Broadcasting of sports
Broadcasting of sports has been one of the lucrative industries around the world. One of the renowned players in the field of sports media is the Entertainment and Sports Programming Network (ESPN) (Saks & Yanity, 2016). ESPN boasts of being the world leader in offering sports entertainment, which is evident by subscription across homes in the United States, where the broadcaster is in over 98,516,000 homes (Saks & Yanity, 2016). Its flagship news and sport shows clocks over 115 million views every month. ESPN is not the only sports media hub out there, but other competitors joined the market to offer more affordable prices. Companies such as DirectTV, Fox, and CBS are also involved in the sport televising business. The televising rights are given to a company depending on its viewership and its reach. As the leading company, Espn has established its popularity over the others and therefore has managed to get most of the sports contracts for televising games such as the NFL and the major league. However, in many instances, there has been criticism and controversies around the television contracts, which is the central theme of this discussion.
Despite its vast appeal and fan base ESPN has been walking along a thin line while featuring sports news and a clogged lineup of sports live events. The broadcaster has paid billions of cash for the award to air the live competitions, including the National football league, the major league, and the national basketball. Apart from the mentioned contracts, it is also the world’s largest broadcaster of university and college sports (Saks & Yanity, 2016). The lucrative partnerships that come with securing televising rights for all sports live events have built up to place Sen in a ripe position for conflict because of the many events that should be on their Network. The coverage becomes an issue because there are also those events in which the Network has only semi-exclusive rights to air.
Sports contracts are a huge source of revenue to bother the broadcaster and the sports clubs. Professional teams make a lot of money from big contracts for live televised sports and rights contracts. Many clubs have adopted this method as opposed to ticketing or selling merchandise because it is more convenient and can reach a lot of people at the same time. Nevertheless, there have been many issues going behind the closed doors regarding coming into an agreement in this contract and deciding who to give rights to air which show. Different leagues favor broadcaster of their country, their race, or social standings. Such acts have elicited a lot of critics, especially in the NBA, and the NFL leagues, which is filled with African American players. Apart from the issue of biased coverage, there has also been an issue of racism and discrimination. Some of the broadcasters have found themselves in hard situations for being biased or racial. An instance that has faced NBC, which ESPN owns, tried to discredit research findings by scientists tying brain injuries to football (Mark Fainaru-Wada, 2019). The story which was aired through the film concussion was a pivotal basis of bob Costas addresses while at the broadcaster. Nevertheless, the Network ended up ousting the broadcaster who had become the face of the Network and had amassed so much followership from fans across the world. The termination was because NBC had paid billions of monies to the NFL to air the live sports and could not let anyone paint a negative image of the sports and compromise their contract.
The first contract to be awarded for ESPN was in 1987. They used a lesser rated game within the NHL as their masterpiece to launch their alternative channels. However, as their competition, Walt Disney, the company owner, acquired ABC, having already broken even with ESPN and making profits. Its contracts form then have been of a symbiotic kind with the sporting clubs and bodies. The company has also established its relationship with the major leagues across Europe and U.S., which has entered into tv right deals. The relationship has caused so many frictions for journalists working for the Network as they are forced to be biased in reporting and toe the line of the broadcaster or leave. A different incidence occurred when an ESPN reporter was suspended in 2009 for criticizing the Major League Baseball commissioner (Saks & Yanity, 2016). At that period, ESPN had a $2.4 billion deal to broadcast the Sunday Night Baseball (Saks & Yanity, 2016). The conflict of interest in the contract they had with the Major League made them force the journalist to apologize to the commissioner for his comments.
A study carried out by Clavio and Pedersen in 2007 found that there were methodological flaws to show that ESPN biasness in including more highlights for the NBA compared to NHL in its sports center “Top 10 Plays” (Saks & Yanity, 2016). More so, the authors of the broadcaster’s magazine rarely covered arena football or triple crown racing. Over 108 articles investigate, 106 of them were about the NBA, and only one covered the sports. Half of the NBA articles were done even before the span was awarded the contract and rights to broadcast it. Such practices show how popular a team may carry the day in sports highlights even when a network does not own the broadcasting rights.
Many scholars have challenged ESPN integrity in the journalistic reporting with concern over the conflict of interest to the leagues they have exposure and popularity in. It is not about the wave of politics or social class, but having unbiased programs and coverage. The broadcaster has also been criticized for its great attention to men’s professional sports and neglecting women’s sports. Additionally, the criticism concerning the issues of ethnic whereby there are varying mediated contract forms and carriage fees makes the contractual aspect of sports be on the spotlight. It is the expectation that all sports should be given equal airplay and coverage. However, the variation of carriage fees may be. Discrimination and infringing on journalistic integrity to keep a contract expose the dirty sport side while sealing these sports deals.