08/07/17: Turner’s PGA ground game

Good morning. It’s Monday August 7, 2017 and this is your first early morning Sports briefing.

With Jordan Spieth seeking to become the sixth player to notch a career Grand Slam with a victory at the PGA Championship this week, TNT and CBS tee up for coverage from Quail Hollow Club in Charlotte starting Thursday on TNT at 1p. Broadcast plans for this year’s event will include more than 18 hours of live action on TNT led by hosts Ernie Johnson Brian Anderson, analysts Ian Baker-Finch and Billy Kratzert, and Amanda Balionis providing pre- and post-round interviews while Trevor Immelman was added as a new on-course analyst for this year’s coverage. Meanwhile, NBA Champion Andre Iguodala will serve as a special contributor for the event and contribute across multiple platforms, including TNT, CNN, PGAChampionship.com, the PGA Championship Apps, and PGA.com’s social media platforms.

Meanwhile, the PGA Championship’s official digital platforms, managed by Turner Sports, received an overhaul ahead of this year’s tournament with a focus on broadened video integration – including four times the amount of live and on-demand video content pieces than in the past – and responsive optimization for mobile viewing via PGA Championship LIVE and sponsored by Omega, Mercedes-Benz, Arby’s, National Car Rental, Workday and Ping. The video experience will showcase the event’s top players via its Featured Group channels while PGA Championship LIVE will debut dedicated live video coverage of The Green Mile. Cynopsis Sports caught up with PGA.com GM Gary Treater to discuss the upgrades, the viewing habits of the golf fan and what to expect from the tournament.

Treater on viewing habits: One of the things that we’ve noticed across all sports, and golf is no exception, is the changing viewing habits of sports fans, particularly with live events. Obviously, we’ve got traditional television and we’ve created a lot of content and live videos for a second screen experience. Turner tends to look at this through the lens of how consumers are viewing sports and then try to create compelling multi-platform experiences for them. On the digital side, we’ve seen significant changes in the last few years and we’ve taken the opportunity to upgrade our digital products and platforms to address those changes with a focus on more video, more focus on mobile and also creating and programming content that addresses these various viewing habits that people have during a live event.

On golf fans: For golf, viewing habits can change across the four days or even from morning until afternoon because the event goes on for so long and people have the opportunity to view it all day. So we have to address the way we present content and how we build our products. For golf fans, we’ve seen much more demand for video in recent years. This year, you will see more live streams, with five available for fans on digital. On VOD, we looked at what fans are gravitating toward and because of their busy lifestyle, they sometimes can’t view the live feed, so we are going to produce four to five times the amount of VOD content we have offered in the past. For example, a typical fan on Thursday might be in the office and be able to access the stream on desktop, and spend two hours watching that accumulated throughout the day. As they leave, they may go home, tune in to TNT and watch the broadcast and toward the end of the evening, they tend to catch up and find out what happened during the day that they may have missed. On weekends, they are less in front of their desktop and on the go more, so providing different types of content is part of what we are doing in terms of programming differently.

On the PGA Championship: We tend to look at a live golf event like the PGA Championship as a three-legged stool. We’ve got live video, live scoring and then live reporting on what else is happening. Often time sin golf, there are so many shots and activities that never make it on air, that we are able to capture and feed it into our stream so people can see what’s going on as a supplement to their viewing experience.

On spectators: One of the things that the PGA has always encouraged Turner to do is – in addition to serving this worldwide audience – to leverage our expertise into making the on-site fan experience exceptional as well. Golf is a hard sport to view on-site. You don’t see the whole field, you can’t see all of the players at one time, etc. So the spectator experience is more challenging than in other sports. So what we’ve done is to use our products and technology to enhance that experience that includes new features in the app to make it easier for fans to find their favorite players and navigate toward them. We use alert to notify them within seconds or minutes by curating a piece of content and pushing it out to them even if they are only three holes away.

