The E.W. Scripps Company (SSP): 5 FORCES Analysis [Nov-2025 Updated]

You're looking for a clear, no-nonsense assessment of The E.W. Scripps Company's competitive position using Porter's Five Forces, and I'll map out the pressure points using their Q3 2025 financials, so you can see exactly where the leverage lies. Honestly, the landscape is tough: suppliers like major networks command high affiliation fees, while your customers-advertisers and cord-cutting subscribers-are squeezing revenue hard, evidenced by only $132 million in Q3 core ad revenue. Rivalry is defintely fierce, especially with consolidation moves like Sinclair's stake, and that 4.6x net leverage means every dollar counts. Still, the biggest fight is against substitutes like streaming, even as The E.W. Scripps Company pushes back with 41% CTV revenue growth. Let's break down exactly where the leverage is right now.

The E.W. Scripps Company (SSP) - Porter's Five Forces: Bargaining power of suppliers

You're assessing the supplier landscape for The E.W. Scripps Company, and honestly, the leverage held by content providers is a major factor, especially given the balance sheet pressures you're seeing.

Major broadcast networks definitely command high affiliation fees for must-have content. The E.W. Scripps Company secured a new multi-year affiliation agreement with NBC starting January 1, 2025, covering all of its 11 NBC television stations. This followed a successful renewal with CBS last fall. These network relationships are critical; without them, the value proposition of local stations erodes fast, limiting Scripps' ability to negotiate terms down.

Sports leagues are gaining significant leverage because Scripps Sports needs them for ad revenue growth. The WNBA deal on ION saw linear and connected TV revenue jump 92% over the 2024 season. The upfront cycle for sports volume was up 30% and commanded premium ad rates. The original WNBA deal, which began in 2023, was reportedly worth US$13 million annually. Furthermore, The E.W. Scripps Company is banking on a new agreement with the NHL's Tampa Bay Lightning to boost Q4 core revenue.

The company's financial structure directly impacts its pushback capability. At September 30, 2025, total debt stood at $2.7 billion. Leverage remains high at 6.9x. This substantial debt load, which included issuing $750 million in new senior secured second-lien notes in August 2025, constrains the company's flexibility to aggressively challenge content cost increases from powerful suppliers.

Key technology vendors for digital infrastructure and the ATSC 3.0 rollout hold moderate power. The E.W. Scripps Company is a founding partner in EdgeBeam Wireless, a joint venture with Gray Media, Nexstar Media Group, and Sinclair, leveraging ATSC 3.0 for data transmission. While this venture aims to create new revenue, the underlying technology partners and infrastructure providers for this build-out have leverage, as the transition is capital-intensive and critical for future diversification. The estimated total addressable market for the services EdgeBeam targets illustrates the scale of the underlying technology dependency:

The power of these tech suppliers is moderated by the fact that The E.W. Scripps Company is collaborating with peers to share the development burden, rather than being a single buyer negotiating with a monopoly vendor.

Here's a quick snapshot of the supplier dynamics you are facing:

• Network Affiliates: High power due to must-have content.
• Sports Leagues: Rising power, driving 92% revenue growth in WNBA on ION.
• Debt Holders: Significant constraint with $2.7 billion in total debt.
• ATSC 3.0 Vendors: Moderate power via joint venture structure.

Finance: draft 13-week cash view by Friday.

The E.W. Scripps Company (SSP) - Porter's Five Forces: Bargaining power of customers

You're analyzing The E.W. Scripps Company's customer dynamics as of late 2025, and the picture shows clear pressure points from both distributors and advertisers.

Cable/satellite operators, the traditional gatekeepers to household viewership, maintain significant leverage. This power stems from the ongoing secular trend of cord-cutting, which industry analysis suggests involves mid-single-digit subscriber declines across the pay-TV ecosystem. For The E.W. Scripps Company, this translates directly into carriage fee negotiations. In the third quarter of 2025, distribution revenue, which is the fees charged to these pay TV providers for carriage, remained flat year-over-year at $186 million. While flat revenue suggests current contracts hold for now, the underlying subscriber erosion means The E.W. Scripps Company faces high renewal risk and must concede terms to maintain broad carriage.

Core advertisers, those buying regular commercial time outside of election cycles, are definitely price-sensitive in the current economic climate. For the Local Media division in Q3 2025, core advertising revenue registered $132 million, which was an increase of nearly 2% year-over-year. Still, this modest growth against a backdrop of overall revenue contraction shows advertisers are holding firm on pricing, demanding value for every dollar spent.

The most dramatic demonstration of customer power comes from the highly cyclical political advertisers. The absence of a major national election cycle in 2025 created a massive revenue vacuum. Political advertising revenue for The E.W. Scripps Company plummeted from $125 million in the prior-year election quarter to just $5.1 million in Q3 2025. That represents a year-over-year drop of over 97%, highlighting how dependent a portion of the business is on the timing of political spending, which customers control entirely.

