MediaTalk | Season 3 | Ep. 45 - How TEGNA Tailors Sports Rights Deals Across Leagues, Markets for Maximum Reach

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Mike Reynolds: Hi, I'm Mike Reynolds, a senior reporter covering the media industry with the S&P Global Market Intelligence tech, media and telecom news team. Welcome to "MediaTalk," a podcast hosted by S&P Global, wherein the news and research staff explore issues in the ever-evolving media landscape. Today, I'm joined by Brad Ramsey. Brad is Senior Vice President and head of sports rights for the station group TEGNA. I've worked with Brad on some articles over the last couple of years, and he was a keynote speaker at the Kagan Summit in Manhattan last June. How goes it, Brad? Thanks for being with us again.

Brad Ramsey: Oh, it's going great, Mike. Thank you for having me. Excited to continue the conversations we have had and appreciate the opportunity to chat with you and your audience.

Mike Reynolds: For those who don't know, TEGNA has deals with 14 NBA, NHL, MLB, and WNBA teams over the past year. It's a varied package with complete local rights for several clubs, 20-game packs with a couple of others, and a number of carve-out deals. Brad, can you just give our "MediaTalk" listeners a brief overview of what your roster looks like?

Brad Ramsey: You gave a pretty good summary, Mike, but I'm happy to expand on it. And your listeners, our listeners could probably tell by your description that there's a lot of variety in the deals. We have 14 partnerships. We're proud to be the first broadcaster to have full season local rights agreements across each of the NBA, NHL, Major League Baseball, and WNBA. And no two of the 14 partnerships look exactly alike. We have full rights all games and sell all sponsorships in Dallas and Seattle. We have 20 games each with the Nuggets and Avs and our good partners at Kroenke Sports Enterprises LLC in Denver. We've expanded our WNBA portfolio. It started with the Indiana Fever and we expanded to include the Dallas Wings this past summer. And we had a lot of fun and a lot of success with four Major League Baseball deals this past summer. That involved 10 games in each of Denver, Phoenix, Cleveland, and San Diego.

Mike Reynolds: Very cool. Very good. So a lot of this has occurred given the major transformation of the RSN space in recent years. But you guys have had a longer standing relationship with the NBA San Antonio Spurs.

Brad Ramsey: That's exactly right. In fact, we were looking back through the archives this morning as I prepared for this conversation. It's 25 years we've been partnered. Really? Okay. From local rights with the Spurs. Okay. It started in 2001. Tom Curry, our GM in San Antonio, who has a great long-running relationship with the team was not in San Antonio in 2001 and neither was I, and we haven't been there all 25 years, so we can't say for sure that there wasn't a break in the action somewhere along the way. Okay. But we can say with confidence, uh, 25 years ago that partnership started and it's been great. The, I don't know if another city loves their team as much as San Antonians love the Spurs, and we've learned a lot through that partnership. It's been a win-win partnership. But we've also, as our sports rights portfolio evolved and broadened in a big way over the last couple of years. We have evolved that relationship. And, I would say it looks more now like some of our other sports rights deals do in terms of the way the partnership is constructed than other partnerships look like. That one, if you will.

Mike Reynolds: So you guys, again, going back a quarter-century, KENS in San Antonio, has shown Manu Ginóbili, Tony Parker, The Big Fundamental [aka Tim Duncan] — all those guys. It's really cool. And now you guys are in there with Wemby, and I believe you were sitting courtside and saw the big man in action. Tell me about that.

Brad Ramsey: I did get to see the Mavericks and the Spurs open the season against each other this year, and I had the great fortune of sitting courtside for that game. I had one of our great partners, clients with us for that, and we were both in awe of Wemby's presence. He had a dominating performance and obviously the Spurs are off to a really great, I think, franchise best ever start in 2025. Believe he really seems to be coming into his own great friendly, entertaining young man. And he's playing incredible basketball. So that was fun to watch and a bucket list experience for sure.

Mike Reynolds: Good deal. As I alluded to, again, transformation in the industry. Diamond Sports in Chapter 11 for 21 months, it's now Main Street Sports. There's been a lot of movement in terms of teams with different partners now. Is it a kind of a back to the future concept for you guys in terms of stations getting back into the local rights game? Brad?

