NFL TV deals working out well

[dfergie]

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Steve Tisch committed to relationship with DirecTV

By Georg Szalai

The NFL's various current TV deals are working out well, including the one that provides NFL Sunday Ticket exclusively on DirecTV, Steve Tisch, chairman and co-owner of the New York Giants, said here Thursday.

"We are committed to our relationship with DirecTV," he said at the annual Media and Money conference, hosted by The Hollywood Reporter's parent The Nielsen Co. and Dow Jones.

"Right now, we feel DirecTV as the exclusive partner is really in the consumers' best interest."

Source & More: hollywoodreporter.com

[scoop8]

It's been discussed before, iirc, on the other satt Bd but I admit that it's a little difficult for me to buy the "NFL is better off by DTV's exclusive ST" stance. It doesn't affect me since I'm a DTV customer with ST since '99.

[scoop8]

An interesting expl was given over on a related blog (link was posted on the other forum) .

Here's the expl of DTV's ST exclusivity issue:

Originally Posted by Ben on EngadgetHD blog

What Roger is trying to say is the NFL believes that if all providers offered the NFL Sunday Ticket, then Fox and CBS would stop paying to carry the games and that everyone would have to subscribe to the $200 a year package to watch NFL Football. Which would of course mean less customers because most wouldn't pay for it. So yeah, it would be bad for everyone including customers.

Of course no one knows if this would really happen, but I'm sure it is what CBS and Fox are telling the NFL in their negotiations.

The NFL already had to renegotiate the contracts with CBS and Fox just to offer the Red Zone Channel.

Can't argue with it. As we've all said before, the customer had to choose a provider that best offers their interests. For me, it's DTV due to the sports offerings, "no Versus" notwithstanding.

Link to the blog is here .

[meStevo]

Ratings have been stellar this season too for regular season NFL games.

[MikeinBaja]

Originally Posted by meStevo

Ratings have been stellar this season too for regular season NFL games.

Agreed, but with the lack of many close & competitive games each week - I'm starting to wonder if it is worth the extra $ for ST/SF just to have the conus nets switch to the close games anyway?

(But I sure do love my football!).

[SFGuy]

Originally Posted by MikeinBaja

Agreed, but with the lack of many close & competitive games each week - I'm starting to wonder if it is worth the extra $ for ST/SF just to have the conus nets switch to the close games anyway?

(But I sure do love my football!).

I say that every year before the season begins if it's worth it. Then the season begins and the games on my local TV stations (in San Francisco) pretty much suck since I would get mostly 49ers and Raiders (road) games. There has been weeks where only 2 games have been shown on local channels in the early games.

[cfb]

Originally Posted by scoop8

Can't argue with it.

I know this is hard to believe, but I can!

If the networks didnt do the games, the NFL would have to do all the paid promotions and local commercials, all the camera work, pay all the announcers, sideline reporters and interviewers. Pay for and produce all the pregame and post game shows. Cough up local celebrities and current/former players from the local team to do spot interviews. Yada, yada yada. And then pay the networks to carry the games for broadcast customers who dont get cable or satellite...and there are lots of those.

Very time consuming, very expensive.

Unraveling and restating who wants what: the NFL wants to get paid as much as they can for as little work as possible. Directv wants to charge as much as they can for the sports packages so they can make a solid profit against what they're paying the league for monopoly carriage.

If every cable/sat provider were offered the product you'd have 20 sets of negotiations, you'd have much lower costs per subscriber and much smaller payments to the league.

Directv will pay a big premium for the product because they not only make money selling it by itself, it draws in subscribers who want the package and cant get it anywhere else. Thats additional subscription revenues for them. Its also a great retention tool.

If you could get the package anywhere and the competitive price was $150-200 a year instead of $380, none of that customer draw/retention benefit would be there, and I'm betting thats 30-50% of the value premium that directv is paying.

So the league would have to work harder and have massive negotiation chores, and get paid a lot less. Directv would lose a major profit and subscription tool.

Whats in the consumers best interest hasnt been and isnt being thought of for even one microsecond.

[meStevo]

Sports programming isn't a commercial, they will never have to pay to put their game on TV, no sport will unless no channel wanted to carry it. Having said that, the rest of your argument falls apart I think. As for other costs... NFLN and DirecTV both put on shows on their own channels every week dedicated to the sport, they are investing heavily in football... and it's for more than just their own benefit.

Everything else is speculation on what if's. We don't know how much the NFL would make, more or less, if DirecTV didn't pay for exclusivity. Also I think it's widely accepted that DirecTV doesn't make money selling the NFL package, they make money by retaining subs who join for that specific reason. It's the only reason why I and many others are DirecTV customers.

As for games not being close, football is football... it happens. People think parity is gone, it's just a product of some of the copycat tendencies the league is going through. Young coaches and 1st year QBs right not are all the rage, teams desperate to win are hiring the next big young coach and starting their young QBs and it's blowing up in many of their faces.

Feel free to unsub to Sunday Ticket the year Gruden, Cowher, Holmgren and Shanahan re-enter the league as head coaches, im sure you won't miss much.

[cfb]

Originally Posted by meStevo

Having said that, the rest of your argument falls apart I think. As for other costs... NFLN and DirecTV both put on shows on their own channels every week dedicated to the sport, they are investing heavily in football... and it's for more than just their own benefit.

Those shows, even the big ones, arent that expensive to produce. The NFLN games do, but as you'll note they dont do many of those.

Most networks actually lose money most years on what they make vs what they pay for NFL carriage. They make up for it with additional advertising, lead-ins and carry overs and so forth. Directv would get no such benefit.

So basically the proposition for directv would be "Take on a lot of unprofitable business, do a lot more work, employ a lot more people, lose money and make less".

Or the proposition for the networks would be "The league is going to take away half of our customers by providing the product through all the non broadcast avenues, and also take the production of the product and the local value add away from us. But we can still pay them to air it and maybe get some ad revenue from whoever doesnt have cable or satellite".

Anyhow, the main point is that there is crucial intrinsic value in any monopoly situation. The NFL is a monopoly and so is the NFLST deal with directv. The longer you can maintain that monopoly, not get sued, and still wring that extra value out, the longer you win.

To suggest that this arrangement is in the best interest of the consumer is pretty gutsy.

[meStevo]

What you're suggesting is that the networks won't ever be tripping over themselves to try be the ones with the rights to produce these games themselves, which will never happen.

Even the insignificant UFL got 70 million to keep their games on Versus/HDNet for 2 years.