What do the fans want? Sports teams, leagues, andmarketing professionals are turning to a growing array of media to capture the elusive customer.

There is probably no better placeto examine the media landscape inthe next decades than the sportsarena, especially the first big playersin this highly lucrative, multibillion-dollar worldwide industry. We arenow seeing a massive readjustmentin what has historically been a syner-gistic relationship between thesports leagues and teams and themedia. In this transformation, newalliances will be formed, mediagiants will be sorely pressed to oper-

ate, and viewers—i.e., fans or cus-tomers—will have unprecedentedaccess to information on numerousand yet-to-be-determined distribu-tion channels.

In the United States, today’ssports-media model was pioneeredon television by ABC’s Wide World ofSpor ts , NBC’s coverage of theOlympics, and CBS’s Sunday after-noon football. This relationship wasclear: The sports properties soldtheir rights to the media, who then

40 THE FUTURIST January-February 2007 www.wfs.org

The Future of Sports Media

LOGOS: PR NEWSWIRE / NEWSCOM

By Irving Rein,Philip Kotler, andBen Shields

©2007 World Future Society • 7910 Woodmont Avenue, Suite 450, Bethesda, MD 20814, U.S.A. • All rights reserved.

www.wfs.org

communicates with itsfans through every distri-bution channel imagin-able. From its flagshiptelevision network, thecompany has spawnedother networks (ESPN2,ESPNEWS, ESPN Classic,ESPN Deportes), syndi-cated radio stat ions(ESPN Radio), a maga-zine (ESPN the Magazine),an interactive Web sitewith streaming video,audio, insider informa-tion, and fantasy games(ESPN.com), a mobilephone content provider(Mobile ESPN), and

sold the sports content to advertis-ers, who gained audiences and po-tential customers for their products.The model was primarily built onnetwork television and was largelyresponsible for turning professionaland college sports into multibillion-dollar businesses. Over time, thismodel began to change as cable tele-vision networks entered the sportsrights fee arena and, because of cablesubscriptions revenues, began com-peting with network television andfragmenting what was once ascarcity-driven market.

The best example of a current win-ner is ESPN (Entertainment andSports Programming Network), thesynergistic sports-media brand that

THE FUTURIST January-February 2007 41

MANUTD.COM SCREEN CAPTURES

New technologies are trans-forming the sports media land-scape. Today, a single team likethe English soccer club Manches-ter United is accessing all thepipelines of traditional sports me-dia channels such as ESPN, as thistable illustrates. In the future, wewill continue to see teams,leagues, and even stars developand manage their own mediacompanies.

Reinventing Sports Media Pipelines

ESPN Manchester United

Television ESPN, ESPN2, ESPNEWS, MUTVESPN Classic, ESPNDeportes, ESPNU

Radio ESPN Radio MU Radio

Magazine ESPN the Magazine UNITED

Internet ESPN.com Manutd.com

Mobile Phone ESPN Mobile MU Mobile

Restaurant ESPN Zone Red Cafe

Manchester United isn’t just the world’s most popular football team;it is also a major business enterprise, branching into publishing, mo-bile communications, and financial services, among other industries.

Major League Baseball’s MLB.com Mosaic offers on-line real-time simultaneous viewing of a several games.

PR NEWSWIRE / NEWSCOM

sports-themed restaurants ( theESPN Zone). Throughout most ofthe cable network’s history, if a sportwasn’t covered by ESPN, it didn’texist.

In the next stage, sports leaguesand teams, because of technologicalinnovations, are beginning to com-municate differently with fans. Forthe first time, the content providersare developing pipelines directlyaimed at their fans. A leader in thistransformation is ManchesterUnited, the billion-dollar Englishfootball (soccer) club, which hasadapted and expanded ESPN’s blue-print to its own one-city team. It hasa television channel (MU TV), radiostation (MU Radio), magazine(United), mobile phone service (MUMobile), team-themed restaurants

(the Red Cafe), and interactive Website (Manutd.com) with streamingvideo, audio, insider information,and a fantasy game. OutdoingESPN, it even has its own financialservices, including car insurance,credit cards, and mortgages; a ManUlottery; and a host of other attrac-tions. As an English football cluboutside of London, ManchesterUnited has transformed itself into aglobal lifestyle brand through inno-vative partnerships and new mediacommunication strategies.

The signals of this future trend areeverywhere. Sports properties arebecoming their own media compa-nies, interacting directly with theirconsumers without the filter oftraditional media. For example, themost valuable television property in

sports is America’s National FootballLeague (NFL). For most networks,the NFL is sought after not only forits high ratings but also for the pro-motional lead-ins to the rest of thenetwork’s schedule and as a compet-itive asset in the television contentwars.

