Raphael Stevens

ESPN and the NCAA have signed a new media rights agreement that runs from 2024 to 2032.
The deal is roughly triple the value of the current deal.
The agreement will provide more exposure and revenue to women’s sports.

An ESPN GameDay logo is displayed at the Capital One Orange Bowl game between the Georgia Bulldogs and the Florida State Seminoles at the Hard Rock Stadium in Miami Gardens, Florida, on Dec. 30, 2023.
Peter Joneleit | Icon Sportswire | Getty Images

The NCAA and ESPN have reached a new eight-year media rights deal worth more than $115 million annually, as the value of sports media rights reaches new heights.
The new agreement carries an annual value of roughly three times the current 14-year deal, which pays about $40 million annually.

An NCAA spokesperson confirmed an additional 25%, or $28.75 million annually, will help with production and marketing costs.
“ESPN and the NCAA have enjoyed a strong and collaborative relationship for more than four decades, and we are thrilled that it will continue as part of this new, long-term agreement,” said ESPN Chairman Jimmy Pitaro.
The new deal is effective Sept. 1 and runs through 2032. It will include the rights to 40 NCAA championships — 21 women’s and 19 men’s events — as well as exclusive championship coverage of all rounds for women’s basketball, women’s volleyball, women’s gymnastics, softball, baseball and FCS football. It also provides international rights to the 40 championships and the Division I men’s basketball championship.
“Having one, multi-platform home to showcase our championships provides additional growth potential along with a greater experience for the viewer and our student-athletes,” NCAA President Charlie Baker said in a statement.
As the sports media landscape changes, women’s sports have been a bright spot, as they notch record ratings in recent years. ESPN has benefited through its airing of the NCAA women’s basketball tournament and the WNBA playoffs, among other sports.

Endeavor’s IMG and WME Sports, who consulted for the NCAA on the deal, say about 57% of the value of the deal is tied to women’s college basketball specifically, Baker told the Associated Press.
The NCAA said the dramatic increase in the value of the NCAA’s media rights will allow it to explore revenue distribution units for the women’s basketball tournament, a topic the organization began discussing last year.
Last year, complaints of inequality overshadowed the women’s tournament as several players posted on social media that their facilities were significantly worse than the men’s facilities.
“Concurrent with the terms of the new media rights, several enhancements to student-athlete benefits across all three NCAA divisions will take effect, and this deal will help fund those important programs. And the national, integrated platform the family of ESPN networks provides will help grow the visibility of many NCAA sports, particularly for our women student-athletes,” said Linda Livingstone, chair of the NCAA Board of Governors and Baylor University president.
ESPN and the NCAA’s relationship has lasted more than 45 years, since ESPN launched in 1979.
The NBA has the next major professional sports rights up for grabs. The league is in negotiations with a plethora of interested parties as it looks to make its decision before the current deal expires following the 2024-25 season.Don’t miss these stories from CNBC PRO: More

Ford Motor reported sales of nearly 2 million vehicles in 2023, a 7.1% increase from the previous year.
But its sales increase is lower than the overall industry’s growth.
Ford’s F-Series continued to top the charts as America’s best-selling vehicle.

2024 Ford F-150 PowerBoost Platinum hybrid

DETROIT – Ford Motor’s U.S. sales increased about 7% last year, marking the automaker’s best sales since 2020 but coming in lower than the overall industry’s growth.
Ford on Thursday reported sales of nearly 2 million vehicles in 2023, a 7.1% increase from the previous year. The company finished third in overall U.S. sales, trailing Toyota Motor and General Motors.

Ford’s overall 2023 sales are lower than the industry’s sales growth, which auto data firm Motor Intelligence reports topped 15.6 million last year — marking a 12.3% increase from 2022 and the segment’s best performance since more than 17 million vehicles in 2019.
“In a year of challenges, from a labor strike to supply issues, our amazing lineup of gas, electric and hybrid vehicles and our fantastic dealers delivered solid growth and momentum. We have the products that customers want,” Ford CEO Jim Farley said in a release.
Electric vehicle sales came in at 72,608 for the year, up 18% from 2022 and boosted by nearly 26,000 EVs sold during the fourth quarter. Ford said sales of its electric F-150 Lightning pickup — which saw price adjustments earlier this week — were up 74% during the fourth quarter. Sales of the Mustang Mach-E notched the best annual tally since the vehicle launched in 2021, the company said.
Electrified vehicles, including hybrids and EVs, represented only about 10% of Ford’s overall sales in 2023.
Hybrid sales were up 25% during the full year over 2022 and up 55% in the fourth quarter.

