Rise in streaming puts value of sports rights at risk, warns Netflix F1 show’s mastermind

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for free

Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.

The rise of streaming and the fragmentation of audiences increases the risk of falling valuations for sports rights, the executive behind Formula One’s Netflix series has warned.

Sean Bratches, a former F1 and ESPN executive known for boosting the profile of the motorsport through the Drive to Survive Netflix docu-series, said broadcasters would struggle to maintain levels of spending on media rights as sports viewing shifts from traditional television, including cable and satellite.

“There are many rights agreements that are being done today where the marketplace in the future remains uncertain and different models are being tried,” Bratches said.

“Over the past 30, 40 years, you’ve seen the greatest engine of economics that has driven the world of sport in terms of the cable bundle,” he said, adding that owners of sports rights needed to find new outlets for content as audiences turn away from linear television, especially cable television in the US.

Television companies until recently paid sports leagues for expensive media rights for decades, charging viewers more money for “bundled” packages of sports and other channels. But new competitors such as Netflix and Amazon’s Prime Video have challenged this model, forcing traditional broadcasters to invest in their own streaming platforms, which are struggling to generate profits.

The comments from Bratches, who quit a full-time role at John Malone’s Liberty Media’s F1 in 2020 and has joined rights agency Relevent Sports, come shortly after two of the biggest TV companies in America wrote down the value of their cable channels by a combined $15bn, underlining the format’s decline.

He stressed that the shifting landscape for media rights meant sports leagues needed to be creative in how they allocated their content across platforms. The F1 docu-series inspired a range of sports to follow suit, including tennis, golf and rugby.

Drive to Survive has been credited with expanding the audience for F1 in the US after years of struggling to gain attention in a crowded market. This has helped the sport to increase the value of its media rights in the US from negligible sums to roughly $85mn a year.

Bratches said he enjoyed the Tour de France version, Unchained, but warned that not every sport can achieve the same results as F1.

“The critical thing about sports docu-series is they need to be authentic . . . there are some docu-series that are out right now that were fast followers to Drive to Survive whose participants in sport are just not the most dynamic individuals,” he said.

Sport was the “last bastion of content” that can predictably “aggregate large audiences”, said Bratches, with big broadcasters continuing to agree multiyear contracts worth billions of dollars with leagues, underlining the continued demand for live sport.

As the new chair for Relevent, Bratches is looking to sell European football to emerging US audiences.

The sports media agency, owned by Stephen Ross, a property developer who is also behind the promoter of the F1 Miami Grand Prix, has over the past few years brokered billions of dollars in media deals on behalf of the Champions League organiser Uefa, and Spain’s La Liga.

Relevent also represents the English Football League, which runs the three professional divisions below the Premier League, and helped to strike a rights deal with CBS Sports, including with the subscription streaming service Paramount+.

“I see a significant opportunity in growth in European football outside of the core territories,” Bratches said. “I think there are opportunities to support leagues and teams and federations . . . particularly in the US, which is the number one sports media marketplace in the world.”

A supporter of Premier League team Arsenal and Germany’s Hertha Berlin, Bratches counts himself among US fans who are “getting up at the crack of dawn in the States” to watch F1 or European football matches.

“There are new time windows that are being opened up and expanding audiences, and in large part, European football is driving that,” he said.