March 2016

CABLE TO TELEVISE NCAA MEN’S BASKETBALL CHAMPIONSHIP GAME

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April 4, 2016 marks another turning point for cable television. On that date, Turner

Sports will televise live the NCAA Men’s Basketball Championship Game. This will be the

first time one of the “crown jewels” of televised sports will be seen on a cable network.

The championship game marks the culmination of the annual and popular “March

Madness” tournament. (The American Gaming Association estimates that last year 40

million Americans will fill out over 70 million bracket, wagering about $9 billion on the

NCAA tournament.) In the past, the men’s championship games have aired exclusively

on broadcast television, and since 1982 it’s been on CBS.

Since 2011, the 67-game and 68-team tournament has been on both CBS and three

Turner entertainment networks; TNT, TBS and TruTV. This was part of a 14-year $10.8

billion agreement that will run through 2024. Turner Sports had televised the two

National semi-finals games (a.k.a. “Final Four”) in both 2014 and 2015, introducing

“teamcast” to viewers. With “teamcast”, Turner televised the game on all three networks,

two of the networks (TNT and TruTV) used the college’s home team announcers with

TBS using national (or unbiased) broadcasters.

CABLE TO TELEVISE NCAA MEN’S BASKETBALL CHAMPIONSHIP GAME

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Turner will televise both the “Final Four” and Championship game in 2016 and will use

“teamcast” for all three games. In the future, Turner Sports and CBS will alternate its

coverage of “the Final Four” and championship game through the end of the contract.

CBS will televise the three final games in odd years and Turner Sports in even years.

As a whole, Turner Sports televises more “March Madness” tournament games than CBS.

As mentioned, the NCAA tournament is one of the most popular events on television.

According to the Nielsen, last year, the entire tournament averaged 11.3 million viewers

per game, the most since 1993 when “March Madness” averaged 12.7 million viewers.

This was also an increase of 8% from the 2014 tournament of 10.5 million viewers. Nielsen

reports the 2015 National Championship game, Duke over Wisconsin, averaged 28.3

million viewers, a 33% rise from the 2014 game (21.3 million). It was the most watched

NCAA title game in 18 years (28.4 million; Arizona and Kentucky in 1997). According to

Nielsen in total, an estimated 100+ million viewers tune in to watch some part of the

three week tournament each year. The NCAA announced that last year’s tournament

was also popular on social media, it had grossed a record 350 million total social

impressions across Facebook and Twitter, a 45% increase over 2014.

The NCAA Men’s Basketball Championship game follows a pattern of post season

live sporting events now on cable television. Since 2011, the top rated cable program

has been the college football championship game on ESPN. At first, it was the BCS

Championship game, in 2015 the three game college football playoffs was initiated.

According to Nielsen this year’s championship game averaged 25.7 million viewers

(Alabama over Clemson), the most watched cable program of the year. The inaugural

game in 2015 set a record high for any cable program with an average audience of 33.4

million viewers. Led by ESPN, cable television has become the home of post season

college football bowl games televising over 30 contests each year. In January 2015 ESPN

televised a Wild Card game the first time a cable network aired a post season NFL game.

This year the NFL Wild Card game was simulcast on ABC and ESPN.

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Each year more post season NBA basketball games are available on cable rather than

broadcast television. This includes the highly rated Eastern and Western Conference Finals

each May, televised on TNT and ESPN. As Nielsen estimated last season, the Western

Conference Finals averaged 7.4 million viewers on ESPN and the Eastern Conference Finals

averaged 6.8 million viewers on TNT. Under the most recent agreement the two networks

will continue to televise NBA games through the 2024-25 season.

Cable has been the home many post season baseball games. Each year the two Wild Card

Games League, four Divisional Series games and one League Championship Series are

watched on TBS, ESPN, FS1 and MLB networks. The “play-in” Wild Card game introduced

in 2012 has become very popular with viewers. Nielsen said in 2015, the National League

Wild Card game averaged 8.3 million viewers on TBS, the American League Wild Card

game averaged 7.6 million on ESPN. The 2015 National League Championship Series on

TBS averaged 7.9 million viewers despite being a four game sweep. The current MLB

contract will expire after the 2021 season.

A majority of ice hockey’s Stanley Cup playoffs, including the several games of finals, can

be seen on cable television, across several NBCU networks led by NBC Sports Network.

This is part of a ten year agreement with the National Hockey League that expires after

the 2020-21 season. Other top tier live sporting events are migrating to cable as well. In

2015 the ESPN networks televised the entire U.S. Open (tennis). Previously, the U.S. Open

had also aired on CBS every year since 1968. The U.S. Open follows Wimbledon and the

Australian Open as Grand Slam tennis tournaments that are available exclusively on cable.

Besides the sports mentioned above, cable is the home of many other popular sporting

events; from the early rounds of Grand Slam Men’s golf tournaments, to numerous soccer

matches from the MLS, FA Cup and English Premier Soccer to name a few. The All-Star

games of the NBA, NHL and NFL can now all be found on cable. On the global stage,

cable is the home to numerous Olympic events and dozens of World Cup soccer matches.

Locally, there are dozens of regional sports networks featuring live games of the home

team. Other sports found on cable include the UFC, wrestling, motorsports, horse racing,

X-Games, WNBA and cycling’s premiere event, the Tour de France.

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The four major sports leagues in the U.S. (NFL, MLB, NBA and NHL) all have their own

cable networks offering live games, there are also vertical networks devoted to tennis

and golf.

Televised sports continues to thrive, according to Nielsen’s “Year in Sports Media

Report”, for 2015 there were over 127,000 hours of sports programming on broadcast

and cable television resulting in over 31 billion hours watching TV sports. This represents

an increase of 160% and 41% respectively from 2005. Increasingly cable television has

become the home to many of these live sporting events.

As on demand and binge viewing proliferates with scripted entertainment shows, sports

tend to be watched in live. According to the Nielsen sports report, in fourth quarter

2015, 95% of total sports viewing were watched in real time when ads cannot be fast

forwarded. In addition, sports fans tend to be passionate and are active on social media,

Nielsen Social reports that sports accounts for only 1.4% of all TV programming, but

nearly one-half (49.7%) of all Twitter TV conversations.

In this era of audience fragmentation live sports continues to thrive.

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