10 Key Takeaways From Variety and Sportico’s Sports and Entertainment Summit

variety.com:

Variety + Sportico’s Sports and Entertainment Summit in Los Angeles, presented by City National Bank. Leaders, athletes and executives came together at the 1 Hotel West Hollywood to discuss the varying challenges, techniques and strategies that have served them well.

Here are 10 key takeaways from a day of lively discourse. In the summit’s opening session, moderated by Variety co-editor-in chief Cynthia Littleton, panelists discussed how live games and other sports content perform on streaming platforms versus traditional TV. “We do have to acknowledge that sports are unique,” said Rosalyn Durant, executive VP and head of programming and acquisitions at ESPN. “If you look across the media industry, sports have to be live.” Jon Cruz, YouTube’s global head of sports partnerships, noted that “the intent is to provide flexibility for our users and our partners” with the use of lucrative streaming value bundles.  “We want to make sure viewers have access to the content they want,” said Cruz. “We want to make sure whether you’re the NFL, FOX, or ESPN, you have multiple ways to monetize your content on our platform.” Mike Mulvihill, president of insights and analytics for Fox Sports, pointed to the struggles of the regional sports network business as an example of how the economics of pay TV have shifted.

In the past, the more successful a show was, the more money it generated. “Now we’re at a moment where the relationship between popularity and revenue is breaking down.

And it makes are business a lot more complicated, and I think it’s a major reason why we have writers and actors on strike.” So while the content being broadcast on regional sports networks is still as popular as ever, cord-cutting and streaming is still