This year’s football season is taking the venerable sport a quantum leap closer to what fans of all sports worldwide will soon be taking for granted with next-gen viewing experiences that fully exploit the interactive personalized dynamism of IP technology, especially when it’s employed with ultralow-latency streaming.
The transformative implications of what’s taking shape around efforts to drive viewer engagement with on-screen magic have been largely overshadowed by press reports covering new streaming deals as a way to reach cord-cutters and cord-nevers. The big news is that pervasive inclusion of live football as part of streamed services’ programming has led to virtually every NFL and top-tier college game becoming available through live-streamed as well as multichannel pay TV and over-the-air distribution.
The emphasis on the business side is understandable, given what’s at stake as the big four broadcast and streaming rights holders with billions invested in recent multi-year contracts compete in high-wire acts aimed at balancing monetization agendas across traditional TV and digital outlets. But they’re also going further than ever in the digital domain to deliver the feature personalization and gamification deemed essential to driving engagement with a restless generation of younger consumers.
In the process, they’re also making a case for everyone else to get onboard with streaming. Recent developments involving Disney’s ESPN franchise add up to an Exhibit A depiction of what’s in store from here on, not only for football but for sports of all types. In fact, in some cases like global soccer, cricket, car racing, tennis and golf, American football is just catching up to where things have been at the cutting edge of streamed sports viewing experiences.
A Clear-Eyed Assessment of Challenges to Legacy TV Distribution
What the transformation means to the challenges football game producers face protecting their legacy TV businesses as the lure of streaming intensifies were recently well articulated by Walt Disney & Co. CEO Bob Iger. During an early August investors call. Iger spent some time discussing what was then the recently announced and since launched ESPN streaming service, which encompasses all programming delivered over the seven ESPN cable channels.
While stressing that Disney views what it’s doing with ESPN as part of its TV business, Iger acknowledged that “the features and functionality of the ESPN app will have more on them or in the app than obviously any linear channel can provide. It will really be a sports fan’s dream in terms of everything they’ll be able to do and watch on that channel.”
Advanced viewing experiences distinguishing what viewers can get subscribing to the $29.99 full or more limited $11.99 ESPN DTC service compared to the conventional ESPN TV channels are a big part of the pitch the sports giant is making to potential customers. ESPN said the “enhanced ESPN App will introduce a more personalized, dynamic viewing experience for fans. New features will include updated multiview options, integrated game stats, betting information, fantasy sports and commerce, along with a personalized SC For You.”
The lure of what’s available on the streaming app at no extra cost to pay TV subscribers who already get ESPN is sure to draw many connected TV viewers to the streaming side, potentially increasing the appeal of cord cutting in budget-squeezed households. Such outcomes are made more likely by the fact that Disney is bundling Hulu and Disney+ with the ESPN DTC (direct-to-consumer) streaming service, either at a restricted one-year-only cost of $29.95 or on an unlimited basis at $35.99 monthly, which, of course, cord-cutting cable subscribers getting ESPN DTC free would have to pay.
Adding to the drama, the NFL and Disney also announced a landmark deal which, if approved, will give the league an unprecedented 10% stake in an affiliated game distributor in exchange for ESPN’s takeover of the NFL Network with the addition of more games and other benefits. A taste of what’s in the offing on the ESPN DTC service, which launched August 21, can be found on the NFL+ streaming service, which remains under the NFL’s control but is available in the deal with ESPN for bundling with the latter’s streaming service.
The Market-Moving Impact of Genius Sports
A lot of the global transformation in sports viewing experiences, including what’s happening at ESPN, stems from the success of the AI-enhanced data aggregation and distribution platform developed by Genius Sports, a company founded in London that now headquarters in New York City with offices all over the world. It happens that the advanced betting and other data-rich features available on NFL+ are supported by technology from Genius Sports, which has also been supporting features on the ESPN+ streaming service that’s now a part of the ESPN DTC service.
While declining to go into details of what Genius Sports is bringing to the new streaming service, Matt Fleckenstein, chief product officer at Genius Sports, says the arc of development on ESPN and NFL+ is parallel. Specifics are “just a question of whether we’re working directly with NFL+ or ESPN,” he says.