ON THE AIR

The NFL preseason kicked off last week with the NFL Hall of Fame Game, driving NBC to its best weeknight preseason game in six years through a 5.4/10 overnight score for the Cowboys/Cardinals game on Thursday night. Top local markets: Dallas 13.9/26; San Antonio 13.5/24; Albuquerque 11.9/21; Phoenix 11.2/20; New Orleans 10.9/16

Meanwhile, NBC Sunday Night Football was honored by the Pro Football Hall of Fame for its record six consecutive TV seasons as primetime television’s top show. The SNF on-air team of Al Michaels, Cris Collinsworth and Michele Tafoya joined executive producer Fred Gaudelli and director Drew Esocoff at the debut of a new NBC Sunday Night Football display in the Interactive Exhibit Gallery at the Pro Football Hall of Fame.

Meanwhile, NFL Network unveiled the subjects for this season’s new episodes of A Football Life and The Timeline. The seventh season of A Football Life premieres Sept. 15 at 9p a profile of Pro Football Hall of Fame quarterback Dan Marino. The third season of The Timeline will debut on Sept. 21 with a spotlight on The Greatest Show on Turf.

ESPN announced locked in more talent hires, announcing that it had re-signed senior writer Seth Wickersham to a new extension and hired Joel Anderson and Phil Steele to join the team. All three journalists will contribute across ESPN linear, digital and radio platforms, just in time for the upcoming football season. Wickersham will continue his enterprise and investigative reporting for ESPN The Magazine and ESPN.com in addition to appearing on the likes of Outside the Lines, SportsCenter, NFL Live, The Ryen Russillo Show, and E:60. Joel Anderson joins ESPN from BuzzFeed News as a senior writer, covering college football and college basketball. Phil Steele joins ESPN full time as a reporter and analyst after contributing to ESPN Insider and ESPN The Magazine for the past several years.

In other talent news, NBC Sports announced that three-time Women’s Rugby World Cup participant Phaidra Knight will serve as a studio analyst for its coverage of the 2017 Women’s Rugby World Cup. She will provide commentary throughout coverage of the event, which will take place in Ireland this month. Coverage begins Aug. 12 at 11:30p with NBCSN’s coverage of the USA Rugby Women’s Eagles against Italy in Pool Play.

ELEVEN Sports locked in a new broadcast partnership with UFC to show all live UFC events in Belgium and Luxembourg. In addition to broadcasting am average of 40 live events annually, the channel will also serve up more than 150 hours of additional content for fans including magazine review shows. “ELEVEN Sports have shown they are committed to growing the sport of MMA and for this reason we believe they are a great partner for UFC,” said Joe Carr, Senior Vice President, Head of International and Content. “UFC has seen expediential growth in Europe in particular, with sell out events and an increasing fan base. We’re excited to partner with ELEVEN to bring more UFC content to the fans in Belgium and Luxembourg.”

SHOWTIME Sports VP and Creative Director Earl Fash passed away after a 35-year career at the company. In a statement, SHOWTIME Sports writes that “Earl’s legacy is one of loyalty, kindness and genuine happiness. Our thoughts are with his wife and two sons, and his many friends at SHOWTIME who are devastated by his passing.”

A CYNOPSIS MESSAGE

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Take part in a special class taught by some of the industry’s biggest and most successful names as they break down the essential elements you need to know about: audiences, the business landscape, sponsorship activation and the influencers who are changing the game.

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SPONSORSHIP & PROMOTION

ESPN saw its fourth annual ESPY Day to benefit the V Foundation raise $5.2 million for cancer research this year, including $2.6 million that will be directed to the Stuart Scott Memorial Cancer Research Fund. This year’s fundraising total surpassed last year’s total with an overall 32% increase. The 2017 Sports Humanitarian Awards increased its fundraising from last year by 50% to $1.75 million, which included a $500,000 presenting sponsorship from Bristol-Myers Squibb. Additionally, Bristol-Myers Squibb made a $2.5 million grant to the V Foundation that the organization plans to use for investment in the advancement of pediatric immuno-oncology research.

