Cynopsis: Sports
10.28.13

Good morning. It’s Monday, October 28, 2013, and this is your first early morning Sports briefing. 

The NBA is finally here with broadcasters tipping off the season off while coming off some record spikes the last time around. At Turner Sports, the season will open with three consecutive nights of doubleheader coverage across TNT and NBA TV starting tomorrow at 7p with Inside the NBA pregame featuring Ernie Johnson, Charles Barkley, Kenny Smith and Shaquille O’Neal. The action then gets underway at 8p with Bulls/Heat. In addition, as part of TNT and NBA TV’s comprehensive Opening Night coverage, NBA TV will also carry a special edition of NBA GameTime at 6p.

Meanwhile, NBA fans in New York City will see TNT’s studio show serve as part of an on-site attraction sponsored by 2K that will take place at Flatiron Plaza today, complete with a basketball court, NBA 2K14 video game kiosks, and a video board perched 30 feet above Broadway and Fifth Avenue serving as a viewing area for fans to watch the live TNT pre-game show and game coverage. Turner Sports will also set up an NBA on TNT social media vending machine at various locations throughout New York City, giving fans a chance to win prizes. Cynopsis Sports spoke with Christina Miller, SVP & GM of NBA Digital, about the strategy, scope and social game going into the NBA this season.

On the takeaway from 2012-13: The takeaway from last season was really about the momentum. The league has been growing every year and is filled with a generation of talent that hasn’t been seen in quite some time and has led to growth for us on the NBA Digital side across all of our platforms. That includes original content, ratings, and all of our metrics which is a real statement for the health of the business. Moving into this year, we are looking at our 30th year as a partner with the NBA. That is a huge milestone in this era.

On programming: We are looking at new shows, new content, and new talent. We are stacked going into this year. For us, we have 97 live regular season games and are surrounding it with an amazing team of talent. Last year, we saw tremendous growth in our series Open Court with a rise of about 87% year to year. So this year you will see eight more episodes of that and we’ve added some really strong guests to the roundtable and are continuing to evolve that series. All new content this season will also include the rebooting of Inside Stuff, which we are very excited about as it is ready for the NBA Digital Experience. When you look back at the last time Inside Stuff aired, social media was not a factor. So now we are able to bring to it a layering of social media with original content across all of our platforms. That debuts on Nov. 2.

On layering: We have a new series called The Starters, which was formerly known as the Basketball Jones, and they have come to NBA Digital to have a true transmedia content experience. So when you think about the mobile space, we will have podcasts for the show, we will have segments and content that will live across our apps and on mobile. They will have the daily TV show as well. So when you look at how this is stretching across more screens more often, that’s what we mean by the layered experiences.

On mobile: Mobile is incredibly important to us. When we think about mobile, we think about more. We are coming off of our best year ever in everything from our video views; time spent viewing; app engagement; push notifications and more. All of these were strong for us and this year we are redesigning our app with a great new user interface. We are also adding a robust mix of content with everything from game recaps to player videos to team statistics, leaderboards and more. All of that is right there up front for fans to take advantage of and spend more time with as they come in and out of that app experience. So whether it is mobile web or your app, it is out there to be consumed.

On the Air

An stunning finish to Game 3 of the World Series handed FOX a 7.4/14 household rating/share with 12.5 million viewers, according to fast national ratings form Nielsen. That marks a rise of 21% and 19% respectively compared to Game 3 a year ago and is the highest-rated, most-watched World Series Game 3 since 2009. The World Series on FOX through three games is averaging an 8.1/14 with 13.4 million viewers, up 13% over last year’s first three game average (7.2/12, 11.7 million viewers) in households and up 15% on average viewership. According to figures released by Nielsen SocialGuide, Twitter activity for Game 3 drew over 482,000 tweets (up 171% from 2012 World Series Game 3) from more than 211,000 unique authors (up 120%).

After gearing up for its first ever PPV on Nov.2, anchored by a showdown between Rampage Jackson and Tito Ortiz, Bellator announced that the entire card would now run on Spike TV after Ortiz had to pull out due to an injury. Bellator CEO Bjorn Rebney and Spike President Kevin Kay announced that the card will instead run on the cable channel at 9p  with three title fights featuring the promotion’s biggest stars.

Speaking of PPVs, Showtime is tinkering with its end of the year schedule. In short, Golden Boy Promotions and the network are merging the final three boxing cards left this year into two stacked cards. The result will see the Dec. 14 card headlined by the Adrien Broner/Marcos Maidana welterweight title will carried on the network instead of PPV. Meanwhile, on December 7th, Showtime will produce a quadruple header headlined by a welterweight fight between Paulie Malignaggi and Zab Judah.

Matt Lauer sits down with Olympic gold medalist Lindsey Vonn this morning on Today. After a serious crash last season, Vonn is now competing as we head into the Winter Olympics. The interview marks Vonn’s first in-depth sit-down since Lauer last spoke to her after the crash.

NBA TV is continuing its coverage of Turkish Airlines Euroleague basketball games with regular season and postseason action, along with the 2014 Turkish Airlines Final Four games. Overall, there will be as many as 28 games televised by NBA TV. Games will air weekly throughout the season each Sunday at 1p on a tape-delayed basis.

The Orlando Magic and Fox Sports Florida locked in a 10-year contract extension that will make the channel the team’s local television rights holder through the 2025-26 NBA season. The deal kicks in with the 2016-17 season.

NASCAR released the last of its national series schedules for the 2014 season on Friday with a 22-race slate for the NASCAR Camping World Truck Series. Changes will include the loss of Rockingham Speedway from the schedule. New elements next year will include the addition of races as Gateway Motorsports Park near St. Louis as well as New Hampshire Motor Speedway.

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Sponsorship & Promotion

Dale Earnhardt Jr. is reenlisting with the Army National Guard, which extended its sponsorship of the driver through the 2014 season with Hendrick Motorsports. The deal will see them serve as the primary sponsor of the No. 88 Chevrolet for 20 Sprint Cup races next year, including the Daytona 500. The Guard will also have prominent brand placement during all non-primary events.

The Valero Energy Corporation has extended its title sponsorship of the Alamo Bowl through 2019. The post-season college football game is held in San Antonio of course with Valero signing on as title sponsor in 2007. This year’s game takes place on Monday, December 30 at 5:45p.

Digital & Technology

NBC Sports Group reports that NBC Sports Live Extra scored its best NFL streaming traffic ever for a non-Super Bowl last week with the Broncos/Colts match-up. Metrics included records in total uniques (356,403), total visits (382,548) and total minutes (19,588,823). For the year, the 2013 NFL season’s streaming traffic on NBC Sports Live Extra is up in all three categories: total uniques (36%), total visits (35%) and total minutes (42%).

The Main Event

Red Sox/Cardinals on FOX at 9p.

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ON THIS DAY in 1976: The Yankees’ Billy Martin named AL Manager of Year.

In The Know: What number did the Yankees retire in honor of Billy Martin? (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: What was the first NFL team to put their logos on their helmets? Answer: The Rams. Kudos: Marty Rosenberg-PetryMedia/NY; Michael Ritz-BucStar Consulting/NY; Jason Wachter-Turner Sports/NY; Synda Kollman-Charter Marketing Group/Boca Raton; Jim Dittemore-I Will Race You MotorSports Management/KC; Miriam Aardahl-OMD/LA; John Chavez-Independent producer/LA; Susan Torrey-New Day Marketing/Santa Barbara; Don Wollman-Big Brother/LA.

 A CYNOPSIS MESSAGE

Later — Chris
Chris Pursell for Cynopsis | Sports
10.28.13

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