Sport Management Students Gain Experience Creating and Pitching Media Rights Deals

Alyssa Pasniewski '23 M.S., an international programming coordinator at ESPN, handles the scheduling of Major League Baseball, the NFL, and XFL for ESPN for networks across the entire Pacific Rim – including Australia, New Zealand, and the Caribbean.

It's a complex process. "In the U.S., ESPN has rights to Sunday Night Baseball and the Wild Card playoff round, but outside of the United States, the package is much larger, with multiple games a week extending through the end of the World Series," she said.

A semester-long 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 M.S. in Sport Management in May, and her classmates were placed in groups representing ESPN, Warner Brothers Discovery Sports, NBC Sports, and Amazon. Each team vied for media rights to upcoming seasons of the NBA.

The course was co-taught by Practitioner-in-Residence J.W. Stewart, a former sports anchor and reporter with ESPN and NBC CT, and William Mao, the senior vice president of media rights consulting for Octagon, a global sports agency. Guest speakers included Carol Stiff, former VP of Women's Sports Programming at ESPN; and Alex Rosen, senior counsel of global media for Major League Baseball.

With the total value of sports media rights in the U.S. across TV and streaming expected to surpass $30 billion by 2025, according to Tim Baysinger of Axios Pro, understanding media rights is crucial, Stewart said.

"Media rights are the largest revenue source for most sports organizations, including the NFL and the NBA, as well as the World Cup and the Olympic games," added Ceyda Mumcu, Ph.D., chair of the University's Sport Management Department.

"It's important for anyone in sport management to be aware of how this revenue is generated, who the stakeholders are, what perspectives they have, and how they come to agreements that benefit both parties," Dr. Mumcu continued. "Our curriculum is cutting edge and closely aligned with the sport industry. We always push the boundaries and aim to prepare our students with industry knowledge and skills."

In the course, each team had to create and pitch a proposal. "There are 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, problem solve, and effectively communicate their solutions."

Mao, who handles such negotiations in his day-to-day work said, "I was impressed by the ability of the groups to take in feedback and revise and improve their presentations – the content and the delivery – based on the multiple phases of negotiation."

Emily Bogdanowicz '23, '24 MBA said her team representing NBC went through many negotiations and continued to tweak their pitch.

"My group and I got creative with our pitch, taking into consideration what our company, NBC, wanted, what the NBA has, and what other broadcasting companies might be trying to get," she explained. "Knowing that the NBA would look for a deal similar to what the NFL has, we anticipated a multi-billion-dollar deal as well as multiple broadcasting companies getting 'a slice of the pie.' The class taught me just how complicated these media rights negotiations are between the broadcasting companies and the professional sports leagues."

Bogdanowicz plans to work in the sport industry in ticket sales. Her ultimate aim is lofty. "The end goal is to be NFL commissioner," she said.

Groupmate Joe Klaus '23, '24 M.S. relished tackling the challenges with his collaborators on the NBC team. "We had to understand that the network is the home of the Olympics, and we had to work around that schedule and the prime time shows and other sports programming," he said. "We needed data to back up all our points, and some of that isn't available, so we had to continually think out of the box."

A graduate assistant who does broadcasts and sideline reporting for Charger athletic events, Klaus plans to become a sports anchor. "Having this experience will "definitely give me a leg up" when he looks for jobs.

Pasniewski, who joined ESPN last summer, said she is already using what she learned and that will continue. "The guest speakers gave us a ton of knowledge on ratings, the negotiation process, what sections a contract should contain, and much more, all of which gave me a deeper understanding as to what my managers and bosses do," she said. "Some of what I was taught is above what I do right now, but it paints a clearer picture of what my duties can be in the future."