I have been in the sports media industry for over 25 years and one thing I can tell you is that while many networks and publishers want to cover sports, not all can do it right.
BET has been one of the latter.
That’s not a slight at the company for sports isn’t something that you can just do. It has to be done right and done by the right people.
That’s why news of the cancelation of 106 & Sports earlier this week after just one season came as no surprise. It was something I knew would happen when the show was first announced last year.
Why? Because BET isn’t sports.
They aired HBCU football and basketball games in the past but the demand, especially from sponsors, wasn’t great. The production wasn’t that sharp and sports audiences never accepted BET as a sports destination.
Live sports is expensive to acquire and produce, and when that isn’t offset by ratings and revenue, the end will inevitably come.
And while 106 & Sports wasn’t a live game, it was a program focusing on sports and urban culture that BET heavily invested in, yet it only lasted 8 episodes, mostly because audiences weren’t interested in sports programming on BET, a fact that has held true for decades.
This is no disrespect to hosts Cam Newton and Ashley Nicole Moss, for they did what they could do make the show a success. But even their talents couldn’t overcome the challenges BET has always faced when trying to navigate the sports realm.
When I was at Interactive One, people with no sports experience would emphatically state that Black media companies like Interactive One and BET needed sports programming.
That always sounds good until the reality of the costs involved and the fierce competition punch you in the face.
It’s a situation everyone faces when entering sports programming.
When Fox launched FS1, they debuted Fox Sports Live to go head to head with ESPN’s SportsCenter. After 4 years of retooling and show rebranding, the show was canceled due to high costs and low viewership.
One of the biggest mistakes I always hear from many aspiring sports media individuals has always been wanting to be the “ESPN” of someting.
The ESPN of Black Sports. The ESPN of high school sports, etc.
Start ups can’t compete with a company that has a head start of over four decades and is armed with tens of billions of dollars. It never works.
What does work is when you have something unique that caters to a niche audience.
That’s why The Shadow League and The Undefeated/Andscape surprised the doubters with years of success. That’s why HBCU Gameday, HBCU GO and HBCU+ continue to grow and cover the space.
When I was running The Shadow League, our biggest wins came when we stuck to what our audience wanted and looked to us for- sports through Black voices. When we veered off track, our audience let us know.
