by On the one hand, Sunday will be a cause for joy for CBS Sports. The sports division will broadcast its 22nd Super Bowl, the most of any network. The game is guaranteed to be the most-watched event on television this year, generating hundreds of millions in advertising revenue and providing a huge promotional platform for CBS and its parent company, Paramount.
On the other hand there is everything else.
The storied CBS Sports division, home to broadcasts of marquee events like the Masters and March Madness, is facing a wave of changes. Its former president, Sean McManus, will leave the company in April. The division has lost the rights to one of its signature properties, Southeastern Conference college football games. Deep-pocketed tech giants are getting aggressive with live sports programming, with companies like Amazon (NFL football on Thursday nights) and Netflix (WWE wrestling) entering the field. And Paramount is widely considered an acquisition target, with several suitors circling the company.
All of this leaves CBS Sports facing a number of challenges, which company leaders say they can handle by sticking to what they know.
“No matter what happens to the company in the future, sports will become more and more important every year,” McManus said.
CBS Sports has long been one of the elite players in American broadcasting. Its low-key coverage, chronicled over decades by broadcast booth legends such as Pat Summerall, John Madden, Verne Lundquist and Jim Nantz, has stood in stark contrast to louder competitors like ESPN and Fox. CBS has televised the Masters tournament golf course with limited commercial interruption and in stately, hushed tones dating back to the 1950s.
And CBS has plenty of major sporting events coming up for the foreseeable future. The network’s NFL rights are secured through 2033, for about $2 billion a year. The rights to the men’s college basketball tournament are tied up for another eight years, for about $750 million a year. And many PGA Tour events are signed through 2030 for hundreds of millions a year.
That’s because even as traditional TV ratings are plummeting and more people migrate to streaming, live sporting events are still thriving on broadcast networks. Recent NFL playoff games broadcast on CBS set viewership records.
“No matter how many changes are taking place or are on the horizon, football on broadcast television, and especially the NFL, is the only entity that exists above and beyond all that,” said Bob Costas, the eminence of the sports broadcast.
Even if the network’s sports divisions have to make adjustments, “it doesn’t have much to do with the NFL,” Costas said. “The only thing they have to do is keep contributing money for the rights.”
Still, nearly all media companies face rising sports rights fees as they try to juggle the challenges. These include cord cutting, declining advertising revenue and streaming businesses losing money. Three companies — Disney, Warner Bros. Discovery and Fox — announced Tuesday that they would jointly launch a new sports streaming service this year, to better control their destiny in a changing world. Paramount, however, will not be part of that service.
Like other media companies, Paramount, which also owns cable networks such as Nickelodeon and MTV, has been hurt by the decline of cable television. According financial presentations, Paramount has committed to making more than $30 billion in future payments, the vast majority for sports rights. That’s more than the stock market says Paramount is worth. The company’s streaming service, Paramount+, lost hundreds of millions of dollars last year, and several analysts are skeptical that it will exist in its current form within a few years.
Several suitors, including Skydance and Warner Bros. Discovery, have expressed interest in Paramount’s media business.
Over the past 18 months, several senior executives have stepped out he company. McManus, leader of the sports division for 27 years, will be replaced by a former lieutenant, David Berson, after his retirement in April.
Both men described the transition as smooth (CBS Chairman George Cheeks referred to it as “a master class in succession planning”), and emphasized that the division would stick to what it did best: acquiring desirable sports rights and produce strong transmissions. .
“The relationships we have with these various leagues are deep and storied, and there is a tremendous level of comfort and trust that we will make the best showing,” Mr. Berson said.
However, CBS has faced some challenges even on that front. For more than two decades, CBS broadcast SEC college football games on Saturdays, a typically top-tier event. CBS had been paying $55 million a year for the rights.
But this year, ESPN will take over broadcasts of SEC games and will pay $300 million a year to do so. To make up for the loss, CBS acquired the rights to Big Ten games, but for a higher price (about $350 million a year) and for a league that has been weaker overall in recent years, although it has Added several rich sports highlights. West Coast Universities.
“I think there’s a good chance there will be tremendous growth in the Big Ten, both on the field and in the television universe,” McManus said.
Berson highlighted the division’s ability to innovate with sports productions. He pointed to the fact that the Super Bowl would be simulcast on Nickelodeon in a broadcast tailored to kids and families.
“We really believe it’s about cultivating the next generation of fans and doing it in a really fun way that brings back the audience,” he said.
Although CBS closed major deals into the early 2030s, technology companies like Amazon, Netflix and Apple have begun their march toward streaming live sporting events. Amazon now streams “Thursday Night Football,” Netflix acquired the rights to WWE’s flagship weekly broadcast, “Raw,” for $5 billion over the next 10 years, and Apple bought the rights to show Major League Soccer throughout the world. An old rival, NBC Sports, also recently successfully streamed an NFL playoff game on Peacock.
All of this adds up to a hugely changing sports media landscape.
“They may actually be competitors in the future,” McManus said of the technology companies. “Our agreements are, broadly speaking, over this decade, if not longer. We will look at them and do our research. And if they become competitors, so far we have managed to keep the properties we wanted.
“So, you know, it’s hard to predict the future, but I feel good about where we stand.”