Genius Sports has become a leading provider of AI-aided data applications for betting and enhanced viewing features in affiliations with hundreds of sports organizations worldwide, including major soccer, cricket, and rugby leagues, esports producers, the NCAA and the PGA Tour, as well as the NFL and ESPN. “We’re supporting everything from interactive betting to feature augmentations and graphic overlays to things like free-to-play games,” Fleckenstein says.
He notes a big reason for the company’s success is its ability to universalize data usage through its GeniusIQ next-generation data and AI application platform. The platform makes data available with advanced game analysis for a broad range of use cases falling into three “buckets” – betting, fan engagement and athletic performance – thereby eliminating the need to rely on multiple suppliers of app-specific use cases.
In the case of the NFL, which recently extended its arrangement with Genius Sports through the 2029 season, including the 2030 Super Bowl, the league is putting the technology to use in all three usage categories. The vendor is exclusive distributor of real-time play-by-play data feeding things like personalized NFL+ Fantasy features as play unfolds and low-latency in-game betting supported by all the leading sports betting books.
In the case of in-game betting, sports books’ betting options are displayed on phone and tablet screens with live play utilizing the Genius Sports BetVision platform. In a conference call demo, Fleckenstein shows that by streaming the action straight from field cameras with data amassed by the vendor’s auxiliary play-tracking feeds from iPhones positioned across the venue, the platform makes it possible to put together the betting options with game playout on bettors’ phone and tablet screens within three to four seconds of action on the field, thereby avoiding the much higher latencies incurred with production processes used in the live stream going out to non-betting audiences.
Moving a highlight circle across the screen, a user can click for a betting option related to what’s going on in that space, which is instantly displayed with odds at the bottom of the screen. Once bets are activated the sidebar display tracks how the chosen actions are playing out with changing odds and maintains tabulations of all betting outcomes as the game progresses.
“We know where all the players are with ball location and have all the bets available from the participating sports books,” Fleckenstein says. It only takes Genius 300-400ms to deliver data related to what’s happening on the field to the sports books, which then use other data amassed by Genius or other AI-assisted platforms to create betting options that can be instantly displayed on-screen with calculated odds.
The display adapts the presentation of those options to whichever book the user is engaged with. Adding to the fun, users with a screen touch on any player involved in a book’s proposed bet can get relevant player stats to better inform their betting decisions.
But as significant as these capabilities are to enabling in-game betting, the full potential of micro-betting depends on eliminating even the short three-to-four-second lag time achieved with Genius Sports’ direct feeds from the field over conventional streaming infrastructure. Otherwise, tipoffs from in-venue fans can tilt betting on imminent outcomes in favor of their off-site betting friends.
“Right now, if you want to pair the bet making with the video experience, the video doesn’t move as fast as the data,” Fleckenstein says. “They need to be synchronized. We’re in the middle of that. Things are getting faster, but it’s up to broadcasters.”
As previously reported, the monetization upsides seen for moving micro-betting from a two-screen to a single-screen experience are drawing providers of real-time streaming platforms into the discussion. While developments have been slowed by sports books’ fears that single-screen micro-betting could disrupt their traditional revenue streams, sources tell us they’re nearing completion of deals on some fronts that could break the logjam.
TV Station Groups’ Big Hopes for Football’s Revenue Contributions
In any event, given what’s unfolding to draw viewers to live-streamed football, the stakes couldn’t be higher for TV station owners and the multichannel video program distributors (MVPDs) that deliver the lion’s share of the audiences for broadcasters’ pro and college football coverage. Once again station group owners in their latest earnings reports cited football as a significant counterforce to economic headwinds impacting ad revenues.
During Sinclair’s Q2 earnings call in early August, COO Rob Weisbord, while acknowledging the overall advertising environment “remains rough,” said that with “larger buys coming down the pipeline…we’re cautiously optimistic as we move through the summer months into September with the return of college football and NFL.”
