Speaker 1: The volume all right, once a year. Because I don't
Speaker 1: like to pester people I work with, I bring on
Speaker 1: one of my favorite people, Michael Mulhill. So you know
Speaker 1: you're insightful when you're the president of Insight and Analytics
Speaker 1: at Fox Sports. Who doesn't want to be insightful. So
Speaker 1: Michael knows I'm a bit of a junkie for this stuff,
Speaker 1: and he's always been really open and he just knows
Speaker 1: I could sit and talk about this all day. So
Speaker 1: it's very wonky, but I always get tremendous feedback. Michael,
Speaker 1: and I want to start with something that's kind of
Speaker 1: fascinating to me, and I don't know the answer on
Speaker 1: ninety percent of these questions. So we have added at
Speaker 1: Fox the Cubs Dodgers opening series in Tokyo, obviously driven
Speaker 1: by two things Sho Hee o Tani and the remarkable
Speaker 1: success of those brains. Those are big baseball brands. Throw
Speaker 1: the Yankees in. They're probably the three biggest brands. But
Speaker 1: it's interesting when I see that, I wonder how Fox
Speaker 1: management thinks. Does Fox look at it and say, listen,
Speaker 1: we're not gonna make money on this. I mean to
Speaker 1: do a remote expensive to go to Tokyo's all diffootball game.
Speaker 1: But it kicks off our baseball season, which we had
Speaker 1: such a just a remarkable national legue, playoffs in the
Speaker 1: World Series. I mean it just baseball. Probably the best
Speaker 1: baseball ratings in a decade in terms of outside of
Speaker 1: the CUB season overall performance. So is this something that
Speaker 1: a company looks at and says, hey, listen, great momentum,
Speaker 1: let's keep it going, biggest brands, We're going to lose
Speaker 1: some money on this, it's just good for the business.
Speaker 1: Or can you go into a series and it can
Speaker 1: be viable? And I'm just I'm this is again so
Speaker 1: wonky in this probably private information, but give me the
Speaker 1: most honest answer you can.
Speaker 2: Okay, that's a good place to start. First of all,
Speaker 2: thanks for having me. I always enjoy these conversations. I
Speaker 2: love coming on the pod. It can be a little wonky,
Speaker 2: but we're going to try to make it as interesting
Speaker 2: as we can for a technical listenership. Look, this is
Speaker 2: our thirtieth season with Major League Baseball, and I think
Speaker 2: that they are a cornerstone of the Fox Sports brand.
Speaker 2: They're a cornerstone of the Fox network and we value
Speaker 2: that relationship tremendously, and we want to look for ways
Speaker 2: to be creative partners, be innovative partners, and over a
Speaker 2: one hundred and sixty two game regular season, you know,
Speaker 2: I think that means looking for novel, exciting different locations
Speaker 2: to have a game. And over the last couple of
Speaker 2: seasons that has meant Field of Dreams. It's meant rick
Speaker 2: Woodfield in Birmingham, Alabama, a great tribute either the Negro
Speaker 2: leagues last year. This year it's going to mean Bristol
Speaker 2: Motor Speedway. We'll do a baseball game within the interior
Speaker 2: of a NASCAR racetrack. It has meant London, and now
Speaker 2: this year for us, it's going to mean Tokyo. And
Speaker 2: I'm like, we can make a dollar on those two games.
Speaker 2: I think it's a great way to start the season.
Speaker 2: It's a great way to bring some excitement and novelty
Speaker 2: to what is a very long regular season. I think
Speaker 2: not just we at Fox, but everybody in the Commissioner's
Speaker 2: office is looking for ways all the time to develop
Speaker 2: tent polls and develop sort of interesting events for the
Speaker 2: regular season. This is a great way to start it,
Speaker 2: and we want to send that message that it's an
Speaker 2: important season for US. It's a milestone season. This is
Speaker 2: an incredibly important partner. We value the relationship enormously and
Speaker 2: we want to start the season in kind of a fun,
Speaker 2: exciting novelty and particularly acknowledge the intense popularity of the
Speaker 2: game in Japan, Like clearly we're sending the right team there,
Speaker 2: and I think it's going to be a great way
Speaker 2: to start out the season.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you know, and I've said this, I've always been
Speaker 1: seen sort of as a football guy. If you ask,
Speaker 1: you know, the average person what's calling like, he'd be
Speaker 1: college football, NFL. That doesn't mean I don't like the
Speaker 1: World Cup. I go to UFC fights. I'm an NBA fan.
Speaker 1: I grew up with it. Love you know. I like
Speaker 1: March madness. I think sometimes outside of the NFL sports
Speaker 1: is cyclical. Boxing used to be bigger. UFC squashed it.
Speaker 1: Horse racing was bigger, They had controversies. NBA was bigger.
Speaker 1: Now it's more international, not really a face of the
Speaker 1: league Baseball and when the kind of regional networks were
Speaker 1: sold at Fox, they don't have the same gravitas, they
Speaker 1: don't have the same economic pull and what it's created
Speaker 1: through no fault of anybody is the haves and the
Speaker 1: have nots. There's a bigger gap there. Well, that's not
Speaker 1: necessarily bad for a television network because the best teams
Speaker 1: are Atlanta, Los Angeles, Houston, the two New York teams.
Speaker 1: The cub has made a huge pick up with Kyle Tucker.
Speaker 1: So it's interesting. I don't know the health of the sport,
Speaker 1: you know, you and I that's not our concern. But
Speaker 1: there is a moment now where it does it not
Speaker 1: feel like baseball? Through through Otani driving up the I five,
Speaker 1: Soto actually leaving the Yankees going to the Mets, which
Speaker 1: makes them a villain to half of New York, does
Speaker 1: it not feel like baseball? Is probably the healthiest it's
Speaker 1: been from a television product since the Cubs year.
Speaker 2: Look, I think the structure of Major League Baseball is
Speaker 2: fascinating because there is a gap between the haves and
Speaker 2: the have nots, and that always has been. You know,
Speaker 2: I think you could go back through fifty sixty seventy
Speaker 2: years of baseball history and it's always been that the
Speaker 2: New York teams are the highest revenue teams. That used
Speaker 2: to be based on gate revenue. Then it became based
Speaker 2: on regional sports network revenue. But it's always been true
Speaker 2: that in baseball, brands make stars, right, And you could
Speaker 2: sort of contrast that to the NBA, where I would
Speaker 2: say in the NBA, stars make brands. Like a player
Speaker 2: like Steph Curry can go to the Warriors and take
Speaker 2: a franchise that was always sort of an afterthought in
Speaker 2: that league and turn them into the most valuable franchise
Speaker 2: in that league. That's Lebron going to Cleveland, it's Curry
Speaker 2: going to the Warriors. That's a pretty well established dynamic
Speaker 2: in basketball, whereas in baseball it's really hard to become
Speaker 2: a national star unless you're playing for one of the
Speaker 2: big brands, right. I mean that's true going back to
Speaker 2: Roberto Clemente.
