NBC Universal is the surprise winner of NBA broadcast rights negotiations, stealing a “B” package that basketball fans and media insiders assumed was all but certain to go back to TNT sports. But despite the excitement around “Roundball Rock,” Basketball Night in America and more free basketball broadcasts, Colin Cowherd believes it’s a bad deal for NBC.
In Wednesday’s episode of The Colin Cowherd Podcast, the longtime sports commentator poo-pooed the package and predicted it will lose significant money for the company.
“The NBA is going to sign this massive contract. NBA basketball on NBC according to all these reports, NBC’s going to lose a billion dollars a year on it,” Cowherd explained. “It’s just not a good deal for NBC.”
NBC is expected to pay the NBA around $2.5 billion annually for two primetime windows each week, a conference semifinal series and a conference final series. NBC could boost its Peacock subscription numbers by making games exclusive to the streaming platform and perhaps help maintain its cable carriage rates with additional content on USA Network, not to mention bolster its few remaining regional networks in Boston, Chicago, Philadelphia, and Northern California. But Cowherd believes in a vacuum, it’s a bad business deal.
Still, Cowherd argued there was no way around the massive spend for NBC if it wanted the NBA. Even if ratings fluctuate and the NFL is king, the pizazz of the NBA and cultural strength is too strong for it to lose its appeal any time soon.
“In the NBA, the star plays 40 minutes and has the ball every possession,” Cowherd explained. “In basketball, the star is always on the floor, always taking shots. For all the NBA critics … it may not be a good deal for NBC or ESPN or Amazon, but the NBA is always going to get its money.”
In terms of pure expenditure compared with ad revenue for broadcasts, you could make an easy case every sports network loses money. Still, in a more fractured moment of cable’s deterioration, streaming growth, and the valuation of sports rights going up, NBC would not have bid such a massive sum if it would not benefit parent company Comcast’s overall business.
Cowherd has rich guy friends in the business world who likely gave him some insight here, but NBC has to be happy with its choice.
[The Colin Cowherd Podcast on YouTube]