For the 47th year in a row, Ford F-Series was America’s best-selling truck and America’s best-selling vehicle for the 42nd year in a row. Sales topped 750,000 units last year, up about 15% compared to the previous year.
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Correction: This story has been updated to correct that Ford Motor’s 2023 sales were the automaker’s best since 2020. More

Peloton is partnering with TikTok to bring short-form fitness videos and other content to the social media channel.
The partnership comes as Peloton looks to attract a wider array of customers and boost subscribers amid falling sales and profits.
In May, Peloton rebranded as a fitness company “for all,” and is still working to get that message out to the public.

Peloton has launched a partnership with TikTok.
Courtesy of: Peloton

Peloton launched a partnership with TikTok on Thursday as part of its strategy to change its public perception and attract a broader array of customers as sales and profits fall. 
The partnership will create a new fitness hub on the social media platform dubbed “#TikTokFitness Powered by Peloton.” It will feature short-form fitness videos, longer live classes, content from Peloton’s instructors and collaborations with TikTok creators. 

Shares of Peloton rose about 10% in pre-market trading after the news was announced.
It comes about six months after Peloton rebranded itself as a fitness company “for all” and launched a tiered pricing strategy for its app. The changes were designed to position Peloton as more than just a bike company and bring in new customers who may not have been able to afford its pricey connected fitness equipment but could be interested in a monthly subscription for its content. 
“On the one hand, there’s a longer-term goal around changing perceptions around who Peloton is for to multiple different types of audiences and I think one of the real strengths of TikTok … is that it increasingly reaches everyone, including the younger audience,” Oli Snoddy, Peloton’s vice president of consumer marketing, told CNBC in an interview. In the short term, the partnership will seek to build on what Peloton says has been a successful relaunch by boosting metrics such as app downloads and conversions, said Snoddy. 
During the Covid-19 pandemic, Peloton became a Wall Street darling after gyms shuttered and consumers flocked to buy its stationary bikes and at-home treadmills. But demand plummeted when the virus receded and consumers returned to normalcy. 
In the three months that ended Sept. 30, Peloton lost 30,000 members and revenue fell to $595.5 million, down from $757.9 million three years earlier at the height of the pandemic. 

Peloton CEO Barry McCarthy, who replaced the company’s co-founder John Foley in February 2022, has been working to rightsize the business and set it up for long-term growth and profitability. He has focused on boosting Peloton’s subscriber count and opening up new pathways to owning Peloton equipment by offering a rental service and refurbished options. 
While the initiatives are showing early signs of progress, Peloton still isn’t making money off the members that it has, making partnerships with companies such as TikTok and Lululemon critical to its long-term success. 
“We have over a billion users across the globe of all demographics,” Sofia Hernandez, TikTok’s global head of business marketing, told CNBC. “People from 16 to 60 are on the platform and when I think about [Peloton’s] campaign of ‘anyone and anywhere,’ there’s not a better place to reach that level of audience we have, that level of a diverse audience.” 
Hernandez noted that the partnership will go beyond workout videos and will include “behind the scenes” videos such as “get ready with me” clips and other fitness-adjacent content that gives people on TikTok an inside look into Peloton and its instructors. At first, the content will feature well-known instructors such as Cody Rigsby and Ally Love, but the partnership also hopes to introduce some of Peloton’s lesser-known instructors to a wider audience and boost their followings. 
“We know that when people experience Peloton, they really get it, they fall in love,” said Snoddy. “This is really about taking the instructors and the content we have and kind of dimensionalizing it to a broader audience on TikTok.”Don’t miss these stories from CNBC PRO: More

Online spending during the holiday season shot up nearly 5% to $222.1 billion in November and December, according to Adobe Analytics.
Shoppers got drawn in by retailers’ deep discounts and leaned on buy now, pay later more than in previous holiday seasons.
Yet Adobe’s holiday total excludes in-store spending and may not capture whether consumers spent more than they can afford.

