MediaTalk | Season 4 | Ep. 44 - Scripps Bets on Free Over-the-Air TV to Win Back Sports Fans

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Mike Reynolds: Hi, I'm Mike Reynolds, senior reporter covering the media industry for S&P Global Market Intelligence tech, media, and telecom news team. Welcome to "MediaTalk," a podcast hosted by S&P Global, wherein our news and research staffs explore issues in the ever-changing media landscape. Today we're joined by Brian Lawlor.

Brian previously headed up EW Scripps local division, which he helped grow from 14 to 61 stations over a 14-year period. Now Brian has been working as president of Scripps Sports, which was formed just under four years ago. Over the course, Scripps Sports has built quite the portfolio of national rights on EW Scripps broadcast network, ION, particularly with women's leagues.

With the transformation of the regional sports network industry, Scripps stations have also take a leading role in providing local TV coverage for professional teams, particularly on the National Hockey League ice. Lot to talk about. How are we doing today, Brian?

Brian Lawlor: Great. Thanks for having me, Mike. Good to be here.

Reynolds: Let's start at the beginning. Before there was Scripps Sports per se, your stations up in Big Sky Country began televising Big Sky football and basketball games, I think it was in the 2022/'23 season. It's a relationship that has been built up over the years now, right?

Lawlor: Yeah. We love the Big Sky.

It's a great league, and we've got a big footprint there of local TV stations. We're in every market in Montana, and I got to tell you, Montana State, Idaho, there aren't professional sports teams out that way, and so college football is everything. And there's nothing, in my opinion, more fun than the Saturday before Thanksgiving, where Montana-Montana State have their Brawl of the Wild. It's been going on for over 100 years. Okay, cool. And it's great. And so it's an important part of our portfolio and how we got started.

Reynolds: Okay. All right. Scripps Sports, I think you formed it in December of '22. Brian, what's the thought process then, the vision? Did you identify women's sports as an opportunity at that moment?

Lawlor: Yeah, we did. We bought ION during the pandemic, and ION had been a network that for many years had only run sort of dramas and procedurals. And after we acquired it, being a pretty diverse media company, our CEO said we should spend a little time just seeing if any of the other things that we have a competency in make sense on ION.

So we spent some time looking at news and originals and entertainment. And one of the things we looked at was sports. And ultimately we identified that other than the NFL, most leagues were really seeking reach, and having a challenge getting their games in front of fans. And so we recognized that we had a platform that fully distributed.

It's on every cable, satellite system. It's an over-the-air network. We had a streaming channel, and so we recognized that this could be an opportunity to help leagues connect with their fans. And once we ultimately identified that, we said, what leagues do we think we want to partner with?

Where do we think we can perhaps make the greatest impact? And we identified at that point that it was pretty challenging to be a women's sports fan in America. There was not a lot of consistency and a lot of visibility, and we felt like we had a platform that could really change that.

And so it wasn't by accident that we stumbled into women's sports. We created a strategy and developed a roadmap and a plan, and then spent a year or two executing on that. And I think we've made a real big difference in closing that gap between women sports fans and how to find the games that they're most interested in.

Reynolds: Absolutely. You did the deal with the WNBA, if I'm not mistaken, April '23, and a month later the games were on the air?

Lawlor: Yeah, that's correct.

Reynolds: Okay. All right, so at the first season, I think you guys averaged about 290,000 viewers. Were you pleased with that? And again, obviously there's been a lot of growth since then, much of it tied to one Caitlin Clark.

Lawlor: Yeah, look, we were definitely pleased with out of the gate. We built a national franchise on Friday night. We had double headers every Friday. And it was the first time that there was a place that you knew that every week you could go and watch the WNBA.

And every game on Fridays was part of our portfolio, again, national reach. But ION was not a place people knew to look for sports, certainly not women's sports. So we felt like that was a really good season. At that time, Caitlin Clark was still in college.

Right. And if you build it, they will come. We knew she was a popular player, but we were standing this up because we saw a lot of interest and growth opportunities for women's basketball. But then that Final Four with her and Angel Reese and Cameron Brink, and that just got so much attention.

Sure. And of course, the cadence was fascinating because they played in the Final Four early in April. You know—Right ... two weeks later was the draft. Yeah, exactly. And then four weeks later the season started. And all of that happened in six weeks. So there was all this buzz and interest about those players, and six weeks later, you could watch them on national TV and watch them through the whole season, and that was really what launched, I think, the success of the league.

Reynolds: Yeah, I know, again, new contracts for everybody. This past season, Brian, you guys did, I think, about 617,000 viewers on average, down slightly. Your take on what the '26 season was for ION?

Lawlor: It was a great season. I think we had some comps that were a little more challenging.

