MediaTalk | Season 3 | Ep. 23 - A Sneak Preview of the Kagan Media & Telecom Summit 2025

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Mike Reynolds: Hi, I'm Mike Reynolds, a Senior Reporter, TMT, S&P Global Market Intelligence. Welcome to Media Talk, a podcast hosted by S&P Global. Here, the news and research staff explore issues in the ever-evolving media landscape. Today, I am joined by a host of S&P Global Market Intelligence's Kagan Analysts: Justin Nielson, Scott Robson, Seth Shafer, John Fletcher, and Sarah James. She's the Senior Editor - TMT News & Research Management, S&P Global Market Intelligence, my boss, and the editor of Media Talk. We're going to talk about an upcoming event we're all participating in—the Kagan Media and Telecom Summit 2025 in Manhattan. The Kagan Summit will be held on June 10 at 335 Madison Ave. It's in Midtown—Grand Central, as a matter of fact. Over the course of the Summit, we're going to explore dynamics impacting Kagan's coverage areas around the continuing ascent of streaming as the key distributor for an ever-expanding array of content, as well as the ongoing transformation of sports rights and the way we view games and competitions today and tomorrow. At the Summit, we're also going to dive into the increasingly competitive world of broadband, the lifeblood for so many aspects of our lives today. The Summit will also tackle M&A after a bit of a dry spell. There have been some significant deal announcements of late and perhaps more to come. We're also going to hear from a couple of keynote speakers in the morning. We'll talk broadcast sports with TEGNA Senior Vice President of Media Operations and Head of Sports Rights Brad Ramsey. Then, after lunch, we'll hear from Lori Adams, Vice President of Broadband Policy & Funding Strategy for Nokia. S&P Global Market Intelligence Kagan Principal Analyst Justin Nielson, Research Director, Head of Kagan Research, is going to start us up, so to speak, at 9:15 a.m. ET or thereabouts on June 10. Justin is going to provide an overview of things he and his colleagues are working on under the heading of "Kagan Media Research Overview and 2025 Outlook." Justin, how's it going?

Justin Nielson: It's going well. Thanks, Mike, for having me. It always seems like these events creep up on you, but it's great timing, especially in the environment we are in for M&A as well as advertising. So I'll briefly go over some of our outlooks for the media industry, looking at sports rights that are emerging with local broadcast deals along with streaming distribution models, as well as the ESPN D2C product; the macro shift from video consumption

from linear networks to streaming; the global advertising outlook, looking at a non-political, non-Olympics year, so how's that going to impact broadcasters? And then, speaking of broadcasters, what's the prospect for M&A if we get some ownership cap relaxation at the FCC? Also, looking at the outlook for other segments within the media space, looking at local sports rights deals, TV networks, streaming video, and film and home entertainment as well.

Reynolds: So just a few things to digest as we all nibble on our bagels.

Nielson: Exactly.

Reynolds: After Justin's presentation, the Summit will host its first keynote speaker. Yours truly is going to interview Brad Ramsey. He's the Senior Vice President of Media Operations and Head of Sports Rights at TEGNA. As has been the case with a number of other TV station groups, TEGNA has returned to the future of sorts, televising local games for professional teams, scoring increased audience and higher ad sales, while also helping the clubs broaden their fan bases and sell tickets and merchandise. TEGNA's sports roster extends to pro teams from the MLB, NBA, NHL, and Women's Sports, with the NWSL's Seattle Reign and two WNBA teams among its deals. TEGNA is the primary rights holder for the NBA's Dallas Mavericks and the NHL's Seattle Kraken. TEGNA's WTHR station in Indianapolis is the anchor of a broadcast network encompassing 12 markets, covering the Indiana Fever and the WNBA star Caitlin Clark. Following my conversation with Brad Ramsey, which is entitled "Broadcasting Stakes Out New Opportunities in a Rapidly Changing Sports Marketplace," the Summit is going to shift its focus to streaming. Seth Shafer, Principal Analyst, Consumer Insights at S&P Global Market Intelligence Kagan, is the Media Talk house with us to discuss how content providers are looking to capitalize on consumers' affinity for the distribution form. At the same time, longstanding media conglomerates still have substantial assets and financial interests rooted in the linear world. Seth, tell us about the Summit's first session, which I believe is entitled "Video Distribution Strategies in a Streaming-First World."

