Cynopsis: Sports
01.31.14

Good morning. It’s Friday, January 31, 2014, and this is your first early morning Sports briefing. 

Say hello to NFL Now. The league announced its new digital sports platform yesterday, offering the likes of game highlights, live streams of press conferences, originally produced content from the league and its 32 teams, behind-the-scenes locker room footage as well as content from NFL Films, NFL Network and NFL.com. The outlet will launch this summer, before the new season, and offer fans the ability to personalize the feed according to their interests, with users able to indicate their favorite team, fantasy players and videos they like and dislike.

“We are always looking for ways to better serve our fans, and NFL Now will do just that,” said Commissioner Roger Goodell. “Our media strategy has been a key component in the growth and success of the NFL over the past 50 years, and we fully expect NFL Now to be a big part of that initiative in the future.”

Partners already on board include Verizon, Gillette, Microsoft, and Yahoo.

“At the end of the day, when you combine our product suite from what we’ve done in video and what we’ve done in personalization in the last year, we wanted to partner with the best brands and the best content and it’s really a natural mix with the NFL,” said Ken Fuchs, VP of Yahoo Global Media and Head of Yahoo Sports, which is serving as a distribution partner. “With the type of experience that they are creating around NFL all year-round, the thought of adding that to the experience we’ve created across different platforms through sports was really enticing.”

A HEARTY THANK YOU to all of our speakers and participants at the Cynopsis Sports Breakfast of Champions. Attendees got a first-look at Budweiser and Bud Light’s Super Bowl commercials from Blaise D’Sylva; a social wake up call from Lockerdome’s Gabe Lozano; a candid look at athletes from Campus Insiders’ Bonnie Bernstein and her panel of NFL Players Inc. President Keith Gordon, NFL athletes Pierre Garcon and Keith Rivers, and Golf Channel’s Frank Nobilo; an exclusive look at Nielsen’s 2013 Year in Sports from Stephen Master; and true inspiration from IMG’s George Pyne. Thanks everyone!

NASCAR has a new championship format, designed to maximize interest in the Chase, with the field now expanding to 16 drivers and no sure-winner until the final checkered flag. The new round-by-round advancement format for the 10-race Chase for the NASCAR Sprint Cup will see the number of championship drivers in contention decrease after every three Chase races, from 16 to start in the “Chase Grid“; 12 after Chase race No. 3; eight after Chase race No. 6; and four after Chase race No. 9. The final four drivers will then enter the NASCAR Sprint Cup Championship with the highest finisher capturing the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series title. “We have looked at a number of concepts for the last three years through fan research, models and simulations, and also maintained extensive dialogue with our drivers, teams and partners,” said Brian France, NASCAR chairman and CEO. “The new Chase for the NASCAR Sprint Cup will be thrilling, easy to understand and help drive our sport’s competition to a whole new level.”

ESPN reports that Wednesday’s 2012 NBA Finals rematch between the Thunder and Heat delivered a 2.7 overnight rating to the network, according to Nielsen. That marks the highest-rated NBA game on ESPN during the 2013-14 season with the telecast up 93% from last year’s comparable matchup.

Wednesday night’s latest NHL Stadium Series matchup on NBCSN between the Rangers and Islanders from Yankee Stadium continued to deliver for the network. The game averaged 682,000 viewers and produced a 0.41 HH rating for the evening (with viewership up 6% over the channel’s 2013 Wednesday Night Rivalry average). However the bigger news was on the local front, where the rivalry delivered a 3.58 household score in the New York market, making it the highest-rated NHL regular-season game ever on NBCSN in that market.

NBC Sports Group and Red Bull Media House unveiled the schedule for the 2014 Red Bull Signature Series, with 20 hours of programming set to run on NBC this year. The action begins on Sunday at 3p with Red Bull Frozen Rush, an off-road truck race on the ski slopes of Maine’s Sunday River Resort.

In international waters, WWE and BSkyB extended their partnership for five more years to exclusively broadcast WWE’s weekly flagship programming to more than 15.5 million homes in the U.K. and Ireland through 2019. The deal will see BSkyB continue to carry WWE’s Raw and SmackDown programs and add WWE Main Event to its lineup. 

