ESPN and ABC Release 2007-08 NBA Schedule

ABC and ESPN released their 2007-08 NBA schedule today. The schedule features a total of 90 games, with 18 on ABC and 72 on ESPN. The NBA finals will be broadcast exclusively on ABC. Overall ABC will broadcast six NBA Sunday doubleheaders. Both ABC and ESPN will feature a flexible schedule.

ABC and ESPN will combine to present a Christmas Day tripleheader. It will open at 2pm on ABC with the Cleveland Cavaliers and LeBron James versus the Miami Heat with Dwyane Wade and Shaquille O’Neal. The game will be followed by Phoenix and Steve Nash visiting the Los Angeles Lakers and Kobe Bryant. The nightcap moves to ESPN, where the Portland Trail Blazers’ and Greg Oden face the Seattle SuperSonics’ Kevin Durant at 8 p.m.

ABC highlights:

• 18 exclusive broadcasts;
• a flexible schedule allowing for the best possible matchups throughout the season;
• a Christmas Day doubleheader with Miami at Cleveland and Phoenix at the L.A. Lakers with coverage beginning at 2 p.m.;
• a NBA Sunday regular-season schedule from Jan. 27 through April 13;
• multiple appearances from several of the league’s top teams, including defending NBA Finals champion San Antonio and runner-up Cleveland, along with Chicago, Dallas, Detroit, L.A. Lakers, Miami and Phoenix;
• two games between the Miami Heat, with Dwyane Wade and Shaquille O’Neal, facing the Cleveland Cavaliers and LeBron James – Christmas Day at 2 p.m. and April 13 at 1 p.m. (both games at Cleveland);
• Cleveland and LeBron James will host Denver and Carmelo Anthony Feb. 10 at 1 p.m. The matchup will be followed by the Lakers and Kobe Bryant visiting the Miami Heat and Shaquille O’Neal at 3:30 p.m.;
• 2006 NBA Finals rematch with the Miami Heat hosting the Dallas Mavericks March 16 at 3:30 p.m.;
• a Texas showdown with the San Antonio Spurs hosting the Houston Rockets and perennial

NHL and ESPN Talking

Street and Smith's Sports Business Journal is reporting that the NHL and ESPN are having talks about bringing the league back to the World Wide Leader in Sports. The league may be back on ESPN, ESPN2, and ABC as soon as the 2008-09 season.

Sources also say the league is negotiating its planned NHL Network with cable and satellite operators. The NHL is taking a page from MLB by tying carriage of its planned channel with the renewal of Center Ice. The U.S. channel will have a look and feel similar to the Canadian version, and will have 50 live games in 2007-08. Most of the content will be identical to what appears in Canada, although repackaged with some U.S.-based programming.

The NHL and ESPN are in discussions about bringing the league’s games back to ESPN2 as soon as the 2008-09 season.

Multiple sources described the conversations as preliminary. The two started talking the week of July 16 when the NHL approached ESPN about NBC’s nine-game regular-season schedule, plus the playoffs. NBC holds the rights to air the coming season as part of a revenue-sharing agreement, and the network holds a one-year option for the 2008-09 season.

It’s not certain that NBC would exercise that option, given the sport’s tepid ratings on the network. Regular-season ratings on NBC averaged a 0.9 during the 2006-07 season and a 1.0 during the 2007-08 season over nine telecasts.

The key to this whole scenario is Versus, which holds cable exclusivity to all of the league’s games through 2011 and is paying the league a rights fee in excess of $70 million annually. Sources close to the Comcast-owned network, however, indicated that Versus would be willing to waive that clause, but only if it gets something in return — either a lower rights fee, a stronger schedule or a deal extension.

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ESPN and the WNBA Team Up

The Sports Business News is reporting that the WNBA has agreed to an eight-year rights extension through the 2016 season with ABC, ESPN, and ESPN2.

The new contract includes a minimum of 18 regular-season games to be telecast on ESPN2 (approximately one per week) and two games on ABC. The postseason on ESPN2 will include a minimum of 11 games, including the entire best-of-five WNBA Finals. All ABC and ESPN2 telecasts will continue to have time-period exclusivity. In addition, the deal includes coverage of the first round of the WNBA Draft on ESPN2 and rights to coverage on ESPN Deportes, including: live simulcast rights for all ESPN2 regular-season and post-season games, as well as all studio and specials programming; SAP rights for all ABC games; and enhanced digital media rights for ESPNDeportes.com.

Although financial terms are not discussed in this article, it has been reported that the deal did include a rights-fee, and not a revenue sharing percentage. What does it say about the state of the NHL that the WNBA received more guaranteed money than they did? Of course, it is probably not a coincidence that the NBA recently also agreed to terms with ESPN and ABC. It would not be surprising to learn that David Stern made it clear that if you take the WNBA, you will get treated better by the NBA.

Best Business Deal of All Time?

from Darren Rovell of CNBC News

Let's just say there was probably some champagne passed around in the Silna family yesterday. That's because the Silna brothers, Ozzie and Dan, learned that they'll be paid some $ 136 million over the next eight years. The checks will be coming from the Denver Nuggets, the San Antonio Spurs, the New Jersey Nets and the Indiana Pacers.

If you haven't heard the story, it's a classic and is probably the best business deal of all-time.

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When I first wrote about the new NBA tv rights deal, I said that David Stern was a genuis. After all, he got $900 million per year even though regular season ratings on ABC have declined every year since 2002. Now I realize that Dan and Ozzie Silna are the real genuises.

Stern works his magic once again – inside the NBA gigantic TV deal

from Howard Bloom at SportsBusinessNews

With the final piece of the National Basketball Association season to be put in place tonight with the league’s annual player draft, NBA commissioner David Stern as he has done since he became NBA commissioner in 1984 delivered a new rights agreements again raising the revenues of the NBA. The key to the agreements which signify a significant increase in revenues for the NBA – Stern selling both ESPN/ABC and Turner on the big picture, where the industry is going and how the NBA and their media partners are going to a part of that move forward.

According to Mediaweek: the NBA has agreed to a new eight-year, $7.4 billion television rights agreement with ESPN/ABC and Turner Broadcasting System, with the amount of television coverage consistent with the current agreement, but giving all the TV rightsholders new, expansive digital rights.

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This proves that David Stern is a genuis at negotiations. He managed to get the NBA owners almost a billion dollars a year for seven years, despite the fact that the NBA on ABC experienced a 31-percent drop in ratings and has lost 1 million viewers since 2002. Ratings drop 31 percent; tv revenue increases 22 percent. Using this ratio, and considering the drop in NHL ratings, Gary Bettman should be able to get the NHL owners 10 billion dollars per year in his next network deal.