Speaker 1: And like I said for years, if Derek Jeter was
Speaker 1: the Kansas City Royal, he would have been a hell
Speaker 1: of a player. But most of his dramatic moments were
Speaker 1: in October and frankly against the Red Sox or in October.
Speaker 1: And I think this is a great point. There is
Speaker 1: a distinction between the NBA and baseball, and it's brand first,
Speaker 1: and that's a Rod and Otani seem like complete outliers
Speaker 1: to me big enough. Now, now Otani is a bigger
Speaker 1: star with the Dodgers, but he was still Babe Ruth
Speaker 1: esque fascinating. But you consider that stuff right when as Fox,
Speaker 1: you consider how the player makes the brand, when you
Speaker 1: schedule games based on player movement.
Speaker 2: We absolutely do. And I think the dynamic that's been
Speaker 2: set up in baseball is that there's certainly there's a
Speaker 2: correlation between payroll and regular season wins. And so when
Speaker 2: you have this divide between the haves and the have nots,
Speaker 2: it favors the big brands. The big brands are more
Speaker 2: capable of developing superstars and national household names. And we're
Speaker 2: probably headed to another season where the Dodgers, the Yankees,
Speaker 2: the Phillies, the Braves, the Mets are going to be
Speaker 2: ninety plus win teams and all going to get into
Speaker 2: the postseason. And so in the regular season you have
Speaker 2: that advantage that were the benefit of CRUs to the
Speaker 2: bigger markets and the bigger payroll teams. And yet the
Speaker 2: postseason acts as a little bit of a leveler and
Speaker 2: an equalizer where Baseball has created this format in which yes,
Speaker 2: those big payroll, big market teams get in, but they
Speaker 2: also get in alongside Arizona, alongside Cleveland. A team can
Speaker 2: get into the tournament and get hot and get to
Speaker 2: the World Series. So you've got a little bit of
Speaker 2: an imbalance in the regular season that we do try
Speaker 2: to take advantage of. But then that equalizes a little
Speaker 2: bit in the postseason and you can end up with
Speaker 2: the World Series that is Dodgers Yankees, or you can
Speaker 2: end up with the World Series that we had two
Speaker 2: years ago, which was Diamondbacks Rangers. When the World Series
Speaker 2: is Diamondbacks Rangers, that's obviously not optimal for our ratings
Speaker 2: in the short term, but I think it creates a
Speaker 2: perception of competitive backs balance and a belief across all
Speaker 2: the fan bases that they do have a chance to
Speaker 2: get journaman and maybe get to the World Series, even
Speaker 2: if their payroll is one hundred million dollars less than
Speaker 2: a Dodger payroll or a Yankee payroll. And I think
Speaker 2: that's a quality that's unique to baseball.
Speaker 1: I think one of the things, and not like I'm
Speaker 1: giving away any secret sauce, but I watch our management team,
Speaker 1: and I've said before, the place I used to work
Speaker 1: was a massive hotel chain. Fox is smaller, although certainly
Speaker 1: not boutique chain we have. It's easier for me to
Speaker 1: communicate with management at Fox simply because you're right upstairs.
Speaker 1: I don't feel like we're swimming in a sea of games.
Speaker 1: I think we're very intentional with our league contracts. And
Speaker 1: I'll give you an example. I think, and this is again,
Speaker 1: this is not a revelation that we're becoming more of
Speaker 1: an event society. Due to the social platforms, we're a
Speaker 1: distracted society. It's more frenetic TikTok. It's harder to get
Speaker 1: people's attention. But I look at Fox and we have
Speaker 1: the World Cup an event, ANFL event, college football event,
Speaker 1: indie racing an event. This is really smart to me,
Speaker 1: This is really smart programming. I think Death Valley is
Speaker 1: Monday through Friday league programming hockey, NBA, to some degree
Speaker 1: Baseball as well, that it's very difficult to grab the
Speaker 1: attention in non event times. We are becoming. Olympics still
Speaker 1: rates World Cup clearly, Dana White, Saturday Night Fight Cards
Speaker 1: still rate that. It looks like it has been very
Speaker 1: intentional by Fox, that you've been about you've been ahead
Speaker 1: of this, that you are thinking about how the culturally
Speaker 1: we become more an event society. Now, is this coincidence
Speaker 1: or is this stuff you and Shanks and all the
Speaker 1: big wigs talk about.
Speaker 2: Well, it's not coincidence, and we're certainly not the only
Speaker 2: ones that are doing it. I mean, I agree. I
Speaker 2: think the sports business is becoming more reliant and more
Speaker 2: driven by the tent pole events. I think that your
Speaker 2: brand tends to be defined by your very best. Right,
Speaker 2: there are eighty seven hundred and sixty hours in a year.
Speaker 2: We have to think about how to fill eighty seven
Speaker 2: hundred and sixty hours of cable programming. We have to
Speaker 2: think about how to fill several hundred hours of broadcast programming.
Speaker 2: But we're not really defined by the eight thousand hours.
Speaker 2: We're defined by the Super Bowl, and we're defined by
Speaker 2: Freddie Freeman hitting a Grand Slam in Game one of
Speaker 2: the World Series and the World Cup Final, the moments
Speaker 2: that are really resonant and memorable, and that's what we're
Speaker 2: selling to our advertisers. That's also what we're selling to
Speaker 2: our audience, that we are a place that you can
Speaker 2: come and share an experience with somebody that's important to you.
Speaker 2: And we talk a lot about the social connectivity of
Speaker 2: sports and how that sort of underlies our entire business.
Speaker 2: But we want to be a place where you can
Speaker 2: come and share an experience and maybe have a memory
Speaker 2: with somebody that matters to you that you have for
Speaker 2: the rest of your life. And to have that, you
Speaker 2: really do have to be focused on the big events,
Speaker 2: the Super Bowls, the World Series, the things that might
Speaker 2: create a lifetime memory. And now that for us, that
Speaker 2: also means the Indy five hundred. You know, we want
Speaker 2: to continue to look at ways to develop events that
Speaker 2: could potentially create a once in a lifetime memory for somebody.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, I mean Fox has always had I mean
Speaker 1: FS one was the speed channel, if I recall, I
Speaker 1: mean FS one. Fox has always had auto racing as
Speaker 1: part of their brand from a long time ago. So
Speaker 1: it was a natural fit. You know. Obviously, I joke
Speaker 1: with my wife all the time, I'm in radio and
Speaker 1: cable TV. Your husband's careers are going the wrong way, honey.
