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The Big Impression
E.W. Scripps’ Seth Walters on making premium sports more accessible
00:22:04
Seth Walters, head of CTV sales at E.W. Scripps, joins The Big Impression podcast on why sports shouldn’t sit behind paywalls.
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A
I'm damien fowler.
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B
And I'm ayli slifring.
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And welcome to the big impression.
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This week we're joined by Seth Walters, head of CTV sales at E.W. scripps.
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Scripps is making a pretty bold bet on the future of sports, building a network around free over the air distribution at a time when so much of live sports is locked behind paywalls.
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It's a move that flips the traditional model on its head, opening access while also leaning into the rise of ad supported streaming and fast.
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And it's not just about distribution, it's about who gets seen. Scripps is bringing more local teams, emerging leagues and underexposed sports into a broader
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spotlight that creates a very different kind of opportunity for advertisers, especially as live viewing remains one of the last truly real time high attention environments.
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So today we're gonna dig into how free sports can scale and what it means for brands trying to reach those fragmented audiences and where CTV fits into all of this.
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Let's get into it,
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A
Seth. You know, going in all. Going all in on free over the air sports. What did you see in the market that made you feel that this was the right time to make that move?
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C
Yeah, thank you guys for having me. Scripps is a. Is nearly 150-year-old company rooted in local journalism that started with newspapers, eventually evolved to radio broadcast, and then ultimately television. We still today support 60 different local stations in 40 markets. And we've also launched our network business through an acquisition of ion Networks in 2019. And so what I oversee today, I'm the sort of head of digital sales, both for the networks and for local, which really has enabled us to be an early mover into the streaming space. And let me explain that a little bit more to you. Because we are rooted in local over the air programming. We were an early mover in fast. We actually acquired a company called Newsy, which we've since rebranded as Scripts News. And that was our first foray into free ad supported streaming.
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A
When did you do that?
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C
I don't. I think it's 2015. Yeah, I'm not certain on that date. Yeah, yeah, a little bit over a decade ago. And as a result of that, we started to see the immediate impact of the audience migration to streaming platforms, which everyone is acutely aware of today. We very early on recognized that because of our unique position as a local over the air broadcaster, we were not tethered to a particular model, that many of our peer sets was in both the national broadcasters like your ABCs and CBS's and FOX who are, you know, restricted in some part with contracts that they have in place with their affiliates or other cable companies where we're often locked up against as our competitive set. They're limited by some of their agreements that they have in place with cable operators, the MFNs that restrict them from making their content available everywhere and then even within the fast space. What we've seen over the past few years, early on, getting those rights were usually a throw in or very low premium on top of what we were licensing to get this programming. Now the major studios in the fast space have for the most part launched their own fast services and the cost to get fast rights for premium programming has risen. And so because we moved very early on, we were, and we're not tethered to a particular model, we made distribution our primary focus. And we are, I often refer to ourselves as the largest independent streaming platform. What I mean by that is we're not necessarily. We have owned and operated apps for our local stations, but all of our networks are basically widely distributed everywhere across nearly every FAST service, every virtual mvpd. We also have those channels over the air. They're free over the air and then also in cable packages through, you know, operators like Charter. And so that is the same feed that's available over the air in a cable package that's available on fast. It's a linear mirror, as we refer to it. They're all channel based. We don't have a ton of AVOD consumption. It's all through our channels that are airing the same thing everywhere that content is available.
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A
I see. Yeah.
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And so really quickly, yeah, because we started to lean into sports, we recognize that we can amortize the cost of getting sports rights across all of those different touch points. And that's really differentiated for the strategy that were employed for the script Sports network.
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Yeah.
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What changes though now when you amortize that? What changes when you make it free?
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Yeah, of course we need to monetize it through advertising. But I think, I think really the nuance is that we are our superpowers. Distribution. And for the leagues and for advertisers, the value that we delivered for them is reach. So being able to run with us, reach sports fans everywhere that we're distributing this content and continue to cultivate more meaningful relationships with those audiences on the Scripp Sports Network, which serves as a better canvas for advertisers to create and engage those audiences more deeply.