ESPN locked down a deal with America Movil for rights to the 2014 and the 2016 Olympic Games in Spanish-speaking Latin America. The deal marks the second time in South America, and first in Central America and Mexico, that ESPN will televise the Olympic Games to Spanish-speaking fans. The agreement will include Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Uruguay and Venezuela. 

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Russell Wilson is already walking out of NY a champion. NFL Players Inc. reports that the Seahawks QB ranked on top of the NFL Players Inc. (NFLPI) Top 25 Player Sales List from Sept.-Nov., based on total overall sales of all licensed products from online and traditional retail outlets as reported by more than 65 NFLPI licensees. Second place fell to 49ers QB Colin Kaepernick, with Broncos’ Manning third. Rounding out the top five were Robert Griffin III and Tom Brady. Other Super Bowl players to make the top 25 included Marshawn Lynch (No. 9), Richard Sherman (No. 11) and Wes Welker (No. 14).

Stat-tracking app Numbeez is following Super Bowl Teaser Ad Viewership all this week for Cynopsis, leading up to the big game on Feb. 2. Download the app for free and follow these stats for yourself in real time by searching ‘Cynopsis’ in the app. Additionally, check out the video compilation of today’s top performers here.
 

Friday, Jan. 31, 2014

Brand and Spot	Views	Viewership change (from previous day)
Budweiser “Puppy Love”	15,476,388	New
Hyundai “Nice”	5,659,665	57.85%
SodaStream “Sorry, Coke & Pepsi”	5,346,923	50.95%
AXE Peace “Make Love Not War”	3,656,728	4.14%
Jaguar “British Villains Rendezvous”	3,324,220	New
Butterfinger Cups “Big Game Teaser”	2,876,836	4.71%
Dannon Oikos “The Spill”	2,607,102	12.80%
Volkswagen “Game Day Teaser”	1,967,383	2.19%
Bud Light “Arnold Zipper”	1,961,777	1.08%
Bud Light “Arnold Warmup”	1,709,155	0.81%

Source: Numbeezis a new stat-tracking app for iOS that acts like Pinterest for numbers. Whether it is sports scores, stocks, weather, or the historical prices of advertising during the Super Bowl, Numbeez curates data in fun dashboards that can be shared with others and update in realtime. We’re tracking Super Bowl teaser ad viewership on the Cynopsis board  just download the app and search ‘Cynopsis.’

The Skittles brand will return to the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series in the 2014 season as part of Mars, Inc.’s longtime partnership with Joe Gibbs Racing. The brand announced that The Skittles No. 18 Camry will take the track for two NASCAR Sprint Cup Series races this season, driven by Kyle Busch on March 2 at Phoenix International Speedway and March 16 at Bristol (Tenn.) Motor Speedway. This marks the first time in more than 10 years that the Skittles brand will join the lineup of  Mars, Inc.’s sponsors at Joe Gibbs Racing including, M&M’S, Doublemint, and SNICKERS in the 2014 season.
 
MSG Networks and Visa launched a series of 12 vignettes dubbed The Road to Gold, celebrating the Rangers, Devils and Islanders players who will be representing their countries at the Olympic Games in Sochi. The spots will run through February 23 on MSG, MSG+ and MSG.com and feature the likes of: Rangers Ryan Callahan (USA), Ryan McDonagh (USA), Derek Stepan (USA), Henrik Lundqvist (SWE), Carl Hagelin (SWE) and Rick Nash (CAN); Devils Jaromir Jagr (CZE), Patrik Elias (CZE) and Damien Brunner (CHE); and Islanders John Tavares (CAN), Michael Grabner (AUT) and Thomas Vanek (AUT).

The Paley Center for Media announced a new exhibit collection drawn from the archival recordings of U.S. broadcasts of the Olympic Games the represents more than 1,300 hours of Olympic and Olympic-related programs. The U.S. Olympic Archive presented by Gordon Crawford, digitally archived to ensure its preservation for future generations, showcases the broadcast and cablecast history of the games in the United States from the 1960 Olympic Winter Games in Squaw Valley through the 2012 Olympic Games in London. In addition, the organization is offering free screenings of the 2014 Winter Games from Wednesday, Feb 12 through closing on Feb 23.

