The E.W. Scripps Company is gearing up to get in on live sports action, announcing Thursday the launch of a new Scripps Sports division led by Brian Lawlor.
In announcing the new business unit, Scripps said it wants to leverage its local market TV portfolio and national broadcast reach to forge partnerships with leagues, conferences and teams amid changes in the TV landscape and sports rights marketplace.
“There is no better way to reach every generation of sports fan than through live broadcast television,” said Adam Symson, Scripps’ president and CEO, in a statement. “Scripps is working with the leagues and teams that recognize the role our assets can play in increasing reach and visibility for audience engagement.”
Lawlor will head up the new unit as president, having led Scripps’ Local Media division since 2009 – growing it from 10 local TV stations at the time to 61 today.
The broadcast executive, in a statement, pointed to the high popularity of sports “with its consistently large and dedicated audiences” but noted sports viewing has become fragmented alongside cord-cutting and challenged regional sports networks models.
“Cable subscriptions are down, and regional sports networks are challenged, keeping fans from watching their home teams,” Lawlor said in a statement. “Between our vast number of local stations and ION, a national network that can be customized in many markets, we believe Scripps is positioned to widely showcase leagues and players that are currently limited by aging distribution deals.”
Scripps purchased ION Media for $2.65 billion to expand its broadcast footprint and national TV networks business, completing the deal in January 2021. At the time, Scripps said ION reached more than 100 million homes through over-the-air and pay TV platforms.
Scripps, owner of the fifth-largest broadcast network in the U.S., has already been involved in acquiring sports rights for local markets, including the NFL, NHL, MLS, National Women’s Soccer League, and multiple college sports rights.
Sports Business Journal reported that while Scripps is teed up as a bidder for local sports rights, providing an alternative to RSNs, it’s also looking to scoop up national sports rights (to run on ION) but won’t bid on major packages like NBA, NASCAR or Pac-12. Scripps’ Symson told SBJ that the strategy is a “fan engagement funnel” – using its local stations and national networks to pull in a larger pool of fans at the top of the funnel.
“In my opinion, leagues and teams that focus strictly on pay-TV or DTC will end up in one way or another finding themselves with impaired assets,” Symson told SBJ.
In terms of the strategy, Scripps sees room for itself to play a role where traditional RSNs are falling short. In recent years rising carriage fee costs and increased cord-cutting has seen pay TV providers walk away from RSN distribution deals, leaving local sports fans on the sidelines. Sinclair Broadcast has garnered much attention, as the broadcaster paid around $10 billion to acquire 21 RSNs from Disney in 2019 but has since faced financial losses and a large debt load as distributors dropped channels, alongside increased costs for sports rights and declining viewers.
Speaking to NextTV about Scripps play for sports, Lawlor said smaller RSN distribution translates to teams being unable to reach 50% of households in their home viewing markets.
“That’s not a good business model if you can’t reach half of your potential customers,” Lawlor told NextTV, adding that he thinks linear TV will be the solution for many leagues and teams as RSNs remain troubled.