A couple of weeks we went up against the World Cup that was happening in the US. And so that was a major draw. Stanley Cup, NBA finals. But I think, to your point, we were about flat with where we were the season before on linear, but then on our FAST streaming channel, our hours of viewing there were up over 10% from the prior year, and that's grown every single year.

So I think when you look at the fast platform and the linear, we were at least even with the season ago. But again, we were really pleased, and that was right on our targets for the season.

Reynolds: I think you had your most viewed telecast, a Fever-Wings game at about 1.6 million, and I think there were five other games that exceeded a 1 million viewership draw.

Lawlor: Obviously, Indiana's a huge draw every time we have them, and fortunately Caitlin was healthy this season. That wasn't the case a year ago. But yeah, I think 1.6 million viewers on that day. What we really liked was that the audience kept building.

We hit a million viewers in the first five minutes of the game, and it stayed for the entire game—ultimately peaking at 2.2 million. We continue to see a lot of interest, a lot of engagement and really strong demos. Sort of 50/50, men and women, so—Oh, really?

Okay ... there's a perception that maybe women's sports is only appealing to women. It's not the case at all. Okay. We see both in this league and the NWSL, we see an even balance, and a lot of the growth in the last two or three years for the WNBA has come from men, not women.

Reynolds: Okay. I was going to ask you about the NWSL next.

You guys have been doing that for a few years now. How is it? I know more about basketball than soccer, so forgive me. How is the women's soccer league performing for you guys?

Lawlor: Really well. Look, the WNBA has had a level that—significantly higher than any of the other women's sports, and that's a great thing.

But the NWSL continues to really deliver on our expectations. Been a lot of growth. The league is expanding. There's players that now are becoming household names. Our challenge is that, again, we by design built a national double header on Saturday nights. We built that knowing that we were going to go head-to-head with MLS. There's, if you're a soccer fan, you've got NWSL or MLS to choose from.

But at the end of the day, we thought what was most important when we started this three seasons ago was, again, have a franchise night, have consistency, double header. We built a studio show so that we treat all of our women's sports as the same that every network would treat a male sport, with analysis, with insight, with really telling the stories and getting into the hits, runs, and errors that avid sports fans are really comfortable with.

We've had a lot of growth in the NWSL. We're excited about where that league is going as they continue to add more teams and grow across the country.

Reynolds: So again, you guys got back-to-back nights on Friday and Saturday for a good chunk of the year. You sell that together, or are there a lot of advertisers that have schedules in both leagues?

Lawlor: Yeah, good question, Mike. It's both. We do have some brands that are partners in both leagues and we sell them together. There's others that are only interested in the W or only interested—Sure ... in the NWSL. The audience is a little bit different. Okay. We do find that the NWSL audience skews a little bit younger. It's a little bit more diverse. Also, we see more engagement on a streaming platform for the NWSL than for the WNBA. So each one is unique.

And for people, for brands that are looking to associate themselves with all women's sports, we've able to bring a whole buffet of opportunities. And beyond that, we got the PWHL, ATHLOS, the track and field event, Major League Volleyball.

Reynolds: So many different properties, Brian. I hope we can get to a lot of them.

Yeah. One that's coming up is starting with the golf or the WTGL. I, there's been a couple of men's seasons. I believe it starts on ABC or ESPN maybe on November 8th. And then you guys are picking it up a couple nights later. Can you give our listeners a sense for what that's about?

Lawlor: Yeah, we're excited about this. I think our goal is to help elevate the interest in women's sports and the players associated with the sport. And I've been a fan of the TGL for the last couple of seasons. I've enjoyed watching it. I've been down there a couple times.

It's a really cool, unique experience. It's an opportunity to really get to see the players and learn their personalities beyond what you normally see on a PGA broadcast, and we think it's a lot of fun. And so when we started chatting with them, probably two years ago, and they mentioned, "Hey, we think that there's a path for us to get into women's," we said, "Hey, if you ever get into women, we think it's a real compliment to what we've built."

And once they ultimately decided to move forward, they came to us and said, "Look, we love our relationship with ESPN, which is exclusive to the TGL, but we also see great benefit to your platform, the over-the-air reach. And really, you guys have distinguished yourselves as the leader in women's sports.

And for the WTGL to sit on the same platform and the same channel as the WNBA, the NWSL, PWHL, it adds credibility to the league. And so we're really excited to launch that league alongside many of the players that are going to be part of it. And most importantly, we're excited to bring their personalities out and get people excited about rooting for certain players that maybe they're going to learn a little bit more about them than they would see in a normal LPGA broadcast."

Reynolds: You'd mentioned earlier you guys doing production for the soccer and the basketball leagues. Same thing here, or are you sharing resources with ESPN?

Lawlor: The league is going to do the production.   And then they'll provide that for us.  I think you'll see a lot of similarities in the broadcast and even the people on air doing the broadcast between us and ESPN.