Seth Shafer: Yeah. Thanks, Mike. So many big words and things there. I think, on the simple level, it's no surprise clients, everybody in the space, are wrestling with this evolution of video content moving to streaming platforms. As simple as that is in theory, in practice, it's still a fragmented world. All these revenue streams still add up to lots of billions of dollars. So really, in the panel, we're trying to dig into kind of where we are with this shift to streaming. We will have myself and Justin from the research point of view, so quantifying market sizing, what's the US SVOD market expected to do? The impact of new ad-supported tiers that we're all suffering through unless we're coughing up extra money now to watch our streaming services. But then also virtual multichannel YouTube TV services like that. And then free ad-supported TV, so this sort of new breed Pluto TV, Tubi. And also not forgetting the impact social media and YouTube still have on this landscape. Just as much as premium video is in vogue with advertising at Netflix and Disney Plus and other places, a lot of media companies still rely pretty heavily on social media and YouTube for both distribution and ad revenue as well.

Reynolds: Seth, who's going to be joining you on stage?

Shafer: Yeah, we'll have Terrence Monagas from The E.W. Scripps Company. Scripps is an interesting one, still with Ion, in the traditional TV world, but also available on a lot of fast platforms. And then the sports angle there I think is interesting as well. Even though we have a dedicated sports panel that Scott's going to tell us about in a bit, sports on streaming obviously is another big ongoing shift. Joining us as well will be Josh Smith from HBO | Max | Warner Bros. Discovery. So his role is a little more focused around Max—used to be HBO Max, now Max, going back to HBO Max. We can ask him about naming strategies and give him a hard time about that, but I think that side will be an interesting one because that service is right in the middle of everything I was talking about as far as the shift of SVOD services now having to bundle in new sports along with entertainment and provide this full package to keep people engaged.

Reynolds: Absolutely. Max is making some inroads in terms of subscriber gains, and yet, WBD has an expansive roster of cable networks. So a lot of good stuff to talk about there. After we have a short break, we're going to kick off our second panel. This one is on sports and it's entitled "Live Sports: A Powerplay for TV Networks and Streamers." Kagan Principal Analyst Scott Robson is

going to coach this one for us. How are you doing, Scott? And can you tell us a little bit about the panel?

Scott Robson: Thanks, Mike. Doing well. I'm excited to be heading back to New York for another installment of the Kagan Media Summit. The panel I'm moderating is all about sports media, and we have three esteemed guests to weigh in on some of the major topics influencing the industry today. So first up, we have Andrew Golding from Televisa Univision, who was also on the sports panel at last year's summit. Now Univision holds a variety of marquee soccer rights to things like Liga MX, and the company will be broadcasting 18 matches from the FIFA Club World Cup this June, shortly after the summit. So now don't get that confused with the FIFA World Cup, which will be held in 2026, but it's another soccer tournament being held here in the States. That's going to include an expanded format this year, so that should be interesting. It really follows the theme we've seen play out in the past few years of expanded sports tournaments. Things like the 12-team College Football Playoff, new leagues like golf's TGL, and just more sports in general on TV. Televisa Univision's also growing its VIX streaming service, so we'll dive into that as well and get a sense of how major sports rights holders are balancing linear and streaming assets when it comes to sports. Continuing with the soccer theme, we have another returning guest on the panel who's very knowledgeable when it comes to soccer, and that is the National Women's Soccer League's SVP of Broadcast, Brian Gordon. The National Women's Soccer League started a new broadcast deal with CBS, Amazon, ESPN, and Scripps Sports in 2024. That's valued at around $60 million per season, which was a huge win for the league. So we'll dive into that a little bit. And the league is also an interesting one to watch as the teams have the option to sell rights to local games to regional sports networks or stations in local markets, which makes it pretty unique. The league also has the NWSL Plus streaming service, so a lot of different distribution models in place. And then finally, we have Mike Kerman from the CW Network on the panel. The CW was not known as a destination for live sports content until Nexstar purchased 75% of the network in 2022. CW then went on to be the first broadcast partner in the US for LIV Golf. And while LIV has moved on to other distribution channels, the CW has been fairly aggressive in building out its live sports portfolio over the past two years. So the network has deals in place with college conferences like the ACC and PAC-12. They have NASCAR Xfinity Series and AVP Volleyball. So overall, I think we have some good viewpoints being represented on the panel with owners of cable networks, broadcast networks, streaming services, local stations, as well as input from a pro sports league.