A UPS worker sorts packages in New York on Dec. 18, 2017.
Adam Jeffery | CNBC

Online spending rose 4.9% year over year, setting a record for e-commerce during the holiday season, as shoppers pounced on discounts and leaned on buy now, pay later to cover more of their purchases, according to Adobe Analytics.
Sales totaled $222.1 billion on retailers’ websites and apps from Nov. 1 to Dec. 31, according to Adobe.

Adobe’s data covers more than 1 trillion visits to U.S. retail websites, 100 million unique items and 18 total product categories.
This year, more purchases rather than higher prices drove spending, Adobe said.
Prices have been falling across many product categories sold online, such as electronics. E-commerce prices have dropped for over a year, and were down 5.3% year over year in December, according to Adobe’s Digital Price Index, which tracks online prices across 18 product categories. If Adobe adjusted for inflation, online consumer spending would have grown even more during the holiday season.
Strong spending during the critical season could bode well for Walmart, Amazon, Target, Macy’s and other retailers, if they attracted a healthy share of those dollars. For most major retailers, fourth-quarter earnings season kicks off in February, and those reports will give a clearer picture of the companies that gift-givers and party hosts favored.
Yet strong online holiday sales may not mean consumers will spend freely in the new year. Some shoppers may shell out more than they can afford during the peak shopping season, and could pull back in the months ahead as the bills come due.

One reason for big spending in November and December? Big discounts. Adobe found that discount levels hit record highs during the holiday season.
For example, discounts peaked at 31% off listed price in the electronics category, compared with a peak of 25% during the holidays in 2022. Price cuts topped out at 24% for apparel, compared with a peak of 19% during the holidays in 2022.
Cyber Week, the five days between Thanksgiving and Cyber Monday known for compelling deals, accounted for $38 billion of online holiday sales — or nearly one in five dollars spent during November and December. Spending during the promotional period rose 7.8% year over year.
Buy now, pay later, a financing option that has become easier to use on retailers’ websites, proved more popular this holiday season, too. The payment plans, which are offered by companies like Affirm and Klarna, allow shoppers to pay off items in smaller installments over time.
Use of buy now, pay later hit an all-time time and contributed $16.6 billion in online spending during the holiday season, Adobe found. That’s a 14% jump from the year-ago holiday period.
Other holiday spending totals have come in rosier than expected, too. Retail sales during the holiday season, excluding automotive sales, increased 3.1% in the U.S. year over year, according to preliminary data from Mastercard SpendingPulse. The company measures in-store and online retail sales across all types of payment, and its total is not adjusted for inflation.
In a news release, Mastercard Economics Institute’s Chief Economist Michelle Meyer credited a healthy jobs market and easing inflation for giving consumers confidence to spend.
The company also found sharp growth in online spending during November and December. Online retail sales rose 6.3% year over year compared to a 2.2% increase for in-store spending, according to Mastercard. But online shopping remains a smaller portion of overall holiday spending. More

Walgreens reported fiscal first-quarter adjusted earnings and revenue that topped expectations, but cut its quarterly dividend nearly in half.
The retail pharmacy giant slashed its dividend to 25 cents per share from 48 cents per share to “strengthen its long-term balance sheet and cash position,” according to CEO Tim Wentworth.
Walgreens reiterated its fiscal 2024 adjusted earnings guidance of $3.20 to $3.50 per share. 

Walgreens reported fiscal first-quarter adjusted earnings and revenue that topped expectations on Thursday, but cut its quarterly dividend nearly in half. 
The retail pharmacy giant slashed its dividend to 25 cents per share from 48 cents per share to “strengthen [its] long-term balance sheet and cash position,” CEO Tim Wentworth, who officially took the helm during the quarter, said in a statement. 

Walgreens’ dividend yield is now 3.9%, based on Wednesday’s closing price. That’s down significantly from its prior yield of more than 7%, which made the company the highest-paying dividend stock in the Dow Jones Industrial Average. 
It also marks the company’s first dividend cut in nearly five decades. The dividend will be payable on March 12.
The dividend reduction comes as Wentworth, a health-care industry veteran, tries to steer the company out of a rough spot. 
Shares of Walgreens plummeted 30% last year as the company grappled with weakening demand for Covid products, low pharmacy reimbursement rates, increased pressure from online retailers, labor unrest among pharmacy staff in the fall, an uneven push into health care and a challenging macroeconomic environment.
But Thursday’s earnings beat marks a turnaround from October, when Walgreens missed earnings estimates for two straight quarters for the first time in nearly a decade.

