SL: Moving onto soccer, you call what EPL has done for the network “creating a new day part” whereas maybe the only thing that was on sports wise before was College Gameday. How do you go about improving on that, and maybe even expanding it?
JM: Saturday and Sunday mornings were, for the longest time, a wasteland. You’d have clip shows, you’d have news shows, you’d have a lot of cartoons and infomercials, and there wasn’t really a lot on to watch. We just decided that this is going to fit right in our wheelhouse, and we promoted it and its built up over time, and everybody is really focused on getting people to the set and making it appointment television.
We’re blessed that the league schedules much like the NFL, so you know that if you’re a Liverpool, Arsenal, Everton fan, you know your team is going to play in one of five or six windows, and that’s an unbelievable benefit to have. You don’t have that in the NBA or the NHL, you don’t have it in baseball, you certainly don’t have with MLS. You have it with the Premier League and that kind of works in our favor, and its kind of helped us establish Saturday and Sunday mornings as a day part. You can turn on your set at 7 a.m. ET, go right through until 3 p.m. ET, and get your fill of all the Premier League football you want.
SL: Talking about MLS, you could say it was successful for the network, but it was not necessarily…
JM: [Interrupts] Well, we had a good run with those guys for three years, we wish them well. We had what we thought was an exciting concept to help grow the game, we couldn’t come to an agreement on certain terms. They, obviously, were able to get good deals from both Fox and ESPN. Both those guys will do well.
I’ve been a friend of Don Garber’s and a fan of Don Garber’s for over 25 years and I think he is a tremendous commissioner and I wish nothing but the best for him and I hope he’ll be successful.
SL: With Premier League, is the worry that you’ve created too good a product? I don’t usually hear ESPN or Fox execs say publicly a year or two out from a new deal that they want back in.
JM: I always use the expression that it’s like running for Congress. You get elected and then you gotta worry about getting elected again. We can’t focus on any of that. When the time comes, I’m sure we’ll be there, as will everybody else, and hopefully we’ll hold on. We can’t worry about things we can’t control, we’re worrying about the next two years, doing the best job we can.
The promise we made to the Premier League was that we’re going to put them on a level with all the other major sports in America, and I think everyone would agree that we’ve done that, and we’re gonna continue to do that, and that’s all we can do. I can’t worry about things that are outside my control, that’s for other people to spend their sleepless nights over. I’ve gotta make sure that everything here works well.
SL: Would you ever want the network to push for longer than the standard three-year deal?
JM: That’s not up to me, the Premier League has rules, we’re respectful of those rules. We knew when we got into this that it was a three-year deal. We’ll wait, in three years time, we’ll have another conversation. I would certainly be surprised if the other guys didn’t wanna get into it, that’s just the way the business is.
SL: A lot of the other competitions and leagues are wrapped up for a little while, do you see NBC expanding its soccer portfolio at any time in the near future?
JM: Well, we’re expanding it with the World Cup on Telemundo starting in 2015 with the Women’s World Cup. I think we’re very happy with this property and focused on making the Premier League as big and as good as it could possibly be. There are a lot of other leagues that are already locked up that don’t offer the same type of programming opportunity and the same kind of connection for the fans that the Premier League does. I would argue that the Premier League is the best international football in the world, as evidenced by the World Cup, having more players from the Premier League than from any other league. If that doesn’t tell you the quality of the league, I don’t know what does.
SL: The TV status for the Copa America is something that’s sort of up in the air. Would that be something that interests NBC?
JM: Yeah, sure. We’ve had some preliminary conversations on that and we’ll look at that as well. We’ve had some discussions on that, when the time comes, we’ll kick the tires on that. Hopefully we can find a way to make something like that work.
SL: Would you ever want to see a Premier League on American soil?
JM: Sure! Look at how great the atmosphere is here at Fenway Park. It’s July 23rd, there are other games going on, there are other cities touring. I don’t think any of them can compare with the atmosphere here at Fenway Park. There were 30,000 fans singing, in harmony, “You’ll Never Walk Alone.” It was unbelievable.
The answer is yes, but by the same token, that’s not our decision. That’s the Premier League’s decision.
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