Brad Ramsey: I think that's a fair way to put it. I have often said it's a classic case of what's old is new again. Okay. And, and it's working well. This journey started for me. For TEGNA in what I call the Modern Sports Distribution era, the first week of April, 2023. As you alluded to, Diamond had just declared bankruptcy. It was a long process. Our CEO called me that first week of 2023 and said, let's look into this and see if there is a there, there. And then there was, and is, and I think it all starts with the fan. We saw an opportunity to reach more fans in more homes with more games. That's a win for fans. And fans really like that it's easier to find games. And in many cases, free for them to access the games. And teams really like that because teams these are big businesses. The franchises and partners that we work with they're in the game of growing as much as they're in the game of sports and they wanna reach more people in more homes with more games. And we have found a strategy and a path to be, good partners for them in the right situation. As Mike, from our past conversations I like to say first and foremost, the rights have to be available and a, an influx of rights hit the market in 2023 as a result of this process. That RSN closed up shop in some markets, continued in others. And then the, their emergence from bankruptcy included, negotiations with the leagues that allowed for some of the carve-out deals. That we have done. So there was a large number of teams and rights that hit the market in 2023. There were a lot of teams and the leagues were concerned. About that RSN being a going concern for the 2023, 2024 season. They made it through that season. They emerged and things have settled down, a bit. And for now, when rights will become available, where they will become available is a little bit more of a predictable pattern. Now moving forward, as unpredictable as it might

Mike Reynolds: be. Okay. Okay. I want to get this outta the way early. Nexstar Media Group Inc. is looking to acquire TEGNA. Nexstar through the CW has a lot of sports these days. World Wrestling Entertainment LLC they're with the NASCAR Xfinity series. They've got. Association of Volleyball Professionals, college basketball and football. They're gonna have the PBA bowling tour next year. They've also got some local things with the Clippers the New York Mets here in New York with PIX and I think they were involved with the Texas Rangers some games last year. Brad, can you speak at all about a TEGNA Nexstar relationship on the sports side?

Brad Ramsey: Mike, I certainly appreciate the question and I can't speak to the M and A. I would just refer our listeners to the things we have said, publicly in the announcement and on our earnings call et cetera. And that process will play out, over the next year, give or take. What I can tell you as a fan of local sports and live sports in general, because of how it resonates with the audience, I admire what Nexstar has done and is doing with the CW. It's interesting to watch and creating, more live sports for more fans. And I think that's a good thing. And I think both companies, you could be a casual observer and notice that both companies see the opportunity in sports because of the way it resonates with audiences. And I also have to say, thank you, to Nexstar and the 14 other broadcast companies who are partners with us in our 14 deals. In these 14 rights agreements that we have across the NBA, WNBA, NHL and Major League Baseball, we have 15 different broadcast companies that have partnered with us to help us fill out the broadcast footprint because these teams. Expect and want the reach not only to go up in their home market, but to also match and expand the RSN footprint that they had overall. And so as broadcasters, we we've been very collaborative and Nexstar is one of 15 broadcast companies that have helped us, fill out that holistic footprint. And across these 14 deals, we're in a total of 87. Local TV markets around Really. Okay. The country, 66 of them unique. And what's the difference in the 87 and the 66? I'm, let's say the Mavericks and the Dallas Wings are both airing in Waco. We're counting that as a market for each team in the 87. But 66 unique markets and 15 broadcast groups have been, both small and big partners with us to help fill out these footprints.

Mike Reynolds: So these are ad hoc networks, if you will, right?

Brad Ramsey: That's exactly right. And it's a collaboration between us as the rights holder, the team, and the markets they wanna reach and the leagues who define the territories. But these are big, expansive networks. For example, the Dallas Wings are now in 12 markets across Texas and reach over 6 million TV households. Three over the air. So these are big footprints. across the partnerships. Including the households that our broadcast partners help us reach. We're touching nearly 38 million TV households with our local sports rights. That's a number we're really excited about. And we are in 98% of the TV homes that the league allowed territories would make possible. So here and there, there might be a very small market where we don't touch part of the league defined team territory, but we have been able to secure partnerships and partners that allow us to reach 98% of the TV homes that the league allowed territories across the four leagues allow, and I have to, I know I keep doing this, but it takes a village Thomas Goodhew is the person on team TEGNA that manages those distribution relationships with our partners and is the liaison between our teams and our partners. And he's done yeoman's work and we're really proud of that reach. They're complicated partnerships. A lot is happening behind the scenes. I'll give a shout out to Scott Gill and Drew Pyburn and our tech team who make it look really easy to the fan, for the game to just show up in their home when they power on the TV and things go right. But in terms of fiber connectivity, master control. And in some cases with an individual team working across four or five broadcast groups like we're doing with the Dallas Mavericks or the Dallas Wings or the Seattle Kraken, that's a complicated endeavor behind the scenes. It takes a lot of work.

