Sports Summit: Lazarus -- TV Everywhere Protects Pay TV Ecosystem

New York -- With the rise of online and mobile video, TV Everywhere is seen as a way for programmers to protect their property from being usurped completely.

"The TV Everywhere aspect of our business, specifically around sports and live events, is an important part of protecting the pay TV ecosystem," said Mark Lazarus, chairman of the NBC Sports Group, during a keynote conversation with Multichannel News news editor Mike Reynolds during NewBay Medias Sports Business and Technology Summit on Wednesday.

"All the distributors and all the programmers should be moving towards a way to protect the value of that system so we can continue to pay the rights and build our high quality content," he continued.

Last summer during the London Olympics, NBC made every single event available live on one platform or another, with most of its coming via the second screen. The success of its digital coverage -- 159.3 million video streams (64.4 million of them live) -- helped Lazarus feel better about making so many of their events available on multiple platforms. "It was a strategy put in place before that," he said. "It was a little bit emboldened by the success we had there."

Lazarus said that adoption of TV Everywhere is still growing, touting his upcoming deals with AT&T, Cox, Charter and DirecTV. "Were still hopeful to make a deal with Time Warner Cable," he said of the No. 2 MSOs holdout. "We think over time this will become a part of our normal negotiations."

With the launch of Fox Sports 1 looming, Lazarus discussed the prospects of the year-and-a-half old NBC Sports Network, which rebranded from Versus in January 2012. "We are two years into a five-year process," he said, noting that NBCSN has acquired some significant rights. "Weve made more progress in some areas than I thought we would and weve made less progress in [other] areas."

In August, NBCSN gains rights to the Barclays Premier League, Englands top-tier soccer circuit and one of the groups major recent rights acquisitions.

"We think it was a good bet," he said of the premiership, which includes many of international footballs most popular clubs. "For the amount of content that it is, its a good value."

One of NBCs main sports properties - the National Hockey League - is enjoying a boffo ratings season. Games two and three of the current Stanley Cup Finals between the Chicago Blackhawks and Boston Bruins were NBCSNs most-watched NHL games ever.

Lazarus credits a scheduling change made for the lockout-shortened season, namely the "Wednesday Night Rivalry" slate, for the ratings momentum.

"We have acquired a lot of product," he said. "Its a very competitive rights landscape."

There have been whispers that the National Football League will look to sell off a portion of its Thursday Night Football slate, which it currently televised by the league-owned NFL Network.

"At this point the NFL has not come out with any plans of what theyre going to do with those games," Lazarus said said. "The scarcity of [NFL football] has been good for the marketplace."

LINK:	http://www.broadcastingcable.com/article/494120-Sports_Summit_Lazarus_...
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