FOX Sports is preparing to broadcast Super Bowl LIX from Caesars Superdome in New Orleans, La., marking the first time that Tom Brady will be working as a television analyst for the championship matchup. The seven-time Super Bowl champion is in the first year of a 10-year contract with FOX Sports reportedly worth a total of $375 million, but there have been questions related to the viability of the arrangement. Throughout the season, Brady has been operating under restrictions that preclude him from attending practices at team facilities or criticizing officiating as a minority owner of the Las Vegas Raiders. Brady is also said to have an influence in decisions by the Raiders organization, including the recent hiring of head coach Pete Carroll, resulting in questions surrounding a potential conflict of interest.
On the latest edition of The Sporting Class, Pablo Torre struggled to identify a precedent for this kind of situation. David Samson, the former president of the Miami Marlins, explained that Raiders fans should be upset that Brady does not have a full-time commitment towards the organization. Furthermore, he articulated that it takes a week to be able to prepare for a game on television and does not see how Brady will be able to do both. Samson referenced a particular moment between Brady and play-by-play announcer Kevin Burkhardt in which the analyst ostensibly reaffirmed his commitment to the broadcasts.
“It was so manufactured that it was obviously not believable to me,” Samson said, “and if I’m Mark Davis, I will not allow Tom Brady to continue at FOX because I want his full attention, and if I’m FOX, I will not allow Tom Brady to run the Raiders because I need his full attention.”
John Skipper, the co-founder and chief executive officer of Meadowlark Media, expressed that he believed salaries for people in the position are too high, contending that they do not make a financial difference in the game. Referencing the ratings during the Championship Round of playoff games, he is not sure if there would have been a difference had Brady not been in the booth.
“Does it bother me?,” Skipper replied .”I do believe there’s a conflict, and the conflict should probably be resolved. I don’t know why he’s allowed to continue to have that conflict, and he probably brings more value, though I doubt Mark Davis is going to pay him $37.5 million, though his stake in the team may be well worth more than that. He should make a decision about which one he wants to do.”
Samson subsequently expressed that he had been thinking about the value of alternate broadcasts, using the example of ESPN carrying the ManningCast during select editions of Monday Night Football. Hypothesizing when Skipper was shown the P&L financial statements while running ESPN, he imagined that he would have questioned if the network was spending $8 million extra to include the Mannings on this alternate feed. Skipper, who has watched the ManningCast throughout the year, wondered what would happen if there was no other choice but to watch the game in this manner. When asked about what would happen, Torre believed roughly the same amount of people would be viewing the game.
“So then why would you increase your expenses?,” Samson said. “If you’re not getting an incremental revenue benefit for it, why are you increasing your expenses? To make it look like progress?”
Torre acknowledged that FOX seems to be using Brady as a marketing device under his deal as well and that likely factors into the calculus of the deal. Samson also bet that the network is taking money from different areas of the business in order to pay for his salary.
Yet Skipper did not think this was a big factor, and he later recalled being amused about hearing difficulties related to preparing for a game that some of the announcers have played for their entire lives. Nonetheless, Torre divulged some level of comedy to Brady struggling to articulate his thoughts in the booth when he was widely touted for his ability to process situations on the gridiron in real time. Torre thought that there would be a correlation between his on-field aptitude and performance in the booth, an assertion he conveyed had been disproven by Jon “Boog” Sciambi.
“It has very, very little to do to what you do when you take the snap from center, you drop back three or four steps and see the field,” Skipper said. “Even if you did that better than anybody, you still don’t know how to articulate that, you don’t know when to do it, how to interact with the other people who are helping you do that.”
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