Mike Reynolds: I recently heard you speak at the NAB conference in New York. If I'm remembering this correctly I think you were saying as you headed into the 24 25 seasons that your local station groups would exceed the equivalent RSNs audience by 250 to 300%. Did you hit those marks

Brad Ramsey: By and large we did. The headline is very positive. We are super excited. About the audience delivery. And it shows us that fans are responding that these games are resonating with fans. For the 24, 25 season, our Dallas Mavericks games collectively delivered 379% of what they did on the RSN. Even our baseball deals, that we're only 10 games delivered exponentially bigger audiences than on the RSNs. So we're really happy. Same kind of success with our NHL partners and our WNBA partners. The Indiana Fever, I think at the prize for the best year over year performance in moving from, regional cable distribution to free over the air TV. They're on our two stations in Indianapolis and it sounds like a number that's too good to believe, but delivered over 500% the audience that, that team was delivering locally in the Indianapolis market the year prior. If

Mike Reynolds: That's going back to last year, Brad, even as Caitlyn Clark missed most of their games.

Brad Ramsey: That's exactly right. Mike. It's all about reach. And it's all about, fans having access to the games. And I should add one of the things we're really proud of, we talked to our partners about this. We have strong teams, strong local brands, strong news product in these markets where we partner with teams. And it gives a run of the mill regular season game on a Wednesday night, the feel of a playoff game because, we're doing countdown clocks in newscasts and we're doing features and special interviews. In the morning news and in the afternoon news. Okay. So there's a big marketing engine. Behind this, through our local brands that carry the games. Because we're a 24 7, 365 content machine. The audience is coming to us all day, every day to stay engaged with local weather, local news, local traffic, and it's a chance for us to cross promote in a very big way.

Mike Reynolds: I know it's early. The NHL season started on October 7th. The NBA season is just a couple of weeks, in any sense for early returns on viewership so far in the 25, 26 season for your clubs.

Brad Ramsey: We're really happy that's the headline, and it continues to show positive momentum over years past. For example, in Seattle, our Kraken games are up 14% year over year in the home market in the Seattle Tacoma, DMA, we know there's a continued growth curve here where people continue to find out where the games are when they are and again, that content engine that we talked about in your prior question plays a role in that as well. But, two weeks into the season we're up 14% year over year with the Kraken audience, just as an example in the Seattle Tacoma, DMA and the Kraken Games Touch a Five State region. The total audience across the five state region is up 8% over the first two weeks of the season. Okay? And we're bullish on continuing to grow throughout the season as well, early in the season. Seattle's hearts and minds have been yeah, my, a little

Mike Reynolds: baseball thing going on. Yeah, they had a

Brad Ramsey: little, they had a little baseball run there that went well into the postseason and here in the early part of the NBA and the NHL season we're up against interest in the NFL which we embrace. And that's all part of the calculus. We're off to a great and exciting start.

Mike Reynolds: Okay. The NHL Kraken, and the WNBA Stars and the NBA Mavericks, those are your big, full local rights deals. Your next biggest set of deals is with the Avalanche and the Nuggets out in Denver. And as you mentioned, you work at Kroenke Sports and Altitude Sports. You started last year, and you've got a similar deal in place for the current seasons? Games a piece,

Brad Ramsey: that's right. Just to recap and make sure I followed along there, we have the full season and all local rights with the Dallas Mavericks and the Dallas Wings, the Indiana Fever of the WNBA and the Seattle Kraken. In the NHL. Kroenke Sports and Entertainment, for those that may not know, owns both the Colorado Avalanche and the Denver Nuggets LP. And they also own their RSN Altitude. And Mark Cornetta, our president in the Denver market, has a great and long-running relationship with just about anybody and everybody you could run into on the street in that DMA, but also with Kroenke Sports and Entertainment. We're really blessed to have that partnership. Grateful that they were willing and able to thread the needle and carve out 20 games for the Avalanche and 20 games for the Nuggets to put on broadcast. And it was a big success in year one. And, we don't comment publicly on the links of our deals or partnerships, but we are excited to now be into a, multi-year arrangement with them. And here we are in season two and also off to a great start.