Building on the popularity of football, Sinclair has launched four podcasts devoted to college football programs at Ohio State, Alabama, Texas, and Notre Dame and “will shortly be announcing a landmark events and media partnership” devoted to “producing original content and brand activations,” noted vice president of investor relations Chris King. This will include a “nationwide tailgate tour during the upcoming college football season” and an exclusive event at Super Bowl LX in Santa Barbara, he said.
At Nexstar Media Group, along with the local ad revenue contributions generated through stations affiliated with Big 4 broadcasters of NFL and college games, COO Mike Baird noted on the company’s earnings call that it will benefit from renewal of its agreement to carry PAC-12 Conference games on Nexstar stations affiliated with the CW network, which it took control of in 2022. “We continue to see favorable returns on our programming investments, with sports now accounting for more than 40% of the CW’s programming hours,” Baird said.
E. W. Scripps, too, touted the importance of football to its second half expectations following first-half revenue performance that was down just 2% from a year earlier, a “best of class” performance that tied “directly back to our sports strategy,” according to Scripps CFO Jason Combs. While “there’s a lot of hesitancy out there” in the overall second half advertising picture, Combs voiced “optimism around our ability to monetize football as it starts to kind of roll back in here.”
That says a lot about how big a factor football can be in TV station fortunes, given that Scripps Sports’ tie-in with football solely revolves around its long-standing relationship with the NCAA Division 1 Big Sky Conference, which consists of ten full and two affiliate member universities in eight western states. As described by James Rafferty, senior director of sports production at Scripps Sports, the contract with Big Sky, which was renewed for another five years in March, makes Scripps responsible for producing and broadcasting over the seven Scripps Montana stations at least 12 conference games featuring either or both of the Big Sky Montana schools, Montana State and Montana University.
Whether at home or away, the productions will supply the TV coverage of those games provided by other broadcasters in opponents’ home markets, including Scripps stations in several other Big Sky states. Under licensing terms, Scripps must feed the games to ESPN+ for online distribution, although the local Mondana Scripps stations are able to carry ancillary Big Sky game programs over their digital outlets.
While Big Sky doesn’t support some of the production “bells and whistles” found at larger conferences’ venues, Scripps is generating coverage that “brings big-market, big-production to FCS football,” Rafferty says, adding, “We’re using a full production truck for the games with a crew of 15 to 20 people.” The broadcaster also is preparing to execute a social media-oriented strategy aimed at fostering fan engagement, which will “increase the amount of social content and the ability to use that content to give us feedback from fans responding to polls and trivia questions.”
Rafferty says the Big Sky relationship goes deeper than basic game production with Scripps acting as league supporter in event productions like the annual Big Sky Hall of Fame banquet and the Media Day seasonal kickoff. It’s a relationship that goes to the heart of Montana culture with broadcast of the annual “Brawl of the Wild” showdown between MU and MSU, which Rafferty says draws the biggest statewide audience for any TV program other than the Super Bowl.
Station owners are also benefitting from relationships they’ve built with colleges at the regional and local levels, in some cases enabling game coverage not supplied by the national networks and, in others, resulting in ancillary programming with games broadcast nationally. “We’ve partnered with a bunch of universities and colleges,” says Robert Folliard, senior vice president of government relations and distribution at Gray Media.
“This is a strategic initiative for the company to get into local sports where there’s a ton of advertising and sponsorship opportunities,” Folliard says. “We provide the only platform that can get them into every home.”
In many cases, Gray has been expanding these partnerships in conjunction with running its own regional sports networks, like Palmetto Sports and Peachtree Sports in Georgia, where “we may not have the game, but we have the coach’s show and the pre- and post-game shows,” Folliard says. The company has expanded reach for these regional sports networks through use of low-power stations and primary stations’ multicast spectrum. In addition, some low-power stations are used to carry Spanish language programming from Telemundo, which includes football games the network has the Spanish-language rights to.
On another front, Gray with the six other partners in the NextGen TV Pearl TV alliance will be broadcasting college and NFL games in HDR-enhanced 4K football games, marking a major advance in viewing experience over what consumers can get through cable and online services. All stations in the alliance with ATSC 3.0 transmission capabilities will be using whatever approaches to HDR technology they’ve adopted to broadcast games delivered by their affiliated big 4 broadcast networks.
