With August winding down, it is time for college football. MediaTalk host Mike Reynolds joins three S&P Global Market Intelligence Kagan analysts to talk about the 2024/25 college football season, which has a number of major changes, including conference realignments and a 12-team College Football Playoff. Together, they talk about the demise of the Pac-12, the expansion of the Big 10, the dominance of the SEC and the chances for the ACC. It promises to be a wild year with big rights fees, big ratings and big stories.

With the Summer Olympics behind us, it is time to turn to the Premier League. Considered by many soccer/football fans to be the best of all leagues around the world, the Premier League is the NFL of the UK — by far its most popular sport. This episode pits MediaTalk host and Arsenal-fan Mike Reynolds against an entire family of season ticket holders for the Tottenham Hotspurs, led by S&P Global Market Intelligence Kagan analyst Richard Berndes. Together, they discuss existing and future rights deals for the Premier League in the US, UK and EU; the role of streaming in growing fandom; and the potential for more games to be played in the US. Finally, they tackle the prospects for new and old Premier League teams. 

For the first time in years, the Kagan Media & Telecom Summit was back as an in-person event in New York. Listen in as MediaTalk host Mike Reynolds and S&P Global Market Intelligence Kagan principal analysts Justin Nielson, Scott Robson and Seth Shafer recount the main takeaways from the event. Justin discusses the outlook for political advertising and retransmission consent fees for broadcasters. Scott talks about sports rights shifting from TV networks to streaming services and the implications of the recent NBA rights deal, including the ongoing question over whether Amazon or Warner Bros. Discovery will end up with the NBA's "C" package. Seth also touches on the importance of live sports, while noting that advertisers and consumers are no longer delineating between traditional video like broadcast, cable or even Netflix and user-generated content sites like YouTube and TikTok. Content is still king, but content comes in many forms across many platforms.

This summer brought two separate but significant events that proved one thing: spending on cloud security is set to soar. In July, Israeli cybersecurity startup Wiz walked away from a $23 billion deal with Google, choosing instead to bet on its own growth and pursue an IPO. Around the same time, CrowdStrike released a faulty security update, causing an outage that left flights grounded and IT systems hobbled. This MediaTalk episode explores the effects of these two events and how spending on cloud security — both in terms of enterprise IT budgets and potential M&A — is expected to increase in the coming months and years.

Just ahead of the Opening Ceremony for the 2024 Olympic Games — the first Games in history with a 50/50 split between male and female competitors — this MediaTalk episode looks at the rise of women's sports among fans, advertisers, network owners and investors. The episode builds on a two-part report recently published by S&P Global that reviews more than a century of milestones in women's sports. After touching on the then, the episode also gets into the now, outlining media rightsholders' plans for covering women's sports in the US, UK and EU, with a special focus on the Olympics, basketball and soccer. The episode also highlights the burgeoning revenue, marketing and investment opportunities in women's sports as valuations for teams reach record levels.

Last week, MediaTalk spoke to NBC about their plans for Olympics coverage in the US. This week, MediaTalk host Mike Reynolds chats with Scott Young, group senior vice president of content, production and business operations at Warner Bros. Discovery Sports Europe. Warner Bros. Discovery is the rights holder across Europe for the Games, with Paris representing the first for the combined company. With roughly one week to go before the Opening Ceremony on July 26, Scott gives us some insights on Warner Bros. Discovery's production, distribution and advertising plans for the Paris Olympics. He then goes on to describe not only what the Games mean for Warner Bros. Discovery, but what they mean for the world at large. Let the Games begin!

The Summer Games are almost upon us, with the Opening Ceremony set for July 26. Gary Zenkel, president of NBC Olympics, joins MediaTalk to discuss all the work that has gone into preparing for this year's Olympic Games. Between the Opening Ceremony on the Seine to competition locations at the Eiffel Tower and Versailles, these Summer Games promise to be historic. Gary details NBC's 7,000 hours of coverage, including 1,500 hours on linear, and the importance of Peacock as NBC's hub of Paris Olympic coverage in the US. 

On one hand, the wireless industry is entering a phase where it gets to enjoy the fruits of its 5G labors. Capital expenditures are going down while subscriber totals continue to climb. On the other, the industry is also seeing increased competition from cable operators and their MVNO offerings. S&P Global Market Intelligence Kagan analyst Lynnette Luna gives her outlook for the US wireless industry in 2024.

Worldwide annual video game console shipments are set to fall by almost 50% between 2023 and 2028, according to the most recent outlook from S&P Global Market Intelligence Kagan. What is driving that decline? This episode of MediaTalk seeks to answer that question with help from Kagan analyst Neil Barbour, who leads video game coverage for the consumer technology team. Neil explains why the newest consoles from Microsoft and Sony have been slower to catch on, and he describes how Nintendo's Switch is gearing up to exit the market. The forecast is not entirely grim, however. While hardware sales are down, software sales remain strong thanks to device-agnostic entities like Roblox and Fortnite.

The summer of sports is underway, and soccer fans across the globe are ready to root for their favorite teams and players. Together, MediaTalk host Mike Reynolds of New York and S&P Global Market Intelligence Kagan Research Analyst John Paul O'Sullivan from London share their thoughts about a couple of major international soccer tournaments: UEFA's Euro 2024, which starts on June 14 from Germany, and 2024 Copa América, which begins in the US on June 20. The pair talk viewership, advertising and availability across three continents, and then share their best guesses as to which teams will win their respective tournaments.