Jim Cochrane: [00:00:00] Now we’ve got all these different ways that fans can watch our games and, and with Major League Baseball has made it a more watchable sport. While not messing with the integrity of the game and so doing those things, I think the league’s getting to a point where they are meeting the fans where and how they want to consume the sport.

Umar Hussain: Welcome to Navigating Sports Media, a special edition of the Navigating Sports Business podcast. I’m your guest host Umar Hussain. I recently joined Navigate as head of media after working for Disney, ESPN, Comcast, NBCU, and the NBA. It isn’t as simple as turning on your TV anymore, and I’m excited to share a new perspective as I interview some of the most influential leaders in sports media.[00:01:00]

Today I’m happy to be joined by Jim Cochrane and Jon Heidtke, who worked together to help the Texas Rangers take their local Rights Destiny into their own hands, and recently launched the Rangers Sports Network. Jim, who’s the Chief Business Officer for the Texas Rangers. And Jon, the founder and principal of High Key Sports Entertainment.

Welcome guys. Jon, am I saying your last name correctly?

Jon Heidtke: Yeah, pretty good. Umar. Very well.

Umar Hussain: Okay. What’s the background there? I’m as someone whose last name always gets butchered and first name. I love to hear other stories in their background.

Jon Heidtke: So my family is German, or my father’s son of the family is German, which hence the Heke.

And they came over back probably in the mid 18 hundreds. Or Wisconsin dairy farmers, a lot of Lutheran ministers and their outpouring. And so my dad was a Lutheran minister and he moved to Texas after he graduated from seminary. So I was born and raised in Texas and have been a Texan all my, basically all my [00:02:00] life for a few jobs out of a, out of the state.

Umar Hussain: Amazing. Okay. That’s an awesome background. Jim. First question’s for you. The Dallas market is a super interesting media market for the sports industry in particular because you’ve got so many major teams and you’ve got so many different business models. As you guys know, the media landscape is quickly changing and evolving.

Can you give us a quick how you got, what’s the history behind Ranger Sports Network and how do you feel about it after it launched on opening day?

Jim Cochrane: We were thrust into this with the bankruptcy of the former Diamond sports and starting to think about how do we move forward in this process? And so that’s when we brought Jon on board with his deep history running Fox Sports Southwest for as many years as he did to sit down and talk about how, what are our options going forward?

How do we want to do this? And Umar, as you mentioned, the, our market’s gone a number of different directions as far as how the other two teams in the market. Certainly the Cowboys have their national TV deal and don’t have local TV rights, [00:03:00] but. Both the stars and the Mavs had to get to this before we did because their season started before ours did.

And so we were able to see what they were do. But going back before that even, we decided how do we wanna do this? And our principal owner, Ray Davis, ultimately decided through consultation with Jon and others that let’s bring this in house. Let’s be in control of our destiny as it relates to getting our games on the air.

’cause we had two goals when we started this. Number one was, let’s get Rangers games to as many fans as possible. Because through distribution deals and whatnot, the previous ballet, sports Southwest had some struggles with that. So that was goal number one. And then number two, it’s a pretty significant revenue bucket that we had to try to refill as well.

And we wanted to be in control of that as opposed to letting you know, some executives at a at another organization. And we didn’t have line of sight to make decisions that affected that revenue stream. And so ultimately that’s how we decided to do it. We still saw the stars go with free app model with Victory plus.

And then the, the MAs [00:04:00] created their own network with mostly games that were over the air, but the NBA’s rights landscapes changing as well, where there’s more national TV games and whatnot. And we were in a unique position to, to go do this. Some other MLB clubs were too, and they decided to go different routes.

But Jon was big in helping us put this together and a lot of connections in the industry, especially because we had to self-distribute and self-produce these games. And so after four games, I think we’re all smiles and pretty excited with how it started.

Umar Hussain: Yeah, and I’m gonna keep it with you for just a second, Jim, but like how, what, I guess the question I have here is.

Your background is in partnerships. You moved up as an intern through the Texas Rangers organization. We have a lot of listeners who are aspiring sports professionals. So I think your story is amazing there, but here you are. Now you’ve sold, but now you are, you’re distributing. What were some of the things that you learned that you didn’t know as part of this whole PO process that Jon probably illuminated for you, but the experience itself I’m sure lended a ton of [00:05:00] nuggets there.

