Inflation in sports media 'is going to continue,' analyst says
Nearly $10 billion of sports broadcast rights were signed away last week, and multiple industry experts have indicated the bill to broadcast live sports isn’t done growing.
“We think inflation on the sports side is going to continue,” Robert Fishman, a managing director at MoffettNathanson, told Yahoo Finance Live (video above). "It’s really up to the companies on how they allocate this overall [with] content budgets going forward.”
Fox (FOX), CBS (PARA), and NBC (CMCSA) will be splitting a tab worth more than $1 billion to broadcast games for one of college football’s most popular conferences starting in 2023. On Friday, Paramount announced plans to spend an additional $1.5 billion on UEFA Champions League soccer rights.
The large Big Ten bill came after Amazon (AMZN) and Apple (AAPL) both reportedly showed interest in streaming conference games.
Fishman noted that the entrance of the tech giants into the live sports streaming wars has forced broadcasting companies to pay more than they’re used to. In some cases, the growing price has led to traditional sports brands like ESPN (DIS) to not partake in media rights deals.
“Sports rights continue to put pressure on all of these models,” Fishman said. “But it’s still essential for these traditional media companies because we have strong belief here that sports is the glue to the overall media ecosystem and we’re seeing that play out.”
Bill Mulvihill, the head of U.S. Bank Sports and Entertainment Group, told Yahoo Finance the mere presence of companies like Apple, Amazon, and Google (GOOGL) is a contributing factor to the rising broadcast prices. Multiple analysts have indicated that the sports streaming interest from tech companies is increasing and therefore could help boost prices moving forward.
The inflated media rights are also pushing franchise valuation — and therefore the value of the sports industry as a whole— to record levels. Forbes released its 2022 NFL franchise valuations list on Monday, and the Dallas Cowboys topped the list at a record $8 billion, while the average valuation across the league jumped 28% from a year ago.
Mulvihill’s team at U.S. Bank helps finance major moves made by sports franchises like team sales and stadium construction. The increased media revenue helps banks justify the increased valuations across the league and their willingness to finance deals involving pro sports teams, Mulvihill said, particularly because many of the billion-dollar deals span roughly a decade.
Media "is a larger percentage [of total revenue] than ever, and a growing percentage as the value of live entertainment has really exploded, and the most valuable live entertainment is sports content,” he said. “So you've seen the composition of revenue really shift to be more media-focused and away from Game Day, like items, like ticket sales and concessions, to longer-term media-related revenues really across all the sports. Both professionally and at the collegiate level, you've seen the same trend.”
Josh is a reporter and producer for Yahoo Finance.
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