Money talks.
One of the best in-game features Major League Baseball introduced for its national broadcasts has been its mic’d up in-game segments.
Players understandably were hesitant to do in-game interviews with announcers during regular-season game action because they want to focus on getting their jobs done. However, MLB and the MLBPA came up with a plan to pay the players that began with dipping its toe in with some experimentation in 2020. Let’s take a look:
1. Players, like an Aaron Judge or Martin Maldonado receive $10,000 to do an in-game interview, according to sources. The money does not come from ESPN or Fox, TBS, Apple or Peacock.
2. The MLBPA and MLB recognized they need to entice players to do the in-game talk-back, so the money comes out of the earmarked joint funds that MLB and the players association share. It’s a pretty good deal for talking to Karl Ravech and company over the course of a half inning, for, say, like 10 minutes, which works out to an average of $1K a minute.
3. It’s important on a couple of levels. First and foremost, it is nice for the national games to have wrinkles to make them feel different. That is helpful. Second, it gives MLB stars a chance to show their personality.
And who couldn’t use an extra 10 grand?
Quick clicks
Marcus Spears has re-signed with ESPN for four years, which I broke on Friday night. To me, Spears was a no-brainer to extend for ESPN, because he has a tremendous personality and has a great presence. He is really good on TV. That is hard to find. Everyone can have an opinion, and if you had a strong NFL and college career, it will have some substance. But TV is about entertaining and informing, which Spears does so well. He’s not Charles Barkley, who he happens to be friendly with, yet, but there is a genuineness that shines through. That quality is what makes Barkley stand out as the best sports studio analyst ever. The move also demonstrates ESPN will keep those it wants, even as layoffs loom. … YES had Meredith Marakovits take over the “Batting Practice Today” show Thursday, going further behind the scenes. The segment with head groundskeeper Dan Cunningham was particularly fun as you got a glimpse at how the field is so immaculate. Having Marakovits use the lawn equipment was risky, but it worked. …
The USFL began its second season this weekend. It is a real competition about who will survive long-term between the USFL and XFL. The XFL has Dwayne (The Rock) Johnson, while the USFL has the nostalgia of the old uniforms. Fox and NBC, who are both broadcasting the USFL this spring, pulled out the New York stops by having the Empire State Building lit up in the red, white and blue colors of the league logo. … Yankees radio has undergone a bit of a youth movement, first with 36-year-old Justin Shackil becoming John Sterling’s full-time fill-in on games as well as hosting most of the postgame shows, but also with Emmanuel Berbari, just 23, becoming Shackil’s backup on the postgame. Berbari is from Glen Lawn in Long Island and graduated from Fordham in 2021. … On David Cone’s “Toeing the Slab” pod, Fox Sports’ John Smoltz, defended himself against critics who think he doesn’t like baseball by hauling out the “they never played the game” crutch. As defenses go, we would have advised against that one, because it is lazy and demeaning. … Nice work by WFAN playing the best of “The Sports Edge with Rick Wolff” on Sunday morning. Wolff passed away at 71 due to a brain tumor. Phil Mushnick wrote a nice tribute to Wolff.
YouTube Sunday Ticket and the open market
The pricing for Sunday Ticket and the Red Zone on YouTube was announced last week. It is a bit higher than DirecTV’s decades-long offering of the services.
It is hard to do an exact comparison because what people paid for DirecTV varied. I had DirecTV for years because of Sunday Ticket and would get it for, like, $100 or so a year by calling and saying I might cancel, resulting in a $200 or so discount on the $300 listed price. They finally said no and I canceled DirecTV.
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Anyway, this is what the new YouTube pricing will look like:
• YouTube TV subscribers can pay $349 for Sunday Ticket or $389 with Red Zone
• Non-YouTube TV subscribers will pay $449 for Sunday Ticket and $489 with Red Zone, too
• Subscribers can get $100 off if they sign up before June 6.
Let’s go over it:
1. The real interesting element to YouTube’s roughly $2 billion deal with the NFL for Sunday Ticket and Red Zone is that anyone can buy it. Since 1994 when Sunday Ticket started, it’s been siloed behind DirecTV, which used it to gain and keep subscribers, like me.
While YouTube will use the package in a similar fashion by offering a discount to anyone who has its TV service, you can also get Sunday Ticket without YouTube.
2. It was believed that DirecTV had around 1.5 million subscribers to Sunday Ticket. At the end of last year, DirecTV had around 13 million subscribers. Now that YouTube can distribute to everyone, what will that do to the 1.5 million number? You come here for answers, but we are not sure. I would think it will be higher, but how much.
3. Let’s say YouTube gets to 5 million subscribers and the average person pays $350 — that would approach $2 billion. YouTube paid around $2 billion per year for the service, so it probably just needs to eventually get near that 5 million number to make the deal a win. That number could be offset by the assumption that Sunday Ticket grows monthly subscribers for YouTube TV.
I’d like to thank the Academy
On the morning that the “Marchand & Ourand Sports Media podcast” won the SportsPodGroup’s award for best sports business podcast, I was talking to a top TV executive, whom I told in reference to the Sports Emmys, “Awards are BS unless you are winning one.” So John Ourand and I will take it. The response we have received has been very nice for the podcast 80+ episodes in.
I want to thank our executive sports editor, Chris Shaw, who first approached me about working with Ourand on the pod. I could give a long list of others to thank, but the guts of it, besides John, of course, are Sports Business Journal’s Acie Wyatt and Chris Mason, who supervise and produce the pod each week. There are many others who contribute and thank you to all that have listened.