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B
And you know, that network has such a strong, like local broadcast footprint Yep. How are you then thinking about building something that feels more national in scale but still rooted in those local communities? I guess, especially when it comes to sports?
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C
Yeah, we basically were leaning into two of our strengths. One, with women's sports. We were an early mover in that space in a partnership with the WNBA that we struck in, I believe, 2022. That was when we formally launched the Scripp Sports brand. That was before Caitlin Clark was in the league. That was a multi year partnership that we continue to see strong growth year after year and that we recently renewed this past season.
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We got ahead of that really fast.
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C
We got ahead of that. We had that at the right time and it served to create a foundation for the model that we use to partner with these sports leagues. So with the wnba, we run a franchise night every Friday night, a doubleheader of regular season games throughout the course of the regular season. And then we replicated that same model with the National Women's Soccer League on Saturday nights. So the network itself, Script Sports Network, has a bend towards women's sports. We've expanded on those league partnerships most recently with the Professional Women's Hockey League. Coming off of the exceptional performance of the Team USA during this past Olympics, we began to partner with them for the first ever national broadcast for a professional Women's Hockey League game and are now airing their playoffs on the Script Sports Network. So that's the semifinals and finals that are happening this month. That's their. It's called the Walter cup, not the Walters cup, but it is their version of the Stanley cup that's happening this month. We also have partnered with Major League Volleyball, which is a women's volleyball league. Their championships are happening this month. We are also partnering with Professional Women's Rodeo, which is an event that's happening this month. And then of course, as Scripps, we're known for the Scripps Spelling Bee, just last do we celebrated our 100th anniversary of that event. Historically, we've aired the semifinals and finals of that event on our networks, but there's several days of competition that we don't get to broadcast. And this again gives us that opportunity to do that. That's our lane as a leader of women's sports. But of course you mentioned local. And that's really where I think the value is going to come across this channel over time because we've established a leadership position with some local teams, almost replacing the sort of RSN business model where we deliver their content over the air as well as help to manage their Chaining services. So far that focus has been with the National Hockey League where we are the largest broadcast partner for NHL with five local teams. We also are partners in specific markets where we have stations with the Las Vegas Aces, which is the WNBA team in Las Vegas, as well as the latest franchise for the MWSL in Denver called the Denver Summit.
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B
Are you saying that you're helping distribute their own streaming channels?
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C
Yeah. So for most of those brands, we support the direct to consumer apps that are subscription based and supported, but we also produce studio shows and ancillary content and programming that we think can start to make its way way to reach a larger national audience across this channel.
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B
And yeah, it does seem like more and more teams are starting their own types of apps and streaming.
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Yeah, I mean, it's an ecosystem and that is changing rapidly. It's increasingly getting more fragmented and expensive for consumers to access the fans they love, you know, the teams that they love in the games that they want to watch. And so I do think that part of what we're trying to accomplish here is, is to continue to feed that fandom for span for sports fans, especially those that are interested in upstart sports that might not be getting the national exposure that they want to, to better, to better serve that audience.
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How intentionally, how intentional was that, Seeking out of sports that certainly may not be mainstream, but of course they're mainstream, but they are now. How intentional was that? When you think about, yeah, it's core
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to its core to the strategy, it was very intentional. I think we recognize that there's untapped value there. It's an underserved audience, underinvested from a broadcast perspective. And we felt that what we can bring to the table, that the teams really needed to help build awareness of their sport is the distribution and reach that scripts brings to the table.
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I would love to know a little bit more about how you think about your audience.
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C
Yeah, for this specific channel, the audience, it's a month old, so the audience is still being developed at this time. But what we do know from again, having one of the largest streaming portfolios across all these different services is that we know we're reaching a younger fan base. One might think because it's free, we're reaching a less affluent fan base. But that doesn't necessarily seem to be the case. In fact, it might actually be right on par with the rest of the broader television ecosystem that we reach. But I think of it more as we reach everybody and we're cultivating stronger community relationships with the people who are very passionate about the individual supports that we are supporting.