Jim Cochrane: Yeah, we make jokes internally. I didn’t know what master controller transmission was about nine months ago. And so Jon finds that funny because look, everybody turns games on you. You turn on ESPN or you turn on the channel and the games are on. You don’t always realize what goes into all this until you have to build your own network.

And we’ve got some great folks on our side, Angie Swin, who’s our SVP of Broadcast, largely took the production side under her wing, Jon and one of our owners, and now chairman of. The Ranger Sports, media and Entertainment, Neil Leman, they’re the ones that largely took on the distribution challenge. I helped Angie with production and working with Victory Plus who’s doing our digital rights now.

And then also we worked on an over the air piece that Jon helped us with as well. And so really in concert with all this that came together. But there’s so many things that you don’t think about. But when we sat down and started this, and Jon was part of the process too, you sit down and say, what does a great broadcast look like?

What are some neat things that we could do if we’re starting from scratch that we might, and [00:06:00] so. You know, we added Defy cable cam. We, we, you know, we had drones for the first couple of games, uh, of the season, bringing unique and interesting viewpoints that fans don’t always see, or they only see in really big games.

We wanted to bring that to regular season games for the Rangers too. So, yeah, we learned a lot. Jon knows this. I was at the National Association Center of Broadcasters Convention back in November, December, New York, walking booth to booth, looking at cameras and all kinds of equipment. I didn’t even know what it did, but I got an education on it pretty quick.

Umar Hussain: Jon, how about yourself? So you’ve been in this space, the media landscape like myself for a number of years, and you’ve seen how the evolution’s happening. When Jim called you up and you guys were maybe putting their blueprint together on what your plan is, you’ve seen what the maps had done, you’ve seen what the stars have done.

Where was your head at and did you have an idea of this hybrid model to go out and to do it yourselves? Or was this something I may have having run an RSN before? Where do you see the pros and cons when [00:07:00] and where you guys headed out?

Jon Heidtke: So when we first started sitting down with the Rangers over a year or so ago, looking what their options were, certainly there was the Diamond Sports group that was still interested.

They were coming out of bankruptcy or were still in bankruptcy. But uh, there was still some question would they make it out? And one of the conversations, if they make it out and they offer you some right fees, it won’t be what you were getting. But is it a number that, that might make sense depending on the cost that on Gold Vault starting your own network?

Because again, if you look at what Diamond was prepared to pay was, that would’ve been a a net number. And we’re talking about. We living, it’ll be a gross number, but you still have to pay for production. So I think at the end of the day, the key thing was, and Jim alluded to it, but the ownership, particularly Ray Davis, really wanted to control his own destiny coming off a World Series victory.

If you look at the Rangers territory, when I left Fox Sports Southwest back in 2017, we had over 10 million cable subscribers out there. We were, we basically distributed across all 31 markets that we had in the five state area that the Rangers were able to go to. And it was a very robust network back then.

Obviously times have changed. [00:08:00] Cord cutting has accelerated much faster than everybody we thought. People have are consuming in a variety of different ways right now. And so I think the first thing that we sat down and looked at was, okay, if you control your own destiny, here’s a couple of things we really have to take a hard look at.

One was prior and the last year that the Rangers were on diamond, they were available out of those 10 million homes that had dropped all the way down to 2 million, and so roughly 16% of the universe had opportunities to watch a ranger of baseball. That just wasn’t acceptable. So I think the first thing that we realized, if we look at this distribution model, we’re gonna have to get games on over the air and a broader distribution just so we can prime the pump, if you will, and Ranger fans can have access to on a game of the week type of concept.

So that was important. And when Jim and I sat down and Angie and we put out an RFP to see what the local broadcast station market looked like, and we were, I think we were very pleased that all the different players that wanted to step up with that, particularly the station groups, again, we cover 31 markets.

At the end of the day, we had TEGNA in there. We had Fox, we had Nexstar, ev, every gray television everybody was [00:09:00] interested in in this process. And again, the unique thing is it’d be great if every station group had a station all across our footprint be really steel to get done. Uh, that wasn’t the case. So we had to work with different station entities and those station groups had to work together to build this network.

