Students on the university’s Media Business in Sport program – one of the few sports management courses of its kind in the country – have taken on roles as chief negotiators for ESPN, Warner Brothers Discovery Sports, NBC Sports and Amazon.
June 8, 2023
The Sports Media Rights course at the University’s Orange Campus.
Alyssa Pasniewski ’23 MS, an international programming coordinator at ESPN, oversees Major League Baseball, NFL and XFL planning for ESPN for networks throughout the Pacific Rim — including Australia, New Zealand and the Caribbean.
It’s a complex process. “In the US, ESPN has the rights to Sunday Night Baseball and the wild card playoff round, but outside of the US the package is much larger, with multiple games per week stretching to the end of the World Series,” she said.
A semester project in the university’s new “Media Business in Sport” course prepared her well for her work at ESPN, she said.
For the project, Pasniewski, who received her master’s degree in sports management in May, and her classmates were divided into groups representing ESPN, Warner Brothers Discovery Sports, NBC Sports and Amazon. Each team competed for media rights for the coming seasons of the NBA.
The course was co-taught by practitioner-in-residence JW Stewart, a former sports anchor and reporter at ESPN and NBC CT, and William Mao, senior vice president of media legal advice at Octagon, a global sports agency. Guest speakers included Carol Stiff, former VP of Women’s Sports Programs at ESPN; and Alex Rosen, Major League Baseball’s senior counsel for global media.
‘I was impressed’
With the total value of US sports media rights for TV and streaming expected to exceed $30 billion by 2025, according to Axios Pro’s Tim Baysinger, understanding media rights is critical, Stewart said.
“Media rights are the single largest source of revenue for most sports organizations, including the NFL and NBA, as well as the World Cup and Olympics,” added Ceyda Mumcu, Ph.D., chair of the university’s sports management department.
“It is important for anyone in sports management to know how these revenues are generated, who the stakeholders are, what their perspectives are and how they come to agreements that benefit both parties,” continued Dr. Mumcu gone. “Our curriculum is up to date and closely aligned with the sports industry. We always push the boundaries and aim to prepare our students with industry knowledge and skills.”
During the course, each team had to create and pitch a proposal. “There were so many things they had to consider,” Stewart said. “Do they want the rights to regular season games … or the rights to All-Star Weekend, and how much is that piece worth? It forced them to think critically and creatively, solve problems, and communicate their solutions effectively.”
Mao, who handles such negotiations in his daily work, said: “I was impressed by the groups’ ability to take feedback and revise and improve their presentations – the content and the presentation – based on the different stages of the negotiation.”
“It will definitely give me a head start”
Emily Bogdanowicz ’23, ’24 MBA said her team representing NBC went through many negotiations and continued to tweak its pitch.
“My group and I got creative with our pitch, taking into account what our company, NBC, wanted, what the NBA has, and what other broadcasters might be trying to achieve,” she explained. “Knowing that the NBA would be looking for a deal similar to that of the NFL, we anticipated a multi-billion dollar deal and several broadcasters would get ‘a piece of the pie.'” The course did showed me how complicated these media rights negotiations are between the broadcasters and the professional sports leagues.”
Bogdanowicz plans to work in the sports industry in ticket sales. Your ultimate goal is high. “The end goal is to be an NFL commissioner,” she said.
Groupmate Joe Klaus ’23, ’24 MS enjoyed tackling challenges with his staff on the NBC team. “We had to understand that the channel is the home of the Olympics and we had to align with that schedule, prime time shows and other sports programming,” he said. “We needed data to back up all of our points and some of that isn’t available, so we had to constantly think outside the box.”
Klaus is a research assistant responsible for broadcasts and side reports for sporting events in Charger. He plans to become a sports presenter. “This experience will “definitely give me a head start” when looking for a job.
Pasniewski, who joined ESPN last summer, said she’s already applying what she’s learned and will continue to do so. “The guest speakers gave us a lot of knowledge about ratings, the negotiation process, what sections a contract should contain and much more, which gave me a deeper understanding of what my managers and supervisors are doing,” she said. “Some of what I was taught goes beyond what I’m doing now, but it paints a clearer picture of what my responsibilities may be in the future.”
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