For the first time ever, FOX Sports GO will offer live, streaming coverage of the Daytona 500 on Sunday, Feb. 23. The platform will offer two separate live streams of the 56^th running of the Great American Race: the customary FOX Sports broadcast in English as well as the FOX Deportes telecast in Spanish. Customers of participating video providers may access the live streams of the Daytona 500 through the FOX Sports GO app for iOS devices, as well as on desktops through FOXSportsGo.com.

WWE revealed that its flagship WWE App surpassed 10 million downloads in 220 countries since it first launched in August 2012. The app will serve as a key component in the delivery of WWE Network, which launches on Monday, February 24. Over the past year, the WWE App has been downloaded more than 6 million times with more than 500,000 fans experiencing its second screen capabilities on Monday nights.

The NBA Board of Governors unanimously approved Mark Tatum to serve as NBA Deputy Commissioner and Chief Operating Officer. The league announced that Tatum will assume his new role on February 1, 2014, when current NBA Deputy Commissioner and COO Adam Silver becomes NBA Commissioner. In addition, the NBSA also elevated three other execs, including: Bill Koenig, from NBA Executive Vice President, Business Affairs and General Counsel to President, Global Media Distribution; Sal LaRocca from NBA Executive Vice President, Global Merchandising Group to President, Global Operations and Merchandising; and Danny Meiseles, from NBA Executive Vice President and Executive Producer to President and Executive Producer, Content. 

Who ya got? Seattle vs. Denver in Super Bowl XLVIII on Sunday at 6:30p on FOX.

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ON THIS DAY in 1988: Doug Williams leads the Redskins to a win over the Broncos in Super Bowl XXII.

In The Know: What was the last Super Bowl team to make a first-ever franchise appearance in the big game? (Email [email protected] with your answer and be sure to include your name, company, city and time zone. Unofficial rules: Only the second four correct answers from each time zone will be mentioned; and once you’ve been mentioned in any of the Cynopsis editions, you can’t be mentioned again that calendar week.)

Answer to Our Last Sports Trivia Question: How many Super Bowls have gone into overtime? Answer: Zero. Kudos: Andreas Droste-NBC Sports/NY; John Totaro-Totaro Communications/NY; Mike Donato-ABC/NY; Jim Bono-Crown Media Family Networks/NY; Chris Crowley-Outside Television/Westport; Matt Deprey-Discovery Communications/Silver Spring; Brian Quinn-Comcast Spotlight-Washington D.C./Bethesda; Keith Allo-Golf Channel/NBC Sports/Orlando; John Kukla-KDFW/Dallas; Gretchen Brady-KDAF-TV  CW33/Dallas; Tom Moore-Kalt Productions/LA; Dani Beaulieu-USA TODAY Sports Media Group/LA; David Westberg-SAG-AFTRA Los Angeles local/LA.

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The Cynopsis Media Boot Camp
One-Day Immersion In Ratings Analysis, Web/Social Analytics + Multi-platform Buying

Thomas Ziangas, SVP, Research, AMC Networks
Audrey Siegel, President & Co-Founder, TargetCast tcm
Ron Geraci, EVP, Research & Planning, Nickelodeon Group
Adam Pincus, EVP, Programming & Production, GroupM Ent.

Feb. 11, 2014| Yale Club NY |Early Bird Ends 1/27 |Register Now!.

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Later — Chris
Chris Pursell for Cynopsis | Sports
01.31.14

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JOB OPENING:PREDITOR/WUSA/DC: Proficient on Avid Media composer & Adobe Creatve Suite. Min 3 yrs. producing/editing/writing promos. After Effects & Photoshop skill pref. Need prvn track rec. of success creating finished promos. Email: [email protected] (2/7)

JOB OPENING:ACCT EXEC/UNIVISION/Chicago: Dvlp, sell and maintain strong relationships. Dvlp strategies and action steps req’d to met est budgets. Exc communication & presentation skills. Bilingual speaking pref’d. Resume HERE [email protected](2/7)

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EXPERT SERVICES ADS: These ads are for companies or people who offer an expertise in the field of media by way of production, voice over artistry, writing, set development, etc. For information on rates and specs for posting an Expertise Service ad email Trish at [email protected]

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SITUATION WANTED:ASSISTANT/ADMINISTRATIVE/LA: Experienced entertainment assistant seeks PT employment in LA. 5+ years assisting upper level management, personal & clerical. [email protected] (2/6)

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