Mike Reynolds: Okay. The word carve-out has come up a couple of times. You've got, I think the Indiana Pacers, the Minnesota Timberwolves, the Minnesota Lynx from the WNBA and four baseball teams, and we'll talk about that in a bit. But again, the carve-out packages, Brad, these are a few games. What's the benefit for TEGNA to be involved when there's only a handful of games?

Brad Ramsey: When there's only a handful of games, there's a good portion of the audience that might only have access to those games and not all the others because those are the games that we're making available free over the air. To the audience and back to the point, off the top of what's old being new again. Even without a cable or streaming subscription, you can, get a Nuggets game or get an Arizona Diamondbacks game or get a Cleveland Guardians game free over the air. With a 15 or $20 antenna off the shelf at Best Buy or Walmart. And it really expands access and then, supply and demand fundamentals are at play here when you only have 10 games and a limited amount of inventory that are gonna reach a bigger, wider audience. Advertisers and sponsors wanna be a part of that 'cause they know nothing gathers a big group of people around a TV set or a tablet like live sports. And the only thing better than live sports is live sports with your hometown team. So those carve-out games are made possible by the team and or the league and or their, regional distribution. Partner of record, having the ability in those contracts to do a local broadcast deal. And for example, the NBA teams that remained with what is now FanDuel Inc. or Main Street Sports Group, they're able to negotiate with their RSN to do a number of games free over the air on broadcast throughout the season.

Mike Reynolds: Let's go to baseball. Through the transformative period of the past couple of years wound up producing and distributing games for the Rockies, the Diamondbacks, the Guardians and the Padres. That's worked out well. I think the Padres and the Guardians both made the playoffs. Were they your top viewing teams?

Brad Ramsey: That's right. That was our four. 10-game partnerships that we worked on both with the teams and the leagues. Really proud, that all of those either are multi-year relationships or we're in conversations with one about a multi-year relationship. And they performed very well. The Colorado Rockies are a great organization. It's well documented that they had a rough year on the field. Yes, they did. Of historic proportion. But those games did very well. They exceeded our audience expectations. And I go back to a couple of points I've made in the conversation already. You just can't beat the reach of your local broadcast station. We have just an outstanding and long dominant NBC station. In Denver, in KUSA, and when you put the power of KUSA behind a team with local affinity a limited number of games available free over the air, it makes for a great combination. And so I go back to the supply and demand fundamentals. Even with the tough year on the field for the Rockies we exceeded our own expectations and I hope and trust we exceeded the expectations the Rockies had of what we could deliver.

Mike Reynolds: You mentioned advertising, I'm assuming 14 different clubs. Does that mean you have 14 different ad sales relationships or are there some general concepts that apply across your roster?

Brad Ramsey: You're exactly right. 14 deals look 14 different ways, if you will. One of the things that's most fundamental is not in the structure of the agreement and how much inventory we split or how many sponsorships we split, but we have well established strong sales teams with great relationships with local advertisers in each of these markets where we do partnerships. And I think that's one of the things that's attractive to teams and the leagues, and it's one of the things that made this space attractive to us. And so we have absolutely leaned on those local relationships to help expand. The share of wallet that we're able to create and the kind of impact we're able to have for our advertisers and sponsors. And we've also, of course used it to create new relationships and we've seen the opportunity go in both ways. We're obviously expanding relationships that we have with local advertisers into our local sports rights. But in some cases we've had people come to us to be a partner in local sports rights, and then we're able to expand the relationship into other things we do, whether it be local news or our OTT streaming apps, et cetera.

Mike Reynolds: Speaking of streaming the clubs invariably have their own streaming partnerships these days. What do you work in terms of working with them, Brad? Is there an ad combination or how does that kind of play out?

