According to a report released this week by PriceWaterhouseCooper, the revenue earned from media rights by the North American sports industry will surpass the revenue earned at the gate by 2018, when they’ll reach $19.95 billion and $19.72 billion, respectively, fulfilling the old adage that the sports business is really the TV business.
Increasingly, the reverse is also true: The TV business is really the sports business.
More than a third of all TV advertising in the U.S. today goes to live sports, and that doesn’t include ESPN, which shows a mix of live sports and sports-related programming. Add in ESPN and the share of advertising going to sport programming would top 40 percent, Advancit Capital partner and former Fox Digital president Jonathan Miller estimated from the stage at the New York Media Festival earlier this month. 
At the same time, according to SNL Kagan, sports networks account for nearly 20 percent of the carriage fees paid by cable and satellite operators, and that doesn’t count the portion of the carriage and retransmission fees paid to broadcasters and general-interest cable networks that can be attributed to the sports programming they carry. According to an analysis last year by MoffettNathanson analyst Michael Nathanson, the aggregate of sports rights account for as much as 50 percent of the cost of the average cable bill. Read More »