Disney knows that business, like football, is a contact sport. Sometimes the hits come in-house from feuding among executives. Sometimes they come in court, from battling the Federal Communications Commission.
And sometimes, Disney, which owns ABC, takes hits from its own affiliates.
ABC station owners are irritated with Disney's recent decision to air the Super Bowl on many different platforms, including Disney+, ESPN2, NFL Network and ESPNU. The game is already airing on both ABC and ESPN. The aggregate of the different platforms may drop advertising revenue associated with broadcast viewership by up to 35% compared to last year, according to a station group CEO who asked not to be named because the data is private.
Disney has the broadcast rights to this season's Super Bowl. ABC hasn't had the Super Bowl since 2006. Disney got back in the Super Bowl rotation when it struck its most recent media rights deal with the NFL in 2021.
The Super Bowl is a major moneymaker for ABC stations. Some of these are owned by Disney, but the vast majority are part of local station groups owned by companies such as Sinclair, Nexstar and Tegna.
Fox said last year that Super Bowl ads generated more than $800 million in gross revenue across all platforms. The math for the main broadcast network is simple. There are about 85 30-second spots during a standard game. At $8 million a pop on average, that's $680 million.
Most advertising campaigns are national, but some brands buy big markets only. That allows smaller markets to sell advertising locally.
An average primetime audience is around eight million viewers. So, if the Super Bowl gets 15 times the audience, advertising rates increase in lockstep. Super Bowl LX, held in February, had 125.6 million viewers.
About 3% of a typical local affiliate station's annual advertising revenue comes from the Super Bowl when the game is on its air, according to a person familiar with the matter. The number can be much higher for the owned-and-operated big market stations, which typically take in about $10 million in advertising revenue from the Super Bowl, according to a source familiar with the matter.
Local affiliate stations pay the owners of the broadcast networks — Disney for ABC, Comcast for NBC, Fox for Fox and Skydance for CBS — a so-called reverse retransmission fee for the right to carry network programming.
There's a standard process to retransmission fee discussions. Disney pays billions for live sports and then asks its affiliates for money to help pay for them. The affiliates then negotiate with the pay-TV providers and charge them retrans fees.
This is why the broadcast affiliates are steaming. For decades, the Super Bowl was exclusive to broadcast TV. Getting access to the Big Game was a big part of that fee.
For years, media companies have made the Super Bowl available for both broadcast and streaming audiences. Still, this year, Disney has taken a wrecking ball to the broadcast exclusivity of the past.
Disney's different options
Given the game is an ESPN production with ESPN's primary "Monday Night Football" announcing crew — Joe Buck and Troy Aikman — it's reasonable to assume the cable network will get a fair amount of viewership for the game.
Disney is also putting the game on Disney+ — a streaming service that's never been about sports. Airing the Super Bowl on a streaming service isn't new. NBCUniversal's Peacock, Fox's Tubi and Skydance's Paramount+ have streamed the game in the past. But those services allow for geofenced dynamic advertising insertion (DAI), allowing local affiliates to sell commercials to a streaming audience. Disney+, which doesn't typically air live ABC sports programming, doesn't have DAI.
Disney is also airing so-called "alt-casts" of the game on ESPN2 (Eli and Peyton Manning will do their typical "ManningCast"), ESPNU ("Super Bowl LXI Field Pass with The Pat McAfee Show"), and NFL Network ("Super Bowl LXI Playbook with Next Gen Stats").
Disney is even airing a "Star Wars"-themed alt-cast on Disney Channel and Disney XD. The "Star Wars" alternative broadcast will also be on Disney+.
The commercials that run nationally will be the same on all platforms, according to a Disney spokesperson. The "Star Wars" alt-cast will be ad-free.
Disney wants to synergize its platforms to maximize viewership — and collect the ad revenue.
"The Super Bowl is the year's most-watched telecast, and our broad distribution across ESPN, ABC, and Disney+ will give fans everywhere more ways than ever to enjoy the game," according to a statement provided by a Disney spokesperson. "Making marquee live events available via streaming is a well-established industry practice. Fox and NBC have recently offered the Super Bowl on Tubi and Peacock, and we've similarly streamed 'The Oscars' on Hulu and 'Dancing with the Stars' on Disney+, for example. There's nothing unprecedented about this approach as we are meeting the modern consumer where they are."
Still, the totality of it all will certainly lower broadcast viewership. One station group CEO estimated local advertising revenue associated with the game may fall 35%. That executive declined to be named because the analysis is private.
"Any time you fragment distribution, you're destroying value for each of the individual platforms," a station group CEO told me, who asked not to be named for fear of potential retribution. "I don't have a problem with what Disney is doing — I have a problem that there's no acknowledgement that we're losing money."
Affiliate board involvement
This issue of lower broadcast Super Bowl viewership, and associated advertising revenue, is of so much concern that it's currently being discussed at the affiliate board — an elected body of executives across the TV broadcasting industry who act as liaisons between local stations and their parent network (Disney/ABC, in this case).
It's unclear exactly how affiliates may be compensated, if at all.
The decline in traditional TV viewership is pushing Disney to broaden its coverage to new platforms and new audiences that don't watch cable or broadcast TV.
Station executives want Disney to lean in to what continues to be a profitable, albeit declining, business. Several of those executives told me privately they think Disney is doing itself and the broader linear TV ecosystem a disservice by not banding together with affiliates to keep viewers on broadcast platforms.
"Our ABC affiliates are important partners and we always take that into careful consideration when making these decisions," said a Disney spokesperson. "We've successfully navigated similar situations in collaboration with the governing board many times before, and this is no different."
The chairman of the ABC Television Affiliates Association Board of Governors declined to comment.