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Cowherd refers to his earlier comments about someone needing to have a well thought answer to every question. He said that Khan laid out 9 months to a year in advance as to what was going to happen with the NFL TV deals and then closer to the deals, Khan nailed the money figures in advance. He asked Khan if he thought ESPN would have been willing to walk away from the NFL. Khan said he believes they would have as it's different leadership now. Bob Iger is leaving and he came up in the entertainment system. Bob Chapek came up through the theme parks system. The entertainment side would be willing to overspend for a talent or entity. No one in theme parks overpaid for a roller coaster. The NFL's pitch to Disney to use their highlights wasn't going to work and the NFL had to sweeten the deal and give them more or else, in Khan's mind, Disney would have walked.
Khan was asked about striking deals with both FOX and NBC for the WWE and whether it was difficult given networks want exclusivity. Did he get pushback from NBCU's rivals from the PeacockTV deal? Khan said there was a recent Supreme Court case where the FCC further deregulated ownership of networks, newspapers, etc. The Court just upheld that the de-regulation was right. It used to be a foreign based company could not own an American Network. It used to be you couldn't own more than one Network in the same city. That has changed. Khan said he expects more mergers and acquisitions. It used to be 100 entities owned 100 things and now it's like 8.
Khan said that he didn't do the deal alone, mentioning Triple H, Stephanie McMahon and others. He said NBCU was the incumbent as they were already working together. Khan knew when he saw a photo of FOX execs and Cowhed to the event, he knew FOX was in. Once they knew FOX was in, it was more prudent to follow the NBA model. Having two enterprises wanting and having your content is better overall.
Cowhed brought the conversation back to re-regulation and talked Jeff Bezos and Amazon and their acquisitions. He believes Bezos probably didn't want to get into a bidding war with the networks as he'd rather buy a network outright. But, Amazon did get the Thursday Night Football. Khan predicted Apple or Amazon eventually buys a network. He said the benefit of the long-term deals with the NFL is if the networks sell, the NFL has an opt-out. Most of those deals don't kick in for several years so we are talking 10-11 years from now. One of the reason FOX sold to Disney is that they weren't big enough to compete with the juggernauts that were being created, so they sold 70% of their assets off to Disney. If you can't get into the business because of broadband, you sell it off. There are smaller companies now but they can always buy other companies or be bought.
Cowherd noted that most airlines are bought because the other airlines want their routes. He says that Amazon and Apple don't know the TV or entertainment world, so it might be a case of them buying the company and keeping the same people in charge. If Amazon bought a baseball league, they could sell the jerseys on Amazon. There are days in Silicon Valley where there are trillion dollar days. Khan pointed out the head of The Washington Post and the Whole Foods CEO remained in power or were pushed upwards with higher positions of power after Jeff Bezos purchased their company. Bezos knows what the execs of those networks bring to the tables and he'd probably tell them to run it the way they've run it, just tweak it so it can help Amazon.
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