Sports are very important to the sports-heads on this forum. This forum only represents a very skewed demographic of DISH's entire sub base. The average DISH customer wants "best", but I could sell them the specs of a 111 as "best" and they wouldn't know any different unless their neighbor told them so. The average DISH customer is NOT technically inclined...
As a point of contention, sports fans are also some of the most disloyal (statistically speaking) as they're often the first sub type up in arms over lack of a particular package, failure to renew channels, on the phone over sports contract disputes between leagues that have nothing to do with the DBS providers and are often threatening to flip for any of the reasons I've just listed and then some.
Pricing is undecided.
I would say sports are very important to a lot of customers, not just "sports heads". I would consider "sports fans" to be a very broad descriptor that includes the most casual fan to the one that wants to watch every game in their particular league. I thing what a lot of sport fans, particularly those that are on the more casual end of the spectrum want is to watch
their team. That is why league contracts and RSN feeds become important, because "their team" may only be on one particular network. i really don't care that I might be able to watch all the NFL Games, or all the NBA games, but if my Red Raiders are not on Dish on a given Saturday in the fall, then I am upset, especially when I know that my neighbor that has [insert alternate pay TV service here] has the game and Dish does not.
I would say that the average Pay TV customer is not technically inclined...it is not just limited to Dish Customers.