Reynolds: All right. Let's go local. Scripps, I believe, displaced Gray the local deal with the Las Vegas Aces from the WNBA before the '25 season, when the Aces won the title. They've been the best team in the league for the last half dozen years. What's the reaction? People in Vegas like watching the club up there on your stations?

Lawlor: Yeah, there's a lot of interest in that club. I've been out to a lot of games. They've sold out I don't know how many consecutive seasons where every one of their games are sold out, but there's great energy in that town. To your point, it's a winning franchise. They've won three WNBA championships, I think in the last five or six years.

Reynolds: They have the best player in the league—five-time MVP in A'ja.

Lawlor: Absolutely. She is unbelievable. But the rest of that team also, they are a fun team to watch, and the energy in that building is terrific. And Las Vegas is a market that we have really made a significant commitment to our sports. We're the home of the former Stanley Cup champion Vegas Golden Knights. Then to be able to put the Aces on that same channel—and this year we'll launch the PWHL's Las Vegas franchise. We've really built a great platform there for anyone interested in the home teams of Las Vegas.

They're on one channel.

Reynolds: That's KMCC?

Lawlor: Correct. Yep. And we own the ABC station there and KMCC, so we have the primary ABC that really, in every newscast, we're constantly promoting the teams, showing highlights, driving audience to the next game.

It's our megaphone to help amplify where people can watch the games and to showcase the players and the results. And then we've got our KMCC, our local—we call it the Spot—Las Vegas, and that channel is the home now to 70 Las Vegas Golden Knights games.

We've got another 30 Aces games. We'll put 30 PWHL games. We've got a lot of local sports there in Las Vegas.

Reynolds: You mentioned the Vegas Knights, one of four NHL teams you had last year. There's also the Mammoth. You had the Lightning and the Panthers who  I think have won a couple Stanley Cups under your watch as well.

You got it. And this year you've added the Nashville Predators. What's the appeal for hockey for Scripps and for our viewers?

Lawlor: Look, we really like hockey. I think it's a sport that is fabulous on TV. We've been really lucky to have playoff-caliber teams.

To your point, Tampa Bay, Vegas, Florida—they've won four of the last five Stanley Cups. Now we add in Nashville. These are markets that are just rich in passion for sports. When we got into and implemented our sports strategy, we looked around to ultimately identify what rights were going to become available.

And many of these were with regional sports networks. Vegas was the first one where their regional sports network shut down. That made those games available. It allowed us to come in and bring them over the air, and we very quickly saw the power of what the over-the-air broadcast did. Vegas averages almost a six household rating over the course of the season, one of the best teams in the NHL.

And between putting the games on linear broadcast and then in partnership with the teams, we launched a streaming channel. The beauty is, no matter where you are through your day in Las Vegas, you can either be in front of a television and watch the games or call the games up on a phone or an iPad.

And that's the beauty of our platform, being able to watch the games anywhere, anytime, on whatever device you have available, and it's worked really well. And so we saw the success with the Golden Knights, as did the other partners. And suddenly Florida came calling, saying, "Hey, we love what you've done for Vegas."

Do we have an opportunity to do the same with them? We did that. They had just won the Cup. They repeated. Then, we were able to add that interest with Tampa. That's a really popular team there, a great franchise. It's one of the largest TV markets in America.

So we pull more viewers per game out of Tampa than we do. Golden Knights have the highest rating of all of our franchises. Okay. Yeah, it's gone really well, and I think we've become now the largest local partner with the NHL. And I think the NHL has realized that the over-the-air platform for their league is a great platform to get the league and the players in front of fans.

Reynolds: Now the NHL season, I think it started on September 29th, so you guys have a few weeks' worth of Predators games. What's been the response down there in Nashville?

Lawlor: It's been great. I think through the first 10 games we've seen viewership up 233% over a year ago, three-plus times of what the ratings used to be, and we're just—Okay—getting started. We've also had a lot of success in building subscriber base on the streaming platform.

So again, fans, wherever they are, they're able to watch games on a television or on their phone. But most importantly, they can go the whole season and not miss—miss a period, which I think is a great win for all fans.

Reynolds: You guys also jumped into the NBA this year. You're working with the Pistons. I know we're pretty early in the season there, but I know the Pistons came back from a 29-point deficit against Boston. They're off to a good start. People like the Pistons on your stations?

Lawlor: They do. Very much. We're just getting started, to your point. They had such a great season last year. They were the top team in the East during the regular season. Yeah. Already, their opening day was on NBC.

So we're just getting up—Okay ... ramped up, and I can tell you, the four preseason games that we did on our local WMYD in Detroit averaged a 3.3 household rating. Last year on FanDuel, that was a 0.5 for their preseason games. So we're up 500%, having a lot of success with brands coming in and partnering with us, and advertisers.

