MediaTalk | Season 4 | Ep. 22 - Kagan Media & Telecom Summit Preview: Streaming, Sports Rights, Broadband, M&A Outlook for 2026

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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, where the news and research staff explore issues in the ever-evolving media landscape. Today, we're going to preview the Kagan Media and Telecom Summit 2026. It's set for June 9th at The Commons. That's at 22 Vanderbilt and 335 Madison. That's in Midtown Manhattan, just a couple blocks west of Grand Central Station.

Kagan analysts will be at the Summit, and they are in our virtual house today: Head of Research Justin Nielson; Principal Analysts Seth Shafer and Scott Robson; and Analyst John Fletcher. I'm also going to be there, as will Sarah James — she's the industry editor for Market Intelligence Tech, Media, and Telecom News team, my boss, and the editor of “MediaTalk.”

Over the course of the Summit, the Kagan and TMT crews, along with an array of industry executives, are going to explore the dynamics impacting various parts of Kagan's coverage areas, including the continuous ascent of streaming, the ongoing transformation of sports rights, and their increasing importance within the media realm.

There's also going to be conversations about various dynamics shaping broadband, the key to much of our media consumption these days. Also on top is advertising, which remains the fiscal underpinning of much of today's content distribution.

The summit would not be complete if it didn't focus on M&A.

There have been a number of deals announced, some consummated, others still awaiting various approvals, and there figures to be more to come. Justin Nielson, head of Kagan Research, is going to start us up, so to speak, at 9:15 AM ET, or thereabouts, on June 9th. Justin's going to provide an overview of things he and his colleagues are working on under the heading of Kagan Media Research Overview and 2026 outlook.

Justin, how you doing today?

Justin Nielson: I'm doing great. Thanks, Mike, for having me.

Reynolds: All right. As you always do, Justin, you're going to share a few Kagan stats with us. What are we going to talk about?

Nielson: Yeah, absolutely. And it will focus on those primary areas that we'll be diving into in the panel session. So we'll give my advertising outlook for the broadcast sector, looking at the retrans environment in terms of broadcast fees coming from the operators. And then also looking at the focus in terms of streaming and sports as well as infrastructure build-out.

Reynolds: All right. Following Justin's presentation, the summit will host its first keynote speaker. Yours truly is going to be on the stage with Adam Monaco, an industry veteran of local and national sales.

And right now, Adam is Executive Vice President of Sales at Disney Advertising. Under the banner of Countdown to 2027 Super Bowl, Live Sports and Entertainment, Disney's approach to the upfront we're going to scorecard a lot of what ESPN has in terms of its key properties.

That means the NBA finals and Stanley Cup finals, which are currently in full flight. Go Knicks. Women's sports, football, college and pro, which includes ESPN's first ever Super Bowl telecast, which will be simulcast at ABC, the broadcast network's first time showing the NFL championship game since 2006. And by the way, the game is on Valentine's Day, which brings certain implications, ramifications, et al.

And Adam and I will also talk about the upfront and Disney's various properties on the linear, streaming, and live sides.

After Adam concludes, I'm going to remain on stage and moderate the summit's first panel entitled Advertising Outlook 2026: Can TV Win Back Advertisers and Generate New Growth?

As media planning and buying becomes more sophisticated, the talk here, among other things, will delve into AI and data, local sales, the midterm election cycle, and the upfront. To tackle these subjects, we have a venerable group of industry executives. Sean Wright, he's Chief Insights and Analytics Officer at Guideline, a leading provider of advertising data and media planning technology.

Sean's an industry veteran who's been on both the buy and sell sides of the business. We also have Dan Callahan, who's Senior Vice President Chief Revenue Officer at Spectrum Reach, which is the ad sales unit for Charter Communication, the nation's largest linear distributor, and one that is about to get bigger with its acquisition of Cox.

Steve Passwaiter is a veteran political analyst and currently the president of Silver Oak Political, a Washington, D.C. advisory that assists organizers introducing services or improving their position in the political ad sector.

Also on hand will be Sean Cunningham, president and CEO of Video Advertising Bureau, the industry trade group representing the ad sales departments of networks and distributors alike.

As many of you are aware, or if you're not, you'll discover that Sean also has been known to, how, how should I say, keep close tabs on measurement company Nielsen.

After that, following a short break, Scott Robson, who leads Kagan's coverage of US networks and keeps tabs on all things sports, will head the second panel called From Rights to Revenue: Shaping the Future of Sports Media.

Hey, Scott, how are we doing today?

Scott Robson: I'm doing well. Thanks for having me, Mike. I'm looking forward to the summit.

Reynolds: All right. I know you're going to be touching on a number of topics with your panel, but I'm interested to hear what you're going to have to say about valuing rights amid the changing landscape.

Robson: Yeah, absolutely. So sports media, it's no longer just about who owns the rights. It's about how rights are structured, valued, distributed, monetized, and how capital and technology are reshaping the entire system. So what makes the panel so great is that we have a trio of speakers that really collectively represent the full life cycle of the sports media deal ecosystem.