Despite their league’s televisionrights monopoly, the NFL has beenbuilding its own television channel,the NFL Network, which competedagainst ESPN with its own NFL draftshow and broadcast eight regularseason games in the 2006 season.Rather than selling its Thursday andSaturday night television package toother networks, the NFL is investingin its own media brand, using thenetwork as a backup plan for thetime when or if television networkswon’t pay the rights fees. The NFLNetwork has also bought the rightsto several college bowl games, coversthe league’s teams all year roundfrom the draft to training camps, andbuilds the legends of the league withits popular NFL Films content. Forthe traditional sports media, the NFLNetwork—along with the NationalBasketball Association’s NBATV, theBaseball Network, and other team-only channels—is redefining sportstelevision and transforming theonce-reliable sports rights infra-structure.

The Internet is another area insports media where rules are beingrewritten and the marketplace is rap-idly changing. Major League Base-ball (MLB), for example, through itsAdvanced Media division, has builta substantial Internet infrastructurefor streaming live video of baseballgames throughout the season. For aone-time subscription fee, fans canwatch almost every baseball game ofthe season on their computer.

The streaming video business hasbeen a substantial revenue generatorfor the league, and it is defining theways that leagues and teams broad-cast sports on the Internet and makea profit in the process. When the Na-tional Collegiate Athletic Associationdecided to stream the Final Four col-lege basketball tournament, it turnedto MLB because it had the capacityand skill to do so. MLB has becomeone of the benchmarks for integrat-ing new technology into its commu-

42 THE FUTURIST January-February 2007 www.wfs.org

Texas Hold ’Em in Sports TelevisionIn 1976, the major networks

played in their own game and hadall the chips.

Three decades later, the table iscrowded, with more chips andmore players.

Major Networks: A fourth majornetwork has been added to themix, FOX, which has investedheavily in sports programming tobuild its media brand.

Regional Sports Networks: Thisgroup comprises team-ownedchannels, such as the YES Net-work and Altitude Sports & En-tertainment, and regional cablenetworks, such as the ComcastSports Net Chicago or Fox SportsNet Pittsburgh.

Cable Networks: Cable tele-vision created new opportunitiesfor sports programming. ESPNwas the avatar of the 24-hoursports network and has since beenfollowed by OLN. Superstationssuch as TBS and WGN have alsointegrated sports into their pro-gramming.

Single Sports Channels: Leaguesand specific sports have devel-oped dedicated channels to theirsports. Examples include the NFLNetwork, Fuel TV, and the GolfChannel.

Satellite TV: Leagues now offersubscriptions that give the vieweraccess to almost any game. Ex-amples include NFL SundayTicket and Cricket Ticket.

Major Networks (ABC, CBS, NBC)

Major Networks

CableNetworks

Satellite TV Packages

Dealer

Dealer

SingleSportsChannels

RegionalSports Networks,Team-OwnedChannels

nication strategies to meet thechanging expectations of fans, andMLB’s current success only meansthat other sports properties will be-gin emulating and reconfiguringtheir formula.

A final indicator of the changingsports-media relationship is theincreasing amount of fan-driven con-tent on the Internet. A good exampleis Deadspin.com, a sports news Website that is operated out of the NewYork City apartment of the site’sfounder. Deadspin covers sportsnews like any other newspaper andmagazine, provides forums for fansto discuss the latest sports controver-sies, and is sometimes the first me-dia outlet to break a story. Dead-spin’s influence has become soimportant that even members of thetraditional media often get their ma-terial from the site. That fans havealso become the distributors of infor-mation demonstrates how thetraditional media’s role as filter is di-minishing, and both sports proper-ties and the fans themselves are in-creasingly filling the channels.

The radical realignment of sports

is the canary in the coal mine for thefuture of media. It’s only a matter oftime before the professional sportsmodel becomes the standard in col-lege and high-school sports. The BigTen Conference, for example, hasplans to begin a satellite channel toprovide content to its fans. Other en-tertainments such as film, fashion,and music are also developing theirown content and media pipelines toreach targeted fan bases.

It’s fair to say that the media land-scape over the coming decades willlook considerably different than itdoes now. Moreover, the storytellersand strategists who formerly workedin these media channels will increas-ingly find employment with the con-tent providers and nontraditional in-formation distributors. If thetraditional media pipelines are goingto survive, they will have to seeknew alliances and look to connect tothe content providers in innovativeways. Already we see increased bar-tering, cost-sharing, and integratedmultiplatform distribution strate-gies. The only certainty about thesports marketplace is that it is adapt-

ing, and for the stakeholders, thismeans constant monitoring ofchange and a commitment to inno-vation. ■■

Rein Kotler Shields

About the AuthorsIrving Rein is professor of communicationstudies at Northwestern University.

Philip Kotler is the S.C. Johnson Distin-guished Professor of International Market-ing at the Kellogg School of Management,Northwestern University.

Ben Shields is a doctoral candidate in thedepartment of communication studies atNorthwestern University.

They are the authors of The Elusive Fan: Reinventing Sports in a Crowded Marketplace (McGraw-Hill, 2006,www.theelusivefan.com), which is availablefrom the Futurist Bookshelf, www.wfs.org/bkshelf.htm.

THE FUTURIST January-February 2007 43www.wfs.org

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