Speaker 1: We may want to move into a fixer upper in
Speaker 1: a smaller neighborhood, but there are ways to stem losses
Speaker 1: and relationships. We have a streaming venture coming up. Relationships
Speaker 1: with YouTube. Fox News is obviously a juggernaut in an
Speaker 1: industry that is regressing. But The New York Times still
Speaker 1: makes money in newspapers, and Delta and Southwest Airlines in
Speaker 1: that in the aviation field, which has been under great
Speaker 1: financial duress many times in my life, they're still industry leaders.
Speaker 1: You can make money in industries that shrink. How do
Speaker 1: we view cable now? I mean, I've said this to you.
Speaker 1: I'm sixty, Michael. I can't give cable up because I
Speaker 1: like college football and I'm not giving it up. And
Speaker 1: it's and by the way, I also like news and politics,
Speaker 1: so I'm not giving it up. I mean it's like,
Speaker 1: I like streaming, but if I want to watch you know,
Speaker 1: political stuff live CNBC, Fox Business Channel, that's that's. As
Speaker 1: I get older, I kind of watch news, sports and
Speaker 1: politics more. How do you view cable? How viable is it?
Speaker 1: Is it a five year runway, eight, ten or three?
Speaker 2: Well, that last part of the question is really interesting,
Speaker 2: right because I think you and I, unfortunately are both
Speaker 2: getting to the age where you know, we can think
Speaker 2: in terms of the rest of our careers, and that
Speaker 2: might only be a ten fifteen year horizon, right. So
Speaker 2: when I think in terms of the number of years
Speaker 2: that I expect to continue to be doing this. I
Speaker 2: think I think cable is going to continue to be
Speaker 2: certainly viable, very profitable. It's funny we we have a
Speaker 2: lot of conversations in this business about cable as a
Speaker 2: declining part of the business. Sometime it's put in even
Speaker 2: more negative terms than declining, and yet when companies like
Speaker 2: ours come out with their quarterly earnings, you often find
Speaker 2: that it's still the cable networks that are driving a
Speaker 2: huge percentage of the earnings. Right Like WBD owner Brothers Discovery,
Speaker 2: they just had their most recent earnings call, and on
Speaker 2: that call, it was all the traditional linear cable networks
Speaker 2: that are driving billions and billions of dollars in earnings
Speaker 2: for a company that is still varies significantly in debt
Speaker 2: and trying to climb out of that debt, and their
Speaker 2: cable earnings are a powerful engine to try to get
Speaker 2: them out of that situation. So the earnings on the
Speaker 2: cable side are still extremely significant. It may not be
Speaker 2: a growing part of the business, but it's still a
Speaker 2: very profitable part of the business. I do think there's
Speaker 2: been in the sports world a little bit of a
Speaker 2: movement toward taking some of the best events from cable
Speaker 2: and putting them back on the podcast where you potentially
Speaker 2: have more reach. And I think there's something special about
Speaker 2: being on broadcast. But the idea that cable is going
Speaker 2: to disappear, cease to exist, stop being profitable, I think
Speaker 2: that's a long way away. You know, you still have
Speaker 2: tens of millions of people who are comfortable with the
Speaker 2: cable bundle. Maybe there's some inertia in play there. They
Speaker 2: like the ease of use, they like knowing where to
Speaker 2: find everything. They like knowing that your show if they're
Speaker 2: a Direct TV subscriber is on Channel two nineteen, and
Speaker 2: they know where they can find Monday night football. They
Speaker 2: know where they can find the NBA Playoffs. There's a
Speaker 2: simplicity to it that is really compelling, and I think,
Speaker 2: particularly for older consumers that grew up with cable, they're
Speaker 2: not moving away from it anytime soon. I think we're
Speaker 2: a long way from the end of the bundle.
Speaker 1: Who's scoring big in the NBA this season? You are
Speaker 1: all the new ways to get in on the action
Speaker 1: at Draftking Sports Book and Officials, sports betting partner of
Speaker 1: the NBA Slams, Dishing the ball cleaning the glass, get
Speaker 1: behind your favorite players. Prop bets you can make on DraftKings.
Speaker 1: It's fun the home of NBA player props. If you're
Speaker 1: ready to place your first bet, make it really simple.
Speaker 1: Pick how many points your favorite players going to score.
Speaker 1: Go to DraftKings Sportsbook. They have an app, download it
Speaker 1: make your pick. If you're a first timer, here's something
Speaker 1: special new Draft Kings customers. All you have to do
Speaker 1: is bet five bucks, get one hundred and fifty in
Speaker 1: bonus bets instantly. So take it to the rack with
Speaker 1: DraftKings sports Book, Every point Counts. Download their app takes
Speaker 1: ninety seconds. Use the code column cli n to get
Speaker 1: one hundred and fifty bones in bonus bets betting just
Speaker 1: five only on DraftKings. The Crown is yours.
Speaker 3: Gambling problem called one eight hundred gambler In New York
Speaker 3: call eight seven seven eight ope and Y, or text
Speaker 3: hope and Y four six seven three six nine. In Connecticut,
Speaker 3: help is available for problem gambling called eight eight eight
Speaker 3: seven eight nine seven seven seven seven or visit CCPG
Speaker 3: dot org. Please play responsibly on behalf of Boothill Casino
Speaker 3: when resorting Kansas twenty one and over. Agent eligibility varies
Speaker 3: by jurisdiction VOYD and Ontario. New customers only bonus bets
Speaker 3: expire one hundred and sixty eight hours after issue. In
Speaker 3: four additional terms and responsible gaming resources see DKANNG, dot co,
Speaker 3: slash audio.
Speaker 1: You see this. I remember having a conversation years ago
Speaker 1: with a friend of mine who's in the financial planning industry,
Speaker 1: wealth management in New York, and we were talking about
Speaker 1: the private jet industry, and there was I had to
Speaker 1: take a private jet somewhere, and I said, you know,
Speaker 1: how safe are these? And he said, well, just sign
Speaker 1: up for the Warren Buffett company. That one will be viable.
Speaker 1: He said. At some point, you know, there'll be about
Speaker 1: three of those companies, maybe two. Like everything else. You know,
Speaker 1: you know how the world works, right, people gobble up
Speaker 1: smaller companies. And I look at streaming. Everybody has Netflix first,
Speaker 1: in better rates, better production, cash heavy, asset heavy. They're fine.
