It would drive the price of current packages up as more people left.

alas, the bubble bursts

Ratings are not driving this. It is all the carriage fees that FSN and their equal can get.

The ratings for the Rangers is pretty pedestrian. It is absolutely not driving the total figure. They mainly need enough ratings to cover the production costs via ad revenue.

It's a strange situation. Nobody watches the networks but they still rake in money because people don't mind their cable bill being 150 bucks a month.

If you cut TV spend on sports to ala carte the revenue would barely cover the cost to put the broadcast on the air. It is a very tenuous situation for sure, and as more people cut their cable off the situation is going to get more dire.

This risk spills over to college sports as well. I think for this reason the TV broadcast rights have peaked.

culdeus


I agree... the way content is broadcast is changing, and I think we've peaked. It is what is driving things like MLB.TV and the SEC Network.

Most people pay around $50/mo for landline phone, over $100/mo for internet, $150/mo for Cell... and then another $120/mo for Cable.

That's $420/mo for communications... or $5K/yr.

Landlines have been diminishing, while the other 3 have increased, along with the pricing.

For us, we only watch live sports and the rest is DVR'ed. Most of the DVR stuff we can get online for free.

I haven't looked at MLB.TV, but may soon. If I can get MLB.TV and the SEC Network on our smart TV... I'd love to snip Cable.

MLB.TV will black out local games (unless you use ways to get around it).

Sports will be what keeps cable going the longest and is why so many channels are getting involved, especially college football. If you want to watch every game of 2 teams you pretty much have to have cable.

quote:

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Most people pay around $50/mo for landline phone, over $100/mo for internet, $150/mo for Cell... and then another $120/mo for Cable.

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You need to renegotiate your contracts.

My total top-tier internet + all everything uverse package is about $110 and my unlimited text & talk cell package is like $85.

I don't have a land line, but when I worked from home and did it was something like $25.

Most people pay around $50/mo for landline phone, over $100/mo for internet, $150/mo for Cell... and then another $120/mo for Cable.



What?!

Those figures are super high, but even with a uverse plan heavily discounted to do U200 with one of their top tier internet you would be doing really, really well to get away with a bill under $125 and that would be on a temporary basis at best.

Even first time subs. are getting quotes of 69 for U200. That's WAY up from their launch rates which could have found you with U200 for 39. From what I recall uverse was losing money offering their service so cheap. I don't think they are losing money anymore.

The next frontier here is breaking up cable into sports, and no sports. The no sports side really should only cost the end user about 30 bucks. Maybe less. The problem is if not enough people go sports pack the sports pack will be in the 90-120 range. At that point you are better off going with a jailbroke appleTV and using MLBTV (Which is what I do)

Been with direct TV for years. Get highest speed Internet and second highest level of channels for $115 with a phone line

115 is nice for that, but many are going cable-less and getting bills in the <50 range for now.

At those rates kershaw level deals are unsustainable, that's the main point here.

mlb.tv is just gravy. I don't even think they really make all that much off it. The LAST thing they want is for that to be the base for which their TV rights are generated.

I think someone said that in the DFW area you have less than 40,000 homes per night watching more than 7 innings of rangers a week, the stat was 2 hours of coverage on FSN. I couldn't find that link just now so I'm not sure what year that was. Lets just say the hardcore user base that watches Rangers baseball enough to get a package is perhaps 500k users. That's just going to net a paltry 75 million bucks to the FO. Oof.

So someone tell me how these deals haven't peaked.

I home office and need static IPs and SLAs on my Internet.

I haven't looked at U-Verse because it was added not too long ago. So, if those bundles are cheaper... great for yous peoples... but still wouldn't likely apply for me.

Now... the fact I expense that...

They probably are coming to a peak, for now. Similar to how ARod and somewhat Manny changed things and it kind of leveled out for years. Even now that ARod deal would be massive. I'm guessing we will see deals similar to Cano/Kershaw over the next few years but likely not significantly bigger in any way.

quote:

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"I believe salaries are at their peak, not just in baseball, but all sports. It's quite possible some owners will trade away, or even drop entirely, players who expect $200,000 salaries. There's a superstar born every year... But still there is no way clubs can continue to increase salaries to the level some players are talking about."

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- Peter O'Malley, 1971.

I think we can all see where the rights fees now are generated. The population growth is not keeping up with the level of people peeling away from cable. ESPN viewership is starting to taper. All these things factor into the long term viability of monster contracts.

To sustain this you are going to have people needing to pay into 150 basic cable subs, then 200 then 300. Will they do it? Maybe, but that's what it will take and I just don't see that working out.