Ever since professional sports crashed to a halt last month, I’ve been thinking about the poor folks at TSN and Sportsnet in the sort of terms that God and Abraham argued over Sodom and Gomorrah in the Bible.
In Genesis, Chapter 18, you’ll recall, God reveals that he – sorry, I mean He – intends to destroy the twin cities for their sins. Horrified, Abraham tries to negotiate. What if there are 50 righteous people there, he asks God: Would He spare the cities then? Sure, God says. So, er, how about 45 people? asks Abraham, just getting started. Okay, God says. All right, then how about 40? Abraham asks. Yes, fine, comes the reply. Abraham continues in this vein like a reverse auctioneer, reducing the number by 10 until God agrees that if there are as few as 10 righteous souls in Sodom and Gomorrah, he’ll spare everyone.
(Psst: He did not spare everyone.)
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For more than five weeks now, TSN and Sportsnet, as well as internet-delivered subscription services such as DAZN, have had no live sports content to offer, prompting for some of their subscribers a Sodom and Gomorrah sort of quandary: How little do I need to watch these channels before I decide to dump them and save the cash?
There’s a dirty little secret at the heart of the sports-TV subscription business: Showing fewer games can actually be better for the bottom line. A couple of weeks ago, a former sports TV executive explained to me that the NHL lockout years were, counterintuitively, some of the most profitable for TSN and Sportsnet, because the networks didn’t have to pay either the rights fees or the production costs for the games they didn’t air. Although their ad revenue dropped, their subscription revenue continued to come in.
And those subscription fees have only gone up: In 2012, Sportsnet earned about $17.30 a customer from subscriptions annually, according to Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission filings. By 2018 – the most recent year for which figures are available – that was up more than 260 per cent, to $45.23 a subscriber. TSN also had a sharp rise, although not as steep, to $43.10 in 2018 from $26.27 a subscriber in 2012. (Those are wholesale prices; cable customers pay perhaps twice that much.)
Sure enough, the fourth quarter 2012 report for Rogers Communications Inc., which owns Sportsnet, found a “$30-million net positive impact from the NHL player lockout.” (That was before Rogers signed its $5.2-billion ,12-year NHL rights deal.) Bell Media, which owns TSN, also cited the three-month lockout as a significant factor for higher profits that quarter.
Still, there’s a difference between no hockey and no anything at all, which is why the programmers at TSN and Sportsnet have been throwing stuff at the wall over the past month like frenzied amateur pasta chefs in hopes that something will stick: E-sports featuring real athletes, gimmicks (TSN’s April Fools slate included the European tram-driver championship, in which trolleys push mammoth bowling-ball-style beach balls careening into oversized pins) and days and days of so-called classic games that are sometimes merely unremarkable, middle-of-the-season matches that were forgotten as soon as they were played.
For the most part, that stuff is empty filler, Styrofoam peanuts to make the package seem bigger; nobody actually thinks you’re going to watch it. But the networks know they need to give subscribers some sense of value, so they’ve been pursuing a two-pronged approach: repackaging old games in ways that create communal events and getting marquee personalities on air as much as possible. TSN has gone one big step further, recently bringing back its nightly SportsCentre news shows, including the midnight bros Jay and Dan. On Monday, it will also bring its afternoon drive-time radio show, Overdrive, back to TV.
“We want to entertain viewers with the most engaging, entertaining content possible, and really provide sports fans with the ability to relive some of their best memories in a time when they need it most,” Shawn Redmond, the vice-president of Discovery Networks and TSN, said in an interview. In many cases that means “presenting big events in stunt form,” such as the Toronto Raptors’ 2019 playoff run (in partnership with Sportsnet) over 24 successive nights. This week, TSN will re-air Bianca Andreescu’s run to the U.S. Open championship from last year.
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TSN’s rebroadcast of the Raptors’ win in Game 6 of the NBA Finals a week ago pulled in about 750,000 viewers. Nothing close to the 15.9 million who tuned in to some portion of the game when it aired live last June, but not bad for a rerun.
“I’ve been very pleased with the reach,” Redmond said, using the industry term for the aggregate number of viewers who tune in for any period of time to a single broadcast. While average-minute-audience (AMA) is usually the metric used by broadcast networks whose primary focus is on delivering ads to the largest audience, cable networks such as TSN know that as long as their subscribers tune in for even a fraction of a broadcast – measured by “reach” – they’re probably going to hold on to the service.
And both networks have been packaging the old events with new content, such as last Friday night’s watch party when Jose Bautista joined Sportsnet’s Arash Madani, Hazel Mae and Shi Davidi during that network’s rebroadcast of the madcap “bat flip” from Game 5 of the Blue Jays-Rangers American League Division Series in 2015. When TSN re-aired Mike Weir’s 2003 Masters championship, the network packaged it with a fresh FaceTime interview Bob Weeks did with Weir from his car.
“It’s impossible to replicate the [average-minute-audience] ratings of a period when sports are live,” Redmond said. “But I’ve been really happy with the reach and engagement with our content, and the feedback from viewers and partners.”
The networks are the lucky beneficiaries of two simultaneous shifts: one, technological; the other, aesthetic. Over the past few years, more and more reporters can use their phones as mobile TV cameras. So if a story broke during the day, they would report it as quickly as possible, and the content would be uploaded to a network’s social-media streams and website, rather than waiting to get the reporter into the studio and saving the story for the suppertime broadcast.
“If I think back to the early days of SportsCentre, so much was keyed towards … that 6 o’clock [broadcast],” said Ken Volden, vice-president and executive producer at TSN, where he is responsible for the network’s in-house production. “Now, you know, if something happens at 1 o’clock in the afternoon, we want it on one of our platforms as soon as we get there.”
