ESPN game for Classic Sports Net
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Analysts had valued Classic Sports at below $150 million because it's available only in about 10 million cable and satellite households. But "when we get the full wind in our sails, we'll drive distribution" with an all-out marketing plan, said George Bodenheimer, executive VP of sales and marketing for ESPN, in a conference call with reporters.
And, sources say, ESPN will beef up all areas of operation of Classic Sports, hoping to discourage Fox/Liberty from continuing to develop a competing cable channel called American Sports Classics.
Fox/Liberty inherited the blueprint for American Sports Classics three months ago when it paid $850 million to buy a 40% stake in a new joint venture that took over the running of seven regional sports channels owned by Cablevision Systems Corp.'s Rainbow Media Holdings. These Rainbow networks included Madison Square Garden and Sportschannel branded networks in New York, Chicago, Philadelphia and New England.
Sources say Fox/Liberty would have abandoned American Sports if it had succeeded in purchasing Classic Sports.
Although it hasn't officially pulled the plug on American Sports, a spokesman for Fox/Liberty says the company will focus on integrating the 20 regional sports networks it controls into a national business. The plan is to keep the local-team games as the linchpin of each regional network while creating a national sales-and- marketing operation, and producing national programs like sports newscasts and interview shows to supplement the contests of the home teams.
Stephen Greenberg, president of Classic Sports and one of its founders, with Brian Bedol and Gil Friessen, told reporters that "we have exclusive rights to the largest number of boxing matches, and these tend to get the best ratings."
Vintage games of the National Football League and the National Hockey League are also exclusive to Classic Sports, according to an insider.
Steve Bornstein, president and CEO of ESPN, who was also on the conference call, says he hasn't decided whether to change the channel's name to ESPN's Classic Sports Network. "But we regard the network as the perfect complement to ESPN, with many opportunities for cross promotion," he says.
Although Paul Kagan Associates predicts that in 1997 Classic Sports will pull in only $5.5 million in advertising revenues and $3.5 million in license fees from cable operators, Classic Sports' Greenberg says the revenue balance is actually tilted in favor of subscriber fees so far this year. Greenberg regards that tilt as a negative, saying the goal of Classic Sports is to make more money from advertisers than from cable systems.
