For Brian Rolup, the National Football League's chief media and business officer, the new sports streaming service from Disney's ESPN, Fox and Warner Bros. Discovery is something of a shocker.
Rolup spoke Thursday at the Washington Post Live Futurist Summit, commenting on plans for a sports streaming bundle from Disney, Fox and WBD that is expected to debut in the fall of 2024. The joint venture will pool ESPN+ and each company's linear TV networks. Broadcast sports programs. Pricing has not been announced.
“They're positioning this as the ultimate sports bundle, but it's missing more than half of NFL football,” Rolup said at a Washington Post event. “Personally, I'm a little confused by the value proposition.”
He added, “I don't understand how sports fans can look at this and say that for example, for $20 more a month, you can buy YouTube TV and watch all of the NFL and say that's more valuable than actually having access to it.” Ta. Up to Sunday Ticket, an off-site package for Sunday afternoons. ”
The executive cited the fact that the three companies' sports bundles will not include NFL games on CBS, nor will they include game packages for NBC's “Sunday Night Football” or Amazon Prime Video's “Thursday Night Football.” .
Lollup acknowledged that the NFL was “a little surprised” by the Disney-Fox WBD announcement. “The press liked to talk about how surprised we were. I mean, we were a little surprised. But I don't think it affects what we do.”
Last week, Disney, Fox and WB Discovery announced former Apple TV+ executive Peter Distad would become CEO of the joint venture. Fox CEO Lachlan Murdoch said the company expects its sports streaming business to reach 5 million subscribers in five years. He emphasized that he expects to increase the existing pay-TV revenue base.
Also at the Washington Post event, Rolup spoke about the NFL's approach to sports betting. “First and foremost, our philosophy has always been to protect the integrity of the game. That hasn't changed,” he said. “Commercialization is pretty far down the list of priorities. The second thing we focus on is working to make sure it's safe for the consumer…even though every gambler is an NFL fan. , not all NFL fans are gamblers. So what you won't see on our broadcasts is a flood of bets, lines and spreads.”
NFL executives talked about the league's use of artificial intelligence and said it is focused on player safety.
“For us, AI is much more applicable to some of the things we do around health and player safety… We have our annual meeting next week and we're going to have coaches, general managers and owners talk about changes to kickoff. “There will be voting in front of the rules to actually increase safety,” Rolup said. “The insights to change that rule are based on a lot of the data we've collected from chips in players' shoulder pads, capturing data and using machine learning to try to figure out what's the safest way to play the game. Obtained from.”
Rolup said the NFL is considering using streaming to expand its fan base and reach younger viewers. “[Y]We can't take the next generation for granted, so we're always investing and trying to make it better, and technology is a big part of that. ” he said. “Technology will allow us to distribute our games more widely…We will be playing games in Germany, the UK and Brazil next year…The support and fan response to these games has been amazing.”
Photo above: Kansas City Chiefs vs. Miami Dolphins AFC Wild Card Game on January 13th. In the US, it was streamed exclusively on NBCUniversal's Peacock.