And so I think that turned out that really well. So that was important that we get games distributed. So theoretically now a hundred percent of that ranger television territory between rabbit ears and over the air had access to the games. Then the second part we had to figure out was, alright, we’ve got this.

Even though the cable industry and the RSN world has experienced significant cord cutting, that is still of the largest source of revenue out there in the local market. So how do we still get these local or the, our distribution partners to want to continue to carry the range of product? And you’re sitting there coming from a Fox model, whereas you’ve got basically.

Five different pro teams across the entire footprint, and you’re having dis discussions with distributors like DirecTV and Charter, and then you come in and say, Hey guys, we’re a baseball team playing primarily six months out of the season. What does that look like? And I think, again, we were [00:10:00] pleasantly surprised by the interest in the distributors, particularly our two largest ones in the f.

Which were, were DirecTV and Charter, so we probably don’t get this thing off the ground if we don’t have those two entities signed up. And we were fortunate to get both of those distributors on board in roughly the equivalent distribution pattern that the, that the old Diamond folks had. So that level of expanded basics.

So that was extremely important. So we get there and then we’ve still gotta go out and work with other distributors in that space. And again, fortunately we were able to get folks like FUBU and some other small operators, and again, we’re not done yet. We’re still having conversations with others, but I think we came out of the gate probably over almost 80% of the marketplace that we had prior, under the, under the Diamond group, and plus you couple the over the air coverage that gave us probably even more distribution than we would’ve had if we, if the Rangers had stayed with Diamond.

Then the last piece of the puzzle, or that three-legged stool was we had to find a direct to consumer partner that could help us get out there. And for those fans who were consuming strictly had cord nevers, never had cable live on their devices, how do we get the [00:11:00] product to those? With our model, we necessarily couldn’t give it away for free and didn’t think that model probably worked from us economically.

We were able to come up with a strategy where we’ve got games on victory plus. And they’re packaging it for the season for roughly 145 games for $120. So a value in that world, but it was never been available to them. So we were able to reach that marketplace again, that had been frozen out of the market.

’cause there was no really direct to consumer option out there. So the fact that we were able to get all three of those things done and basically less than a year, I think is a testament to. Certainly the Ranger’s ownership vision, what Jim and Angie have been able to do and how we’ve all worked together to get this out there.

’cause I’ve talked to my colleagues around the industry and they go, Jon, how did you get all this distribution? What I mean, that’s incredible what you guys are doing, a one team. And so I think from a perspective of where we started, where we are, I think we couldn’t probably be happy where we’ve ended up right now.

And again, hopefully we’ve still got some more distribution to go and we’ll be announcing some launches here as the season goes on as well. So I think everybody’s done a tremendous job out there. And again, I think should be very proud of their efforts.

Umar Hussain: No, [00:12:00] that I’ll have to say like just having lived and breathed this for years, the fact that like everything you’ve rattled off you did in a year is like you guys need to take a step back and at least appreciate what you’ve built and done.

I saw the product on MLB tv. Obviously I’m out of market. Loved it. Have some friends on air there too, Jared Sandler, and it’s really impressive what you guys pulled off. So massive kudos to you. I think taking the destiny in your own hands, we’ve seen the value and the effectiveness of leveraging a very strong live sports strategy can do for a lot of businesses.

There are a lot of big tech companies investing in live sports. The sports fan is engaged unlike any other, except for maybe Taylor Swift fans. But that’s kudos to you guys to figure that out. I think, and I hope, and I’m curious maybe the ducktail into the next question is. Beyond providing the live games, you have this network.

Now you’ve got a direct to consumer experience. Viewers, consumption habits [00:13:00] are changing, your fan behaviors are changing. Have you guys put any thought yet into maybe perhaps a phase two and like how do you, with these new set of rights that you now control and you can leverage, how do you reach sort of those court nevers?

How do you reach those fans that otherwise weren’t watching to engage with your product and perhaps even convert them to come into your ballpark?

Jim Cochrane: I think some of that is, is we did talk to Victory Plus and DirecTV and Charter about additional content and, but we told ’em the first thing we have to do is make sure we get our games on the air that’s primary.

