02-20-2018, 10:27 PM
A lot of good nuggets in this conversation, I thought.
Awful Announcing reports on Kevin Mayer interview
Awful Announcing reports on Kevin Mayer interview
Quote:At that point, Kafka says “One of the narratives of the last couple years has been about ESPN, the problems ESPN has, and the problems that has caused for Disney. There’s been all this discussion about spending all this money on sports rights while viewership and subscriptions are declining. You guys are making a really big bet in part on regional sports networks, basically taking on many more expensive sports rights. Can you explain the logic there?”
Mayer responds “We think that sports is a great business. Yes, there are some elements, you pointed out we have fixed sports rights against variable revenue, but rates are pretty solid and increasing. There are, there has been a slow decline in subscribers. That’s been mitigated a little bit as of late, I don’t want to take too much good news from that, but it has seemed to mitigate the loss of subscribers. And there’s no stronger emotional bond than sports, between the local audience and the local sports team, and I think that survives. And if we do make this broader transition to a direct-to-consumer model, that is a fantastic local way into consumers’ houses and into a relationship with consumers, through their local team.”
Kafka then asks about people who don’t want local sports included in cable packages and how that will work in a direct-to-consumer model, and Mayer says he believes there will be lots of people who do want that.
“We think the fandom there is pretty rabid in terms of local teams and local sports,” he says. “Where there’s rabid fandom and where there’s a high affinity, there’s money to be made. We think fundamentally that will be very good business.”
Quote:The other real comment of significance to sports fans here comes when Kafka asks about the timeline of announcing John Skipper’s replacement as ESPN president. Mayer says that’s a question for Iger, but he expects the decision to be made relatively soon.
“That’s a question for Bob, I know he’s working on it and I don’t think it will be too far in the future. We have put George Bodenheimer, who was very nice to come back out of his retirement, in for several months, so I think it will be in that timeframe.”
Kafka then asks “Do you want that job?” and Mayer says “Running ESPN is great, but I’m going to do what Bob asks me to do, happily, and that’s the job I’ll have.”
So that’s certainly not ruling out the idea, and many (including plugged-in ESPN reporter Jim Miller) have suggested that Skipper’s replacement could come from the Disney side and that Mayer might be a logical candidate. We’ll see if that happens. But this overall conversation is definitely notable for what it says about Disney’s streaming strategy and how ESPN factors into that, both now and in potentially a much bigger way in the future.