Success in the sports media business has always been measured in quantity. How many eyeballs and earholes receive your message? Naturally, then, most programmers have developed strategies designed to deliver the largest audience possible.
That seems to be changing. Sports media—particularly television—has been focused on identifying the right audiences and catering to them. Forget everybody. The new model is catering to people who are somebody!
Is this shift about a desire to deliver quality over quantity? It could be. Is it just about focusing on the best way to survive as distribution options come and go and new generations of consumers present new, distinct patterns of media consumption? It could be that too.
There’s no wrong answer. Whatever the motivation, it is happening. The evidence isn’t new, but in the last week or so, we have been bombarded with it.
NASCAR Is Playing the Long Game
NASCAR’s stereotypical fan has always been described with words meant to avoid saying “poor, white, and conservative,” but that’s what they meant. While that element definitely exists in their audience, NASCAR leaders were willing to try something that might not be popular with that stereotypical audience. The deal it signed in November of 2023 included traditional partners FOX, NBC, and TNT, but it carved out five races that could only be seen on Amazon Prime.
Prime aired its first race on May 24. The results were exactly what you would expect from Amazon. The action looked incredible. The audience got younger, which is good, but it was also smaller—so the people that had quotas to fill and needed something to write about last week decided it was bad.
NASCAR made a choice. Choices do have immediate impacts, but a decision about something as big as broadcast rights is not made solely with the immediate payoff in mind. Why even waste the time and effort to evaluate it that way?
There are so many options for entertainment now. NASCAR isn’t just competing every Sunday with what else is on TV. It’s competing with disposable content on social media, with video games that look like movies, and with anything else that could be loosely defined as “entertainment.” The NFL is the only entity in sports and pop culture whose ratings have not been affected by this—and even it has made deals to put big games behind paywalls. Why wouldn’t something as niche as NASCAR do the same?
Any good leader sets priorities. NASCAR is setting its priorities based on evidence. People complained about the NFL making a playoff game a streaming exclusive. Then what happened? A lot of those same fans complaining that there was no way for them to watch without paying for another subscription decided to pay for another subscription so they could watch.
NASCAR not only enjoys the NFL’s national appeal. It also has the advantage of focus. There is one race every week. If fans want to watch NASCAR, they all have to tune into the same thing. Plus, we’re talking about streaming exclusives making up just five weeks of a 36-race season. There’s room to do some things to take advantage of the sport’s most devoted fans while building an audience ready to embrace where it is that media is headed.
ESPN Is Sticking to Its Plan
Jimmy Pitaro has not been shy about his vision for ESPN. It’s where the biggest stars in sports are. The network will carry the biggest games and also be where you see the most popular commentators.
I don’t think we have to do a whole lot of mental gymnastics here to connect that vision to the fate of Around the Horn. There was a time when the show was really valuable. The network needed to create new stars, and the show’s large, rotating cast presented a great vehicle for that.
Now? ESPN doesn’t need to create new stars as often. We don’t have to suggest that the network was afraid of Around the Horn being too woke, or that the show was in fact so woke that ESPN needed to get rid of it to save its audience. Those are trash theories, and I think the people throwing them around know it—or at least they would if they took two seconds to consider all of the evidence in front of them.
ESPN’s business is pretty simple now: games and stars. Around the Horn was neither, so it didn’t fit the business anymore. Eventually, every show on the network is going to be evaluated the same way, including SportsCenter.
If you need more evidence of this, look at Pat McAfee’s last week. The Pacers asked him to address the crowd during Game 4 of the Eastern Conference Finals, and Pat McAfee did Pat McAfee things.
That didn’t sit well with John Mellencamp. It confused Ben Stiller. It was a good reminder that in the sports world, Pat McAfee is a celebrity—but the majority of people that follow sports do so casually. Pat McAfee isn’t really all that famous outside the confines of ESPN.
That does not matter to ESPN. They know that McAfee fans ride hard for their guy. He is a cult of personality, and ESPN has figured out plenty of ways to capitalize on that—and it will figure out plenty more in the future. Why does it need to be concerned with making McAfee more famous when it can just get more engagement out of his already devoted audience?
It’s the Disney Way
Pitaro isn’t Mickey Mouse’s only employee who is clear about his business strategy. His boss, Walt Disney Company CEO Bob Iger, has mentioned that his vision for Disneyland, Walt Disney World, and the company’s other theme parks is not a sort of “rite of passage” for American children. The idea that every family at some point drives down to Orlando so their kid can ride Space Mountain is a thing of the past.
Disney doesn’t need more people in its theme parks. It needs the people in its parks spending more money. The family that had to save for three years to afford to visit is still welcome. It’s just that now they may have to save for five years, and if they want the very best experience, they may have to save for six or seven years.
The family that comes, stays at a cheap hotel off-property, and eats all of its meals at the park’s cheapest food stands just to be able to make a three- or four-day visit make financial sense are second-class citizens now. The company wants families that will pay exorbitant rates to stay at a resort on the Magic Kingdom’s monorail loop, pay a premium to skip the lines at some of the most popular rides, buy every single piece of plastic that social media has deemed “collectible,” and eat at the most expensive places with the most Instagrammable plates!
Capitalism is petering out, the middle class is disappearing, and the gap between the haves and have-nots is getting bigger and bigger. Disney has recognized that its theme parks will succeed not by pleasing everyone, but by giving its most devoted audience everything it wants at the highest possible price it can justify.
The wording may be grim, but the message is pretty clear. The days of mass appeal are over. We’re doing quality over quantity now. That means priorities will change, and decisions will be made differently.
It’s what a world filled with technological evolution and economic uncertainty demands. Everyone is deciding, reacting, learning, and then deciding again to best position themselves for the future.
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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.