Like everyone else in the alliance, Gray is using inverse tone mapping or “upmapping” to deliver SDR-produced signals in HDR, but is well on its way to introducing ATSC 3.0 transmissions of games produced natively in HDR, which means the cameras capturing the action do so in the full dynamic and chroma ranges supported by HDR. “We’re all angling toward the same thing,” Folliard says, suggesting that eventually the industry will gravitate to a single format. “We’re format agnostic,” he says.
“All signals are a go” on expeditious transition to ATSC 3.0, including FCC chairman Brendan Carr’s oft-voiced enthusiasm for NextGen TV, Folliard says, which means TV stations will be in a much stronger position to hold football fans with the combination of superior signal quality and OTA access to interactive game playing and real-time betting. “Everybody sees live betting as one of those killer apps on the market,” he says. Citing latency issues as a barrier in networked viewing, he adds, “Over the air is great for live betting.
Widespread Reluctance to Divulge Plans for Streamed Football Viewing
Nobody is doing more than Fox Sports to keep all its boats afloat, including the company’s new Fox ONE DTC streaming service, by delivering superior viewing experiences across all affiliated TV and digital outlets. On the big home screen, whether NFL games are delivered via pay TV and OTA connections or online, Fox is tapping things it introduced at this year’s Super Bowl to enhance the lean-back experience, says Michael Davies, executive vice president of field operations at Fox Sports.
“We’re coming off a high note,” Davies says in reference to the new tech advancements Fox Sports introduced broadcasting Super Bowl L1X from the New Orleans Superdome to over 135 million TV and online viewers worldwide. With a new season getting underway “we’re looking at picking up where we left off,” Davies says.
“We’re bringing all our guns” to the looming week-two Super Bowl rematch in Kansas City, he adds. He cites use of things like dual SkyCams, Lidar technology for non-obstructive on-screen placements of AR-embellished graphics displays, and officials’ Hawkeye play review systems to help commentators with real-time analysis. And at some point with broadcasts from select venues, Fox Sports anticipates using output from field-based 1800 cameras that Fox partner Cosm has deployed in some NFL stadiums to support immersive off-site theatrical viewing of game action.
Also remaining to be seen is how far Fox Sports will go in upscaling its NFL broadcasts for distribution in 4K with HDR enhancements. Since 2020, Fox Sports has delivered all three of its Super Bowl broadcasts to TV and online affiliates, with its own Tubi FAST outlet added this year, in upscaled 4K/HDR10 versions along with the natively captured 1080p versions.
Like everyone else engaged in live streaming NFL and big college games, Fox Sports will be taking advantage of internet technology to further enhance user experience (UX), which typically entails using AI in efforts to personalize data and clips related to fan favorites and fantasy football teams. “This is something we’re looking at,” Davies says. “We can’t talk too much about it now, but over the next few months fans will exposed to that kind of thing.”
CBS and NBC Universal were even more reticent about production plans for this year’s NFL and college football coverage. CBS Sports, in the throes of strategic planning following government approval of the Paramount-Skydance merger, declined to comment other than to note that NFL and college football games airing on CBS are also available to stream live on Paramount+ and CBS Sports digital assets, including the free CBS Sports HQ, CBSSports.com, podcasts, social media “and more” will be providing additional coverage.
While declining to discuss football production strategies, NBCU shared recent comments voiced by NBC Sports president Rick Cordella in an interview with Puck podcaster John Ourand in which Cordella noted that viewing of the company’s Sunday Night Football broadcasts on the Peacock streaming service went from seven percent of total consumption in 2023 to 10 percent in 2024. “We're talking about two million plus each and every week people streaming on Peacock which presumably live outside of pay TV, Cordella said.
But while he acknowledged things are “going to just keep going in that direction,” he emphasized there’s still a lot of life on the linear TV side. “I'm not naive enough to think that over some longer period of time streaming and broadcast [will] become somewhat of a similar level, but you know that time horizon may be longer than we anticipate,” he said.
That could be wishful thinking. According to a recent Wall Street Journal report, Comcast is thinking about creating an NBC Sports cable network focused on providing traditional TV viewers access to sports streamed on Peacock.