And as you mentioned, doing all of this really in nine months was quite a challenge, and so we focused on that to get started. We’ve only got four regular season games under our belt, although we did eight spring training games as well. Once we’re into the season a bit, then we’ll start looking at these other options to do exactly what you talked about, which is how do we provide other content behind the scenes type stuff, podcast stuff, things along those lines where fans do want additional [00:14:00] content from us.

And a few of those things we’ve done in other ways before, but now we’ve got the platform with which to, to potentially get it out there. And so Jon was involved in talking to the distributors about what that may look like. Providing options, and in a lot of these cases, these channels are dark until we play our game, but we potentially have the option to go forward with additional content, become a 24 7 channel like you’d see with some other RSNs.

Umar Hussain: Yeah, that’s amazing. I first see the sports fan becoming even more like a membership model where you have a, you have access to your club in ways that you never did before. You have fans who just came to snap a picture on Instagram, or you had fans who come for every game and live and die with every breath of the team.

But now you have this opportunity to connect with them directly through your distribution and your live games. They’re your most engaged fans. Can you build out profiles to create, like you do for your season ticket holders? You’ve got events for your premium guys, you’ve got events for your non-prem fans and create this sort of community.

And that’s really the [00:15:00] power of sports. And kudos to you guys for taking that into your hands and actually being able to directly unlock that in your phase two, phase three approach here. That’s awesome. My next question is really, you have your plan figured out over the next few years here where your distribution’s going to be, but, and Jon, maybe this one’s a little bit more for you, but in the next five to 10 years, where do you foresee or how do you foresee Rangers fans watching and interacting?

With the live games and the team,

Jon Heidtke: I think we want, that’s a great question, and I think, again, as the world and particularly media consumption and viewership evolves, I think that you’ve seen not just the Rangers, but everyone else is trying to figure this thing out too. But I think if we would be able to have our content available to Ranger fans on whatever device they want to consume at, if that’s the sitting in their living room watching on a 72 inch screen or, or someone who’s traveling and being able to watch it on their, their smartphone, I think again, that’s what we’re looking to see, how the world this evolves to.

And I think one of the things that we learned through the process. Us when we were [00:16:00] doing the our due diligence, and Jim and Angie sat on a lot of these calls, we met with the multitude of direct to consumer opportunities. We saw the interest that the broadcasting community had in this because again, live sports now is becoming more readily available to some of these station groups, and how can they exploit it?

How can we work together to better tell our story and to your point, bring those Ranger fans along that that funnel. From where they’re casual fans now we get them into the financially, into the app world where we’re able to communicate them and provide them that customization of that content to that avid fan who’s gonna wanna watch virtually every game and consume whatever content that we put out there.

We feel that all of those elements and the data that we’re gonna be able to generate is going to hopefully prepare us in the next three years to super serve those fans again, wherever they watch. And probably if you look at history right now, it is moving more toward that streaming world. So I think that’s something that more and more people are gonna be comfortable with and we’ll have opportunities there with.

Gamification ideas. And again, the extra creative, the content that Jim’s talked about. And because we’ve launched this now, I think there are other, the teams within the region and [00:17:00] other entities that we’re looking for a home that I think are gonna be interested to see what we’ve been able to accomplish and how do we maybe combine forces on that to create an even bigger opportunities and bringing more fans into this ecosystem.

So I think we’ve got the best of all worlds in terms of really a creative company with Victory Plus that we’re using and some of the things that they’re doing, learning from what they’ve already done with the Stars, to now having baseball in that and. They’ve got other teams that they’re talking to. I think we’ve got the over the air relationship that, again, if you’re still looking at what people tune in to watch live, it’s either sports or local news or news.

And I think, again, those partners are, we’re gonna learn from them and find other ways to work with them. And we’ve still got our bread and butter, the, the satellite and cable industry, and again, those folks video still very important content to them. Even though their numbers may be going down, there’s still a large percentage of the universe that will consume their content that way.

So I do think we’re in a pretty good. Base to working with all these different distributors, learn from and hopefully be able to pivot as the industry changes and be able to keep that content coming and providing even more content and getting more data on our fans to [00:18:00] really, again, provide them a type of Ranger portfolio that they’ve never had access before.

