Tonight in Unpacks: ESPN+ subscriber numbers swell, sreving as a bright spot in an otherwise below-expectations Q4 earnings report from Disney, which continues taking big losses as it implements its long-term streaming strategy. 

Other headlines:

  • Binance acquiring FTX, raising sponsorship questions
  • World Series viewership down after Saturday night’s Game 6 finale
  • LIV Golf turns focus to revenue generation, media deal for Season 2
  • Inside Qatar’s high-tech climate control system for World Cup venues
  • Molson Coors signs on as first sponsor of revamped Leagues Cup
  • Politicians show up at sporting events, but not without risk

In today’s Morning Buzzcast, SBJ’s Abe Madkour examines another marquee team hitting the market; the WTA Tour closing out its season in Ft. Worth amid an uncertain future; the finances around Breeders’ Cup winner Flightline; and A-B InBev getting into pickleball.

Streaming was the bright spot for ESPN parent company Disney in its Q4 2022 earnings today, reports CNBC‘s Sarah Whitten.

ESPN+ now has 24.3 million subscribers, up from the 22.8 million it had last quarter and 42% from the same point last year. The company also added 12.1 million Disney+ subscriptions, bringing that platform up to 164.2 million (vs. an expected 160.45 million, per Street Account). Add in Hulu+ subscribers, and Disney now has 235 million subscribers to its streaming services.

This helps buffet the bottom line from the direct-to-consumer division, which lost $1.47 billion for the quarter, with revenue of $20.15 billion missing Wall Street expectations.

Statista

Binance agreed to buy rival cryptocurrency exchange FTX, a “stunning outcome” that followed days of speculation that “FTX and corporate sibling Alameda Research faced a liquidity crisis,” reports CoinDesk.

FTX’s sale “could jeopardize a long list of sports partnerships around the world,” notes Bloomberg. The crypto exchange inked a $135 million, 19-year deal last year for naming rights to the Heat’s arena in Miami. MLB umpires wear patches with the company’s logo under a sponsorship deal, and FTX has a long-term deal with F1 team Mercedes–AMG Petronas.

FTX also has pacts with Tom Brady, Steph Curry and Shohei Ohtani.

The World Series saw a 1% drop in viewership this year, as a six-game Astros–Phillies Fall Classic could not offset a shift in its scheduling due to a rainout, reports SBJ’s Austin Karp.

Fox averaged 11.8 million viewers this year, down from 11.9 million last year for Braves–Astros. Astros-Phillies also is the second-smallest average for a World Series all time, behind only the pandemic-impacted 2020 Dodgers–Rays matchup (9.8 million for that six-game series). After tracking ahead of the Braves-Astros matchup through Game 5, it was Game 6 that flipped the script on the comparison.

Fox drew 12.5 million for the Astros’ clincher on Saturday night, with the matchup against some big-time college football games in primetime. That figure is down from just under 14 million for the Braves’ clincher on a Tuesday night last year with less sports competition and higher HUT levels. Philadelphia led all markets for the World Series with a 25.0 local rating, edging out Houston’s 24.0 rating over six games.

World Series viewership trend on Fox
YEAR GAMES VIEWERS (000) MATCHUP
2022 6 11,784 Astros-Phillies
2021 6 11,940 Braves-Astros
2020 6 9,762 Dodgers-Rays
2019 7 13,893 Nationals-Astros
2018 5 14,124 Red Sox-Dodgers

Meanwhile, Fox reported this World Series was the most streamed in Fox’s history, with an average minute audience of 232,307, up 2% from the 2021 Fall Classic. Games 3, 4 and 5 all saw record totals in this metric.

On the eve of the finale for LIV Golf’s inaugural season late last month at Trump Doral National Golf Club, much of the brain trust for the insurgent circuit contemplated a reporter’s question: How soon does their business model need to start generating substantial revenue? 

SBJ’s Eric Prisbell writes after the Saudi-backed league’s opening act that consisted of staging eight events, attracting an increasingly talented stable of golfers, and spending nearly $800 million for what they call a beta-test season with relatively little revenue to show from events, merchandise and some international broadcast deals, the goal posts now move.

Financial expectations rise as LIV officials remain bullish on securing a much-needed media rights deal and signing the first league and team sponsors as the start of their second season approaches in February. “We wake up every morning with the pressure to deliver a return on investment,” said LIV president and chief operating officer Atul Khosla. “We need to deliver that and that is what we are committed to doing.”

LIV’s Atul Khosla said the property is committed to generating a return on the huge investment from its Saudi backers

Qatar has built seven new venues and renovated an eighth for the FIFA World Cup that starts in two weeks, and the stadiums will feature a novel, solar-powered cooling system in which air conditioning will be pushed out through vents under fans’ seats and along the side of the playing pitch, writes SportTechie‘s Joe Lemire.