The Journal says the idea, which Comcast has refused to discuss, addresses the fact that TV viewers are missing out on the expanding lineup of football and other sports exclusively streamed by Peacock. But it just could be the viewing experiences customers get watching any game streamed by Peacock may contribute to shortening Cordella’s time horizon.
The transformative implications of what’s taking shape around efforts to drive viewer engagement with on-screen magic have been largely overshadowed by press reports covering new streaming deals as a way to reach cord-cutters and cord-nevers. The big news is that pervasive inclusion of live football as part of streamed services’ programming has led to virtually every NFL and top-tier college game becoming available through live-streamed as well as multichannel pay TV and over-the-air distribution.
The emphasis on the business side is understandable, given what’s at stake as the big four broadcast and streaming rights holders with billions invested in recent multi-year contracts compete in high-wire acts aimed at balancing monetization agendas across traditional TV and digital outlets. But they’re also going further than ever in the digital domain to deliver the feature personalization and gamification deemed essential to driving engagement with a restless generation of younger consumers.
In the process, they’re also making a case for everyone else to get onboard with streaming. Recent developments involving Disney’s ESPN franchise add up to an Exhibit A depiction of what’s in store from here on, not only for football but for sports of all types. In fact, in some cases like global soccer, cricket, car racing, tennis and golf, American football is just catching up to where things have been at the cutting edge of streamed sports viewing experiences.
What the transformation means to the challenges football game producers face protecting their legacy TV businesses as the lure of streaming intensifies were recently well articulated by Walt Disney & Co. CEO Bob Iger. During an early August investors call. Iger spent some time discussing what was then the recently announced and since launched ESPN streaming service, which encompasses all programming delivered over the seven ESPN cable channels.
While stressing that Disney views what it’s doing with ESPN as part of its TV business, Iger acknowledged that “the features and functionality of the ESPN app will have more on them or in the app than obviously any linear channel can provide. It will really be a sports fan’s dream in terms of everything they’ll be able to do and watch on that channel.”
Advanced viewing experiences distinguishing what viewers can get subscribing to the $29.99 full or more limited $11.99 ESPN DTC service compared to the conventional ESPN TV channels are a big part of the pitch the sports giant is making to potential customers. ESPN said the “enhanced ESPN App will introduce a more personalized, dynamic viewing experience for fans. New features will include updated multiview options, integrated game stats, betting information, fantasy sports and commerce, along with a personalized SC For You.”
The lure of what’s available on the streaming app at no extra cost to pay TV subscribers who already get ESPN is sure to draw many connected TV viewers to the streaming side, potentially increasing the appeal of cord cutting in budget-squeezed households. Such outcomes are made more likely by the fact that Disney is bundling Hulu and Disney+ with the ESPN DTC (direct-to-consumer) streaming service, either at a restricted one-year-only cost of $29.95 or on an unlimited basis at $35.99 monthly, which, of course, cord-cutting cable subscribers getting ESPN DTC free would have to pay.
Adding to the drama, the NFL and Disney also announced a landmark deal which, if approved, will give the league an unprecedented 10% stake in an affiliated game distributor in exchange for ESPN’s takeover of the NFL Network with the addition of more games and other benefits. A taste of what’s in the offing on the ESPN DTC service, which launched August 21, can be found on the NFL+ streaming service, which remains under the NFL’s control but is available in the deal with ESPN for bundling with the latter’s streaming service.
A lot of the global transformation in sports viewing experiences, including what’s happening at ESPN, stems from the success of the AI-enhanced data aggregation and distribution platform developed by Genius Sports, a company founded in London that now headquarters in New York City with offices all over the world. It happens that the advanced betting and other data-rich features available on NFL+ are supported by technology from Genius Sports, which has also been supporting features on the ESPN+ streaming service that’s now a part of the ESPN DTC service.
While declining to go into details of what Genius Sports is bringing to the new streaming service, Matt Fleckenstein, chief product officer at Genius Sports, says the arc of development on ESPN and NFL+ is parallel. Specifics are “just a question of whether we’re working directly with NFL+ or ESPN,” he says.
