LibGuides: Sports Journalism & Sports Media: Web Resources

Official Websites of Popular Leagues/Conferences

Who owns the broadcast game rights?

Team/League website (e.g. National Football League Record & Fact Book, NFL Team Media Guides)

Wikipedia: a well-sourced Wikipedia entry includes a References section that might direct you to authoritative sources of information (e.g. National Football League on television)

Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Blackout Rules : A sports blackout is when a sports event that was scheduled to be televised is not aired in a particular media market. This blackout may prevent transmission of sports programming on local broadcast networks and/or non-broadcast platforms such as cable and satellite television. From 1975 to 2014, the FCC had sports blackout rules, but those rules were very limited and rarely involved in the sports blackouts you may have experienced.

NFL tops the list

Image source: Sportscaster. (n.d.). Largest sports league TV contracts worldwide as of September 2016 (in billion U.S. dollars per year). In Statista - The Statistics Portal. Retrieved October 14, 2018, from https://www-statista-com.ezproxy2.library.drexel.edu/statistics/316617/largest-tv-sports-league-contracts-usa/

Network Profile

Network's website (e.g. ESPN, Inc. Fact Sheet from ESPN MediaZone)

Annual Reports of the network's parent company (public companies only)

For example, if you are researching ESPN, parent The Walt Disney Company's 2017 Annual Report contains "estimated subscribers (in millions)" on pg. 2. Company Annual Reports, which also contain financials, can be found in the Investor Relations section of the company's website.

If you don't know who owns the network, you might find the answer in a report from the Federal Communications Commission (FCC):

18th Annual Video Competition Report (formal title: Annual Assessment of the Status of Competition in the Market for the Delivery of Video Programming)