The rise of Scripps Sports, owner of ION, as a player in sports television

Sports Media with Richard Deitsch

Audacy

News, Business News, Sports, Sports News

4.3 • 721 Ratings

🗓️ 25 March 2025

⏱️ 38 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Episode 489 of the Sports Media Podcast features Brian Lawlor, the President of Scripps Sports. As the owners of ION and TV stations around the U.S., Scripps airs both the WNBA and NWSL, as well as a number of local teams including the Stanley Cup champion Vegas Golden Knights. In this podcast, Lawlor discuses ION's foray into the WNBA and NWSL; ION's WNBA Friday night doubleheaders strategy; the impact of Caitlin Clark being on ION eight times this year; the Las Vegas Aces deal with Scripps Sports; ION recording an average audience of 145,000 viewers across 50 NWSL matches last year; the importance of studio programming around live games; his optimism at continuing with the WNBA heading forward; ION's Saturday night NWSL double-header; how he looks at ESPN and others when it comes to women's sports; having the rights to the Big Sky Conference and the great Montana-Montana State showdown; Netflix's foray into live sports and more. You can subscribe to this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and more. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to the Sports Media Podcast. I'm your host, Richard Dice. My producer is Bob Tabador. One guest on this podcast, but a very interesting gentleman when it comes to women's sports in the United States.
0:21.2	Brian Lawler is the president of Scripps Sports.
0:25.5	And for those who are not familiar with Scripps, it's a little research here, 146-year-old media
0:31.1	company.
0:32.2	They own court TV.
0:33.7	They own Bounce.
0:34.6	And then they own 60 local television stations.
0:37.4	So if you are in a market that has a Scripps television station, you are aware of scripts. There's no doubt that people who are listening to this in the U.S. and certainly in Canada may not have heard of scripts. If you are a sports fan, though, you have heard of Ion, most likely. And that is the over-the-air brand that sports fans might know when it comes to scripts.
0:57.2	They've made a bet on women's sports, and it's a bet that's paying off so far.
1:01.5	And we'll discuss that.
1:02.6	And with that, I bring in Brian Lawler, president of script sports.
1:05.3	Brian, welcome.
1:06.5	Thanks for having it.
1:07.9	You got it.
1:08.4	All right.
1:09.2	So let's start here.
1:09.8	Very broad stuff. What do you want Ion to be as far as a strategy as it relates to sports?
1:15.7	You know, we don't plan on Ion being a sports channel. What we do want Ion to be is known as the place for professional women's sports in the U.S.
1:29.7	A destination that it's easy to find women's sports and it's consistent and you always know where you can follow a league or oftentimes a team.
1:41.9	I saw the WMBA schedule for 2025 is out.
1:46.5	You can correct me if I'm wrong about this.
1:47.8	But Ion is airing 50 regular season games?
	...

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