Speaker 1: I look at Disney. It still feels a little wobbly
Speaker 1: where they're now churning a profit, but they lose seven
Speaker 1: hundred thousand subs on their on their plus, so I
Speaker 1: mean it's it's still not quite there. Amazon's fine. They
Speaker 1: have a revenue, a reservoir. Amazon has a reservoir of money.
Speaker 1: It's a It's the retail giant globally, right or at
Speaker 1: least domestically. But I wonder when you look at streamers,
Speaker 1: there was this thought five years ago streaming winds, everything
Speaker 1: else loses. And I look at it today and I
Speaker 1: see a lot of red, and I see a lot
Speaker 1: of people watching television. There was a sense five years
Speaker 1: ago streamers were taking over the world. At some point,
Speaker 1: you have to make a profit. Do you do you
Speaker 1: still feel like the dread of we're all under this
Speaker 1: streaming dark cloud and it's about ready to strike us down.
Speaker 2: Not at all. And I think, if anything, what the
Speaker 2: last five years have established is that Fox and our
Speaker 2: management team, people at higher levels than may have done
Speaker 2: probably the best job of any legacy media company of
Speaker 2: navigating the challenges of the transition to streaming and the
Speaker 2: increased adoption of streaming. I think the two companies that
Speaker 2: obviously have a biased opinion, but the two companies that
Speaker 2: have done the best job of navigating the last five
Speaker 2: to seven years are Netflix and I think us. You know,
Speaker 2: I think we've been able to navigate that as well
Speaker 2: as anyone because we didn't over invest in what I
Speaker 2: would call an independent streaming platform. We remained committed to
Speaker 2: the cable bundle. Were still committed to the cable bundle.
Speaker 2: And I think being patient and not getting into that
Speaker 2: streaming arms race has served a really well. Streaming means
Speaker 2: a couple different things, right, and we sometimes talk about
Speaker 2: it as if it's a monolith, as if it's all one.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: Streaming means independent streamers like Netflix, Apple, Amazon, behemoth tech
Speaker 2: companies that have trillion dollar market capitalizations. And that's one
Speaker 2: version of streaming. Another version is the streaming arm of
Speaker 2: traditional media companies like Peacock, like Paramount, like Max, which
Speaker 2: useduld be called HBO Max. And then the third type
Speaker 2: of streaming is streaming that sort of replicates your cable
Speaker 2: bundle like Hulu Live and YouTube TV and a place
Speaker 2: where you can go to get a package of networks,
Speaker 2: but rather than it being delivered via a cable in
Speaker 2: the back of your TV set, it comes through your
Speaker 2: in home Wi Fi. So I think when we talk
Speaker 2: about streaming, we have to be careful to define what
Speaker 2: kind of streaming are we talking about. We are getting
Speaker 2: ready to go into the direct to consumer business. Our
Speaker 2: chairman Blachlan Murdoch has been very open about saying we
Speaker 2: intend to have a direct to consumer offering ready by
Speaker 2: this coming football season. It changes the way that we
Speaker 2: think about certain aspects of how we program. We now
Speaker 2: have to think in terms of having twelve month a
Speaker 2: year strength so that we can keep a subscriber dialed
Speaker 2: into us all year. But I think we're really comfortable
Speaker 2: with the way we've managed this evolution, and I don't
Speaker 2: think that we're in a situation where streaming is necessarily
Speaker 2: going to take over everything. I mean, I think there
Speaker 2: will be a continued incremental migration of some properties or
Speaker 2: fractions of properties moving to exclusive streaming. But I think
Speaker 2: we're also seeing a lot of success in properties staying
Speaker 2: on broadcast, and that's the NFL. We talked about the
Speaker 2: World Series ratings being at a seven year high. We
Speaker 2: have done this deal with IndyCar where we're now going
Speaker 2: to put every IndyCar race on broadcast and try to
Speaker 2: take advantage of the power of the broadcast platform. And
Speaker 2: I think what they're what we're finding is that there
Speaker 2: is a path to coexistence, right that we want to
Speaker 2: have strong, viable broadcast television I think there are very
Speaker 2: compelling reasons why that's important, not just for sports, but
Speaker 2: it's just important for communities to have strong broadcast TV.
Speaker 2: I don't think the cable bundle is going away anytime soon,
Speaker 2: and I think there's still room for streaming to continue
Speaker 2: to grow its audience and to add more exclusive sports rights.
Speaker 2: But I think it's a little simplistic, and I think
Speaker 2: there've been some lazy takes out there suggesting that everything
Speaker 2: is going to go to streaming. Not everything is going
Speaker 2: to go to streaming. And when it goes to streaming,
Speaker 2: as I say, that means different things. That can mean
Speaker 2: that you are going to a huge tech company, or
Speaker 2: you're going to streaming, but you're still within the Fox family,
Speaker 2: or the NBCU family, the Paramount family, or it just
Speaker 2: means that fifteen to twenty percent of your audience is
Speaker 2: watching via a bundle of networks that's delivered via the
Speaker 2: Internet rather than delivered via cable. But I never bought
Speaker 2: into that more apocalyptic idea that the entire business is
Speaker 2: going to streaming and we're all doomed. There's a migration
Speaker 2: there and there will be a new equilibrium, and I
Speaker 2: think we're getting close to it already.
Speaker 1: Well, I mean, listen, I'm in. I started in AM radio,
Speaker 1: then it became AMFM, and then it became like audio
Speaker 1: and streaming, and then it became podcasts. And my takeaway
Speaker 1: is it's like saying newspapers are dying. No, the delivery
Speaker 1: system was outdated, but I still have the Wall Street Journal,
Speaker 1: I still have the New York Times. I've never read
Speaker 1: more in my life. So I mean, and maybe I'm just,
Speaker 1: you know, an an old guy, but I've never read more.
Speaker 1: You know, I'm always bouncing around adding subscriptions. I mean,
Speaker 1: you know the old cliche content is king. It really
Speaker 1: is true. Like if you have good content and good
Speaker 1: games I watch. I think it's interesting. You know, my
Speaker 1: love for college football, and so I like all the
Speaker 1: new moves. I like NIL though it's imperfect. I like
Speaker 1: transfer portal, though again there needs to be you know,
Speaker 1: there needs to be a fence around in a little bit.
Speaker 1: And I like the convergence of Texas Oklahoma to the
Speaker 1: SEC and the PAC twelve schools, four of them going
Speaker 1: to the Big Ten. So last year is the first year.