Umar Hussain: That’s excellent, and, and maybe that, that, that question dovetails next for Jim. We talked about TV and how TV is changing and evolving, but baseball’s made some changes over the last couple seasons on the rural side. Do you have any thoughts or interesting takes on where you see the. The on field product going in terms of how it changes as a TV product and then that naturally what happens with the TV product there.

And I guess some of that is in reaction to what’s happening with the National Media Rights deal. We heard news with ESPN. Obviously that package is now back into the marketplace, but we’re seeing either tailwinds or even headwinds depending on how you’re looking at it on the national and local level.

Do you have any, where you sit on your seat over there in in Dallas, do you have any thoughts on like where, what you would like to see in terms of what baseball does and as a TV product and but also as a game?

Jim Cochrane: Yeah. Look, I’m [00:19:00] bullish on our content as part of going through this process that, that we’ve talked about here right now.

Our content has value. Especially during the time of year when you know, maybe other TV programming isn’t original. I say sports is the original reality. Television and baseball for us, we play the game every night. So the content does have value. I certainly have confidence in Commissioner Manfred and his crew of people relative to the ESPN package that’s back out in the market to, to find a good home for it.

But part of what we learned on the local level is we have to meet fans where they are for a long time. And what got the RSNs into trouble was if their carrier doesn’t carry our channel, then they’re gonna cut that carrier, go to somebody else. And then they’ll keep watching the game and that’s not what happened.

And we’ve pivoted on our side through this process. Jon talked about our three-legged stool to make sure really. You know, we don’t have to answer the question from our fans anymore of, of basically saying, Hey, I can’t watch your games. How do I watch ’em? Because now we’ve got all these different ways that fans can watch our games and, and with the rules changes that you referenced, [00:20:00] major League Baseball has made it a more watchable sport, banning the shift, shortening the timeframe between pitches and things along those lines while not.

Messing with the integrity of the game. And so that’s made it a more consumable product, both if you’re here at the stadium, but also if you’re watching at home, where now two and a half hours you’re in and out watching a game. But we’re there every night, and so our content does have value. I’m bullish on where that’s headed.

I think the league will do a deal and seeing them getting into some of these other platforms. The Friday night, apple. Game of the week this Friday night, we happen to be the game against Tampa Bay here that’s on Apple tv. That’s a fantastic broadcast production that they put out there. And so doing those things, I think the league’s getting to a point where they are meeting the fans where and how they want to consume the sport.

Umar Hussain: I’ll also ask, and I should have asked off the top, but how has the. Sentiment and the reaction’s been to the launch of the Ranger Sports Network from, and I’m gonna ask, and I, it’s, they always say it’s bad to ask three, four part questions, but I’ll take a liberty here and say, from [00:21:00] everyone, from your media partners, to your players, to your fans, to the front office, how has the reaction been to the product you guys put out?

Jim Cochrane: I’ll take this one first and then I’ll hear what Jon May have to say from industry colleagues as well. Internally front office. We’re very happy with how it went. We put together a very nice broadcast. We did some interesting things with our pre and postgame show that are different than the traditional ones that you’ve seen, and we took it down on the field.

Your buddy, Jared Sandler’s, great at this. He quarterbacks a pre and postgame show. We had a couple different guests come in with him. We use all of our broadcasters. We actually do it as a simulcast now on radio as well. Because we thought to ourselves, we have all this great content on radio. Why are we keeping it only on that platform or vice versa?

We have great content on tv, so now our fans are getting to hear that on both sides, and we have a Hall of Fame radio announcer and Eric Nadel. Why would we not let the fans on TV hear from him as well and his thoughts on the game? So we’re very happy on our side. Production wise, things went very [00:22:00] well.

We’ve heard some from some fans. I try to stay away from social media and comments on there, but from what people have shown me, they’re very good, awful announcing, liked our score bug, which I thought was

Umar Hussain: great because it’s, I’ll have to say I loved the score bug. If folks haven’t seen it, take a look at the score bug.

I’m a sports media nerd, and I always look to see what the new bugs are out there, and this was the first one in a while where I was like. Oh wow, this looks really sleek and clean. Massive kudos for you guys there.

