Comcast, Like Cablevision, Looks for a Competitive Advantage in High School Sports

A few weeks ago, I wrote about MSG Varsity, the new cable news channel for Cablevision subscribers that covers high school sports in Cablevision markets like never before — and also seems like a direct competitive hit vs. Verizon FIOS and satellite TV, which offer no such local content. Now Comcast is doing something similar, taking the CBS online sports brand Maxpreps, and turning it into a Comcast on Demand offering for cable subscribers in Houston.

MaxPreps, which I had never heard of until I got the Comcast release, offers nationwide high school sports scores; if I were in that market, which I’m currently not, it would probably be a destination. It covers, for instance, every one of the 16,225 high school football teams in the U.S., at least in terms of stats. It has a mobile app, and from a monetization standpoint, no doubt draws off the CBS Sports franchise. Nothing like having a big platform to sell across to make those sales guys happy. (Yes, CBS is BNET Media’s corporate overlord, conspiracy theorists, but that’s not why I’m writing about it.)

So why care about a little on demand cable station in Houston? Because these high school sports brands are another way that cable companies are trying to leverage content as a means to securing distribution as phone companies and satellite providers enter their turf. Of course, the biggest example of this right now is Comcast’s planned acquisition of NBC Universal (I’ll leave for another post what that could mean for the MaxPreps deal), but it’s important to remember that the content and distribution battle is being fought on a number of fronts.

Regulators may squawk at the possibility that Comcast would use its acquisition of NBCU to limit access to NBCU content to its own subscribers, so that probably won’t happen, but these local content deals are a bit under the radar, and serve a similar purpose. Personally, I’d think twice before pulling the plug on Cablevision because it’s often the most immediate source of local news; the high school sports angle is a potent one for millions of families deep into their local teams, and so far, those other purveyors of TV aren’t offering it. However, do you think regulators care at all about these smalltown content offerings that are only available from local cable operators? Of course not.

Previous coverage of cable content at BNET Media:

• Comcast, NBC Universal Marriage Means Something for Hulu … But What?
• Cablevision Expands Its Local TV Content Play with MSG Varsity