Speaker 1: The ratings were a bit disappointing, although I do think
Speaker 1: the first round matchups were choppy. I tend to think
Speaker 1: we're a bit hyperbolic as media critics on things like
Speaker 1: things take time to work themselves out. I think it'll
Speaker 1: be better in the second year when you schedule college
Speaker 1: football and you do this every year Big Ten. It
Speaker 1: feels obvious to me that Michigan and Ohio State are
Speaker 1: the number one in two brands. If I said, now
Speaker 1: you have Oregon and the marketing machine of Phil Knight,
Speaker 1: big market Washington Penn State USC, although it feels again
Speaker 1: like it's underachieving. If you take Michigan and Ohio State out,
Speaker 1: what brand moves the needle in the Big Ten that
Speaker 1: maybe I would be surprised? Is there a definitive third
Speaker 1: I would guess Penn State? And is there a game
Speaker 1: or a team that would surprise me?
Speaker 2: It's Penn State, and I don't think that would come
Speaker 2: as much of a surprise to Yeah. I think once
Speaker 2: you get past Michigan and Ohio State, the third most
Speaker 2: important brand to us is Penn State. I think Oregon
Speaker 2: obviously is an important brand, But as you know, the
Speaker 2: way the Big Ten deal is constructed, the conference has
Speaker 2: multiple partners. Each partner has a find window we do
Speaker 2: games at noon. Eastern CBS has the late afternoon window,
Speaker 2: NBC has the primetime window. Because we have that noon window,
Speaker 2: it's almost inevitable that Oregon is just not likely to
Speaker 2: be as impactful to us as schools that are in
Speaker 2: the Eastern and Central time zone. I think again, I
Speaker 2: don't know that this falls under the heading of surprising,
Speaker 2: but I think every year we look at Nebraska as
Speaker 2: a sleeping giant, and we hope for Nebraska to get
Speaker 2: close to the kind of success that they had when
Speaker 2: you and I were kids. We had them on a
Speaker 2: Friday night last year. They got off to a pretty
Speaker 2: good start to their season. They hosted Illinois in a
Speaker 2: Friday night game. That game did over four million viewers.
Speaker 2: That's terrific for a Friday night. That sort of hints
Speaker 2: at what Nebraska could be if they ever got close
Speaker 2: to the kind of success that they had years ago
Speaker 2: under Tom Osborne. So certainly Michigan, Ohio State at the top,
Speaker 2: Penn State next for us because we had that early window.
Speaker 2: Oregon and SC obviously also very important, but their home
Speaker 2: games are going to be in later windows, and Nebraska
Speaker 2: kind of lurking as the brand that you always hope
Speaker 2: might sort of reawaken and drive the kind of viewership
Speaker 2: that they once did.
Speaker 1: Now, Ohio State complained, and I understand it. You know, listen,
Speaker 1: you're a Buckeye fan. You like those late games, you
Speaker 1: can get lubricated. You're going to the stadium at night.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's just more fun going to night games.
Speaker 1: There's no question. I've been to a few Husky games,
Speaker 1: USC games. There is a special vibe playing under the lights.
Speaker 1: But Ohio State, also in our window, is the biggest draw.
Speaker 1: What was last year a difficult ear? Some of it's
Speaker 1: just what the schedule makers give you. What do you
Speaker 1: say to the critics of Ohio State that say, hey, man,
Speaker 1: you're killing us. We need night games. You can't just
Speaker 1: keep going back and forth to us. What would you
Speaker 1: say to the critics, Well, the.
Speaker 2: First thing I would say is I completely understand the complaint.
Speaker 2: Right the Ohio State finished their season last year six
Speaker 2: consecutive noon kickoffs, and I think that's just a byproduct
Speaker 2: of the games being allocated via a draft, right, Like,
Speaker 2: we can only draft the best game that's available to
Speaker 2: us each time that our selection comes up. If you
Speaker 2: were creating a schedule, just on a blank sheet of paper,
Speaker 2: you probably would not give the top team or a
Speaker 2: top team in your conference the same kickoff time on
Speaker 2: six consecutive weekends to finish the season. So that wasn't
Speaker 2: by design. It was sort of just a product of circumstance.
Speaker 2: And I do understand the frustration that some Buckeye fans
Speaker 2: may have felt at the end of last year. I
Speaker 2: want to back up a little and try to put
Speaker 2: into some context the way that we see the scheduling
Speaker 2: of the games and the deal that we have with
Speaker 2: the Big Ten. Right what's the most significant thing that's
Speaker 2: happening in college sports right now? I mean, I think
Speaker 2: obviously the most significant development and the most positive development,
Speaker 2: is that the athletes are moving closer and closer to
Speaker 2: being fairly compensated. Right Athletes are getting paid. And you know,
Speaker 2: when I see a story that Carson Beck is in
Speaker 2: Miami and he's making over four million dollars and he's
Speaker 2: driving a Lamborghini, like, my knee jerk reaction to that
Speaker 2: is that's awesome, because we have decades of history in
Speaker 2: college sports where the athletes that drive all the value
Speaker 2: were not being compensated appropriately and coaches were getting rich.
Speaker 2: Media executives were getting rich. Everybody was making a lot
Speaker 2: of money except for the athletes that actually drive the value.
Speaker 2: And so we're now finally in a position where the players,
Speaker 2: the young men and increasingly young women, who really drive
Speaker 2: the value of these properties, are getting paid the way
Speaker 2: that they should get paid. And whatever complexity comes with
Speaker 2: that that makes a coach's job harder or makes the
Speaker 2: environment maybe a little bit more challenging, all those challenges
Speaker 2: are secondary to the right of the athletes to maximize
Speaker 2: their earnings. I mean, I very very strongly believe that.