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How are you going about the whole measurements angle? Because when you're trying to broadcast and distribute content across both streaming and linear, it can get complicated.
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C
Yeah, yeah. I mean, we're working within the realities of modern media measurement. And the good thing, because we are again a local broadcaster and we work with small businesses around the country. They're interested in bringing their brands to our sports properties and for them it's more tied to driving outcomes for their business. Of course they want to surround premium programming like live sports and are bought into the strategy of what we're doing with women sports and leaning more into local sports as well. I think that for them it is might be less about ratings and more about what is the contribution of reaching this audience and how is it influencing whatever sort of outcomes they're trying to drive for their brands, which is usually visitation to their websites or lead generation or sales or store traffic. And we increasingly are trying to help to optimize our campaigns for those advertisers.
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Are they also thinking about data driven plays within ctv?
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Yeah, I mean that's always sort of core to the strategy. That's again big part of why we believe that our approach for being independent and reaching audiences across all of these different services, as opposed to containing it behind a paywall that we that is more limited in terms of its reach, is playing out to differentiate scripts from others in the marketplace.
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You said something quite interesting about like how are you reaching local advertisers? Yeah. And that to me is an interesting differentiator.
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Yeah, yeah. I mean, it's not done. We're down definitely doing it. But we're exploring ways to utilize our local sports highlights which air as segments in our local news broadcast in across those 40 stations. How can we use that content to create original programming for the sports channel that can air nationally? There's lots of other opportunities to sort of like commingle those strategies and have a major impact and breakthrough. Our sports strategy dates back to 2022. So we. That's when we began to air those franchise nights. Franchise nights with the WNBA and NWSL on our Ion network. This is obviously an extension of that.
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So how do you think about pricing and positioning when you're offering premium live sports in a free environment?
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Yeah, well, first off, there's no question that the sports landscape has become more fragmented and expensive for consumers. I believe I read a stat that for Week 17 of the NFL season, if you wanted to stream all of the regular season games that week, you would need somewhere upwards of about eight different services, which is just unsustainable for sports fans. When I think of the streaming ecosystem more broadly, I view it very similar to the K shaped economy recovery post Covid and let me provide a little bit more detail on that. I believe the streaming ecosystem follows a very similar case shaped dynamic where the largest streaming companies are seeing an outsized amount of viewership promotion on streaming platforms, obviously seeing a sizable amount of advertising dollars as they shift to streaming and the middle is getting squeezed out a little bit. And of course the long tail is really what's struggling from, you know, from a commoditization standpoint, from a, from an advertising engagement and revenue standpoint. And so the strategy around Free with Sports is really intended to help better position scripts to ensure that we're part of the growing upper echelon of that K. Knowing that programming really needs to be differentiated to stand out and capture audiences in an environment that's more conducive to on demand streaming, that might be more designed to leverage algorithms to enable content discoverability. And so having something that is premium and that is exclusive and that really helps something that advertisers want to, you know, have their brand surround is a big, big part of why we've sort of positioned the channel within free and are striving to get distribution for it everywhere we are able to.
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Oh, that's fascinating. Yeah, I like that comparison a lot actually on that point. When it comes to advertisers, who do you think is leaning in more so or who do you think is sleeping on it?
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C
Yeah, that's a good question. We launched when we launched a channel. Our first launch partner was State Farm because we have the bend towards women's sports. You start to see brands that might not necessarily be heavily active in sports space like beauty brands, beauty retail brands, personal healthcare brands, et cetera. And so we're seeing a bit of that interest for what we're doing for women's sports. And of course, you know, the athletes and the teams themselves are cultivating great partnerships with various advertisers. So the nice thing is that we provide them again with a canvas to bring their messaging to scripts to align and adjacent to the athletes that they're sponsoring or that the teams that they're sponsoring, as well as creating more space for longer form content where we can distribute that across the script sports network.
