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Greg2600
join:2008-05-20
Belleville, NJ

Greg2600 to bohratom

Member

to bohratom

Re: Regional Sports Network fees coming for Midatlantic region..

Complain all you want. The teams are the ones reaping the money rewards, because the regional's pay them big bucks. Reason is that they get ratings! Regional sports are not available on the internet, for the most part, and people want to watch them. Every time a provider tries to play hard ball, the fans start crying. They cry to politicians, who then attack the providers. When YE$ Network was created, Cablevision refused to take them without directly charging subscribers, like the old Sports Channel. Well, Yankee fans screamed and cried like babies, and then the town officials threatened to cancel CV's franchise agreement.

russty
@nih.gov

russty

Anon

Is this something non sports fans are going to be able to opt out of? (and presumably lose the 1-2 local sports networks?
nfotiu
join:2009-01-25

nfotiu to Greg2600

Member

to Greg2600
It's not ratings. It is the fact that the people who want them, really want them, and will switch providers to get them combined with favorbably legislation that keeps this model going.

Take the LA Dodgers for example, 350 million per year!!! »espn.go.com/los-angeles/ ··· 4-report

You know how many people watch an average Dodger's game. 50,000!!

So, the 5 million households in the Dodger's market are going to be paying 70 dollars a year for 50,000 of them to watch their games.

Either the Dodger's or Time Warner would go bankrupt over night if RSNs were forced to a la carte. If they were to get that same revenue from only people watching their games (which is the way it should be), they'd have to charge $7,000 a year for their new network!

This model is a scheme that will not last much longer. And hopefully the Dodger's deal is the straw that makes it all come crumbling down.
crgauth
join:2004-05-18
Glen Burnie, MD

crgauth

Member

said by nfotiu:

Take the LA Dodgers for example, 350 million per year!!! »espn.go.com/los-angeles/ ··· 4-report

You know how many people watch an average Dodger's game. 50,000!!

So, the 5 million households in the Dodger's market are going to be paying 70 dollars a year for 50,000 of them to watch their games.

Either the Dodger's or Time Warner would go bankrupt over night if RSNs were forced to a la carte. If they were to get that same revenue from only people watching their games (which is the way it should be), they'd have to charge $7,000 a year for their new network!

This model is a scheme that will not last much longer. And hopefully the Dodger's deal is the straw that makes it all come crumbling down.

Couple of comments:
I did some looking and found that the Dodgers averaged a 1.94 rating last year.
Also saw where LA market has near 13M viewers. So that means that the Dodgers averaged 252K viewers/game. That would be near $1400/viewer/year.
But when you average that out to all households, it drops dramatically. And it doesn't count the ad revenue they get as well.
Doesn't seem too hard to me to make money.
All of that being said, I see it as a never ending spiral.
Players want more money. Teams say they need more money. TV rights pay them more money. Cable fees (and ticket prices go up).
Players see the team making more money and then want more.
Repeat.
nfotiu
join:2009-01-25

nfotiu

Member

I thought I had read 50,000. I see from here it is 67,000 households. »www.sportsbusinessdaily. ··· ngs.aspx

111,000 in better years
»www.halosheaven.com/2009 ··· tings-in

Still, I believe my point stands, that only 1-2% of the population will be watching the new Dodger's only channel, that is charging at least 60 dollars per year in carriage fees.

A tv viewer is worth about 10 cents per hour. If 100,000 people are watching a game, that is about $30,000 per game in advertising revenue they are getting. So they probably get in the neighborhood of 5 million in advertising revenue for a Dodgers season. The other 345 million is covered by carriage fees for the new network which is being paid by all subscribers, even though 98% of them are not watching their games.