ESPN (Disney), Fox Sports or Sports Illustrated; Biggest growth opportunities in Australia, Asia, Europe and the United States Media Man Int

ESPN (Disney), Fox Sports or Sports Illustrated; Biggest growth opportunities in Australia, Asia, Europe and the United States, by Greg Tingle - 2018

Sports Business is Big Business

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Who is really the leader in sports, and how exactly does one gauge this?

I'm covering this from a few angles... One: I'm a former account executive at Optus Communications and much of my work at the company concerned keeping customers on board with Optus Vision / Optus Communications, and there's no doubt that quality sports programming was a major draw card to bring in and keep customers. ESPN programming helped me greatly in my job, which also involved stopping a lot of folks switching (churning) over to Foxtel for the 5 years I was there.

I'm going to turn to a cliché... horses for courses... what may be the best subscriber television (or steaming media) provider for one, may not be for another. It's up to personal tastes and preferences!

Real life example: I currently work for Media Man, a firm which largely created from scratch back in 2001, so I don't get my subscriber television free (most of the time) any more.

My main sports interests (for watching) include WWE, UFC, boxing, surfing, snow boarding and a bit of X Games and motorsport.

Now, there's many places to get all of the above, namely on the internet via the likes of YouTube, the official sports channels from the sports organisations, niche streaming channels (WWE Network, UFC Fight Pass, World Surfing Tour website, Red Bull TV and Garage Entertainment), to name but a few. Then there's Daily Motion, and we're not going to even get into potential illegal streaming options.

I also have digital television, and recently I took up the free trial of Stan (long story of why, but its got a lot to do with my interest to once again working directly in the Australian subscriber television industry). Don't worry, Netflix is on my radar, but Netflix is over-the-top and to the best of my knowledge, does not have an office in Australia, and may only have 1 or 2 employees based in Australia, so its Stan for me at the moment, and they do have some good programming, albeit not as many sports as I would ideally like, but there's some cool sports themed movies on there including Rocky 3 (Stallone vs Hogan ... 'Thunderlips) and Chuck (Wepner). I've also been enjoying the martial arts scenes in movies such as The 36th Chamber Of Shaolin and . Then there's some poker flicks, if you want to count them as sport: Mississippi Grind. And, even more of a stretch with xXx staring Vin Diesel as Xander Cage, a thrill seeking extreme sports enthusiast, stuntman and spy. Yes, you have already likely seen it, but its one of those action movies where you can keep watching the stunts again and again. Point Break (2015) is an action, drama, thriller and features surfing, snowboarding, motorbikes, wingsuiting and more. Again, the stunts are worth watching more than once, so Stan certainly has some very solid sports movies to keep you entertained all month.

Update: Late 2018 - We jumped across (churned) to Netflix. Some of the shows we like:

GLOW (Gorgeous Ladies Of Wrestling)

Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee

DareDevil

Agent Carter

iron Fist

Black Lightning

Narcos

BoJack Horseman

Here's the Netflix Originals web interface for your reference

Ways To Gauge The Global Sports Leader include:

Company Revenues

Global Reach

Media Rights, Sponsorship and Advertising Deals

Public Perception

NRL vs AFL down under...

Many an insider says that the NRL wish it had as much success as the AFL in a commercial business sense. Well, that may be the case, but for most Australia's the NRL is still the football code of choice.

Commonwealth Games, Olympic Games and Winter Olympics...

It's not all fun and games with it comes to the business of The Games...The Games in all forms mean worldwide coverage, exposure for sponsors and advertisers. As a general rule, all the games draw good to great television ratings

to be continued...

South Sydney Rabbitohs. Perhaps Australia's most famous NRL club and the one with the richest history

ESPN: 30 For 30 "Nature Boy"

ESPN Poker

Brock Lesnar (SportsCenter - ESPN)

Floyd 'Money' Mayweather (ESPN)

Dwayne 'The Rock' Johnson (Sports illustrated)

ESPN has some huge money deals in place with major sports codes.

Little doubt that some behind closed door deals are made from time to time with the likes of Brock Lesnar (and advocate Paul Heyman), Dwyane 'The Rock' Johnson, Floyd 'Money' Mayweather and perhaps even WWE's Vince McMahon (who is tipped to launch the XFL in 2020. XFL is the Extreme Football League, which will be an alternative to the traditional NFL (National Football League) known around the world for SuperBowl, the WrestleMania of American Football.

NFL. America's Game? Probably, but XFL and others are going to challenge them to become a more popular version of American Football geared for the fans. XFL will have plenty of sports betting options.

Legends Football League (LFL). Formally known as Lingerie Football League!

New name and new uniforms

Lingerie Football League (wearing the original uniforms)

X Games (owned and operated by ESPN)

Red Bull TV, Marketing and media masterstroke by Red Bull

The FIFA and its World Cup have ensured a number of scandals over the years

Dwayne's World: The Pain and Passion That Fuel the Rock (Rolling Stone)

Stan has 100s of fantastic movies and TV series, as well as documentaries, but sport is not its strong suit. Mind you, there's tons of sports coverage of Australian television as well as on official sports websites and YouTube channels, so that doesn't have to be so much of an issue (this is the way I would sell or promote Stan, should the sports question come up). $10 or $12 a month - bargain!