David Berson may be the head of CBS Sports, but when he spoke to reporters today during the network’s NFL season preview, he sounded a lot like the white collar witnesses and executives that Walt Disney, Warner Bros. Discovery and Fox brought to the federal courthouse just miles away last week.
The three companies were defending the right to launch their joint sports streaming app, Venu, against a preliminary injunction filed by Fubo as part of its antitrust lawsuit against the trio of media companies. Asked whether CBS parent Paramount would consider such a platform, Berson said it was unlikely, but outlined core issues with Venu that were consistent with the defense’s arguments.
“We think the broad reach of broadcast television with our streaming strategy is a phenomenal combination and has been super successful for us,” Berson said. “We also know from Paramount Plus — and I think you’ve heard this from at least one other company out there — that it’s very beneficial to have multiple genres on the same platform. So we know that a fan who is on Paramount Plus for sports is spending 90% of their time on entertainment programming, non-sports.”
That’s almost exactly the argument the defendants’ lawyers are making when they say Fubo’s claims that Venu is an existential threat because it would poach pay-TV subscribers are overblown. Defense lawyers refuted Fubo’s claims that most of its subscribers sign up for sports by pointing to the popularity of non-sports programming on the virtual pay-TV platform.
Berson then brought up another point made by the defendants’ lawyers: that Venu has major gaps in its sports portfolio, particularly when it comes to the NFL. They made this argument to portray Venu as not a threat to the pay-TV ecosystem.
“It’s not a complete offering for sports fans, it really isn’t,” he said. “Listen, there are a lot of other sports, but as far as the NFL goes, if you think about it… CBS, NBC, Amazon, Netflix, NFL Network (all the NFL broadcasters), none of that is there. So you don’t have the first few games of the season, you don’t have Football on Thursday eveningSunday afternoon, Sunday night, Christmas, NFL Network, four of the six wild card games. So that doesn’t exist. How many Chiefs games? They have 17 regular season games, do you know how many of those are supposed to be on there? Three are. Fourteen aren’t. So if you’re a sports fan, it’s hard to find something like that.”
Berson recently succeeded Sean McManus, the long-time head of CBS Sports. CBS’ Studio 43, where The NFL today from which he films is renamed Sean McManus Studio 43.
CBS is part of Paramount, which is currently being acquired by Skydance and RedBird. Berson said the new owners are aware of the value of the sport, but it will be a long time before the deal is finalized.
“On esports, even on the conference call announcing the deal, you heard SkyDance and RedBird say how much they value esports. They believe in esports. They value esports. They love our portfolio. They love our strategy, they love our team.”
On other topics, Berson commented as follows:
Will election coverage depress NFL ratings?: “You have to realize that it’s going to suck a lot of air out of the immediate landscape, but the NFL is like a rocket that’s going to continue to generate interest. And so we could maybe have some influence, but we can only control what we can control.”
On the recent layoff announcements at Paramount: “There is a lot of fuss in the media landscape, but sport is going incredibly well. The larger company announced this yesterday, of course. So all groups are affected, we are largely intact in the sports group.”
Does he watch exclusive NFL games on Paramount+: “No plans.”
How CBS commentators will describe the new kickoff rules: “The NFL hosted our producers, directors and non-television talent on Monday night. They spent a lot of time on this very thing. And I think it’s safe to say that everyone is trying to figure out the best way to explain this to fans… most fans are going to see the lineup of players and say, ‘What’s going on here?’ So it’s up to us and the league to figure out how we educate people.”
