It’s a good time to be in the women’s sports business, and during the upcoming upfront, the E.W. Scripps Co. will be pushing its WNBA and NWSL franchise nights as a way to get more advertisers spending more money on Ion and its other television properties.
“Scripps is all in with what matters right now,” Brian Norris, chief revenue officer for Scripps, told Broadcasting+Cable.
Better known as a local station owner, Scripps in addition to sports provides national advertisers with its Scripps News and Court TV channels, as well as entertainment networks like Bounce, Grit and Laff that are available both over digital broadcast and free ad-supported streaming television (FAST).
“I believe that our upfront will be focused and led by our women's sports offering that live sports offering and giving advertisers to an opportunity to be first movers with us from a sports standpoint and and using that as a foundation for for everything else that we transact ,” Norris said.
The new Scripps will have its first splashy upfront events in New York and Chicago this week and the theme the company has chosen is “The Power of Connection.”
“Our audience is strong and they continue to fuel growth in our portfolio despite the most significant headwinds in our industry’s history,” Norris said. “Against the marketplace backdrop of double-digit losses, the Scripps portfolio is growing and this is fueled by growth on Bounce, Grit and Ion Mystery.”
Scripps says 95% of its linear viewers watch live — that’s 7% higher than the average cable network among adults 25 to 54.
Those viewers are engaged, according to TVision, which measures how long viewers are paying attention during each commercial break in a show. The attention-to-duration index for Scripps network programming is 40% higher than the competition, TVision said, with Laff coming in first.
“We're connecting with our audiences and our viewers. We're connecting with our fans. We're connecting with our communities,” Norris said. And during the upfront it will be connecting with media buyers and their agencies.
Media buyers and advertisers are stepping up to support women’s sports and Scripps is there to help them.
“Marketers are flooding the zone to meet this increase in demand, and early movers are seeing major returns on their ad spend,” he said. “Investing in women's sports is just good business and it's so much more than that.
Scripps women sports sponsors already include State Farm, DoorDash, Ally and Adobe.
Demand should only increase once record-setting college scorer Caitlin Clark is drafted by the Indiana Fever of the WNBA.
Ion will have eight Fever games on Friday nights during the WNBA’s 14 week season, starting with a game against the Los Angeles Sparks on May 24.
Beside women’s basketball and soccer, Ion will continue to air the popular off-network series that have already made it a Top 5 broadcast network, outperforming every cable entertainment channel, Norris noted.
The addition of sports should bring more advertisers and ad dollars to Ion, Norris said.
“For years Ion has provided incredible efficiencies for advertisers. Now I think we can still provide those efficiencies for advertisers, but we also have something that differentiates us from the competition with women's sports,” he said.
“The benefit for us is going to be to expose advertisers–new advertisers in particular–to the entire scripts portfolio,” Norris said.
Ion has also become one of the most popular FAST channels, which ranks in the Top 5 on Vizio and Samsung in its first year streaming.
Ion, Ion Mystery, Ion Plus, Scripps News and Court TV all run simultaneous feeds across linear and streaming television.
Scripps viewing on fast was up 93% in 2023
“It's almost impossible to find quality professional live sports in the fast environment,” Norris said. “And so we made the decision to make our live sports, fully available in a simulcast within the FAST environment and advertisers are enjoying that.”
Scripps clients benefit because ads that run in both FAST and broadcast deliver 68% more reach than linear alone, Norris said.
Scripps will be launching a new on-air look for Ion (that will be reflected on Ion Mystery as well.) The new look will be supported with a year-long marketing campaign.
Norris also said Scripps has three of the top six networks for delivering African-American audiences, with Ion at No. 2, Bounce at No. 3 and Grit at No. 6
“We have a proven track record of authentic connection with African-American audiences anchored by our Network bounce,” Norris said.
Bounce will be adding a new original series Mind Your Business on June 1 and returning its popular show Johnson on August. 3
Scripps has also be ratcheting up Scripps News, which Norris said was built on Scripps’ 140-year-old bedrock of journalistic Integrity, connected to local communities through 39 local stations newsrooms and 14 national news bureaus the country.
“It's never been more important to support trusted objective journalism, but who can Brands trust? Key industry observers have independently rated Scripps News at the very top of the industry in terms of trustworthiness reliability and brand safety,” Norris said.
Scripps is also selling the 100th anniversary edition of the The National Spelling Bee in the upfront.
"The Bee is one of the most flexible and established partnership platforms, delivering real results for our partners," Norris said. Last year’s Bee generated a 26% increase in perceived value for Scripps’ consumer packaged goods client and a 48% lift in brand favorability for its quick service restaurant client.
In the end, Scripps has a simple upfront message for advertisers.
“Simply put we are planting a flag as a champion for women's sports. We're thrilling viewers with TV's most watched dramas. We're inspiring and empowering multicultural audiences,” Norris said. “We're informing with objective context-driven news, and we're reaching viewers on every TV platform.”
