Brace for the Amazon effect on live sport

INFOXNFLCBSCBSNFLCBSTVTVNFLTVCBSTVTV 1993 , a nascent network owned by Rupert Murdoch, an Australian-born tycoon, paid a fortune to scoop the rights to National Football League () games from under the nose of , a veteran broadcaster. It caused a tremor in American television history. As one reporter put it, “The was ingrained in the walls of like Edward R. Murrow and Walter Cronkite.” The cost of sports rights took off. So did the cash cow of modern broadcasting—the “bundle” of sports and other stuff, most of it barely watchable. At the peak in 2012, almost 90% of American homes subscribed to one pay- bundle or another.Today that share has dwindled to about 65%. That makes the even more important to the fortunes of the networks, including Fox and (now merged with Viacom). American football is the most-watched live sport in the country, and sport trumps everything else for ratings and ad revenues. At a time when other entertainment is available at a sliver of the price from Netflix and other streaming services, live sport is the only thing left to induce viewers to pay through the nose for pay-.