Speaker 2: And so, as in any labor market, right, top talent
Speaker 2: is going to follow top compensation. And as the athletes
Speaker 2: are getting paid more commensurate with their market value, there's
Speaker 2: more and more pressure on the conferences and more and
Speaker 2: more pressure on the schools to maximize revenue so that
Speaker 2: they can go out and get the best talent. That
Speaker 2: brings us to the media rights. The Big Ten is
Speaker 2: the best compensated conference in the country in terms of
Speaker 2: media rights. The reason they're the best compensated conference in
Speaker 2: the country is because they have multiple partners, because they
Speaker 2: have a deal with US and with CBS and with NBC,
Speaker 2: I think that's what enables the Big Ten to realize
Speaker 2: more media revenue than the SEC, which is obviously the
Speaker 2: other power conference in college football, and they've gone exclusively
Speaker 2: with Disney. So by having multiple media partners, it sort
Speaker 2: of creates a requirement for US to have a designated window,
Speaker 2: for CBS to have a designated window, for c to
Speaker 2: have a designated window, for US to apportion those games
Speaker 2: out via a draft. We don't have the freedom that
Speaker 2: Disney has to just put the best games wherever they
Speaker 2: want to on the SEC side, And when you have
Speaker 2: multiple partners and the games are being scheduled via a draft,
Speaker 2: you're going to get to some inefficiencies like Ohio State
Speaker 2: playing a bunch of games in a row at the
Speaker 2: same time, or a frustration that Penn State fans had
Speaker 2: when they had a home game last year that a
Speaker 2: lot of their fans wanted to be in primetime as
Speaker 2: the white out it was a big new game. Instead,
Speaker 2: their fans were extremely vocal. I heard a lot about it, right,
Speaker 2: But those are all things that are connected to macximizing
Speaker 2: revenue for the conference, therefore maximizing revenue for the schools,
Speaker 2: therefore maximizing revenue for the players, and that's the most
Speaker 2: important thing, making sure that the kids are compensated in
Speaker 2: the right way, and that the schools can go out
Speaker 2: and get the talent that they need to compete for
Speaker 2: a national championship, which is why I think we now
Speaker 2: have a situation where at the very very highest level,
Speaker 2: that handful of schools that are going to compete for
Speaker 2: a national championship in football every year. The Big Ten
Speaker 2: is just as good as the SEC, and may even
Speaker 2: be pulling ahead a little bit. And it's because of
Speaker 2: that revenue generation that's largely tied to the media rights.
Speaker 1: I want to talk WNBA. I'm kind of fascinated by
Speaker 1: it because I believe for its entire existence, the NBA
Speaker 1: has subsidized the WNBA. And you may argue the moral
Speaker 1: and there's a certain humanity to supporting women's sports. I
Speaker 1: completely understand that. And then Kitlin Clark arrived and the
Speaker 1: team flies private and the ratings are insane. Now, the
Speaker 1: league was growing, and I think the quality over the
Speaker 1: last ten years has improved dramatically, but Kitlyn Clark is,
Speaker 1: as I've said, Taylor Swift and tennis shoes. It is
Speaker 1: just a once in a generation. It's Tiger Woods, the golf,
Speaker 1: it's Shoeo Todi. It's like, oh, it's an event. Every
Speaker 1: game's an event. Is the WNBA a viable TV product?
Speaker 1: Or is it we have a once in a generation talent?
Speaker 1: Obviously the WNBA would not allow you to just buy
Speaker 1: a Caitland Clark package. But is she powerful enough because
Speaker 1: she could have a twelve to fifteen year run here, Michael,
Speaker 1: is she powerful enough a singular star with a little
Speaker 1: bit of a magic Larry Bird quality because of Angel Reees?
Speaker 1: That absolutely helps sort as a story we could follow
Speaker 1: us Americans. We love our stories, we love the journey.
Speaker 1: Reese is part of this. Is that over the next
Speaker 1: fifteen years going to be a viable TV product? Or
Speaker 1: do we just have a megastar? And that's all it is?
Speaker 2: So it's both those things. And I know it's always
Speaker 2: sort of a cop out answer when you give somebody
Speaker 2: an either or choice and they say it's both. But
Speaker 2: I do think in the WNDA, it's both something that
Speaker 2: was growing and viable and becoming more viable by the year,
Speaker 2: and then you injected into that a once in a
Speaker 2: lifetime talent in Caitlin Clark who I think is very
Speaker 2: obviously the overwhelming number one factor in the growth of
Speaker 2: WNBA viewership last year. You know, I think when we
Speaker 2: looked at Indiana Fever games versus all other WNBA games
Speaker 2: last year, the Caitlin Clark games were doing triple the
Speaker 2: viewership of the rest of the league, and that is
Speaker 2: a Tiger Woods level of impact. I don't know that
Speaker 2: there's ever been anybody in Team sports, even Michael Jordan,
Speaker 2: where you would look at their games and see them
Speaker 2: doing triple the average of the rest of the league.
Speaker 2: So I do think a big part of it is
Speaker 2: that once in a lifetime phenomenon of Caitlin Clark, and
Speaker 2: we should just acknowledge the obvious and make it clear
Speaker 2: that she is plainly the driving force behind the growth
Speaker 2: of the league. But at the same time, if God forbid,
Speaker 2: Kaylyn Clark had a career ending injury, she were out
Speaker 2: of the league. If Kaitlyn Clark just were taken out
Speaker 2: of the equation, I still think the WNBA would be
Speaker 2: on a growth trajectory, and it wouldn't be the kind
Speaker 2: of exponential growth that we saw last year. But this
Speaker 2: is a product that was moving forward pretty steadily prior
Speaker 2: to Caitlin. And even now, if you look at the
Speaker 2: collegiate level, yes, seeing growth, ESPN seeing some growth. You've
Speaker 2: still got this next generation of superstars. That's Gugi Watkins
Speaker 2: here in LA, it's Page Becker's in Connecticut right Like,
Speaker 2: we're still seeing progress post Caitlin. And it makes me
Speaker 2: think that, like, obviously she's the catalyst, She's what drives
Speaker 2: the explosion of interest. I think sometimes we overstate the
Speaker 2: idea that it's more than Caitlin. But there was a
Speaker 2: growth curve there before, yes, and I think it would
Speaker 2: continue even if we were somehow in a post Kaitlin.
Speaker 1: You know what, And let me throw this at you,
Speaker 1: Michael and pushback please, But women's basketball is a little
Speaker 1: like men's basketball thirty years ago. It's not as international,
Speaker 1: and the players are staying in college for three and
Speaker 1: four years. So I watched the WNBA draft this year.
Speaker 1: I knew the top eight players. I didn't know any
Speaker 1: of the NBA's players. So as leagues get more global,
Speaker 1: it's not always great for all things domestic. Is that
Speaker 1: when I watch these women's basketball players go to the
Speaker 1: pros early they played four years Caitlyn Clark was a
Speaker 1: three year So I heard about her when she was
Speaker 1: a sophomore junior. It's a national story. She's a phenom
Speaker 1: as a senior, and so what's happening. This is the
Speaker 1: way people forget that you ing and Tim Duncan and
Speaker 1: you know Chris Paul's I mean, Michael Jordan didn't come
Speaker 1: out after his freshman year. People forget it was at
Speaker 1: Carolina and didn't win a title. And so women's basketball
Speaker 1: is a lot like men's college basketball was in nineteen
Speaker 1: eighty eight. Is that the stars stayed and I had
Speaker 1: a story and there were rivalries, Burden Magic, and then
Speaker 1: they went to the draft and I had heard of them,
Speaker 1: and then I followed them in the NBA. And so
Speaker 1: I'm with you on this, Caitlyn's part of it, But
Speaker 1: I think as NBA has gotten more international, the domestic
Speaker 1: component to women's basketball actually fortifies their growth. Like sometimes
Speaker 1: it's a distracted as society. Michael, I want to follow
Speaker 1: simple stories and watch in Iowa and U con Baylor.
