(06-23-2018 06:37 PM)Go College Sports Wrote: (06-23-2018 05:29 AM)Frank the Tank Wrote: I don’t think the comparison should be to the price of a sports ticket, but rather the generally very unrealistic expectations of what a la carte sports channels with ESPN’s content would cost. People very wrongly assume that the per subscriber basic cable fee has any relation to what that channel would cost a la carte. For ESPN to get the revenue that it has now from basic cable in an a la carte model that has HBO-like subscriber numbers, it’s likely in the $40-$50 per month range at a *minimum* (as it has to account for the fact that it will have fewer subscribers and correspondingly lower ad rates).
People simply don’t truly grasp the costs of an a la carte model long-term because we’re in this temporarily highly competitive environment where lots of companies are trying to undercut each other on streaming pricing where they’re trading growth for profits as of now. Those price arbitrage situations aren’t going to last forever. Eventually, companies like Netflix will need to deliver high profits instead of just growth to Wall Street... and these subscription prices will go up to where we’ll likely pay more for less content compared to cable. That’s especially going to be true for sports fans more than any other group.
This also assumes that ESPN's revenue and profits are a fixed variable. I agree that if ESPN goes to a subscriber/OTT format, it wouldn't be at an $8/mo price point. But when consumers are conditioned to the $10-15/month fee for similar services, $50 per month is going to be an incredibly tough sell, even for a die-hard sports fan, since that price point doesn't get you the World Cup, EPL, NHL, key NBA (playoff) games, the Olympics, the Big East, key Big Ten/Pac-12/Big XII games, MLB playoffs, etc. More likely they - and all sports broadcasters - would have to do some belt tightening on rights contracts rather than just throw ever increasing sums at the leagues.
Yep, television is merely an option, a form of entertainment.
If the cost of ESPN got too high, I likely would not pay it and would go without it. It is just not that important to me to have it.
I don't watch the things I have highlighted above now, anyway.
If I miss some ND basketball or baseball games because of it, so it goes. I would do without them. I did before and life was good. I would use internet radio and Gametracker options for those.
(The same goes for the coming ACC Network. I will subscribe, but am only doing so for ND games, not other ACC schools. If the cost kept going up, I would cancel).
If NBC started charging and kept raising the price, I might cancel it, too.
I would try to listen to ND home football games on the radio like I used to do in the Seventies or just go back to reading about the games and checking the box scores.
It isn't affordability per se, it is just "Is my level of interest worth paying this price"? There is a price I am not willing to pay, even if I could well afford it.
I am not willing to allow cable or satellite or television entities continue to extort my fan interest in an never ending climb in rates.
Life would go on just fine for me if all sports TV went away. I would just read more books. I read more than watch TV as it is.
I got rid of DirecTV. I mostly watch Netfilx now instead of the multiple channels I used to have. I have Sling but watch almost no live or network programming. If Sling went up too high, I would get rid of it, too.
IF Netflix goes too high, out it goes too. Television itself is something that I could dispense with if necessary.
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Most popular channels are free