So first off, we have Celia Kohl, who is the head of strategy and business development at Versant Media, who will be bringing the rights buyer's perspective, so she can discuss what the networks are looking for in terms of digital rights, shoulder programming, term length, et cetera. And then we have William Mao, who is an SVP at Octagon that specializes in global media rights consulting, so he brings the advisory and valuation lens and can discuss how sports properties are being packaged, benchmarked, and sold.

And then finally we have Gregory Bedrosian, who's the managing partner and CEO of Drake Star, who brings the investment banking and capital markets perspective, so he can discuss how M&A, private equity, and institutional capital are influencing sports media and technology. So we're going to talk about things like how the upcoming NFL renewal is going to affect the next round of rights deals, how networks are balancing their sports rights portfolios, and how emerging sports properties will fare amid the changing landscape.

Reynolds: So a lot of moving parts there, should make for some interesting comments.

When I speak with Adam, he's also going to speak about women's sports to a large degree, and Disney's the leader there. But your panel's also going to delve into that arena.

Robson: Yes. Women's sports is one of the key themes we will be addressing. Women's sports has moved from being a growth opportunity to a strategic priority, and it kind of sits at the intersection of all the big themes in this panel.

So rights valuation, programming strategy, audience growth, sponsor demand, and capital formation. So we have Celia from Versant—who has been architecting the company's strategy around women's sports, so they've recently renewed their deal with the WNBA, and they've been taking on new women's sports like the League One Volleyball.

I want to hear from William and his take on which new women's sports are attractive right now. There's a women's pro baseball league launching this August, a flag football league in development, and the professional women's hockey league is growing. So it'll be interesting to hear what he has to say.

And then from Greg's perspective, I'm interested to learn what opportunities he sees in women's sports right now, be it rights, team ownership, technologies, or something else. So definitely going to have a women's sports focus in there.

Reynolds: Good deal. After Scott's panel, we're going to take a lunch break.

You can grab a bite to eat, catch up on your messages, do the schmooze, or networking thing if you prefer that term. And then in the afternoon Principal Analyst Seth Shafer's going to bring us back together at 1:30. Seth heads Kagan Streaming coverage and is ingrained in the company's consumer insight studies and surveys as well.

Seth will lead the summit's second keynote discussion. Seth, looking forward to seeing you in New York. How you doing?

Seth Shafer: Yeah, looking forward to seeing you again, Mike. Unfortunately, go Spurs for me. We're hopeful there…

Reynolds: Oh. Okay.

Shafer: But we'll see what happens.

Reynolds: All right. We'll forgive you. Seth, tell us about the connected consumer meeting audiences, where and how they watch conversation that you'll be having.

Shafer: Yeah, that's a mouthful. That's going to be myself and Melissa Otto. So our discussion will be a little bit unique. We're both internal to S&P, so Melissa sits within the Visible Alpha product.

So she kind of is able to tap into a lot of detailed data, basically around consensus estimates. So third-party estimates about a lot of companies that kind of sit within TNT. And then more specifically for our conversation—y— we're looking to kind of structure it into three parts.

So the first segment is dipping into kind of the legacy media landscape in the US, where we were as far as the pay TV ecosystem. So really talking Comcast Charter there, where they are in this transition from strictly pay TV packages to now increasingly bundling in SVOD services trying to navigate the shift from consumers, looking to not pay a big bill every month, to be able to assemble their entertainment how they like.

And that part of the discussion too will include YouTube TV, Hulu + Live TV, this new generation of virtual service as well. Then that's going to segue into streaming obviously, which is front and center.

One thing I'm excited about the streaming world unfortunately, all of our streamers are getting stingier and stingier with data, so it's more and more difficult to kind of peel the onion layers back and see exactly what they're making. Subscriber counts are more difficult. So again, with Visible Alpha kind of being able to pull that data together for a lot of different companies, we'll be able to get into the details there.

The streaming world's interesting. That gets into advertising with all of the big streaming services now leaning heavily, pulling in live sports, live programming, really looking to advertising revenue to kind of keep that total revenue line growing the way they want. At the same time, they're increasingly, really within the last 6, 12 months, trying to look more and more social media, especially TikTok, YouTube Shorts, Instagram Reels, all the services are building in kind of a vertical format video discovery feature where you can just flip through really short content, kind of the last leg of our d- discussion is going to be that world of social media, what that looks like, this kind of fight for consumer engagement time what Facebook and TikTok, those companies are doing, and then again, being able to get into kind of CapEx expenditures there, investments in AI, things like that.

Reynolds: Very good. All right.

Following Seth and Melissa's discussion the summit's third panel will be up with Kagan analyst John Fletcher providing the connectivity, if you will.

How we doing today, John?

John Fletcher: Great, Mike. How you doing?

Reynolds: All right. All right. What can we expect to hear from you and your guest as you assess broadband's final growth chapter, fixed wireless and LEO?

Fletcher: I'm happy to report that just like last year, we have some great speakers lined up for the broadband panel, which provides a nice view on the networks that we use to stream all of this content over the top of. Just listening to Seth and Scott, it just reminds me of how interesting their panels were, and then obviously what you and Sarah are doing as well. There's a lot of really unique and actionable insights that we get to within the course of one day.