Speaker 1: It's real easy I can follow. Yeah, the journey's easy
Speaker 1: for me to follow. So maybe I'm wrong on that,
Speaker 1: but that's just how it works for me.
Speaker 2: No, and the word in everything that you just said
Speaker 2: that really resonates with me is simplicity, right, because we're
Speaker 2: always looking for ways to simplify being a sports fan.
Speaker 2: We want the games to be on networks where you're
Speaker 2: familiar with seeing the games. We want the brands to
Speaker 2: be familiar. When a player moves from the collegiate level
Speaker 2: to the professional level, whether that's basketball or football, it's
Speaker 2: incredibly helpful for the fan, the viewer to have two
Speaker 2: or three years of history of getting to know this player.
Speaker 2: So I agree. I mean, that's absolutely true of Kaitlin Clark,
Speaker 2: But I was like you and you can watch the
Speaker 2: w NBA Draft and you know, you do know Angel
Speaker 2: Reese and you know Cameron Brink and you've seen them
Speaker 2: play in the tournament. And to give some credit to
Speaker 2: a competitor, you know, the job that ESPN is done
Speaker 2: in growing the women's collegiate tournament is extraordinary. You know,
Speaker 2: we like to think that we're just as powerful as
Speaker 2: they are in women's basketball during the regular season, but
Speaker 2: you know, the growth that the women's tournament has enjoyed
Speaker 2: is incredible, and there's absolutely a direct connection between the
Speaker 2: success of that tournament and then the success that you
Speaker 2: saw last year in the WNBA ratings.
Speaker 1: This is the always been sort of the I think
Speaker 1: Lachlan talked about this the other day about continuing to
Speaker 1: nurture the relationship with the NFL. Obviously, if you don't
Speaker 1: have NFL football, you can argue about what your menu
Speaker 1: needs to look like as a sports network. We all
Speaker 1: have to have the NFL. And I was thinking about this,
Speaker 1: and I'm just going to ramble here for a minute
Speaker 1: and a half. Amazon is a retail giant. I do
Speaker 1: not always love the quality of their programming, but they're
Speaker 1: getting better. Netflix is a content giant, so I tend
Speaker 1: to think they get content. They get documentaries, they get films,
Speaker 1: they get specials, but that doesn't necessarily mean they get sports.
Speaker 1: And I have been disappointed with Netflix attempts at sports events.
Speaker 1: This is where I think networks are excellent. I think
Speaker 1: our production values at Fox are second to none. I
Speaker 1: think NBCCBS these are tiffany experiences. These are tremendous production experiences.
Speaker 1: I mean the Super Bowl. I mean Fox will go
Speaker 1: eight hours live or seven hours live. But commercials to production,
Speaker 1: they make you cry, they make you laugh. The Jimmy
Speaker 1: John it's an aipiece. It's just spectacular. I would argue
Speaker 1: that if a Netflix came in and said, all right,
Speaker 1: we are buying a bigger NFL package, I would argue
Speaker 1: they would be better served to say, hey, Fox, can
Speaker 1: you produce it? You're really good at this production thing.
Speaker 1: I'm just telling you, as a consumer, all companies do
Speaker 1: things well. I don't think these streamers understand the value
Speaker 1: and how hard TV production is. So I mean that's
Speaker 1: just my take as a consumer. Tell me I'm wrong,
Speaker 1: lay it out, fire holes in this, But I still
Speaker 1: think network television has a role in sports, even with streamers.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's a lot to react to there, right, So
Speaker 2: why don't we start with what's the role that network
Speaker 2: television has to play even in a world where we're
Speaker 2: competing with tech companies that are capitalized many multiple times
Speaker 2: greater than we are. Right, I really value broadcasting. I'm
Speaker 2: sure you do as well.
Speaker 1: Oh, I absolutely.
Speaker 2: The first sort of job I had in my life
Speaker 2: was I worked at a radio station in Pittsburgh when
Speaker 2: I was fifteen years old. And I've always thought that
Speaker 2: broadcasting occupies a really unique and special place in our culture,
Speaker 2: largely because you are transmitting over public airwaves. You therefore
Speaker 2: have a certain responsibility to the community that you serve,
Speaker 2: and I think broadcasters are a little bit more ingrained
Speaker 2: in their markets than a national cable network can be,
Speaker 2: or than a worldwide tech platform can be. And I
Speaker 2: think one of the reasons that it's so important for
Speaker 2: major sports to remain on over the air broadcast television
Speaker 2: is because of that role broadcasters play. You and I
Speaker 2: are both in southern California, right we just lived through
Speaker 2: the LA wildfires. On the night that the wildfires happened.
Speaker 2: If you look at TV ratings here in LA, people
Speaker 2: who had power and were able to watch TV that night,
Speaker 2: they chose local news over national news by a margin
Speaker 2: of almost ten to one. When something really serious, when
Speaker 2: there's a serious emergency that happens in a community, people
Speaker 2: go to their local broadcasters. That was true out here.
Speaker 2: That's when a hurricane threatens the Gulf Coast. It's probably
Speaker 2: true in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina last night and today.
Speaker 2: People rely on local broadcasts. And so if the viability
Speaker 2: of local broadcast television is dependent in part on those
Speaker 2: stations having marquee sports sports that will keep people subscribed
Speaker 2: to a cable bundle or that will keep advertisers coming
Speaker 2: to that station. I think it's incredibly important that we
Speaker 2: keep as much high profile sports as we can, or
Speaker 2: at least keep a significant percentage of high profile sports
Speaker 2: on broadcast, because broadcast and local journalism really matters a lot.
Speaker 2: And I think there's something very pro consumer about making
Speaker 2: sure that big sports events stay on broadcast TV, not exclusively,
Speaker 2: but predominantly. And I think a lot of the power
Speaker 2: of sports that we have talked about from time to
Speaker 2: time is that it does bring communities together. It brings
Speaker 2: people together. It matters to a city when the Philadelphia
Speaker 2: Eagles do a sixty rating for the Super Bowl or
Speaker 2: a fifty for the NFC Championship game, meaning that literally
Speaker 2: fifty percent of the market is tuned in that can
Speaker 2: only happen on broadcast TV. So I do think there
Speaker 2: are unique qualities to free over the air broadcasts that
Speaker 2: as an industry, we need to acknowledge that there's real
Speaker 2: value there and that there's something special there that has
Speaker 2: to be protected not just for the benefit of the leagues,
Speaker 2: but for the benefit of the communities that these broadcasters serve.