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“How we view content has been changing or morphing as the platforms morph,” he said, mentioning TSN’s Bar Down broadcast team, which originated on the network’s digital platforms and has found its way onto its TV channels over the past few weeks. “It felt normal, for instance, to do a hockey chat with our Bar Down team, and getting some of the younger NHL players on at 8 o’clock on Instagram, because we were doing that already.”
That aesthetic shift also means we’re likely to cut the network’s biggest names some slack when, say, Jay and Dan try to replicate their in-studio chemistry over the internet and it ends up feeling like one of our family’s awkward Zoom calls.
Still, having them and other old TV friends back on air provides a sense of normalcy, which counts for a lot these days. Is it enough to keep viewers engaged – and more to the point, subscribed?
EDMONTON – The Edmonton Oilers signed defenceman Travis Dermott to a professional tryout on Friday.
Dermott, a 27-year-old from Newmarket, Ont., produced two goals, five assists and 26 penalty minutes in 50 games with the Arizona Coyotes last season.
The six-foot, 202-pound blueliner has also played for the Vancouver Canucks and Toronto Maple Leafs.
Toronto drafted him in the second round, 34th overall, of the 2015 NHL draft.
Over seven NHL seasons, Dermott has 16 goals and 46 assists in 329 games while averaging 16:03 in ice time.
Before the NHL, Dermott played two seasons with Oilers captain Connor McDavid for the Ontario Hockey League’s Erie Otters. The team was coached by current Edmonton head coach Kris Knoblauch.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 13, 2024.
NEWPORT, R.I. (AP) — Maria Sharapova, a five-time Grand Slam singles champion, led the International Tennis Hall of Fame’s fan vote her first year on the ballot — an important part to possible selection to the hall’s next class.
The organization released the voting results on Friday. American doubles team Bob and Mike Bryan finished second with Canada’s Daniel Nestor third.
The Hall of Fame said tens of thousands of fans from 120 countries cast ballots. Fan voting is one of two steps in the hall’s selection process. The second is an official group of journalists, historians, and Hall of Famers from the sport who vote on the ballot for the hall’s class of 2025.
“I am incredibly grateful to the fans all around the world who supported me during the International Tennis Hall of Fame’s fan votes,” Sharapova said in a statement. “It is a tremendous honor to be considered for the Hall of Fame, and having the fans’ support makes it all the more special.”
Sharapova became the first Russian woman to reach No. 1 in the world. She won Wimbledon in 2004, the U.S. Open in 2006 and the Australian Open in 2008. She also won the French Open twice, in 2012 and 2014.
Sharapova was also part of Russia’s championship Fed Cup team in 2008 and won a silver medal at the London Olympics in 2012.
To make the hall, candidates must receive 75% or higher on combined results of the official voting group and additional percentage from the fan vote. Sharapova will have an additional three percentage points from winning the fan vote.
The Bryans, who won 16 Grand Slam doubles titles, will have two additional percentage points and Nestor, who won eight Grand Slam doubles titles, will get one extra percentage point.
The hall’s next class will be announced late next month.
PHILADELPHIA (AP) — The driver charged with killing NHL hockey player Johnny Gaudreau and his brother Matthew as they bicycled on a rural road had a blood-alcohol level of .087, above the .08 legal limit in New Jersey, a prosecutor said Friday.
Gaudreau, 31, and brother Matthew, 29, were killed in Carneys Point, New Jersey, on Aug. 29, the evening before they were set to serve as groomsmen at their sister Katie’s wedding.
The driver, 43-year-old Sean M. Higgins of nearby Woodstown, New Jersey, is charged with two counts of death by auto, along with reckless driving, possession of an open container and consuming alcohol in a motor vehicle. At a virtual court hearing Friday, a judge ordered that he be held for trial after prosecutors described a history of alleged road rage and aggressive driving.
“’You were probably driving like a nut like I always tell you you do. And you don’t listen to me, instead you just yell at me,’” his wife told Higgins when he called her from jail after his arrest, according to First Assistant Prosecutor Jonathan Flynn of Salem County.
The defense described Higgins as a married father and law-abiding citizen before the crash.
“He’s an empathetic individual and he’s a loving father of two daughters,” said defense lawyer Matthew Portella. “He’s a good person and he made a horrible decision that night.”
Higgins told police he had five or six beers that day and admitted to consuming alcohol while driving, according to the criminal complaint. He also failed a field sobriety test, the complaint said. A prosecutor on Friday said he had been drinking at home after finishing a work call at about 3 p.m., and having an upsetting conversation with his mother about a family matter.
He then had a two-hour phone call with a friend while he drove around in his Jeep with an open container, Flynn said. He had been driving aggressively behind a sedan going just above the 50 mph speed limit, sometimes tailgating, the female driver told police.
When she and the vehicle ahead of her slowed down and veered left to go around the cyclists, Higgins sped up and veered right, striking the Gaudreas, the two other drivers told police.
“He indicated he didn’t even see them,” said Superior Court Judge Michael J. Silvanio, who said Higgins’ admitted “impatience” caused two deaths.
Higgins faces up to 20 years, a sentence that the judge said made him a flight risk.
Higgins has a master’s degree, works in finance for an addiction treatment company, and served in combat in Iraq, his lawyers said. However, his wife said he had been drinking regularly since working from home, Flynn said.
Johnny Gaudreau, known as “Johnny Hockey,” played 10 full seasons in the league and was set to enter his third with the Columbus Blue Jackets after signing a seven-year, $68 million deal in 2022. He played his first eight seasons with the Calgary Flames, a tenure that included becoming one of the sport’s top players and a fan favorite across North America.
Widows Meredith and Madeline Gaudreau described their husbands as attached at the hip throughout their lives. Both women are expecting, and both gave moving eulogies at the double funeral on Monday.
