Watch Out ESPN, Here Comes Facebook
Facebook, not ESPN, NBC or CBS, has won the rights to live stream 380 Premier League soccer matches per season from 2019 through 2022. The streaming is only in Cambodia, Laos, Thailand and Vietnam. 
Some are calling this the “highest profile sports streaming deal to date” for Facebook, because the Premier League is the world’s most-watched sports league. Facebook has streamed Major League Baseball games and some World Surf League competitions, but this a much larger play on a world stage.
So why isn’t Facebook working on U.S. sports? Many of the rights have been locked in for years, but negotiations are going on with many of the major industry players. The problem is that it is hard to measure all the potential media outlets and deliver a clean, verifiable number back to media buyers and advertisers.
Facebook has the money; now we’ll see if they have the muscle to move into other major live sporting events. All of this has cable companies worrying about potential cord cutting if too many major events go the streaming route.
Mark Mathis
Mark wrote his first direct-mail fundraising letter in 1981 for the University of Iowa Center for Advancement. The effort raised a few million dollars in undiscovered wills and legacy gifts. From that day forward Mark discovered a love of the big idea that moves the needle. After 12 years at KWWL, Mark became a business owner as a co-founder of ME&V — rebranded as AMPERAGE in 2015. After 25 years of leading creative teams in video production, graphic design, PR, writing and web development, Mark transitioned out of ownership in 2021. Today he serves in an employee role as special projects consultant. He is creatively ambidextrous — son of an artist and engineer — and famous for distilling complex ideas down to a few words and a few visuals. Mark is a writer. When he found that many nonprofits struggled with complex branding puzzles, he wrote the book, “NonProfit-NonMarketing .” He also wrote a novel called “Reenactment.” Mark is an active blogger OneMinuteMarketer® with nearly 1,000 readers each week on LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter. One of his most popular YouTube videos is on “How to Look Good on Zoom.” One of Mark’s fondest business memories was being named to INC 500 two times and attending the INC 500 conference with other winners. Mark is considered by some a Civil War expert (and that explains his novel). Mark also served as an adjunct professor in the business and in the communications departments at Wartburg College. Mark is a graduate of the University of Iowa and is currently vice president of the University of Iowa Journalism and Mass Communications Advisory Board. Mark is married to state Sen. Liz Mathis, and the two love to travel, even when it means being trapped by a volcano in the Czech Republic for three weeks.