It really gets me up to speed quickly with all the awesome stuff you guys all do. So I'm really looking forward to doing it.

But in terms of broadband, we're at 91% adoption in the US. It, we went up a one percentage point since last time we did this.

Reynolds: Okay.

Fletcher: And we're going to continue to discuss how we close that gap over the next decade, and including a deep dive on BEAD. Your favorite acronym, Mike, BEAD. Oh,

Reynolds: absolutely. It's the best one. No doubt.

Fletcher: Yeah. And then we're going to dive into the four main broadband technology types. So you got cable broadband, they've had a little bit of a rough go of it recently, losing customers to fixed wireless, which has grown from a 2% share of homes to over 15% now in five years. I guess six years, I guess now.

And then fiber, which is ramping up across all the different parent companies, whether they're defined as a cable operator, a fixed wireless operator, or obviously a telco. And then you also have the overbuilders: G Fiber. And of course, we're going to have to talk about Starlink, the most anticipated IPO of the century, maybe.

I don't know. Yep.

And Amazon LEO is expected to launch this summer, a new entrant into the broadband space. That's going to shake things up. Helping drive the conversation, we've got Lori Adams, she's vice president of broadband policy and funding strategy at Nokia, and Brian Allenby, director of state solutions at Cost Quest.

And I have to tell you, we had a kickoff call yesterday, and this is going to be a good one. They, Brian and Lori have some incredible perspective on all these topics. They're not shy to talk about it, and this is going to be a really great discussion. Looking forward to it.

Reynolds: All right. And we're well timed with the big IPO, as you said, so thank you, John. We appreciate it. We look forward to it.

As the summit hits the 3:00 PM mark, there'll be a 15-minute break before we raise the curtain on the fourth and final panel. Hey, Sarah, how are you? Are we doing okay so far on this installment of MediaTalk?

Sarah James: Hey, Mike. I think we're doing great. Thanks for having me.

Reynolds: All right. Sarah, there's been a lot of deal activity, so appropriately you're going to head a discussion entitled Merger Mania: Riding the Media M&A Wave amid Evolving Valuations. Can you tell us about that?

James: Yeah, I'm really excited about the panel. It's coming at an extremely active time in the media M&A market.

And so joining me on stage will be Drew Marcus of Guggenheim Securities; Naveen Sarma, our own S&P Global ratings credit analyst. He leads the US telecommunications and cable media and entertainment sector. And then John Sanders, who is a principal at Bond & Pecaro, a Washington, DC-based consulting firm. And he's been specializing in valuations and asset appraisals for decades now.

Reynolds: All right. In terms of, as I mentioned, there's been a lot of activity. Do you expect more to come on the course of this year and as we move into 2027?

James: Yeah, I think it's a really interesting time. So one of the things that we're going to be talking about is how we have seen this expected wave of M&A activity in the media and telecommunication space. Obviously, we had an actual full-blown bidding war for the Warner Bros. Discovery assets. Yep. And Paramount Skydance emerged victorious, but they paid for the honor. They're shelling out about $110 billion.

And so some of the financing mechanisms that they used are really interesting. We'll be talking about those, including the growing role of foreign money in some of these deals. And that deal exemplifies a lot of the trends we're seeing, including the role that sports rights are playing in driving M&A activity, so building on what Scott was talking about.

And then we've also seen in the broadcast space, we have Tegna and Nexstar coming together, and so we have seen this wave of M&A. We're currently riding it, but then again, the waters have been a little bit choppier than maybe some of us were expecting.

The Nexstar-Tegna deal in particular after it closed it's been challenged by a number of state attorneys general as well as DirecTV. And the wave of deregulation that we were expecting has happened. We've gotten a lot of these deals approved via different waivers of existing FCC rules, but technically, those rules are still in place. We still have a 39% ownership cap for broadcast stations, and we're still talking about the UHF discount.

It's definitely a lot of activity. We're seeing smaller deals, we're seeing major deals, and it's an exciting time. But we haven't necessarily seen a complete elimination of some of the older regulations that I think people were expecting under the second Trump administration.

Reynolds: All right, so a lot to cover there.

When Sarah and her group of panelists take their final bows, we're off to networking and a happy hour. So that is a preview of Kagan Media and Telecoms Summit 2026. I hope we were able to give you a sense for the various topics we will assess on June 9th at The Commons in Manhattan, couple blocks from Grand Central.

Many thanks here to Justin, Seth, Scott, John, and Sarah for giving us a bit of their sneak peeks, and we appreciate it, everybody.

Nielson, Shafer, Fletcher, Robson, James: Thank you, Mike.

Reynolds: All righty. Before signing off from this episode of MediaTalk, I just want to say the Kagan Media and Telecom Summit 2026 should be fun, fast-moving, and above all, informative.

For those who've already registered, thanks very much. For those interested, you can get there. Here's how. To register, check out the in-person events tab at spglobal.com/market-intelligence. If that doesn't work, maybe try googling Kagan Media and Telecom Summit 2026. I've done that. It does come up, and you should be able to maneuver from there.