Thoughts on a Possible Sale of NBC Sports Philadelphia, Which Would be a Tricky and Complicated Process
We shared that Wall Street Journal report on Thursday afternoon, the Lillian Rizzo piece with some details about NBC Universal pondering the future of its regional networks. The company is allegedly considering moving entities like NBC Sports Philadelphia to Peacock, its streaming service, or selling them outright.
Admittedly, we only scratched the surface when adding some thoughts to Rizzo’s story, but it’s worth revisiting this morning because Philadelphia has a couple of unique contractual and stake-related things that would make the sale of NBCSP very interesting.
For starters, the broadcast contracts between NBC Sports Philadelphia and the various sports teams are pretty much ironclad. Any sale or shift would have to be approved by the Phillies, Sixers, and Flyers,* who all have unique arrangements with the network. And any buyer would take on those contracts, which is what makes a RSN valuable in the first place. If NBC Sports Philadelphia doesn’t have the rights to any games, who is buying the network?
*Now the Flyers, as you know, are owned by Comcast Spectacor, which is a subsidiary of Comcast. NBC Sports Philadelphia’s parent company is the NBC Sports Group, and their parent company is NBC Universal, whose parent company is…. Comcast. So the Flyers, Wells Fargo Center, and NBCSP all exist under some part of the Comcast umbrella. If there’s a sale, then one property moves out from under the umbrella.
With the local hockey team, the more interesting consideration is this –
How much does Comcast really care?
We’re talking about NBC recently giving up the national NHL rights, and with Ed Snider having passed years ago, is there really any passion for the team? It’s currently being run by corporate, non-hockey people. Would they sell NBC Sports Philadelphia, AND the Flyers at the same time? It’s honestly not something we’d consider outrageous at this point.
The Phillies, meantime, actually own a 25% stake in NBC Sports Philadelphia. That happened when both sides agreed to that 25 year, $2.5 billion dollar agreement back in 2014, which gave the Phils the ownership stake and a portion of advertising revenue.
It’s hard to think the Phillies would go for a streaming-only broadcast. Could you imagine that? We had three games on Facebook about a year ago and people couldn’t find it. Or when they did, they hated it. Think of people in the 55 and older demographic pulling out their iPad to watch a game every night. Or, the local corner bar has to cast some sort of stream to their corner television. It’s just weird to think of an old school baseball town like Philly going stream-heavy.
As for the Sixers, they used to be owned by Comcast, which sold the team to the group that’s now known as Harris Blitzer Sports and Entertainment. They don’t have any stake in NBCSP, but at the Philadelphia Business Journal, Jeff Blumenthal makes this relevant point:
Sixers owners Josh Harris and David Blitzer of Harris Blitzer Sports Entertainment, which also owns the NHL’s New Jersey Devils and English Premier League soccer club Crystal Palace, reportedly made an unsuccessful bid to buy the New York Mets last summer. That deal would have included the Mets own regional sports network, SNY, which Harris Blitzer would then have used to form a super regional sports network that also aired Sixers and Devils games. So count the Sixers owners as having expressed interest in the RSN world.
And then there’s the Eagles. The games don’t air on NBCSP, but the popular postgame show does. And there’s Quick Slants and assorted Bird-related programming, which would possibly disappear if the network changed ownership.
It’s also interesting to think that, possibly, the teams wouldn’t even need a broadcast partner. At the expiration of these contracts, what is stopping a club from doing their own broadcast, via stream, and installing their own people? The days of big-money deals and TV partners might be going the way of the Dodo Bird, since technology has brought us to a point where you can keep things in-house instead. A lot of teams are doing more of their own original content these days, or streaming preseason games or other events, so this wouldn’t be out of the realm of possibility.
And then what of the people? What happens to folks like Marc Zumoff and Jim Jackson? Do potential buyers bring them over and install them as their play-by-play guys? What about John Clark and Amy Fadool and all of the behind the scenes producers, technical directors, and camera operators? You’d hope a buyer would keep as many of those people as possible, but it never works out that way, not close to 100%.
Ironically, NBC Sports Philadelphia/Comcast SportsNet was always one of the best performing RSNs, along with the Bay Area operation out in San Francisco. Philly had original programming like Daily News Live and was making money, unlike most of the other regionals. One of the underrated storylines in this entire saga is that the corporate folks at Stamford got heavily involved around 2014, and eventually streamlined the RSNs to make them look the same, and offer similar programming, which resulted in Philly’s station losing its personality and becoming a carbon copy of other, lesser RSNs. Philadelphia was originally pegged as a testing ground for ideas, which would then be replicated at the other RSNs if successful in our region.
CBS did this as well, building the same sets and using the same graphics packages at stations like KYW, WCBS (New York), and WJZ (Baltimore). Corporate oversight is pervasive in television.
Ultimately, when shows like DNL and Breakfast on Broad were scrapped, what we got was a skeleton crew running a network that basically did pregame, postgame, and the games themselves. We got a simulcasted Mike Missanelli Show and programs like Sixers Outsiders and Eagles Outsiders, all of which are affordable and easy to produce. Original programming and documentary making was curbed, which is a shame, because CSN/NBCSP used to land bucketloads of Emmy Awards at every yearly Mid-Atlantic gathering.
(And then when ratings go down, nobody should be surprised, because there’s no lead-in, unless you’re one of the three people watching a Flex Seal infomercial)
Ultimately, should we be surprised by the report of a possible sale or streaming move? No, we shouldn’t. If anything, Comcast sees the writing on the wall and understands that technology is moving us very quickly into a new media world. While it may be jarring to see just how quickly we went from CSN, to NBC Sports Philadelphia, to whatever comes next, the bottom line is that the industry is changing rapidly and Comcast is at least recognizing this and attempting to get out in front. The alternative is what? Just doing the same thing while people continue to cut the cord and explore other options?
It’s fascinating and sad at the same time.