Good morning, all. I hope your week is off to a great start.
Welcome to the beginning of a new NFL season. Say what? Yep. Another NFL season is underway. I have written before, the games may end but the seasons never do for all sports in this day and age, but nobody does it better than the NFL. Fifteen days out from the Super Bowl and all eyes are focused on Indianapolis, where the scouting combine is underway.
From the perspective of salary caps, contracts, etc., the new NFL calendar season starts on Friday, Mar. 1. But here is all you need to know. Baseball’s spring training is less than two weeks old and the lead stories in the Boston Globe’s sports section involve the New England Patriots:
The top-10 free agent quarterbacks available to the Patriots
Why new coach Jared Mayo is not attending the combine
Bill Belichick would be good on TV
Why Steve Belichick left the Patriots
Although the Red Sox - predicted to finish last for the fourth time in five seasons by many “experts” - are getting their share of publicity, it’s the Patriots dominating the coverage in the papers, on digital media and on sports talk radio. And it is not only New England. It seems every market is following the same blueprint.
To be fair, the other team sports have their followings by the millions, but when it comes to the sports’ pecking order in the USA, it is the NFL and everybody else vying for second place; like it or not.
Remembering Willie Stargell
I got to thinking about Willie Stargell the other day. The Pittsburgh Pirates slugger was one of the best and is deservedly in baseball’s Hall of Fame. Maybe it was because my paths with Willie crossed twice, when he was a coach with the Atlanta Braves under manager Chuck Tanner. One of Stargell’s managers at Pittsburgh was Tanner.
As I was a broadcaster with the Atlanta Braves then AAA-affiliate Richmond in the 1980s, I had the opportunity to interview Stargell, when the Braves came through to play a couple of exhibition games against their top affiliate. (Don’t you miss those days when the big league club would play one of their minor league teams?) I also had the chance to serve as an MC at a news conference in Richmond, saluting Stargell, months before he was inducted at Cooperstown.
Below is the actual interview, followed by the news conference with Stargell. Enjoy!
Streaming making headway
The world of streaming continues to wind across our technological landscape and the sports world is trying to keep up, lest it loses out on income streams. Last year, Peacock (Comcast’s streaming service) forked over $110M for exclusive coverage of an NFL playoff game. Amazon Prime is now presenting the NFL with a $125M check to provide exclusive coverage of an NFL playoff game next season. Now comes word that counting streaming services the Super Bowl reached 210 million viewers.
As for streaming itself, a report emerged on Monday noting that revenue from streaming services in the U.S. will exceed pay TV revenue by the third quarter of this year. People are cutting the cord. With leagues dependent on revenue from cable TV, you can understand that while that pie shrinks, eyes are glancing toward more streaming of games. Watch a Yankees game on their cable channel YES, and expect to be constantly reminded to download the YES app, where Yankees games and exclusive programming can be found. Last week Apple launched a sports app. How soon before Apple starts broadcasting games on this app?
The old line about felon Willie Sutton was that he robbed banks, because that’s where the money is. These sports leagues are streaming because that’s where the eyeballs are. In many cases, their survival depends on it.
That is going to do it for this week’s newsletter. As always, thank you for subscribing and have a terrific week.
DAN LOVALLO