Genius Sports has become a leading provider of AI-aided data applications for betting and enhanced viewing features in affiliations with hundreds of sports organizations worldwide, including major soccer, cricket, and rugby leagues, esports producers, the NCAA and the PGA Tour, as well as the NFL and ESPN. “We’re supporting everything from interactive betting to feature augmentations and graphic overlays to things like free-to-play games,” Fleckenstein says.
He notes a big reason for the company’s success is its ability to universalize data usage through its GeniusIQ next-generation data and AI application platform. The platform makes data available with advanced game analysis for a broad range of use cases falling into three “buckets” – betting, fan engagement and athletic performance – thereby eliminating the need to rely on multiple suppliers of app-specific use cases.
In the case of the NFL, which recently extended its arrangement with Genius Sports through the 2029 season, including the 2030 Super Bowl, the league is putting the technology to use in all three usage categories. The vendor is exclusive distributor of real-time play-by-play data feeding things like personalized NFL+ Fantasy features as play unfolds and low-latency in-game betting supported by all the leading sports betting books.
In the case of in-game betting, sports books’ betting options are displayed on phone and tablet screens with live play utilizing the Genius Sports BetVision platform. In a conference call demo, Fleckenstein shows that by streaming the action straight from field cameras with data amassed by the vendor’s auxiliary play-tracking feeds from iPhones positioned across the venue, the platform makes it possible to put together the betting options with game playout on bettors’ phone and tablet screens within three to four seconds of action on the field, thereby avoiding the much higher latencies incurred with production processes used in the live stream going out to non-betting audiences.
Moving a highlight circle across the screen, a user can click for a betting option related to what’s going on in that space, which is instantly displayed with odds at the bottom of the screen. Once bets are activated the sidebar display tracks how the chosen actions are playing out with changing odds and maintains tabulations of all betting outcomes as the game progresses.
“We know where all the players are with ball location and have all the bets available from the participating sports books,” Fleckenstein says. It only takes Genius 300-400ms to deliver data related to what’s happening on the field to the sports books, which then use other data amassed by Genius or other AI-assisted platforms to create betting options that can be instantly displayed on-screen with calculated odds.
The display adapts the presentation of those options to whichever book the user is engaged with. Adding to the fun, users with a screen touch on any player involved in a book’s proposed bet can get relevant player stats to better inform their betting decisions.
But as significant as these capabilities are to enabling in-game betting, the full potential of micro-betting depends on eliminating even the short three-to-four-second lag time achieved with Genius Sports’ direct feeds from the field over conventional streaming infrastructure. Otherwise, tipoffs from in-venue fans can tilt betting on imminent outcomes in favor of their off-site betting friends.
“Right now, if you want to pair the bet making with the video experience, the video doesn’t move as fast as the data,” Fleckenstein says. “They need to be synchronized. We’re in the middle of that. Things are getting faster, but it’s up to broadcasters.”
As previously reported, the monetization upsides seen for moving micro-betting from a two-screen to a single-screen experience are drawing providers of real-time streaming platforms into the discussion. While developments have been slowed by sports books’ fears that single-screen micro-betting could disrupt their traditional revenue streams, sources tell us they’re nearing completion of deals on some fronts that could break the logjam.
In any event, given what’s unfolding to draw viewers to live-streamed football, the stakes couldn’t be higher for TV station owners and the multichannel video program distributors (MVPDs) that deliver the lion’s share of the audiences for broadcasters’ pro and college football coverage. Once again station group owners in their latest earnings reports cited football as a significant counterforce to economic headwinds impacting ad revenues.
During Sinclair’s Q2 earnings call in early August, COO Rob Weisbord, while acknowledging the overall advertising environment “remains rough,” said that with “larger buys coming down the pipeline…we’re cautiously optimistic as we move through the summer months into September with the return of college football and NFL.”
Building on the popularity of football, Sinclair has launched four podcasts devoted to college football programs at Ohio State, Alabama, Texas, and Notre Dame and “will shortly be announcing a landmark events and media partnership” devoted to “producing original content and brand activations,” noted vice president of investor relations Chris King. This will include a “nationwide tailgate tour during the upcoming college football season” and an exclusive event at Super Bowl LX in Santa Barbara, he said.
