Sporting a run that includes the NCAA Men’s Basketball Championship on TBS for the first time, the upcoming NBA Playoffs and the launch of ELeague over the next few months, along with an additional $100 million investment in Bleacher Report, Turner Sports is targeting passion to drive its sports platforms. The National Championship on April 4 serves as the first time that the network will host the high-profile battle, while the company offers team-specific Team Stream by Bleacher Report telecasts that will run on TNT and truTV. Meanwhile, eSports will take the stage on May 24 with the launch of ELeague, with broadcasts from a new complex at Turner Studios in Atlanta with live-streaming coverage on digital platforms such as Twitch.
Cynopsis Sports spoke with Turner Sports President Lenny Daniels about the company’s upcoming telecasts, how the historic championship will be leveraged for its other properties and the problem with digital audiences.
Daniels on TBS hosting the NCAA Men’s Basketball Championship: We’ve talked about this internally the past couple of years and the intensity and passion that we bring to the Final Four is really the same thing we are going to bring to the Championship Game. We always try to take the next step, and this year we are going to bring Team Stream to the Championship Game which is something that CBS has not done, so that will be different. We are always trying to enhance those telecasts but what’s been on CBS the past couple of years is about as good as you are going to get. So we are looking to continue that perfection, keep it going and make it great. Hopefully, we’ll have a good matchup.
On the halo effect for other sports: There are very few top-tier properties like this – March Madness, the Super Bowl, things like that. With those events, you reach the casual fan and you are able to do a lot more with the programming in the way of reach, storytelling and the way to get people to sample and understand other things going on around your network. That’s a big piece of this. We also get the opportunity to showcase that TBS has the broad appeal that CBS would have and that’s something that is very unique and very cool. The Tournament’s doing great, ranking as the fourth-most viewed tournament in 23. Digital and social continue to grow. We are reaching all generations, different people and that just helps TBS.
On the rise of digital viewing: People are watching this tournament differently than they used to. We need to figure out how to capture and then measure those viewers across all platforms instead of looking at them independently. We’ve talked about this for years because a viewer is a viewer, no matter where they might be. Right now, we don’t really pay attention strictly to television, instead we are also looking at engagement so we know – going into the next game – what people are thinking and what they respond to.
On launching ELeague: We’ve been looking at eSports a lot differently. We believe that it is just an underexposed sport right now. Clearly, the younger men are watching it on Twitch and watching it digitally. But we believe that if you bring a piece of that to television, to a different platform such as TV, it will attract people who have not been exposed to it which are a meaningful audience. But at the end of the day, we don’t really want to beat people over the head with it. If you are interested, you’ll pay attention and you’ll watch it. If we can pull people from both directions to the TV platform, that’s cool, but we are not going to alienate digital and we’re going to continue to innovate on that side. What they can experience on Twitch, they are now going to get on TV and they can get a new experience on Twitch that they may not have seen before.
On the new investment in Bleacher Report: Bleacher Report is a rapidly growing business — guided through the vision of founder and CEO Dave Finocchio and President Rory Brown — with a lot of very talented people contributing to its industry-leading content creation, product development and distribution vehicles. B/R has been incredibly successful in driving high levels of engagement through its next generation content experiences, particularly across social platforms, and with a coveted millennial audience base. This investment will escalate its growth even further, primarily through the development of new premium video franchises, innovation surrounding short form content, additional enhancements to Team Stream and the hiring of the best, most creative minds in the industry.