Jim Cochrane: Yeah, and I won’t get into why it ended up that way, but it was interesting because we used Chiron, who’s been a great partner of ours to build out the graphics package.

And at first I think they were pretty hesitant to say, yeah, it’s never really been done before. We don’t know. And then now that it’s out there and we got it working and everything’s gone pretty well there, so kudos to them. They’ve been a great partner for us. But yeah, so far I think the feedback’s been pretty good on, on what we’ve done.

Again, we’re only four games in. We still have things to learn and get better at as we move through the process. But Jon, what have you heard from industry colleagues

Umar Hussain: before that? I gotta say, Jon, you [00:23:00] have to be super proud that Jim dropped, like Chiron, like he must have not been able to do that a year ago.

Jon Heidtke: He’s being kind. When he was talking about what’s a master control, we’re talking about mvpd. He goes, wait a minute, what does all this mean? So all the acronyms. So it was, but to his credit, he and Angie got really up to speed pretty quick through this process. They got their PhD in launching regional sports networks in the last, in the last several months.

Umar Hussain: I love it. And sorry I cut you off, Jon, but yeah, Jim set you up perfectly. What were the thoughts from the

Jon Heidtke: industry? So I think again, and my colleagues again who’ve lived in that space and have seen how the industry has been evolving and it seems how that the leverage has completely shifted from, basically went back in the days from the, uh, the distributors from Fox and we had that we were able to leverage not just the sports networks, we were able to leverage Fox movies and all those things in those distribution battles.

Even though they were high profile, they easily got worked out. And I think, again, just being able to be a one team entity in that space. I think the original reactions was you’re not gonna get any distribution, and if you do, it’s gonna be on these sports tiers that are not very [00:24:00] penetrated very well. So I do think, again, it’s a testament to the Rangers and their brand that we’ve been able to, to still have these distributors see the value of it.

And continue to carry us and value the product and put it in these levels of services that are still relatively highly penetrated in that roughly we call it that expanded basic environment. And I think them being able to see all of the other direct to consumer platforms out there and put it out there and where it’s being carried, and again, talking about how the broadcast community is interested.

And I think we had a unique approach where you’ve seen some of the broadcast station groups take all the games or majority of the games, and sometimes that’s just a lot of sports content and a lot of advertising that these stations have to deal with. And they’re quite not ready for that yet. So I think we came up with a really good platform that allowed the, the broadcast community to dip their toe into this space.

See, see the value of it. They’re gonna get better at it as time goes on. So I think that’s important. As our partners, we wanna be healthy in this process. We still see the, again, the linear bundle. If you’re out there, the, the satellite cable providers still see the value of this. You’re seeing them now pivoting and how they’re looking at doing different things and how they’re [00:25:00] bringing up packaging.

But sports, certainly live sports and local sports is gonna be important to those distribution strategies. And then again, we’re in the brave new world with direct to consumer. But I think again, with the pattern that we’re working with and what I think, again, victory Plus has a lot of that kind of creativity and their DNA too.

So I think we really have a a really good set of partners that we’re gonna work that we’ll be able to all navigate and pivot together as this viewership world continues to adjust to the new distribution platforms out there. So all things considered, if we would put this up on a drawing board and executed the game plan, I don’t think it could’ve worked out anybody where we were when opening day hit last week.

Umar Hussain: That’s a great point and that kind of, and what Jon was referring to for the listeners who may not be as versed on the media side, is you are starting to see the cable providers provide more sports only skinny bundles or slimmer packages because as you mentioned, the headwinds there are effectively the price of the bundle keeps going up because of the value of sports rights.

So it’s almost, it’s a little bit of a cannibalization, but. At the same time, folks [00:26:00] are still wanting to watch this content. People love this content, high intent, high passion, and it’s just a matter of figuring out the best model to get them there. So to have this hybrid model makes a lot of sense. I want to open it up to you guys.

Do you have any questions for me? Not that I’m all that interesting, but. If there’s anything that you’re curious about from our conversation here, happy to give my take as well.

Jim Cochrane: From your standpoint, I know you guys and what navigates put together and with that group, you guys have done quite a bit, especially in the television space, both college and pro.