So we're thrilled to get up and running.

Reynolds: When you're working with the local clubs here, your stations are the home, but do you have de facto networks? Are you working across the state with other ION outlets and with other broadcasters?

Lawlor: Look, we really believe in the power of putting the games in front of fans on over-the-air broadcast.

And with the Predators, we were able to look at their network. Their network on where their league-approved territory is well beyond Nashville, and so we have local broadcasters that we've partnered with. In some cases, Scripps owns the station, in many cases not. But we're through the state of Tennessee, so we're in Knoxville and we're in Chattanooga, we're in Memphis, and then you go into where the games are actually on over-the-air broadcast in Atlanta.

They're into Mississippi and Alabama. So their league territory is huge. And the same thing, in Detroit where, obviously, we are the home of the Pistons in Detroit, and the same thing in Grand Rapids, a Scripps station there. But every other market in the state of Michigan is able to pick up these games free over-the-air with the broadcast partners that we've been able to line up.

Reynolds: Yeah, I was at NAB New York and Tony Lamarrato. He told attendees there that if you, from a political standpoint, you can reach the entire state of Michigan on your Pistons network—Correct—for candidates and parties and things of that nature. So that's a good thing. All right, let's go. You had mentioned the hockey sc—the, and the WPHL, the hockey squad in Vegas. You also have some other local deals which you were doing that, Brian, and then that triggered a more national approach?

Lawlor: Yeah, you know, we track all women's sports very closely, and when the league started three seasons ago, the PWHL—we got to know those folks. We really were excited about their vision. When they started with six teams, three in the US, three in Canada.

Okay. And we said, "Look, we just want to watch and see." They then added two more teams, and then this year, now they're adding four more, and they've expanded to 12. And last year, following the Olympics, that epic—Sure ... USA-Canada gold medal game, there was so much energy and excitement around women's hockey when they came back, and there had never been a nationally broadcast PWHL game before.

But we just felt there were so many of those players had very quickly become household names. We said, "We can't just let people forget about them." And so we immediately approached the league and said, "Hey, how about us? Let's seize this moment in time, and let's put a couple of your games on national TV."

So we partnered with them. They were doing a takeover tour game in Detroit, and we put their very first game ever on national TV. It went really well, and I think the next week we had a conversation and said, "Let's do more." So we lined up, and we broadcast the Walter Cup finals, their championship round, last year, and that went really well. And as soon as that was over, we said, "Look, let's talk about a much bigger deal." And so this year, ION's the home of the PWHL. There's a national game of the week. That'll be every Saturday. Some will be in prime, some will be in the afternoons. We'll be broadcasting their all-star game from Toronto.

And the sea—

Reynolds: Brian, the season starts in early December?

Lawlor: Early December, yeah. Okay. December 5th, I think, is the first puck drop. But we're really excited. And now, they're getting into San Jose, they're getting into Detroit, they're getting into Las Vegas. We really like, now, the fact that it's in seven US cities, it's five Canadian cities.

Some great teams and players across both. So we're really excited to be the home of the PWHL. And just like we feel like we did with the WNBA and the NWSL, help elevate the visibility, help some of these players become household names, and allow little girls to be able to sit at home, whether they have cable or satellite or just an antenna, but allow them to look at these girls and say, "That's what I want to be when I grow up," and realize that it's possible.

Reynolds: All right, Brian, we've covered a lot of sports, but I know your portfolio is much bigger. Do you want to give a shout-out to a couple of the other things you have on the air?

Lawlor: Oh, yeah, we've got a lot. And again, we're having a lot of fun. Obviously, the five NHL teams and the Detroit Pistons. We work with a couple of NWSL teams this year.

We were partners to the Denver Summit when they launched, and what a great franchise they were this season. But, again, in the women's sports space, we're working with Premier Women's Rodeo, which is part of—... PBR—and trying to, again, get noticed there. The Pro Cheer League, again, another new league.

We did some work with Athletes Unlimited Softball this year. And then doing some college basketball. We've got a couple of multi-team events there. Maybe the biggest thing we have coming up is next August and September, we'll be the home of the Women's World Volleyball Championship, where 32 teams from around the world are going to come compete in the US and Canada.

The playoff rounds and the finals will be in Anaheim. It'll be an Olympic qualifier. Okay. Yep. So we're really excited about that event.

Reynolds: All right. That concludes this episode of "MediaTalk." I want to thank our guest, Brian Lawlor, for catching us up with Scripps Sports, very diverse and seemingly always increasing portfolio.

Appreciate you being here, Brian.

Lawlor: My pleasure, Mike. Thanks for having me.

Reynolds: All right. And this is Mike Reynolds. Thanks to all of you for listening on Spotify, Apple, and CapIQ Pro. We'll catch up soon on the next installment of "MediaTalk."