At Nexstar Media Group, along with the local ad revenue contributions generated through stations affiliated with Big 4 broadcasters of NFL and college games, COO Mike Baird noted on the company’s earnings call that it will benefit from renewal of its agreement to carry PAC-12 Conference games on Nexstar stations affiliated with the CW network, which it took control of in 2022. “We continue to see favorable returns on our programming investments, with sports now accounting for more than 40% of the CW’s programming hours,” Baird said.
E. W. Scripps, too, touted the importance of football to its second half expectations following first-half revenue performance that was down just 2% from a year earlier, a “best of class” performance that tied “directly back to our sports strategy,” according to Scripps CFO Jason Combs. While “there’s a lot of hesitancy out there” in the overall second half advertising picture, Combs voiced “optimism around our ability to monetize football as it starts to kind of roll back in here.”
That says a lot about how big a factor football can be in TV station fortunes, given that Scripps Sports’ tie-in with football solely revolves around its long-standing relationship with the NCAA Division 1 Big Sky Conference, which consists of ten full and two affiliate member universities in eight western states. As described by James Rafferty, senior director of sports production at Scripps Sports, the contract with Big Sky, which was renewed for another five years in March, makes Scripps responsible for producing and broadcasting over the seven Scripps Montana stations at least 12 conference games featuring either or both of the Big Sky Montana schools, Montana State and Montana University.
Whether at home or away, the productions will supply the TV coverage of those games provided by other broadcasters in opponents’ home markets, including Scripps stations in several other Big Sky states. Under licensing terms, Scripps must feed the games to ESPN+ for online distribution, although the local Mondana Scripps stations are able to carry ancillary Big Sky game programs over their digital outlets.
While Big Sky doesn’t support some of the production “bells and whistles” found at larger conferences’ venues, Scripps is generating coverage that “brings big-market, big-production to FCS football,” Rafferty says, adding, “We’re using a full production truck for the games with a crew of 15 to 20 people.” The broadcaster also is preparing to execute a social media-oriented strategy aimed at fostering fan engagement, which will “increase the amount of social content and the ability to use that content to give us feedback from fans responding to polls and trivia questions.”
Rafferty says the Big Sky relationship goes deeper than basic game production with Scripps acting as league supporter in event productions like the annual Big Sky Hall of Fame banquet and the Media Day seasonal kickoff. It’s a relationship that goes to the heart of Montana culture with broadcast of the annual “Brawl of the Wild” showdown between MU and MSU, which Rafferty says draws the biggest statewide audience for any TV program other than the Super Bowl.
Station owners are also benefitting from relationships they’ve built with colleges at the regional and local levels, in some cases enabling game coverage not supplied by the national networks and, in others, resulting in ancillary programming with games broadcast nationally. “We’ve partnered with a bunch of universities and colleges,” says Robert Folliard, senior vice president of government relations and distribution at Gray Media.
“This is a strategic initiative for the company to get into local sports where there’s a ton of advertising and sponsorship opportunities,” Folliard says. “We provide the only platform that can get them into every home.”
In many cases, Gray has been expanding these partnerships in conjunction with running its own regional sports networks, like Palmetto Sports and Peachtree Sports in Georgia, where “we may not have the game, but we have the coach’s show and the pre- and post-game shows,” Folliard says. The company has expanded reach for these regional sports networks through use of low-power stations and primary stations’ multicast spectrum. In addition, some low-power stations are used to carry Spanish language programming from Telemundo, which includes football games the network has the Spanish-language rights to.
On another front, Gray with the six other partners in the NextGen TV Pearl TV alliance will be broadcasting college and NFL games in HDR-enhanced 4K football games, marking a major advance in viewing experience over what consumers can get through cable and online services. All stations in the alliance with ATSC 3.0 transmission capabilities will be using whatever approaches to HDR technology they’ve adopted to broadcast games delivered by their affiliated big 4 broadcast networks.
Like everyone else in the alliance, Gray is using inverse tone mapping or “upmapping” to deliver SDR-produced signals in HDR, but is well on its way to introducing ATSC 3.0 transmissions of games produced natively in HDR, which means the cameras capturing the action do so in the full dynamic and chroma ranges supported by HDR. “We’re all angling toward the same thing,” Folliard says, suggesting that eventually the industry will gravitate to a single format. “We’re format agnostic,” he says.