Where are you guys seeing that industry heading? And I’m thinking about it in regards to, as Jon mentioned, we’re still seeing the larger, the lion’s share of money. With traditional cable and satellite, it’s obviously shifting and maybe it’s leveled out, but what are you guys seeing in that regard when you’re doing your studies and talking to teams and leagues and conferences?

Umar Hussain: No, it’s a great question, and I think the answer depends a little [00:27:00] bit on what platform you’re talking about, but I think some general trends that are happening in the space is that the biggest tier one sports rights, the ones who command the big audiences, who have the tentpole events, they’re continuing to see that value reflected in their Scott Rocket valuations and the license fees they’re getting.

Everyone else, I think, needs to be focused on. Getting to that level, creating those can’t miss moments that draw large audiences because. As Jon has alluded to, cable subscriptions are dwindling. The streaming platforms are playing the subscriber acquisition game, but to the largest extent, like they’ve got NFL, they’ve got NBA, like Amazon’s in over a hundred million homes in the us.

Netflix is almost there. So what is next for them when they’ve acquired every sub it’s driving engagement, and then how do you support the rest of their business lines? It’s no longer just a sub fee ad sales. Play. These are like [00:28:00] multi-dimensional corporations and tech companies that have many different products, whether it’s e-commerce, whether it’s cloud storage, how can your product.

Help them with each and every one of their business lines to drive that value so that the, the new way of coming up with valuations is evolving and changing. We are seeing on our side here, so as we think through with our partners and clients, is how do we take the data that you have? And build a story that is not just a media story, but even just beyond.

So that’s probably the biggest thing we’re seeing here. And as we look towards the space you guys are living in with the local rights and the community, and then I know Rob Manfred and the MLB are doing this today and seeing to look at what’s the right mix for local versus national. You guys uniquely have.

A ton of games that you service. So there just couldn’t be a national package that solves all that. Sure you can eliminate [00:29:00] blackouts, but I think it behooves to not fully lean in your local community, in your local market, which is what you guys are doing with Ranger Sports Network. So you, I think you guys are absolutely.

On the right track, and what I would recommend, but as we see too, is it’s an industry-wide problem, but it requires marketplace solutions. So you have to look at what your market looks like, what your fan base looks like, and it might be that victory plus type model works for you, or a D two COE model, or an OTA model.

Or a hybrid, and that’s where we’re trying to help teams and leagues get smarter and sophisticated about what it is and then what journey should they choose like you guys did. So that’s a long-winded way of me giving you the three, four big trends we’re seeing in the place. But I think. As long as everyone’s focused on delivering the best product for the largest audience of the largest buzz.

I look at the WNBA as an example there with what’s happening with Caitlyn Clark. But not only is she a generational talent, they’ve got this like WWE esque rivalry going with Angel Reese, and people [00:30:00] tune in the casual fan tunes in. The avids are always gonna be there, but the casuals are the one who help you get those checks written.

I want to, I want to transition a little bit to rapid fire questions. We’ll start with Jim and then go with Jon, and then we can maybe snake draft it, go back and forth on each question, if that works. If one of you has a conviction to answer something quickly, by all means jump in, but favorite sports movie of all time, Jim, I’ll have you go first.

Jim Cochrane: Rudy.

Jon Heidtke: Nice Jon. Uh, it’s hard to bet against Rudy, but I had, I watched it just recently ’cause of Gene Hackman’s passing. But Hoosiers,

Umar Hussain: very nice club, both classics. The best advice you have ever received. And Jon, I’ll start with you.

Jon Heidtke: Oh gosh, the best sports advice. That was one of my early bosses back in the day when I was working at at HSC.

And we would sit there and he would just always say, if you believe it in your gut, go for it. If it’s wrong, you’ll learn from it. If it’s right, you’ll know how to trust your gut. So I go for it. And trust your gut, Jen.

Jim Cochrane: I grew up in the [00:31:00] sales world, and so the best advice I got was don’t fight for the last dime.

Umar Hussain: I like that. I like that one a lot. Jon, I think I know your answer here, so I’m gonna ask you first, but what’s the biggest sports rivalry you enjoy watching?

