After landing a deal to broadcast WNBA games Friday nights nationally on Ion, E.W. Scripps is looking for more sports leagues and teams to put on its national networks and local stations.
“If we found another league that was the right fit and intersected so well with the demographics that we have on Ion, there’s room for more,” Scripps CEO Adam Symson told Broadcasting+Cable.
“But we’re not looking for partnerships with any sports,” he added. “Clearly, the WNBA is a premier league and that’s what we set out to do was make partnerships with premier partners of the highest kind.”
Scripps is also monitoring the regional sports network situation. Sinclair Broadcast Group’s Bally Sports RSNs are in bankruptcy and not paying some teams for rights. Major League Baseball could take TV rights back from Bally Sports parent Diamond Sports Group early next month.
“MLB has the whole situation well in hand,“ Symson said. ”We’ve obviously had conversations with the folks in distribution with every major league that has been dependent on the RSN business. Where we think there’s a fit with our local footprint and league or a series of teams, we’re absolutely ready to do a deal.”
Historically, sports rights have been costly and getting increasingly expensive. That’s one reason the RSNs are under pressure.
Symson declined to provide details of Scripps’s financial arrangement with the WNBA.
“From the very beginning we’ve been clear that we were going to be taking a disciplined approach to sports rights,” he said. “We recognize that we bring something very special to the table with the reach. I think the WNBA recognizes that, and we’ve created a partnership in which both parties will benefit economically.”
He said the WNBA will be handling production of the games airing on Ion.
New Model for Sports
“I do think that the sports marketplace for the most part is ready for a new model,” Symson said. “We brought a different kind of model to the marketplace when we are speaking with leagues and teams, and our message is resonating. We bring unparalleled reach and they are seeking to connect with as many fans as possible, especially in this environment of fragmentation.”
The WNBA deal came just four months after Scripps established its Scripps Sports division, announcing it was looking to do deals with leagues and teams looking for the reach broadcast can provide while cord-cutting erodes the number of viewers subscribing to pay TV.
More viewers are turning to streaming, particularly for the scripted dramas and comedies that used to draw big ratings on network television.
“Our strategy rests on the fact that live sports and live news are two of the most important content genres for linear television,” Symson said.
Symson did not seem surprised that a deal got done so quickly. “Ion is a compelling platform in terms of reach,” he said. “We could tell when we launched Scripps Sports, based on the number of inbounds that we were getting, that there was a high level of interest in tapping that reach.”
Ion’s Wide Reach
Acquired by Scripps in 2020, Ion reaches 79 million pay TV consumers, plus 103 connected TV households and 34 million over-the-air households, Symson said. “The 103 million connected TV and the 34 million OTA homes aren’t reached by the cable programmers,“ he said. “You can see why a league like the WNBA, which has significant ambitions for continued growth, would want to partner with a platform like Ion and Scripps Sports.”
Symson said it was important to make a deal with a strategic partner that was a good fit for Ion. Women’s sports fills the bill, according to Symson, because of Ion’s large audience of women. Ion ranks No. 3 among cable networks among women 18-49, excluding news.