To counter this customer concentration risk, The E.W. Scripps Company leans on its diversified portfolio structure. The Networks division, anchored by Ion, Court TV, and Scripps News, shows where growth can offset local market softness. Connected TV revenue within this segment grew by an impressive 41% year-over-year in Q3 2025. Furthermore, strategic asset management, such as the announced sale of two stations for a combined $123 million, helps manage the balance sheet, which saw net leverage improve to 4.6 times by the end of Q3 2025.

Here is a quick look at the key customer-facing financial data from Q3 2025:

The power held by these customer groups can be summarized by looking at the revenue volatility and the reliance on specific spending patterns:

• Distribution revenue from cable/satellite was $186 million in Q3 2025, flat despite cord-cutting pressure.
• Core advertising revenue growth was only 1.8% to 2%, indicating price sensitivity.
• Political revenue fell from $125 million to $5.1 million, showing extreme cyclical customer dependence.
• The Networks division maintained revenue near $201 million, with 41% growth in the digital/CTV space.
• The company executed station sales totaling $123 million to de-risk the portfolio.

The E.W. Scripps Company is actively managing its customer base by pushing digital distribution, where CTV revenue grew 41%, while the traditional distribution revenue held steady at $186 million. Finance: draft 13-week cash view by Friday.

The E.W. Scripps Company (SSP) - Porter's Five Forces: Competitive rivalry

The competitive rivalry within The E.W. Scripps Company's operating environment remains exceptionally high, driven by industry consolidation and the inherent pressures of the local advertising market.

Intense rivalry exists with major broadcasters like Sinclair Inc. and Gray Media for local market share. This competition is underscored by recent strategic maneuvers. Sinclair Inc. disclosed on November 17, 2025, that it acquired approximately 8.2% of The E.W. Scripps Company's outstanding class A non-voting shares. This move signals aggressive industry consolidation, especially as Sinclair has since submitted a buyout proposal to acquire all remaining shares for $7 per share. Sinclair, which operates 185 television stations across 85 markets, suggested a merger could unlock more than $300 million in annual synergies. In contrast, The E.W. Scripps Company operates more than 60 stations across over 40 markets. Furthermore, The E.W. Scripps Company announced a station swap with Gray Media to create new duopolies in five mid-sized and small markets.

The financial structure of The E.W. Scripps Company itself mandates aggressive competition for revenue and cost control. Net leverage stood at 4.6x at the end of the third quarter of 2025, down from 4.4x at the end of the second quarter of 2025. This leverage level, coupled with high interest costs, means operational efficiency is paramount.

The pressure on the legacy local business is evident in the financial results. The Local Media segment profit dropped 36.7% in the second quarter of 2025, falling to $55.8 million from $88.1 million in the second quarter of 2024. This decline was heavily influenced by the off-year political advertising cycle, where political revenue plunged to just $2.6 million from $28.2 million year-over-year. Core advertising revenue in Local Media still saw a decrease of 1.9% to $137 million in Q2 2025. Even in the third quarter, Local Media segment profit was nearly $53.0 million, compared to $161.0 million during the prior year's political cycle.

Competition is also fierce in the national network space where The E.W. Scripps Company leverages its ION and Court TV assets against larger media conglomerates. The Networks division, however, has shown resilience through digital growth. Scripps Networks segment profit reached $55.9 million in Q2 2025, a 32% increase over the $37.7 million profit in Q2 2024.

Here is a comparison of scale and recent performance metrics between the two major local broadcasting players:

The strategic response to this competitive environment involves leveraging sports rights and digital distribution:

• Connected TV revenue for Scripps Networks surged 57% year-over-year in Q2 2025.
• Projected 2025 advertising revenue from streaming networks (including ION, Court TV) is more than $120 million.
• The WNBA season on ION saw a 92% increase in revenue over the 2024 season.
• Local Media core advertising revenue was up 2% in Q3 2025, bolstered by the company's sports strategy.

The E.W. Scripps Company (SSP) - Porter's Five Forces: Threat of substitutes

You're looking at a landscape where every screen is a potential competitor for The E.W. Scripps Company's audience attention and advertising dollars. The threat of substitutes is intense, driven by the migration of viewers to on-demand and digital-first experiences. Local TV is facing a disruption perhaps even bigger than what newspapers saw a decade ago, and it's happening fast.

The acceleration of cord-cutting is a major factor here. While The E.W. Scripps Company is actively fighting this trend by growing its digital footprint, the underlying consumer behavior is clear. For instance, in a recent survey of over 1,000 Chicago-area residents, smartphones have overtaken television as the primary source for local news. This shift means that content from social media and digital-only outlets is directly substituting traditional local broadcasts.

