Colin Cowherd talked with FOX President of Insights and Analytics, Mike Mulvihill on the most recent episode of The Colin Cowherd Podcast. Football was the main topic that came up as the two discussed where broadcasting rights are headed in the age of cord cutting.
Cowherd pointed out that not only is the NFL the dominant player in sports television, but that it is college football which has become the second most-watched sport in America.
Mulvihill responded, “Not only was viewership up last year, you can go a step further, viewership for college football last year was the highest it has ever been, so this is the most-watched college football season ever. I do think that there’s been a nationalization of interest which will be enhanced by the West Coast teams coming to the Big 10.”
Cowherd and Mulvihill went on to discuss how games are chosen by networks and that in a couple of weeks they will have a draft of games. Mulvihill said with all that is happening in college football realignment, “there are games that are on the draft board this year that in the old Big 10, you might have thought ‘this is the second or third best game in the pool.’ This year, those games might not go until sixth, seventh, eighth, ninth. The depth of quality games, the number of quality games I would be comfortable putting in a FOX Noon window, our showcase window, there’s at least 40 or 50 games like that.”
He continued saying he would assume it is the exact same way at the Disney offices when ESPN is looking at their SEC schedule of games with Oklahoma and Texas now a part of the SEC. “The depth of great games in those two conferences is just extraordinary,” Mulvihill said.
Cowherd mentioned the days when people wondered when the inflation of sports broadcasting rights would end and pointed to those negotiations now including streaming services such as Amazon and Apple. He asked Mulvihill to talk about the erosion of cable television and how it will play into future sports broadcasting negotiations.
“…Sports content has, in some way, been subsidized by non-sports fans who pay for cable TV,” he said. “…What we have always seen in sports is a rising number of pay-TV subscribers and more people paying for content. So, the pool of money that’s available to us in sports has grown and grown and grown…Entertainment viewers are figuring out they can get the content they want from streaming platforms and so fewer and fewer non-sports fans are paying for sports content. That era of subsidization is either coming to an end or its already over. That pool that we have to pay for sports rights, is going to contract and forces all of [the networks] to be a little bit more disciplined in our deal making and in the way we consider rights opportunities.”
Mulvihill pointed out that cable subscriptions used to be nearly 100 million and is now closer to 70 million. “I believe most of the people that are getting out of the pay-TV bundle, they’re not really big sports fans, they’re people who were subscribing to cable for entertainment content,” he added.
With everything going on and eyeballs moving platforms, it is fairly remarkable that at the same time, sports viewership is rising. Cowherd and Mulvihill talked about FS1 being up 7% and Mulvihill named ESPN, live events with the NFL and college football and added women’s college basketball and, recently, NASCAR as properties that are seeing groth. “There’s a lot out there that is growing,” Mulvihill said.
In summation, Mulvihill said, “I think when we talk about the power of sports on television, what we are often really talking about is the power of football. Football has sort of become a stand-in for the strength of the sports business in general.”
He added that as it relates to FOX, “We really identify with football. That’s what we build our brand on. We are very much aligned with the fortunes of the game. What’s good for football is kind of good for FOX. That’s probably where our investments are going to continue to be, predominantly.”