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Let's sort of zoom out a little bit. We, you know, we have been talking for the last couple of years about the economics around our sports rights and how incredibly expensive. Yeah, they are getting talk about inflation. So obviously you see free ad supported netspell fast. That's supposed to be a joke about dispelling B. Okay, I'll try again. Where do you see three ad supported networks, you know, with live sports, you know, fitting into the whole kind of economics of what's happening around ad sports?
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C
Look, it's not, I, I'm, I lead monetization for brands. So there's a separate team of folks whose job it is to go out and partner and find partners, you know, with our leagues. I think that the best thing or the only thing that I would say is I think there's going to be more opportunities, especially with some of these more, you know, the upstarts that are looking for reach and whose rights perhaps are not necessarily, you know, locked up for a huge period of time. And as a consumer, you know, I think the response from consumers is very meaningful and very measurable. And these leagues listen to social media. They understand the frustration that fans have about finding the, you know, the sports that they want to watch. And I think there's going to be more sampling, I think there's going to be greater over the coming years more opportunities to find premium live sports across everywhere as opposed to being locked behind a specific awol. Naturally there's a lot of money behind that so I'm sure there's other perspectives that might think otherwise because of just how much money flows into that, into that marketplace.
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Yeah, there's sort of tension between, you know, making sports widely available and then like keeping it premium. Yeah, and there's like, has to be some kind of balance there.
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Yeah, look, with the K shaped economy analogy I made earlier, you have taking it back to the customer side of things. Is sports going to become something that only the affluent can afford to watch and what does that mean for the teams and the leagues and ticket sales and merchandise sales over time as they, you know, look to evolve their fan base and, and make sure that they're continuing to generate new fans and not just make it about those who can afford to watch. And so that that's that hat. You know, I can't say for sure because I'm not in the meetings, but I have to imagine that's on the minds of some of the people who are responsible for, for growing the audience for these sports.
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You know, when you think about audience and fan base, how strategic do you get when it comes to partnerships?
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Yeah. Prior to being at Scripps, I worked at two different smart TV and a streaming platform on the platform side, I think the data that the platforms have, some of the ones that I've been most impressed with, they really look for white space and gray space like within their, their, you know, their user base. And with rising subscription prices, I think we're starting to see things like Roku launched Howdy, which is an inexpensive commercial free streaming experience. And I believe that they recognize that with everything, you know, increasing significantly over year, that there's an opportunity to serve those people who still want to access commercial free content but not pay a ton for it. Additionally, you see someone like a YouTube TV who's rolling out new tiers and different price points for separate bundles within their service. And so as a broadcast company, as channels distributed across platform, both of those platforms as well as many others, I think we are looking towards the streaming marketplace and trying to identify where there are opportunities for us again as a free over the air, which does not, which is typically, you know, adds value to all those tiers because we make it accessible and figuring out how and where we, we can fit into some of the trends that are happening for the platforms who are trying to serve audiences who want to pay a little bit less for their entertainment.
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What would you say is one part of the sports ad experience that feels overdue for a refre?
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Yeah, I think there's a lot more engagement that we can create beyond the traditional 15 second, 30 second, 60 second ads. And again in streaming where we're creating a connected experience where we have a lot more flexibility in creating ancillary content and programming around the shows that we're creating to highlight the athletes, to highlight the teams. I want to see brands. I'd love to see brands. And we're pitching brands on doing more things like that as part of larger packages that support the network.
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And that's it for this edition of the Big Impression.
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This show is produced by Molten Heart. Our theme is by Love and Caliber and our associate producer is Sydney Cairns.
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And remember, when I think of the
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streaming ecosystem more broadly, I view it very similar to the K shaped economy recovery post Covid.
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I'm Damian. And I'm Ilise and we'll see you next time.