Managing climate control, security and other operations at all eight venues will be centralized at a single location, the Aspire control and command center. It has required massive IT infrastructure and investment by Qatar’s state-backed Intaleq, which is leading the overall technology ecosystem, along with partners Microsoft (Azure cloud and business intelligence) and Johnson Controls (facility management).

Underlying the stadium networking is a digital twin solution that ingests live data from about 40,000 wireless sensor devices. Operations can be managed via OpenBlue either at the command center as well as at each site, where they glean a real-time understanding of the situation at every stadium.

Other recent World Cup tech news from SportTechie:

Intaleq’s new digital solution is powered by the Johnson Controls OpenBlue digital platform and Microsoft Azure

Soccer United Marketing signed Molson Coors as the first sponsor of its revamped Leagues Cup property, which will debut next summer and feature all 47 teams from MLS and Liga MX, writes SBJ’s Alex Silverman.

The multiyear, multimillion-dollar deal makes Molson Coors the official beer, hard seltzer and flavored malt beverage partner of Leagues Cup. Coors Light will be the tournament’s official beer, and seltzer brand Topo Chico also will be promoted. This represents an initial foray into soccer for Coors Light, and the tie-in is notable given that Heineken has been MLS’s official beer sponsor since 2014. A source said SUM is not treating MLS sponsors as incumbents for Leagues Cup sponsorships and is selling it as a separate property.

Coors Light Marketing Director Katie Feldman cited a desire to reach a younger, more diverse set of consumers by entering the sport and said the prospect of sponsoring a new property was particularly enticing. “We knew we wanted a soccer partner to begin with, and finding the right one was a big opportunity for us,” Feldman said. “This new property is going to be hot.”

As we wrap up Election Day in the U.S., the Charlotte Business Journal‘s Erik Spanberg reminds us that political candidates popping in at sporting events is a familiar tactic, but it’s one fraught with potential brickbats.

“There is a risk any time candidates put themselves in front of a crowd of people, but at sports events, you have the added layers of alcohol and a propensity to get loud,” said Amy Bass, professor of sport studies at Manhattanville College. “We saw crowds taunt Donald Trump at Game 5 of the World Series in 2019, which somewhat shocked him.”

Experts on the political right and left, when asked whether political polarization might endanger stadium and arena photo ops, offered a rarity in response: bipartisan agreement. “It’s a time-honored American tradition for politicians to attend sporting events,” said Ari Fleischer, the former White House press secretary who now runs a communications firm that includes a sports division. He said politicians and their advisers understand that backlash at public events “comes with the territory.”

Fleischer noted Democrats tend to fare better at sporting events in the Northeast and in California, traditional party strongholds. Republicans fare better in the South and other regions where voters favor their party. He pointed to NASCAR and college football crowds as ones more likely to lean red.

In this week’s SBJ Media newsletter, John Ourand covers: 

  • Telemundo bucks ad sales trend; World Cup exceeds 2018 revenue
  • Expect Disney ad sales to be a positive outlier
  • Rainout, more competition hurt World Series ratings
  • Samsung leads all brands in ad spend during World Series on Fox

  • Anheuser-Busch InBev is making a pickleball investment, acquiring the final team in the recent round of expansion for Major League Pickleball, reports SBJ’s Chris Smith. The deal will make the brewing giant a league-level founding partner, in addition to granting it operational control of an MLP franchise.
  • The European Commission has opened an in-depth investigation on the planned acquisition of Activision Blizzard by Microsoft under EU merger regulations, citing antitrust concerns, notes SBJ’s Tobias Seck. In particular, the commission is worried about Microsoft’s potential economic incentive to foreclose, or wall off, access to Activision Blizzard’s console and PC games.
  • Ticketing marketplace Vivid Seats in Q3 recorded $18.7 million in net income, an improvement on a $1.8 million net loss in the same period in FY 2021 and the third straight quarter in the black, writes SBJ’s Bret McCormick. Through nine months of FY 2022, total marketplace orders are at just over 7 million, a substantial increase from the 4.36 million during the same span in FY 2021.
  • Matchday is the first blockchain-based gaming company to partner with FIFA and the global players union, FIFPRO, to license player names and other IP from the soccer federation, reports SportTechie’s Joe Lemire. The company’s first game is Matchday Challenge: FIFA World Cup Qatar 2022 Edition, and the next release will be a casual mobile game in 2023.
  • Riot Games is changing the North American League of Legends tier-two structure, notes SBJ’s Hunter Cooke. This follows Riot’s earlier moves to bolster its structure for its other flagship game, Valorant, in 2023.