David Berson may run CBS Sports, but today while talking to reporters as part of the network’s NFL season preview, he sounded a lot like the economic witnesses and executives that Walt Disney, Warner Bros. Discovery, and Fox trotted out last week in a federal court house a few miles away.
The three companies were defending the right to launch their joint venture sports streaming app, Venu , against a preliminary injunction push by Fubo as part of its antitrust lawsuit against the trio of media companies. Asked about whether CBS parent Paramount would consider such a platform, Berson said it was not likely but expounded on core issues with Venu that meshed with the defense arguments.
“We think that the broad reach of broadcast TV with our streaming strategy is a phenomenal combination, and it’s been super successful for us,” Berson said. “We also know based on Paramount Plus, and I think you’ve heard this from at least one other entity out there, that having multiple genres on the same platform is very beneficial. So we know that when a fan comes into Paramount Plus for sports, they spend 90% of their time in the service on entertainment programs, on non-sports.”
That is almost the precise argument made by lawyers for the defendants in arguing Fubo’s claims that Venu is an existential threat because it would suck away pay TV subscribers is overblown. The defense attorneys rebutted Fubo’s claims most of its subs sign up for sports by pointing to the popularity of non-sports programming on the virtual pay TV platform.
Then Berson made another point argued by the defendants’ lawyers: Venu has big gaps in its sports portfolio, especially when it comes to the NFL. They made this argument to cast Venu as not a threat to the pay TV ecosystem.
“It’s not a full offering for sports fans, it’s really not,” he said. “Listen, there are a bunch of other sports but just as it pertains to the NFL, if you think about this…CBS, NBC, Amazon, Netflix, NFL Network (all NFL broadcasters), none of that’s in there. So you don’t have the first couple games of the season, you don’t have any Thursday Night Football , half of Sunday afternoon, Sunday night, Christmas, NFL Network, four of the six wild-card games. So you don’t have that. How many Chiefs games? They have 17 regular season games, do you know how many are scheduled to be on there? Three are in. Fourteen are not. So if you’re a sports fan, it’s hard for something like that to serve them.”
Berson recently took over for Sean McManus, the long-time head of CBS Sports. To honor him, CBS’ Studio 43, which is where The NFL Today shoots from, is renamed the Sean McManus Studio 43.
CBS is part of Paramount, which is in the process of being acquired by Skydance and RedBird. Berson said the incoming owners understand the value of sports, but there is a long period before the deal closes.
“As it pertains to sports, even on the call announcing the deal you heard from SkyDance and RedBird, how they value sports. They believe in sports. They value sports. They love our portfolio. They love our strategy, they love our team.”
On other issues, Berson commented the following:
Whether election coverage will depress NFL ratings : “You have to go in knowing that it’s going to suck a lot of air out of the immediate landscape, but yet, the NFL is like a rocket ship that is going to continue to drive interest. And so we might, we might have some impact, but we can only control what we can control.”
On the recent layoff announcements at Paramount : “There’s a lot swirling in the media landscape, but sports is doing incredibly well. The larger company announced that yesterday, of course. So every group’s impacted, we’re largely intact in the sports group.”
Does he see exclusive NFL games on Paramount + : “No plans.”
On how CBS announcers will describe the new kickoff rules : “So the NFL hosted our producers, directors, non-air talent on Monday evening. 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 will see the lineup of the players and say, ‘What’s going on here?’ So it’s incumbent upon us and the league to figure out how we educate people.”
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