About damn time
From The GIST Sports Biz (hi@thegistsports.com)
Happy Friday!
Yesterday was a big one for Team USA women. Hurdler Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone broke a world record, long jumper Tara Davis-Woodhall brought home the gold, and four-time Paris 2024 medalist Katie Ledecky officially earned the role of closing ceremony flag bearer for the U.S.
- Ledecky will exit the Olympics more marketable than ever as the most decorated American woman Olympian in history, one who inked a multiyear Athleta sponsorship earlier this year and a $7M deal with swimwear giant TYR in 2018. Swimming in it.
Media
👀 Sitting this one out
The GIST: It’s been a tough few weeks for Warner Bros. Discovery (WBD), the global multimedia brand that has endured everything from being shut out of the NBA’s media rights renewal to losing billions in its linear TV business. In recent days, WBD’s stock has plummeted and was down 40% YTD prior to yesterday’s opening bell. Let’s dive in on the reasons why.
💰 WBD overvalued its linear networks by $9.1B. Last month, ownership considered stripping the conglomerate for parts, essentially admitting the 2022 merger between WarnerMedia and Discovery was a failure. It gets worse: WBD concluded that its TV assets were likely overvalued in previous estimates by $9.1B, especially since it was recently boxed out of an NBA deal.
🏀 WBD lost its NBA media rights. This summer, the NBA (and WNBA) were embroiled in billion-dollar negotiations as the leagues revisited their media rights. WBD held out and ultimately airballed, failing to ink a deal for NBA rights and instead deciding to match Amazon’s $1.8B yearly media package. The NBA rejected WBD’s bid, a decision the company is contesting in court.
- Notably, veteran Inside the NBA host Charles Barkley remains committed to WBD. The network plans to “reimagine” the show’s entire framework with or without NBA access, although the media rights loss is clearly making investors nervous.
🏛️ WBD, along with Disney and Fox, is being sued by FuboTV. A federal court in Manhattan is hearing an antitrust lawsuit this week filed by the streamer against Venu Sports, the sports streaming brainchild of Disney, WBD, and Fox. The proposed app would make the market impossibly competitive — FuboTV could lose more than 300K of its 1.4M subscribers as a result.
- U.S. senators Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders also expressed “serious concerns” about the monopolistic nature of the app, which could control over 80% of nationally broadcast sports and over half of national sports content. (Anti) trust issues.
⬇️ Sports industry sees stocks plummet across apparel, media, tech, and betting
Wall Street stocks saw a precipitous drop on Monday triggered by a market freefall in Tokyo and a ballooning U.S. unemployment rate. It was especially tough for some (but not all) public companies in the sports game, with Amazon, WBD, Nike, and DraftKings’ stocks all tumbling.
📺 Linear TV is still driving NBC’s Olympic business
Peacock may be having a moment, but linear viewership is key to NBC’s Olympic success. Through Sunday night, NBC and USA Network fielded about 86% of total consumption across NBC–owned platforms, resulting in 28.5M average daily viewers. Peacock has nabbed the majority of NBC’s over 17B streaming minutes in Paris, but is only averaging 4.5M viewers per day. Rookie numbers.
📈 Streamers benefit from bountiful Q2 results thanks to live sports
On Wednesday, Disney announced a profit of $47M last quarter from streaming services Hulu and Disney+, the company’s first-ever profit from streaming ventures as Disney begins to focus on live sports. The aforementioned FuboTV saw its sixth consecutive quarter of annual growth with $391M in Q2 revenue as a result of baseball, cricket, and soccer offerings.
- That may be why newcomers like Roku are also getting into the sports game. The company, which allows consumers to plug into streaming platforms via a proprietary device, revealed plans to launch a free, ad-supported 24/7 sports streaming channel on Monday.
🇫🇷 NBC recorded a primetime average audience of 33M viewers through the first 10 days of Olympic action, plus an 80% jump in total viewership from the same time span in Tokyo. Vive la fans.
🥇 Nine U.S. Olympians have won track and field gold medals at Paris 2024, resulting in at least $450K in payouts to Team USA athletes thanks to World Athletics’ new Olympic incentives.
🎓 The NCAA Division I board of directors released a proposal for distributing $25M in prize money to qualifying women’s March Madness teams in an effort to institute the “units” system currently missing from the women’s game. About damn time.
☑️ Retired Olympic track and field legend Allyson Felix was named to the International Olympic Committee’s Athletes’ Commission for an eight-year term.
👟 Chicago Sky star Angel Reese shared a sneak peek of her first Reebok collection, which is set to drop later this month.
💸 Endeavor plans on selling its sports data and tech companies, OpenBet and IMG Arena, per the company’s Q2 earnings report, while its live sporting event businesses report quarterly revenue increases.
🏒 A recent report indicates the release date for the PWHL’s official names and logos has been pushed from August to mid-September. On the edge of our seats.
🏀 The NBA’s New Orleans Pelicans cut ties with Diamond Sports Group (DSG) in favor of a free local Fox station after it was reported that DSG wanted to eliminate its RSN deals with the Pels.
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Peep our squad’s MVPs (Most Valuable Picks):
🏃 What to binge
Sprint. Ever wondered how the world’s fastest humans achieve their dreams? Run, don’t walk, and tune in ASAP.
🏀 What to collect
The Sue Bird Barbie. ICYMI, Barbie’s newest Sports Role Model edition is none other than the Team USA and WNBA legend. It’s what she was made for.
🛍 What to shop
This moisturizer. A French skincare staple (with SPF!) that won’t break the bank. Enchanté.
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