News that political and entertainment outlet Puck is getting into the sports business space with the hire of my friend and former colleague John Ourand from Sports Business Journal got me thinking about the terrain of this type of coverage.
It’s no newsflash that an increasing share of sports news is about business matters. Just in the last month, top sports business stories included the Shohei Ohtani contract, public funding for venues, TV deals and ratings, global NFL expansion, and even Tommy Cutlets and his on-again-off-again-on-again pizzeria visit.
So if the sports business is so much part of the cultural conversation, why are legacy media outlets not investing in it as much as niche players like Puck are? This is not to say the New York Times, Washington Posts, and CNBCs of the world don’t cover sports business, but they don’t do so with the dedicated focus they once did.
When I helped start SportsBusiness Journal in 1998, some gave the new publication six months to survive because the sports business realm, while growing rapidly, was still small. There was a perception that it was so mom and pop, the businesses would expect magazines about them to be free. The then publisher, Richard Weiss, liked to tell the story of visiting before that first launch issue in April 1998 with IMG founder Mark McCormack, who essentially created sports marketing in the 1960s. According to Weiss, McCormack told him the new publication should allow IMG to advertise for free to get credibility.
Suffice to say Weiss didn’t bite and SBJ survived thanks to a forward-thinking parent company, which didn’t turn its first annual profit on the magazine until nearly a decade into the outlet’s life (it would take McCormack’s passing and IMG to be sold before the agency advertised). At this time, sports business was covered in the mainstream by dedicated reporters at the NYT, ESPN.com and USA Today among others. Richard Sandomir was a giant at the New York Times, and Rudy Martzke’s USA Today column was a must-read for insiders (Martzke even appeared on the HBO sports agent show Arliss).
That began to change in the 2010s, when sports business reporter departures from CNBC and ESPN were not replaced, and culminated this year with the New York Times, as part of shutting its sports desk, moved the sports business reporters under the business desk. The Athletic, which now provides the Times’ sports news, as part of a round of layoffs, let go of its sports business reporters (I was one of them, so take that as you will), leaving its million-plus subscribers without dedicated coverage.
Darren Rovell, who left ESPN twice and CNBC between 2006 and 2018, and recently left The Action Network, said while the legacy media is cutting back in the space, it is well covered by niche publications. SportsBusiness Journal spent nearly its first two decades without competition (as I said management had foresight and a stomach for losses early on). Then the business got too big and juicy not to attract rivals.
In 2016 Front Office Sports launched, with a business-to-consumer focus, unlike SBJ’s more classic business-to-business ethos. Just this year, a group led by Jeff Zucker invested in FOS. In 2020 came Sportico, launched by former Bloomberg sports business scoop meister Scott Soshnick, under the ownership of Penske Media, which boasts titles like the Hollywood Reporter, Variety, and Rolling Stone. Sportico is more in the B2B vein of SBJ and competes there too in the conference business. And then came an explosion of newsletters as that space across business and politics skyrocketed.
“This is like a theme throughout all business, right?,” Rovell said of the trend toward niche in sports business coverage. “ Like it’s non-alcoholic beer. It’s, it’s the probiotic sodas… the day and age where everywhere people tried to be for everyone, I think is over. And so that, that just means that there are smaller players who are more relevant. And I think they all matter.”
“It’s not just for the industry anymore,” Rovell said of niche sports business publications. “If you don’t know who your owner is, or how they’re doing financially, or, whether they own their TV network or not, or whether they own their stadium or not, if you don’t know that you’re just like, the stupid radio caller from the 80s.”
This doesn’t mean big sports business stories aren’t covered by legacy media. The Washington Post, New York Times, and ESPN still do tremendous work, though through different verticals now. CNBC is still a place to break major news. It’s where Public Investment Fund governor Yasir bin Othman Al-Rumayyan sat down with PGA Tour commissioner Jay Monahan in early June to break the news of an agreement to align LIV Golf with the PGA Tour (of course this deal still might not happen). And the Wall Street Journal has a healthy dose of sports business stories, especially in golf.
Sports has become such an integral part of the economy perhaps it’s no surprise that coverage of the business is no longer considered unique. Sports is the glue that holds the cable bundle together; the NFL is a cultural and media phenomenon; and women’s sports is bursting at the seams as it grows. The businesses of auto, aviation, and Wall Street are examples of massive industries and all covered in the business sections of legacy media, so in a sense why should sports not sit at the adult table?
When I started at SportsBusiness Journal, the two founders of Game Plan LLC, the first sports-focused investment bank, visited me in New York. Randy Vataha, a former New England Patriot wide receiver, and Bob Caporale, a Boston lawyer, knew then sports would become a major business. But they also knew it was unique.
Caporale, who sadly passed away last year, said something that day in the first offices of SBJ on Madison Avenue that has always stayed with me. “Sports,” he said, “is the only business with its own section in the newspaper.” Sports business may have gotten too big for the sports page only, but it’s now large enough for a steady stream of smaller platforms.
