Live Updates - DirecTV MLB Announcement

[Scott Greczkowski]

DirecTV is also happy to help MLB design the upcoming Baseball Channel.

He says its confusing of whats exclusive or non exclusive rights but he feels they will work through that.

Now Case turns it over to tim who tells us he will be breif.

He wants to stress that todays announcement is for MLB and its fans to celebrate. This announcement also makes the Baseball Channel official.

 

[pdxsam]

they'll probably make some HD exclusive and the mosaic's etc exclusive.

 

[Scott Greczkowski]

They are now going to take questions.

(It almost sounds like this offer to other companies was thrown together today. They keep saying it could be an exclusive but then again it could not.)

 

[Sean Mota]

Deceptiveness, I call it... then...

 

[BarryS14]

Did DirecTV's announce any additional OTA or FOX games or am I holding my breath?

 

[FlyingJ]

Maybe the "rates" are insane enough to keep the others off???

 

[Scott Greczkowski]

If Dish and Cable want to pay for it then they will sell it to them.

 

[Sean Mota]

At what price 700Million? that's the question... Nobody is going to pay for an overpriced package (unless you are directv).

 

[Peter Parker]

Did DirecTV's announce any additional OTA or FOX games or am I holding my breath?

No change to other packages. I would guess that those are stil exclusive for those games.

 

[cosmo_kramer]

If Dish and Cable want to pay for it then they will sell it to them.

For the same rates as D*, or does D* get a break for being a "production partner"??

 

[Cegarrett]

So If E* or Cable agrees to the same terms as D*'s Non-exclusive agreement then D* looses exclsivity Is that right?

 

[Scott Greczkowski]

There is no word how much the package will cost. But the product is being made available to those who carried the extra innings package before.

DirecTV made MLB the best offer other companies didn't bid as high.

 

[Sean Mota]

It sounds like monkey business... saying one thing publicly and then privately doing another... believe me there is going to be problems with this. I can see that this is just a b.s. publicity announcement...

 

[Peter Parker]

There is no word how much the package will cost. But the product is being made available to those who carried the extra innings package before.

DirecTV made MLB the best offer other companies didn't bid as high.

true but did the price come down when exclusivity was "taken off the table"? i did seea thread elsewhere that a D* CSR quoted a EI package rate that was $20 higher than before. Taht might say that this was an expensive package----who knows.

 

[Scott Greczkowski]

They are not negoationing with Dish or Cable, they are being given an opportunity to make this package available to their customers.

(Man there is so much crap floating here I think I need boots!)

 

[Peter Parker]

Excellent. "not sure if the last aprt isa monkey wrench" what does that mean?

It means will the other parties be wiling to commit to the baseball channel.

 

[Scott Greczkowski]

Someone asked about what the other companies would need to if they wanted to get in on this, and the reporter was told they were not going to talk about that here.

 

[Peter Parker]

Apparently the same rate but we have no idea what that rate is.

 

[Scott Greczkowski]

The folks at MLB and DirecTV are getting upset by the questions the reporters are asking.

 

[ScoBuck]

At what price 700Million? that's the question... Nobody is going to pay for an overpriced package (unless you are directv).

I mean, no personal offense to you but........who are you to judge what a multi-billion dollar company does or doesn't do? I know they have over $350 million in annual revenue from the NFL package alone (and the monthly revenue from all the subs that have DirecTV because they want the ability to get the NFL package.

If their marketing people believe that its a good deal for them, so be it. If they feel its going to get them subs from other providers, so be it. And if they fall flat on their face - so be it.

I mean - look at your signature, its obvious you have more than a little bias towards DISH.