television viewership, and that’s true on direct to consumer also,” McManus said. “It’s one of, if not the largest driver of new subscriptions and retention at Paramount+, so it’s important not just to the linear network, but it’s important also to the direct to consumer. It’s vitally important and critical that we retain this.”
Peacock served as the exclusive streaming home of an NFL Wild Card game between the Miami Dolphins and Kansas City Chiefs that amassed an average minute audience of 23 million viewers, making it the most-streamed matchup in NFL history. The coldest game in the history of GEHA Field at Arrowhead Stadium, which ended in a 26-7 victory for the Chiefs, also drove 30% of internet traffic on the day and attained the largest single-day performance in audience usage, engagement and time spent. Comcast paid a reported $110 million for rights to the game and recently surpassed 30 million total subscriptions.
Amazon Prime Video will reportedly pay $150 million to exclusively stream an NFL Wild Card Game next season. The OTT platform is coming off a sophomore season where it registered viewership gains across the board and introduced a Black Friday Football contest. While users can watch the NFL on CBS live on Paramount+, it has yet to serve as the standalone home to a primary game telecast, something McManus does not see changing any time soon.
“I think we’re committed to broadcasting the NFL on the widest possible platforms at Paramount Global,” McManus explained, “so we are not at the moment pursuing that opportunity.”
NFL on CBS
Then-named ViacomCBS reached an 11-year, multiplatform agreement with the NFL in March 2021 worth a reported $2.8 billion. This past season, CBS broadcast 10 games within the 4:25 p.m. EST national window, which averaged 24.637 million viewers. CBS Sports realized its most-watched regular season since reacquiring NFL broadcasting rights in 1998 with an average of 19.345 million viewers, up 5% from the previous year. The Washington Commanders’ Thanksgiving Day matchup against the Dallas Cowboys finished as the most-watched game of the season with an average of 41.672 million viewers and presented three games within the top-five of average viewership on the year.
“I think the NFL will be every bit as or more important two years from now and five years from now as it is today,” McManus said. “The NFL really believes in broad distribution, and you only get broad distribution really on the broadcast networks, so I think the future of the NFL on broadcast television is very, very encouraging and very, very positive going forward. I feel nothing but optimism for the NFL, and quite frankly nothing but optimism for CBS Sports in the future.”
Play-by-play announcer Jim Nantz acknowledged McManus’ forthcoming retirement during the third quarter of the game as he was calling his seventh Super Bowl in the CBS broadcast booth. Over the years, Nantz has been a preeminent voice of the sports division in broadcasting the Final Four and National Championship Game within the NCAA Division I Men’s Basketball Tournament, along with hosting its coverage of The Masters Tournament. He has been the play-by-play announcer in the lead NFL on CBS broadcast booth since the 2004 season where he has called countless thrilling finishes and seminal moments in league history.
“When you watch an event that Jim Nantz is doing, it is automatically a really big and important event,” McManus said. “Nobody’s better at play-by-play than Jim is, whether it’s football or basketball, which he just departed, or golf certainly. I think he’s the best in the industry, and he has a presence and a likability that is impossible to teach. EIther you have it or you don’t, and nobody will ever outwork him. I think he’s the best in the industry, and I think he will be for a long time to come.”
Before Nantz was the lead play-by-play announcer for the NFL on CBS, he served as the studio host for The NFL Today when the network resumed its NFL broadcasts in 1998. He and other program hosts, including Brent Musburger, Greg Gumbel and current show host James Brown, took part in a one-hour special documenting the history of the prestigious studio program. Yet next year’s cast could look different, as contracts for Bill Cowher, Boomer Esiason and Phil Simms all reportedly expired after the Super Bowl.
“I think there’s a great legacy and tradition there, and I think that’s going to continue,” McManus said. “We’re looking at exactly what the format of the show is going to be going forward, but I think we have a lot of momentum, and I think the show is going to continue to be really well received and universally respected as a really good and very watchable pregame show.”
Nantz ended his run calling college basketball last year after broadcasting 31 National Championship games and almost 400 March Madness matchups. Ian Eagle was announced as his successor in the role as the lead play-by-play announcer for the property for coverage from CBS Sports and TNT Sports. Outside of this role, Eagle calls NFL games for CBS, national NBA games for TNT and local Brooklyn Nets contests for the YES Network. He will be joined by analysts Bill Raftery and Grant Hill and reporter Tracy Wolfson for his first National Championship Game on Monday night, a matchup between the Purdue Boilermakers and defending champion UConn Huskies.
“I think Jim’s legacy is very, very secure, and the iconic calls he’s made on the tournament will live on forever,” McManus said. “Now that Jim has decided to step back, I think Ian Eagle is the perfect successor. He’s universally respected and loved, he’s done 600 games with his current partner Bill Raftery and he’s great with Grant Hill, so I think he’s poised for a couple of decades of outstanding work being the lead play-by-play man for CBS Sports.”
Nantz continues to work in the lead broadcasting booth for the NFL on CBS where Wolfson is the lead reporter. For the first thirteen seasons, Phil Simms was the lead color commentator for these games, but he moved to become a studio analyst on The NFL Today ahead of the 2017 season. CBS Sports inked former Dallas Cowboys quarterback Tony Romo to a deal to serve as the lead analyst, and he was extended for a reported value of $180 million over 10 years.
There has been considerable discussion from fans about Romo’s viability as a lead analyst in recent years and rumors of interventions and meetings as well. For example, after Nantz’s call of the Chiefs’ overtime victory to win the Super Bowl in which he recited, “Jackpot, Kansas City!,” media professionals and consumers called out Romo for analyzing the play instead of deferring to the ambient sound.
“I think a lot of the criticism has been very unfair and been the result of social media ganging up on somebody, but I feel very good about Tony and Jim,” McManus said. “I think their chemistry is really good, and I think they work well together.”
New Leadership at CBS Sports
McManus will retire from CBS Sports this month, prompting David Berson to officially take over as the president and chief executive officer of the company. Over the last decade, Berson has been in several meetings and every negotiation that McManus has had.
With the NFL, Big Ten Conference, UEFA Champions League and additional properties in tow, plus a cable television network (CBS Sports Network) and various studio programming, the company will look to continue leveraging its assets while keeping an eye towards the future. McManus does not feel there will be much of a transition despite his departure and is excited to watch the next chapter of CBS Sports unfold.
“I think David’s going to do an amazing job,” McManus said. “He has an incredible talent for programming and production and rights negotiation and marketing and communications. I think he’s going to do an amazing job, and I think the momentum we have is going to continue for many, many years to come.”
Derek Futterman is a contributing editor and sports media reporter for Barrett Media. Additionally, he has worked in a broad array of roles in multimedia production – including on live game broadcasts and audiovisual platforms – and in digital content development and management. He previously interned for Paramount within Showtime Networks, wrote for the Long Island Herald and served as lead sports producer at NY2C. To get in touch, find him on X @derekfutterman.