Jon Heidtke: As a fan of graduate of Proud Texas a and MI love the, when the Aggies and Longhorns get together in anything. It could be Tiddly winks, but there’s always a great, just a great rivalry, and I always enjoy being part of that.

Umar Hussain: Jim, yeah, you’re probably biased here, right? You gotta give me your employer, your like professional Texas Ranger employee answer, and then give

Jim Cochrane: your non, well, the professional answer is Rangers and Astros. So that’s been a fun one since they came over to the American League and got a lot of good friends and colleagues that worked down there for the Astros.

So that was fun. And then of course last year in the A LCS had gone seven games and that makes rivalries bigger, especially when you’re playing really meaningful games. My personal one is I went to University of Oklahoma. I’ve been to 39 OU Texas Games in a row, and so me, it’s the second Saturday at the state [00:32:00] fair.

OU versus Texas.

Umar Hussain: Those are good. I need to get to the state fair. I always see amazing food items there too. Uh, globe life in the state fair. I need to make, I need to put that on my list. Who is a mentor who significantly impacted your career? Jon, I’ll start with you here.

Jon Heidtke: Interestingly enough, when I was in high school, there was a gentleman that was a sports anchor in Amarillo, Texas, and he worked for the NBC affiliate.

For whatever reason, when I was growing up in high school, I knew I probably was never gonna be able to play sports at a really high level. That’s is pretty cable. And this guy was able to talk about the sports at six and 10 every night and I said, that’s gotta be the greatest job knowing a man. So he actually went to our church.

My dad let me follow him around and I got a chance to, to become a mentor and he helped me all through my career. His name was Bill Tegan. And he eventually moved to Oklahoma. He was a sportscaster of the year, and unfortunately, if you may remember when the Oklahoma State plane crashed, gosh, it’s probably been 15, almost 20 years, he was the radio voice of Oklahoma State, and unfortunately, he was on that plane that went down and lost his life with [00:33:00] all the other players and staff.

He was a gentleman in my world that really helped me, showed me I could do it, made it seem like it. It wasn’t un unreachable. And so he got me into the sports industry. And then as I transitioned from that on-Air world into the business world, I would’ve never gotten into that world to begin with. It wasn’t for Bill encouraging me and saying I could get in that space.

And again, always just being there for me whenever I had questions for me very early in my career.

Umar Hussain: That’s amazing. Are you guys doing anything on the creator economy front in terms of tapping into like. Local influencers, social celebrities, things like that. For Ranger Sports Network?

Jim Cochrane: No, not on the network side quite as much yet.

We have an influencer group that’s involved just on the Ranger side, largely with coming out to games showing that they were here, that we give them a ticket discount code that they can send all their followers, and we actually did pretty well with it this weekend. So that’s where we’ve started. I would be surprised if we don’t maybe get into that again.

We talked earlier in the episode here about. Getting into those [00:34:00] things once we make sure we’ve got our games up and running and looking great the way we want it to. And so I would suspect as the season wears on and we get into late spring and summer, that we start looking into some more of those kind of things.

But for right now, we haven’t done a ton with it.

Umar Hussain: That to me is the next kind of phase. You see what Netflix has done with like Logan Paul Max is doing with the Paul Brothers, whether you like them or not. It brings eyeballs, it generates interest. And this next generation of fan loves their Twitch streamers, loves their YouTubers, loves their talkers.

And as fans grow up, how do you keep them in your funnel? And how do you keep them interested and engaged and you have the media assets to now test and play and do those sorts of things and the reach. So that’s where I would specifically look in in the life cycle You guys are in. All right guys. Thank you so much.

Really enjoyed this conversation. We could talk hours and hours longer and I’m sure we could, but thank you guys for giving us a little bit of a look under the hood for Ranger Sports Network. We’re excited to see the additional [00:35:00] announcements, what you do differently, do not change the score bug. I love it and, and good luck to the team and you guys for the rest of the season.

Yeah, thanks you, mark. Thanks for the time, Umar.

If you have any questions or comments, please feel free to reach out to us. My email is Umar UA r@nbgt.com, and you can also connect with us on my personal LinkedIn or the Navigate page. Again, this is Umar Hussein with Navigate Joined by Jim Cochrane and Jon Heke. Thank you for joining us on Navigating Sports Media.

Please stay well.