Reynolds: Yeah, it sounds like it's an interesting group. A lot of different properties and different ways for people to check them out. So if sports are America's favorite pastime, maybe lunch is right behind. And we're going to go to that from 12:15 to 1:30 on the 10th. And after we nosh a little bit, that's going to lead us into our afternoon keynote with Lori Adams, Vice President of Broadband Policy & Funding Strategy for Nokia. John Fletcher, Senior Analyst, Media at S&P Global Market Intelligence, who specializes in the multi-channel and broadband realms, is here with us today and he's going to be in New York on the 10th. John, how are you doing?

John Fletcher: Great. I'm just sitting here listening to Scott, Justin, and Seth talk about their panels, and it reminds me of how interesting this session was last year. I learned so much just watching their panels and they share a couple of slides of data and the discussions. As the kids say, there's a lot of alpha there. There's a lot of great information at this thing, and I'm, yeah, I'm stoked for June 10th for sure.

Reynolds: Alright, Lori's not with us today, so maybe you can speak in her stead. What's her keynote going to touch on, if you will?

Fletcher: Yeah. Lori's the VP of Broadband Policy & Funding Strategy for Nokia. She just emailed me the name of her keynote, and it is a Yogi Berra quote: "If you don't know where you are going, you might end up someplace else." So she's going to take us through a history of broadband. She's going to use a baseball theme to tie it all together, which I think is great, considering the focus on sports in the first half of the day. Mike, she is a huge Red Sox fan. I take it you're a Yankees fan by your reaction.

Reynolds: I am. I am. Guilty as charged.

Fletcher: Gotcha. She's going to use the Red Sox as a way to do this narrative with broadband history, and she's going to be focusing mostly on fiber as the key technology. But she is on the front lines of combining private sector with

the public sector. And so there's a ton going on right now with BEAD, tariffs, the new administration, and the White House. A lot of uncertainty. So she's going to clear the air on all that, and I couldn't think of a better person to talk about broadband in those terms than Lori. Last year's attendees will remember that Lori and I did a Q&A on BEAD as well. So it'll be a great opportunity to get an update from her on where things stand currently.

Reynolds: And in that sense, John, given the many subjects she's going to touch on, it's going to set you guys up for your panel, which will follow Lori's conversation: "Broadband’s Race to Universal Coverage: Fiber, Fixed Wireless, Cable and Satellite (LEO)." John, what's the deal there and who's going to be with you speaking on the panel?

Fletcher: It's my favorite subject, closing the digital divide. We've got a great lineup of speakers. We've got Erik Keith, who's a Senior Research Analyst, Broadband Technology, S&P Global Market Intelligence. And then we have from Nokia, David Eckard, he's the Vice President of Broadband Partners. We have, from CreditSights, Davis Hebert, he's a Senior Fixed Income Analyst. He does a lot of brokering of bonds for TMT and the TMT space. He's going to bring a great perspective there. And then I think we have Tarana Wireless on the panel. Dirk Gates is the Senior VP of Customer Experience. Having Tarana Wireless on a broadband panel in 2025 would be like if it was 1997 and we had a panel on web search and a company called Google joined us. I think that Tarana Wireless is the disruptor right now. They're getting fiber speeds from fixed wireless, and I think it's going to be an awesome addition to the first part of the day we're talking about streaming, and then this panel will talk about where we're going from here. I think the most interesting thing to me is you think about the digital divide, 10% of households don't have broadband. How much money's left on the table? That's 14 million homes that aren't paying for SVOD. They're not paying for broadband. They're not paying for virtual. And so I'm going to quantify the opportunity there for everybody too. And so I am like beyond excited to do this. I'm really looking forward to it.

