Cnbc To Launch Weekend Sports Business Show, Longer-form Productions

CNBC clearly sees its investment in covering sports business as one that’s worthwhile.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, the NBC Universal-owned cable channel is preparing to launch a CNBC Sport weekend show. Per THR, CNBC Sport: On The Record will feature interviews with sports business executives and other figures. Additionally, the company has plans to produce a series of “long-form CNBC Sport-branded productions that explore the intersection of sports and business,” with the first episode focused on NBA superstar Steph Curry’s off-court ventures with his Thirty Ink collective.

The first episode of CNBC Sport: On The Record is scheduled for March 29.

Speaking to THR, CNBC VP & senior executive producer of strategic verticals & audience development Max Meyers pointed to the value that sports brings in the current media climate.

“In an era where everything is time shifted or time delayed, sports is the one sort of appointment type viewing — that and the live market, by the way — so you have to be engaged,” he said. “And that has inflated the value of these franchises, and there’s a natural scarcity to them as well.

“That has brought a torrent of money from all around the world, whether it be from sovereign wealth funds, whether it be from private equity funds, whether it be from other types of Wall Street type, traditional investment houses into this space. And as a result of that, there’s a lot of money going back and forth. CNBC tells the story of money better than any network or any news outlet in all of its forms, so it made sense that we did it.”

CNBC Sport reporter Alex Sherman said that the idea came from CNBC president KC Sullivan, whose pitch was, “look, sports is like a very large investable asset now.” Sherman also added that the network already covers many team owners via their other business interests, with many of the interviews inevitability shifting to sports.

“We talk to them about the markets, or whatever their main business is, and then we shoehorn in a sports question or two when they’re up on air,” Sherman said. “We’ve shoehorned it in the past to some degree so his his idea was like, look, this is already here, we should have a platform for all this where we really dive in, because there’s so much appetite for it, and there’s so much crossover with what we already do.”

In addition to the weekend show and longer-form video features CNBC also has plans to host sports business-centric events, with one focused on women’s basketball already scheduled for April 5. CNBC’s latest efforts to expand its footprint into sports follows last year’s launch of Sherman’s weekly newsletter (which can be found here), as well as a weekly interview podcast, which will be repurposed to provide content to On The Record.

The post CNBC to launch weekend sports business show, longer-form productions appeared first on Awful Announcing.