Speaker 2: So that's me on my soapbox about podcasting wife, it
Speaker 2: was like the quality of production. Just to get to
Speaker 2: the other part. I think Amazon's production of Thursday night
Speaker 2: Football is awesome, right, and.
Speaker 1: I think it's gotten better. I think it was clunky early,
Speaker 1: it's gotten better.
Speaker 2: But a lot of the people who are behind that
Speaker 2: are people that used to work here, right, and they've
Speaker 2: moved out to Amazon, and they've hired talent that worked
Speaker 2: at Broadcast Networks. And I think they do a really,
Speaker 2: really good job. And I would never criticize the way
Speaker 2: that somebody else produces the games. I will say that
Speaker 2: at a company like ours, sports is just so vital
Speaker 2: to our business. You know, you look at the Fox
Speaker 2: Broadcast network. Over eighty percent of our viewing this year
Speaker 2: will be viewing of sports. Over fifty percent of our
Speaker 2: viewing is going to be viewing of the NFL. If
Speaker 2: we don't do a great job on the NFL, if
Speaker 2: we don't do a great job producing it, we don't
Speaker 2: do a great job selling it, we don't hire the
Speaker 2: right talent, we don't have a company. And I think
Speaker 2: that is very different from some of these other companies
Speaker 2: you're describing, where I think Amazon does a great job
Speaker 2: with Thursday Night Football, The reality is that the revenue
Speaker 2: that they generate from Thursday Night football represents a tiny,
Speaker 2: tiny fraction of one percent of the revenue that Amazon
Speaker 2: will do this year. Same thing is true with Netflix.
Speaker 2: You know, Apple has a more limited sports presence, but obviously,
Speaker 2: like the revenue that they generate from sports is just
Speaker 2: infinitesimal compared to their overall business. At a company like Fox, NBC, Disney, CBS,
Speaker 2: sports just means more. It means more to our bottom line,
Speaker 2: It means more to our very existence as a company.
Speaker 2: We have to be great at production because if we
Speaker 2: fail at this, we fail as a company. If the
Speaker 2: big tech platforms fail at producing live sports, they don't
Speaker 2: fail as a company. It doesn't really matter that much
Speaker 2: to the future health of Amazon or of Apple. And
Speaker 2: again I do think they produce the events really well,
Speaker 2: but you just can't deny that it's a bigger portion
Speaker 2: of our business. It's a higher priority for us company,
Speaker 2: and it affects the people that work here, it affects
Speaker 2: our shareholders, it affects every part of what we do.
Speaker 2: That we have to be excellent at game production. There's
Speaker 2: just more of a mandate and a necessity at a
Speaker 2: place like this.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean I watched the Apple baseball stuff Roku.
Speaker 1: It's not a shot at people, It's just I think.
Speaker 1: I think to be excellent at anything, you have to
Speaker 1: be somewhat obsessed. And money can't solve obsession, right, Like
Speaker 1: when you watch I know how much football means. It's
Speaker 1: a CBS and Fox. I can feel it.
Speaker 2: Right, I know.
Speaker 1: And I also know what storytelling means to Netflix. You know,
Speaker 1: I can tell when I watched I watched two documentaries
Speaker 1: this week on Netflix, and god, they know they're all
Speaker 1: over the globe doing this stuff. So uh and like
Speaker 1: everybody else on I'm on Amazon at least twice a
Speaker 1: week ordering something. So I think companies let you know
Speaker 1: what matters by the quality of what they do well.
Speaker 1: And and nobody does everything well and I did regardless
Speaker 1: of money, nobody does everything well.
Speaker 2: Look, I think in the linear TV world, and this
Speaker 2: is the line that I've used a lot, uh, CBS, NBC, ABC, ESPN,
Speaker 2: the companies that have the NFL. If you have the
Speaker 2: NFL in the legacy media world, you're relevant no matter
Speaker 2: what else you do. If you're a legacy media company
Speaker 2: and you have the NFL, you're relevant. If you're a
Speaker 2: legacy media company and you don't have the NFL, you're
Speaker 2: competing to be the least your relevant. Like, that's how
Speaker 2: dark that difference is. In the tech world, Amazon, Apple, Netflix,
Speaker 2: these companies are relevant. I mean, they're obviously incredibly relevant
Speaker 2: to the culture at large. They don't necessarily need that
Speaker 2: live they want the live sports relationships. But Apple doesn't
Speaker 2: need live sports rights to demonstrate that they matter in
Speaker 2: this culture and in this country. Amazon doesn't either. Netflix
Speaker 2: at this point certainly doesn't. We do, and I would
Speaker 2: say the other broadcast networks do too. We need the
Speaker 2: NFL to insulate us against being irrelevant. And the companies
Speaker 2: in the legacy world that are sort of on the
Speaker 2: outside looking in when it comes to the NFL, they
Speaker 2: would immediately gain relevance by having it, and by not
Speaker 2: having it, they have to look for other ways to
Speaker 2: demonstrate that they actually matter in the culture. So I
Speaker 2: think that's where the importance of marquee sports rights is
Speaker 2: a little bit different in our legacy broadcasting, cable driven
Speaker 2: world than it is in the world of tech giants
Speaker 2: that are worth a trillion dollars whether they have live
Speaker 2: sports or not.
Speaker 1: The president of insight and analytics at Fox Sports. He
Speaker 1: tolerates me. Michael mulva Hill, I love all this stuff,
Speaker 1: and you know, what can I say? I ask questions,
Speaker 1: you provide insight, and you do this at least once
Speaker 1: a year. Let me look at this real quick. You
Speaker 1: do this at least once a year, and you know
Speaker 1: about twice a year. I walk up to Michael's office
Speaker 1: and he's eating a ten of sandwich and I just
Speaker 1: sit down and start asking questions. So I figured I'd
Speaker 1: put it on the schedule to be less inconsiderate. They
Speaker 1: are more considerate this time. And Michael, you know, I
Speaker 1: just think highly of you and I really do appreciate
Speaker 1: you taking the time.
Speaker 2: I love doing it. I love it when you wander
Speaker 2: into this office. I never know what question you're going
Speaker 2: to ask next. Keeps me on my toes and forces
Speaker 2: me to sort of think through our positions on various topic.
Speaker 2: And I really appreciate the invite to come on and
Speaker 2: do this with you in front of an audience rather
Speaker 2: than just one on one in this office. I'm happy
Speaker 2: to do it anytime. The volume