“All signals are a go” on expeditious transition to ATSC 3.0, including FCC chairman Brendan Carr’s oft-voiced enthusiasm for NextGen TV, Folliard says, which means TV stations will be in a much stronger position to hold football fans with the combination of superior signal quality and OTA access to interactive game playing and real-time betting. “Everybody sees live betting as one of those killer apps on the market,” he says. Citing latency issues as a barrier in networked viewing, he adds, “Over the air is great for live betting.
Nobody is doing more than Fox Sports to keep all its boats afloat, including the company’s new Fox ONE DTC streaming service, by delivering superior viewing experiences across all affiliated TV and digital outlets. On the big home screen, whether NFL games are delivered via pay TV and OTA connections or online, Fox is tapping things it introduced at this year’s Super Bowl to enhance the lean-back experience, says Michael Davies, executive vice president of field operations at Fox Sports.
“We’re coming off a high note,” Davies says in reference to the new tech advancements Fox Sports introduced broadcasting Super Bowl L1X from the New Orleans Superdome to over 135 million TV and online viewers worldwide. With a new season getting underway “we’re looking at picking up where we left off,” Davies says.
“We’re bringing all our guns” to the looming week-two Super Bowl rematch in Kansas City, he adds. He cites use of things like dual SkyCams, Lidar technology for non-obstructive on-screen placements of AR-embellished graphics displays, and officials’ Hawkeye play review systems to help commentators with real-time analysis. And at some point with broadcasts from select venues, Fox Sports anticipates using output from field-based 1800 cameras that Fox partner Cosm has deployed in some NFL stadiums to support immersive off-site theatrical viewing of game action.
Also remaining to be seen is how far Fox Sports will go in upscaling its NFL broadcasts for distribution in 4K with HDR enhancements. Since 2020, Fox Sports has delivered all three of its Super Bowl broadcasts to TV and online affiliates, with its own Tubi FAST outlet added this year, in upscaled 4K/HDR10 versions along with the natively captured 1080p versions.
Like everyone else engaged in live streaming NFL and big college games, Fox Sports will be taking advantage of internet technology to further enhance user experience (UX), which typically entails using AI in efforts to personalize data and clips related to fan favorites and fantasy football teams. “This is something we’re looking at,” Davies says. “We can’t talk too much about it now, but over the next few months fans will exposed to that kind of thing.”
CBS and NBC Universal were even more reticent about production plans for this year’s NFL and college football coverage. CBS Sports, in the throes of strategic planning following government approval of the Paramount-Skydance merger, declined to comment other than to note that NFL and college football games airing on CBS are also available to stream live on Paramount+ and CBS Sports digital assets, including the free CBS Sports HQ, CBSSports.com, podcasts, social media “and more” will be providing additional coverage.
While declining to discuss football production strategies, NBCU shared recent comments voiced by NBC Sports president Rick Cordella in an interview with Puck podcaster John Ourand in which Cordella noted that viewing of the company’s Sunday Night Football broadcasts on the Peacock streaming service went from seven percent of total consumption in 2023 to 10 percent in 2024. “We're talking about two million plus each and every week people streaming on Peacock which presumably live outside of pay TV, Cordella said.
But while he acknowledged things are “going to just keep going in that direction,” he emphasized there’s still a lot of life on the linear TV side. “I'm not naive enough to think that over some longer period of time streaming and broadcast [will] become somewhat of a similar level, but you know that time horizon may be longer than we anticipate,” he said.
That could be wishful thinking. According to a recent Wall Street Journal report, Comcast is thinking about creating an NBC Sports cable network focused on providing traditional TV viewers access to sports streamed on Peacock.
The Journal says the idea, which Comcast has refused to discuss, addresses the fact that TV viewers are missing out on the expanding lineup of football and other sports exclusively streamed by Peacock. But it just could be the viewing experiences customers get watching any game streamed by Peacock may contribute to shortening Cordella’s time horizon.