Nielsen added vBrand to its portfolio, acquiring the Israel-based tech startup which created a platform that measures brand exposure in sports programming. According to reports, vBrand and its technology will now be fully integrated into Nielsen sports with the intension to offering increased speed and scale to the company’s lineup of existing sports offerings such as Sports24 and Social24.

DIGITAL & STREAMING

Sport streaming service DAZN inked a new distribution partnership with beIN SPORTS that will allow subscribers will have access to beIN SPORTS’ slate of top European soccer matches – live and on-demand. “There is no doubt that Canada is home to some of the biggest sports fans in the world”, said James Rushton, CEO of DAZN. “Super fans want access to multiple sports and that’s why we have made it a priority to expand our offerings in Canada on day one, and we will continue to do so over the coming months.”

The PGA of America partnered with Hong Kong-based i3 Sports to launch create a dedicated digital footprint in Greater China. The deal sees i3 Sports set to create and implement a digital media strategy that localizes the PGA’s library of content and distribute it via wide-reaching platforms, including a dedicated microsite on Sina Sports.

ESPORTS

NBC Sports and FACEIT announced that Twitch will serve as a live streaming partner for the inaugural Universal Open Rocket League tournament. Feeds began with the weekend’s Regional round taking place at the NBC Sports Regional Networks. “We want to reach as many esports fans as possible with Universal Open Rocket League,” said Rob Simmelkjaer, Senior Vice President, NBC Sports Ventures. “Our partnership with Twitch through the Regionals and Grand Finals provides us with another avenue to maximize our exposure in the esports community.”

Texas in on the cusp of getting into the Overwatch League, with ESPN writing that Blizzard Entertainment is finalizing an agreement to sell a slot to Team EnVyUs that would represent that Austin/Dallas region. The deal would mean that Team EnVyUs would relocate to Dallas from its current home of Charlotte,,

GINX eSports TV picked up broadcast rights for The International 7, which will begin from KeyArena in Seattle today.

Capcom reports that nearly 5 million viewers tuned in to watch the Street Fighter V final at Evolution Championship Series 2017 this year. The finals ran on ESPN2 and Disney XD, generating total viewership of 3.1 million. Meanwhile, Twitch drummed up additional viewership of 1.65 million to bring the overall tally to 4.75 million, marking the largest ever for an FGC event.

ROSTER MOVES

The Professional Fighters League announced the formation of a Strategic Advisory Council, locking in the first two members in David Hill, former FOX Sports and FOX Network Chairman; and John M. Fahey Jr, Chairman of Time Inc. and former Chairman & CEO of National Geographic Society. Professional Fighters League Executive Chairman Russ Ramsey will Chair the council.

THE MAIN EVENT

Cardinals/Royals on MLB Network at 7p.

A CYNOPSIS MESSAGE

Cynopsis Digital Model D + “It List” Awards

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ON THIS DAY in 1989: The Boston Red Sox retire Carl Yastrezemski’s #8.

In the Know: Who was the last MLB player to lay claim to the league’s Triple Crown? (Email [email protected] with your answer and be sure to include your name, company and city.)

Answer to Our Last Sports Trivia Question: In the movie Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story, Patches O’Houlihan touts that the 5 D’s of dodgeball are: Dodge, duck, dip, dive and what? Answer: Dodge (again). Kudos: Michael Harrison-starpower llc/NY; Michael Jaquet-MJ Enterprises/NY; Phyllis Toss-Maxus/NY; Alex Falk-WME/IMG/NY; Brianne Maciejowski-Miles/Sarasota; Christian Matthews-Washington Redskins/DC; Sonia Durr-Carat/Atlanta; Synda Kollman-Charter Marketing Group/Deerfield Beach; Joseph Bauer-MullenLowe Mediahub/Boston; Brad Brown-Nevco Sports/St. Louis; Eric Steele-WITI-FOX 6/Milwaukee; Matt Fumagalli-Levy Restaurants/Chicago; Suzy Shoup-Neptune Network/Dallas; Tom Moore-Kalt Productions/LA; David Westberg-SAG-AFTRA Federal Credit Union/Burbank

Later — Chris

Chris Pursell @VegasandVine
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