Here's a quick look at the data illustrating this substitution pressure on traditional local news consumption:

The E.W. Scripps Company is making significant defensive moves by aggressively pursuing distribution on streaming platforms for its networks. This strategy is yielding tangible financial results, which you can see in the Connected TV (CTV) segment performance. The CTV revenue growth of 41% in Q3 2025, following 57% growth in Q2 2025, is a direct countermeasure to substitution. Management projects the 2025 CTV revenue stream to exceed $120 million, a nine-figure line created in just a few years. Still, streaming now accounts for 20% of all Scripps Networks viewing.

The threat isn't just about viewing habits; it's about advertising dollars following eyeballs. While The E.W. Scripps Company managed to grow its Local Media division's core advertising revenue by 1.8% to $132 million in Q3 2025, this growth was overshadowed by the collapse of political advertising revenue, which fell from $125 million in Q3 2024 to just $5.1 million in Q3 2025. This massive swing highlights the vulnerability of the local ad model to cyclical political spending, which digital platforms do not share.

Digital platforms, including social media and other digital-only news outlets, offer advertisers hyper-targeted capabilities that traditional local ad buys struggle to match. This forces The E.W. Scripps Company to pivot its own digital offerings. The company has already taken steps to streamline, such as ending the over-the-air broadcast feed of Scripps News, reverting the channel to a streaming-only feed.

Consider the following points regarding the digital substitution challenge:

• Smartphones are now the primary source for local news in key markets.
• Only 15% of surveyed consumers are willing to pay directly for local news coverage.
• Local OTT app audiences grew by 69% year-over-year as of August 2025.
• The E.W. Scripps Company's CTV revenue growth was 41% in Q3 2025.
• The company is projecting over $120 million in CTV revenue for 2025.

The E.W. Scripps Company (SSP) - Porter's Five Forces: Threat of new entrants

You're looking at the barriers to entry for The E.W. Scripps Company, and honestly, it's a tale of two media worlds: the old broadcast structure versus the new digital streaming landscape. For a new player, the hurdles are drastically different depending on which path they choose.

The traditional broadcast side presents significant, almost insurmountable, barriers. To compete directly in local television, a new entrant needs access to scarce resources like broadcast spectrum and must navigate the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) licensing process. The E.W. Scripps Company itself is noted as the nation's largest holder of broadcast spectrum, which is a massive advantage. Furthermore, existing ownership rules limit any single entity from reaching more than 39 percent of the American television audience. This regulatory and resource scarcity acts as a strong moat against new, large-scale terrestrial competitors.

However, the digital distribution route-streaming apps and FAST channels (Free Ad-supported Streaming Television)-has a much lower barrier to entry for content delivery. Still, establishing a recognized national brand requires serious, sustained capital. The E.W. Scripps Company is actively investing in this area, projecting its full-year 2025 capital expenditure (CapEx) to be between $45 million to $50 million. This figure, while being managed down from previous expectations, still represents a substantial, ongoing investment required just to maintain and grow infrastructure, which a new entrant would also need to match.

Building a recognizable national network brand, like The E.W. Scripps Company has done with ION, Court TV, Grit, and Laff, is a long-term content play. It takes time and deep pockets to build audience trust and scale. For The E.W. Scripps Company's networks division, this investment is paying off in the digital space, where Connected TV (CTV) advertising revenue is projected to hit more than $120 million in 2025, with streaming now accounting for 20 percent of all Scripps Networks viewing. A new entrant would need to replicate this multi-year, nine-figure revenue stream from scratch.

The competitive pressure from new entrants is most visible in content acquisition, particularly sports rights. Tech giants are now major players, driving up the cost of premium live content. Spending on US sports rights alone reached $30.5 billion in 2025. Amazon, for example, is increasing its share of streaming sports rights spend to 23 percent following its acquisition of NBA rights, a deal estimated to be worth around $2.8 billion per year. Overall streaming sports rights spend is projected at $12.5 billion for 2025. This environment means any new entrant looking to immediately gain traction through sports must be prepared to compete against deep-pocketed technology firms with billions in available capital.

Here is a quick comparison of the capital requirements and market scale:

The threat of new entrants is therefore bifurcated. It is extremely high for digital-native competitors willing to spend heavily on content and distribution, but it remains low for those attempting to enter the traditional, regulated, and spectrum-constrained local broadcast market.

Key factors influencing the threat level include:

• FCC ownership rules cap reach at 39 percent.
• The E.W. Scripps Company holds the nation's largest broadcast spectrum.
• Streaming now accounts for 20 percent of The E.W. Scripps Company Networks viewing.
• Total streaming sports rights spend is projected at $12.5 billion in 2025.

Finance: review the Q4 2025 operating budget to see if CapEx can be held at the lower end of the $45 million projection.