On Tue, Nov 20, 2012 at 4:19 PM, Tom Wolper <[email protected]> wrote:
> On Tue, Nov 20, 2012 at 5:37 PM, Bob in Jersey <[email protected]>wrote: > >> *LA Times' Company >> Town*<http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/envelope/cotown/la-et-ct-malone-sports-20121119,0,1724652.story>: >> The cable pioneer potentially sees government involvement down the road >> (i.e. more a la carte options), yet thinks that utilmately technology will >> make things easier... really, could live sports become a part of noncable >> providers like Netflix or Hulu? -- BOB > > > I thought rather than a la carte the cable companies would offer a bundled > package without sports channels and charge a lot less. The problem would be > that there would then be pressure to bundle the sports channels alone and a > lot of households would choose that option. > > ESPN already has a noncable live sports streaming provider. So the road to > making all sports available by streaming is a question of paying for > rights, not a question of technology. > I agree that is not a question of technology, but the paying for rights issue is a pretty huge mountain. Networks overpay for sports rights for several reasons ("prestige", to provide an advertising platform for their entertainment programming, to muscle cable operators, etc.). They also invest heavily in both human and non-human infrastructure to televise the events, and to promote them via ancillary programming. If the NFL were to suddenly move to Netflix there would be a hell of a lot less randome Tebow coverage on ESPN (not saying this would be a bad thing, but less hype on the NFL marketing machine). I can not really imagine any possible future in which Hulu or Netflix could find enough downstream payoffs to having the NFL to offset the huge rights fees they would have to pay to wrestle it away from the networks that currently control it. I can't even imagine that for cheaper sports like baseball and basketball. -- TV or Not TV .... The Smartest (TV) People! You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "TV or Not TV" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/tvornottv?hl=en
