CBS has announced plans to launch a 24/7 live-streaming sports channel later this year, as the broadcast company works to better compete with digital rivals and a loss in subscriptions stemmed from cord cutters.
On a call Monday with analysts following the company’s quarterly earnings report, CBS Chief Executive Officer Leslie Moonves said the company plans to leverage the experience it gained developing CBSN, the over-the-top news channel it launched in 2014, to build the sports channel as part of its ongoing OTT strategy.
“We’re now in the early stages of replicating its success in the world of sports,” he said.
“We think sports fans are looking for something like this, and that opportunity is significant.”
CBS, which has the rights to stream the NCAA men’s basketball tournament through 2032 and also will air five NFL Thursday Night Football Games in the first half of the season, has not yet named the service.
“We are going to look to differentiate ourselves from the ESPN and the Fox Sports as well, and we think we have a good opportunity to succeed,” Moonves said. “The other key, like CBSN, we can keep costs relatively minimal because we already have a great infrastructure for sports like we did with news. So the chances of profitability early on are very good.”
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CBS has been working to expand its sports coverage as wide as possible in an effort to maintain its viewership across multiple channels and platforms. In December, CBS struck a multi-year deal with the NFL to stream games through its CBS All Access digital platform. On Monday, AT&T revealed that DirecTV Now, its Internet-based streaming service that is an offshoot of DirecTV, would add CBS programming, including sports, to its offering for the first time. Its sports programming was also added this year to Hulu with Live TV.
CBS, which has partnerships across several professional leagues, including the PGA Tour, NCAA, NFL and SEC Football, will also air the Super Bowl LIII in 2019.
In its earnings report late Monday, CBS reported a 9 percent increase to $3.3 billion in second-quarter revenue, which Moonves said was a reflection of customers choosing to watch its programming on a delayed basis and paying for so-called “skinny bundles,” which are slimmed-down cable packages that customers can choose if they don’t want to pay for channels they never use. Skinny bundles are more lucrative because they pay more per subscription than traditional bundles do.
“In distribution, we are leveraging the strength of our content to be a leading player in the new skinny bundles and the traditional ones, too,” Moonves said. “And with our growing over-the-top channels, we are set up to succeed no matter how people choose to consume their content.”