Here’s what Walgreens reported for the three-month period ended Nov. 30 compared with what Wall Street was expecting, based on a survey of analysts by LSEG, formerly known as Refinitiv:

Earnings per share: 66 cents per share adjusted vs. 61 cents expected
Revenue: $36.71 billion vs. $34.86 billion expected

The company reported a net loss of $67 million, or 8 cents per share, for the fiscal first quarter.
That compares with a net loss of $3.7 billion, or $4.31 per share, during the same period a year ago, when Walgreens was ordered to pay a multibillion-dollar settlement for litigation alleging the company helped fuel the nation’s opioid crisis. 
The net loss in the most recent quarter included a $278 million after-tax charge related to Walgreens’ forward sale of shares of drug distributor Cencora, formerly known as AmerisourceBergen. 
Excluding certain items, adjusted earnings per share were 66 cents for the fiscal first quarter. 
Walgreens booked sales of $36.71 billion in the quarter, a roughly 10% jump from the same period a year ago. 
The company said revenue growth in its U.S. retail pharmacy and international business segments, and sales contributions from its U.S. health-care division, drove the increase. Walgreens is making significant investments to transform from a major drugstore chain to a large health-care company. 
Despite the quarterly beats, Walgreens reiterated its fiscal 2024 adjusted earnings guidance of $3.20 to $3.50 per share. 
Walgreens expects lower Covid-related sales, along with a higher tax rate and lower sale and leaseback contributions, to offset earnings growth. 
The company did not indicate in the earnings release whether it would also maintain its previous revenue guidance of $141 billion to $145 billion. 
Walgreens said during its quarterly earnings call in October that the company expects more than $1 billion in savings during fiscal 2024 due to its ongoing cost-cutting initiative, which involves closing unprofitable stores and using artificial intelligence to drive supply chain efficiencies, among other efforts.

Sales growth across pharmacy and health care

Walgreens’ U.S. retail pharmacy segment generated $28.94 billion in sales in the fiscal first quarter, an increase of more than 6% from the same period last year. Comparable sales at pharmacy locations rose 8.1%. 
That segment operates more than 8,000 drugstores across the U.S., which sell prescription and nonprescription drugs as well as health and wellness, beauty, personal care, and food products. 

A sign advertises Covid vaccine shots at a Walgreens Pharmacy in Somerville, Massachusetts, on Aug. 14, 2023.
Brian Snyder | Reuters

Pharmacy sales for the quarter rose 10.7% compared with the fiscal first quarter of 2023, as comparable sales climbed more than 13% due to price inflation in brand medications and “strong execution” in pharmacy services, Walgreens said. 
Total prescriptions filled in the quarter including immunizations totaled 311.6 million, which is flat compared with the same period a year ago. 
Walgreens cited a weaker respiratory virus season this fall, which is blunting demand for medications and vaccines. The company also pointed to Medicaid redeterminations, which are routine reviews each state’s Medicaid agency conducts to determine whether beneficiaries still qualify for coverage. 
Retail sales for the quarter fell 6.1% from the same period a year ago, and comparable retail sales declined 5%. Walgreens pointed to the weaker respiratory season as well as “macroeconomic-driven consumer trends” and Thanksgiving holiday store closures – a first for the company last year — to explain the decrease. 

More CNBC health coverage

Meanwhile, the company’s international segment, which operates more than 3,000 retail stores abroad,  racked up $5.83 billion in sales in the fiscal first quarter. That’s a rise of more than 12% from the same period a year ago. 
The company said sales from Walgreens’ U.K. subsidiary, Boots, grew more than 6%.
Revenue from Walgreens’ U.S. health-care segment came in at $1.93 billion, up from $989 million in the same period last year. 
That division includes primary-care provider VillageMD, which includes urgent-care provider Summit Health, and CareCentrix, which coordinates home care for patients after they’re discharged from the hospital. 
Walgreens will hold an earnings call with investors at 8:30 a.m. ET.
— CNBC’s Bertha Coombs and Robert Hum contributed to this report.
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