Brad Ramsey: Again, each of the 14 agreements looks different. Each of our partners has a direct to consumer offering for their fans. And we know and believe that's important to reach people, when and where they wanna have access to these games. It's one of the reasons sponsorships are a priority for us in the way we set up these partnerships, as you've heard me say but maybe our audience today has not. To me, a game is a game, regardless of the screen it's on. So if we sell, a halftime sponsorship to the Pacific Northwest auto group insert brand here. That halftime show is going to appear across all screens, right? Whether it's on our broadcast or on the direct to consumer offering from the team. And in the case of the Kraken, since I already mentioned a hypothetical Seattle example we're really excited about what we've been able to create there with the Kraken. And while those games are available on Amazon.com Inc. Prime and not Amazon channels. As Mike, I always point out. Uh, Okay. Everybody can guess. Amazon Prime penetration is pretty darn high in Seattle. A great partner for the Kraken and a great partner for us. But we do all the ad sales if Mike Reynolds Ford were to buy the first spot in the first ad pod, that's gonna appear to all fans across all screens in that exact same spot. So that's a really great opportunity as you can imagine. For our sales team to create new and meaningful conversations with our customers.

Mike Reynolds: Last thing on ads, you guys held upfront, I believe, in Seattle and Dallas. Were there other markets involved in the same way?

Brad Ramsey: We're doing upfronts on varying cycles in all of our markets. I guess the term upfront was invented because of being in front of the season. But it depends on the market and the team and the offering. For example, in Denver I was able to visit and be there for Mark Cornetta and Team KUSA's upfront just a month or so ago, right before the season. But also, as a local NBC affiliate and a strong one at that we have a great opportunity in first quarter of 2026. To help our clients and partners out, not only with Nuggets and Avs games, but also with the 2026 Olympics and the 2026 Super Bowl. That's another thing that's creating, momentum and synergy for us is our stations. While this local sports rights effort might be somewhat new or renewed we've long been the home for. Local sports and big sports events, right on our broadcast stations and our markets. And that was a great way to bring our clients and partners in talk to them, educate them about the Nuggets and Avs opportunity and the Olympics and the Super Bowl at the same time. And this effort is really appreciated by our partners as well. We're also the preseason rights holder for the Denver Broncos. Okay. Mark Cornetta and that team have a clean sweep in Denver, which we're really proud of. But our partners from Kroenke, AKA, the Nuggets and the Avs and from the Rockies and from the Broncos joined us for that event. And it's just really powerful when we can all talk to our clients and partners in a united way like that, about the opportunities.

Mike Reynolds: Okay, getting to the end here, Brad. MLB in the NBA they're both looking to come up, for lack of better terms, kind of a nationalized package of local team rights for the basketball league. Maybe it's 27, 28 for baseball when all of its rights become available again for 28, maybe 29. Your sensibility for that, and, where does a local broadcaster fit into that world?

Brad Ramsey: I don't have a crystal ball. Mike I certainly appreciate the question. In some ways we have some of the same questions.

Mike Reynolds: Okay.

Brad Ramsey: But what I think we're doing is proving in real time the value we bring to teams and leagues and their partners. And our partners the audiences we generate continue to exceed expectations. We know the ecosystem is evolving. We know that games are gonna be available on multiple screens, but one of the things. I'm trying to be a champion for this came up at the NAB summit in New York is making sure we put the fan at the forefront of all of this. My social media hashtag when we launch a new deal is, fans win and I think we've gotta make sure we keep the fan front and center in these decisions making games. Easier to access if we all stay focused on reach and giving fans access and making the audiences as big as possible and as engaged as possible. The sponsorship and advertising dollars will absolutely follow. We've seen that time and time again in our industry. As many times as it's evolved, that principle holds true.

Mike Reynolds: Well said. That concludes this episode of MediaTalk. I just want to thank our guests, Brad Ramsey, for bringing us up to speed on TEGNA wide world of local sports. We appreciate you being here, Brad.

Brad Ramsey: Mike thank you appreciate you following along for our journey and just wanna give one last shout out to team TEGNA. It takes a village. And we've got a lot of folks working hard to make this success for fans and for our team partners.

Mike Reynolds: This is Mike Reynolds. Thanks to all of you for listening. We'll catch up soon on the next installment of MediaTalk.