NFL on YouTube, Caitlin Clark, Nick Saban: This week's sports business case studies
The Athletic reported out and published more than 60 stories this week covering the universe of sports business, across every sport. Each week, sports business editor Dan Shanoff picks out a few that intrigued him most.
Don't miss any of The Athletic's sports business coverage — if you have the app or are logged into the website, 'follow' the sports business category. Or simply bookmark this page to your home screen for easy access.
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Our Andrew Marchand got the scoop: When the NFL announces its international games Tuesday, it is highly likely the Week 1 Friday prime-time game in Brazil will exclusively air on YouTube, the platform that eclipses every other video consumption/distribution network around the globe.
The game will be free for viewers. (Presumably, Google will be paying the NFL for the right to exclusively stream the game, as NBC did last year to get the Week 1 Brazil game on Peacock.) Last year's Week 1 game on Peacock had 14 million viewers, so imagine how many YouTube might be able to drive with virtually no barriers to viewing.
Why it's interesting to me: Industry observers have been waiting a long time for Google/YouTube to enter the exclusive live sports arena (and separate that from Google's deal with the NFL for rights to distribute the 'Sunday Ticket' package). You can understand why the NFL would be eager to do this — another deep-pocketed bidder for NFL rights only helps the league when those new rights come up for sale.
It is one thing for Caitlin Clark's WNBA games to top a million viewers during the regular season. It is another to top a million viewers for an otherwise anodyne Sunday afternoon preseason exhibition against a Brazilian national team with little to no name recognition among U.S. basketball fans. As noted in Richard Deitsch's coverage, that tops any NBA preseason game except two from LeBron James.
That made this game an incredible experiment for the preeminent sports media thesis: 'The Caitlin Clark effect is real.'
The main (if not only) reason to tune in last Sunday was to see Clark. Weird time slot. Not a ton of promotion. Anonymous opponent. And fans still sought it out. Now imagine a game in prime time against an opponent with an enthusiastic fan base of its own, like the defending champion New York Liberty or Angel Reese's Chicago Sky or A'ja Wilson's Las Vegas Aces.
It is an open question whether a network could air an Indiana Fever intra-team scrimmage and draw half a million people watching Clark. I'd take the over.
College football coaching legend Nick Saban (along with Texas Tech board chair Cody Campbell) would chair a new commission on college athletics that President Donald Trump is interested in forming.
Saban has been outspoken about the state of college sports, and Texas Tech has been at the forefront of tapping high-net-worth boosters to bolster its sports programs through new name, image and likeness rules (or lack thereof).
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Will this commission have any actual formal power to create legislation? No. Will it be able to traverse the current gridlock to get Congress to agree on a national bill to adjust the college sports landscape? Again, almost certainly not. Will it add new complexity to an already-complicated college sports landscape? Surely!
I'm a branding enthusiast, so this week's reveal that Utah Hockey Club would be known as the 'Mammoth' was a notable development.
I'm a fan: Love that they went with the singular ('Mammoth') over the plural ('Mammoths') … love the logo (including, as others have noted, that subtle image of the state outline on the left side near the ear) … love the instant rallying cry, 'Tusks up!' (I am imagining a corresponding hand gesture that looks not unlike the way USC fans curl their index and middle fingers, although I'd flip it so that the fingertips are pointing toward your face.) I also love that the team was so open to including fan sentiment in the decision-making. Dan's branding grade: A-
1. Why tennis players and the ball disappear from your screen when watching matches (and what networks can do about it).
2. This behind-the-scenes look at how F1 partnered with Lego to create life-size versions of its race cars, made from Legos.
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