Reynolds: We are too. Sounds very intriguing. After John's panel, we're going to get one more break in at 3:00 PM, and then TMT News Leader and "Media Talk" editor Sarah James is going to take us home with a panel at 3:15 p.m. ET talking about M&A. As noted before, there's been a flurry of transactions in the last few weeks, and many more could lie ahead. Sarah, could you share your

thoughts about the final session, which I believe is titled "M&A Trends in Media and Telecom: Navigating Change and Opportunity?"

Sarah James: Yeah, it's just absolutely a great time to have this event, given the flurry of deals that we've seen in the past couple of weeks and months. For instance, just within the communication space already in 2025, we've seen Crown Castle say it will sell its fiber operations for $8 billion. AT&T is acquiring a portion of Lumen's fiber operations for almost $6 billion. And then Charter, we all saw, is merging with Cox in a $34 billion deal. That's set to create a cable powerhouse. What's interesting to me is that a lot of these deals had been expected, where we had reports for a couple of months around AT&T and Lumen having discussions. Cox has been viewed as a potential M&A target for years but had long resisted a sale. Now what we're seeing is some of these long-percolating deals finally come to fruition, and now it's just going to be up to regulators to get them over the finish line. And that's just in communications. But the same is true in big tech, where you saw Google announce this year its $32 billion purchase of the cybersecurity company Wiz. That's really going to be the first major test of how the second Trump administration is going to approach these mega deals in big tech. It felt like big tech couldn't really get any of these big deals done under the Biden administration. So big tech CEOs are all really hoping and betting that Trump's Department of Justice and Federal Trade Commission will be friendlier to letting these deals through, but no one really knows. Trump's FTC chair, Andrew Ferguson, has been an outspoken critic of Big Tech in the past. So it's a really exciting time to be talking about this.

Reynolds: Who's going to help you wade through this? I'm thinking 45 minutes is not going to be nearly enough, given the variety of things that are happening and what we have to address.

James: Yeah, absolutely. We're going to be joined by Drew Marcus from Guggenheim, Brian Pitz from BMO Capital Markets, and Rose Oberman, Director, Corporate Ratings: Media and Entertainment, S&P Global Ratings. It's going to be a really fulsome discussion. Both Drew and Brian have been covering the TMT space for decades. I feel like Brian helped launch coverage of interactive media at a lot of different firms throughout the course of his career. Drew brings tons of experience, and then Rose will be covering a lot more of the media, some of the broadcast M&A that Justin will be talking about a little

earlier in the day, giving her outlook. We're going to try and really cover all the bases from tech, media, and telecom.

Reynolds: No small task. I'm looking forward to the Kagan Media & Telecom Summit 2025. I hope today we're able to give you a flavor for the myriad areas the event will examine. Many thanks here to Justin, Seth, Scott, John, and Sarah for giving us a bit of their sneak peeks. Thanks, everybody. Before I sign off from this episode of "Media Talk," I just want to say the Kagan Media & Telecom Summit 2025 promises to be informative, fast-moving, and fun. For those who've already registered, thanks very much. For those still interested, you can still get there. Here's how: To register, check out our in-person events tab at spglobal.com/marketintelligence. If that doesn't work, maybe try Googling "Kagan Media and Telecom Summit 2025," and we should be the top result there. In either case, you can check out the schedule, the agendas, the speakers, and then register. This is Mike Reynolds. Hope to see you all at the Summit on June 10th. If not, we'll catch up soon on the next installment of "MediaTalk."