? Ratings are only one measure in gauging the success of the tournament overall.
? Turner will only ink deals for sports or other properties that include multiplatform and marketing rights.
? Streaming service will tip next month, as Turner Sports prepares for kickoff of Champions League coverage in August.
Turner Broadcasting System Inc.'s Turner Sports and CBS Corp.'s CBS Sports are teaming for the eighth time in providing complete coverage of all 67 games of the NCAA Division I Men’s Basketball Championship on linear outlets CBS (US), TBS (US), TNT (US) and truTV (US), as well as through streaming via NCAA March Madness Live services. Turner Broadcasting President David Levy in a recent interview discussed this year’s coverage of "March Madness" and the company’s upcoming streaming service centered on UEFA Champions League soccer. An edited transcript follows.
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S&P Global Market Intelligence: Two years ago, Turner crowned a champion on its air for the first time. You're going to do it again on TBS, so it's old hat now?
David Levy:
"Fast Break," the whip-around feature going from game to game on NCAA March Madness Live, is a digital-version of what CBS used to do before Turner Sports was part of the tournament, right?
It's new and innovative. CBS had to because they only had the one telecast. What was really disturbing — and I was also a big viewer back then — was that if you wanted to watch a certain game, a West Coast game and you didn’t live there, you couldn’t see it. Fast Break, certainly on the first two full days, should be popular. Especially with the different ways fans consume media today, you have to this make available.
There seems to be no clear-cut favorite to win. Is that good for the tournament?
I think it is. There are 15 teams that can make the Final Four and win this thing. And these are high-end teams, brand names.
You were saddled with two Final Four blowouts in 2016. Any concerns about the ratings?
If we have Duke and North Carolina, we’re not going to have a problem. Two years ago, we did have good names, but the games were 40-point blowouts. In 2014, Kentucky-Wisconsin blew it out on cable. It's still the highest-rated [Final Four game] today in 19 years. We're going to hear [about ratings], if there are blowouts, but we can’t control that. I love this package. It has been delivering for us now for eight years and we've extended it [to 2032]. We look at it very differently than just being about ratings. It's about how we're building fans and audiences across platforms. There were 100 billion impressions last year, outside of linear.
So, cross-platform selling continues to expand?
We have a large cross-section of advertisers buying linear and digital. I think it's 85%. So there's your answer.
But most of the money is still with TV?
Most of the big money still comes from TV. [But digital] is growing and it's not chump change anymore. It's what makes this particular deal unique. You're not going to see any deals, at least from a Turner perspective, when we acquire sports rights or any other property, for linear TV only. You have to have the cross-platform rights, the cross-media rights, the marks, the logos, the marketing rights to use in certain ways. What was unique when we did the NCAA deal in 2010 was all that was in the package. Back then, there wasn't any business line in our model for how much money we were going to make from Facebook Inc., how much money we were going to make from Twitter Inc. And now, they are making some money.
Where do you stand with the streaming service. How far in front will you launch it ahead of your upcoming Champions League coverage?
We will be up and running in April, after the tournament. We have a couple of deals we have to get up and going. We have spring league football and arm-wrestling and some others to help us figure out the kinks. We will be full-blown ready to go by the time Champions League kicks off in August.
Is there more soccer coming?
I’m not talking about other rights now. There will be a conference soon.

Turner Broadcasting President