Sports Media

zambonir 2020-10-15 17:46:05 UTC #81

Yeah, Murphy is old news, but it seems NBC made their decisions more quickly than the Phillies.

I agree about LA and that's the other reason to just get on with it. He could still be a part-timer. Agree about Kruk too, I don't think he's great but he's funny, and Davis doesn't bring much as a personality or an analyst.

What they need, if perhaps less so than the last two years, is a new-school announcer. I know serving as a proxy for fan frustration is part of the job and that's what Kruk does, but it would be nice to have someone who, instead of grumping about a pitching change or shift like they are posting on a Philliesphans game thread, actually had insight into why the dugout makes the moves it does.

andyb 2021-01-22 21:41:32 UTC #82

This one surprised me. NBCSN is ending. Games will go to USA or Peacock. NHL will also likely get a 2nd TV partner like ESPN.

zambonir 2021-01-22 22:18:36 UTC #83

RIP Outdoor Life Network RIP Versus RIP NBCSN

I guess "NBC Sports' still exists (and some NHL games will still be on NBC proper) but it makes me wonder about the branding of the RSNs. "XFinity Sports Philly?"

zambonir 2021-01-23 04:26:09 UTC #84

I'm sure you read this too, wow

andyb 2021-01-23 13:55:19 UTC #85

This is all the Orioles being cheap. While they are cutting their own pre-game shows as well as the Nats, that is all likely designed to improve the cash flow of the TV network to help the club (and it is a 77/23 split in ownership for the Orioles).

When one steps back, the regional sports networks should still be very profitable. They are still getting their $5 a month from cable customers or even more. They saved a lot of money on rights fees last year by not telecasting games, but rebates for cable customers are rare. So the money kept coming in and they had fewer expenses (rights fees).

Take team ownership out of the equation and it was probably a pretty good year for these networks. Put the team back in and it is the fans who end up paying of course, though high sports fees on their bills, no rebates, and now mediocre coverage of their team (again with no discount).

Anyone up for a class action suit?

julio 2021-01-23 14:58:55 UTC #86

I assume this was tongue-in-cheek, but in case anybody might take it seriously...

Are viewers under contract? Have they paid up front for future delivery? If not, I think the recourse is to stop buying the service. We can’t sue somebody for offering a product we don’t like, unless they have committed to provide us with something, and are reneging on that agreement.

andyb 2021-01-23 15:43:50 UTC #87

I guess the tricky thing is when the sports services are a monopoly. These sports fees are added to the BASIC tier of most cable packages. That is why the $5-$8 a month fee is so lucrative for both the teams and the networks. Consumers are not given a choice to not have the sports networks except in rare cases (small packages of OTA channels that are required by law).

I am not a lawyer, but it does seem to hit on some aspects of monopoly law when all cable packages that have these RSNs do not offer the option to not have the RSN. I have one cable provider in Comcast. Now I choose a streaming service and don't get MASN anyway because of that, but it is not as if some aspects of the law and the current situation don't tread really close to the line.

Philsmania 2021-01-23 16:30:38 UTC #88

Where am I going to watch Le Tour de France?

andyb 2021-01-23 17:07:44 UTC #89

https://www.velonews.com/news/road/report-u-s-tour-de-france-broadcast-partner-nbc-sports-set-to-shutter-after-2021/#:~:text=NBC%20currently%20owns%20the%20U.S.,France%20and%20other%20major%20races.

USA or Peacock?

HopeSpringsEternal 2021-01-23 18:04:57 UTC #90

For what it’s worth, I received a $13.91 MASN credit in my November Verizon Fios bill.

zambonir 2021-01-23 18:22:47 UTC #91

Yeah I'm a cord-cutter but I think they were pretty widespread

julio 2021-01-23 19:03:36 UTC #92

I understand your argument... but it's the same argument some would make about Fox News; e.g., you can't subscribe to basic cable without subsidizing that. To get NBCSN on Comcast here, I would have to subscribe to their "Standard" plan - and I'd be subsidizing Fox News, EWTN, Daystar, Newsmax, and undoubtedly several other channels I actively object to... not to mention a bunch of things that are junk, but not outright offensive. I have to think that if there were a plausible anti-trust or class ation argument to be made, people who find Fox News and Newsmax, in particular, to be offensive (and arguably anti-American), would have made that case in court. Hasn't happened, and I can't imagine that an argument about a sports channel would be more likely to be filed, argued, or won.

andyb 2021-01-23 19:26:02 UTC #93

It is a little bit different than the Fox News argument which has partisan overtones. What we have here is MASN reducing the quality of their coverage but not their fees. If Fox decided to eliminate 50% of their coverage (just show Hannity tapes the rest of the day!) but did not reduce their fees then there might be a similar reduction of coverage argument.

Frankly this is hitting the entire cable and streaming service bundles. Scripted television (like expensive dramas on FX and USA and AMC) is starting to disappear. FX moves them to Hulu. USA moves them to Peacock. AMC to AMC+. At the same time the fees for those channels remain the same or increases.

At some point, likely when one can buy live sports a la carte, I will probably drop the bundle and add a couple more streaming services like Peacock. But now, it is the only place I can get live sports and live news. The problem is I am paying more and getting less for that. At least when HBO and Netflix raise their prices I am not getting less content.

The whole cable bundle is falling apart. The big question is whether it dies in 1 year or 5 years or 10 years. And what does that death do to sports. I want my local teams and I want national coverage of sport sports like baseball and the NFL. That might be it though. I might not pay that extra $$$ per month for sports I watch occasionally but not all the time. And I also won't pay $30 a month for my local teams. More like $15. If only 25% of households pay that $15, then sports teams will just have to accept less money.

They are killing their own golden goose and don't realize it.

zambonir 2021-01-23 19:32:37 UTC #94

It's entirely possible you could win a class-action suit, but those mostly enrich the lawyers, and often don't lead to any real reform. IOW maybe we'd all get five bucks, but no one would be ordering the cable companies to finally sell things a la carte. These things tend to play themselves out in the disputes, and it's not just the sports and news and entertainment channels - we didn't have NBC on our AT&T package for about a month recently.

What's a little surprising is that cord-cutters haven't really had any impact on this practice. You can certainly buy a "skinnier" bundle from some of them, or pay more if sports is what you value, but they are basically continuing the same bundling practice as terrestrial cable. If everything was unbundled I don't think it would be pretty. Every channel would cost $10-20. For most people - i.e. people who already can't imagine not having NBCSN Philly, never mind the national channel - that won't work. Even just for sports, if you wanted SIxers/Flyers/Phillies, what you already get included with your NBCSN Philly, it would be $300 a year.

Perfectly ethical consumption is nearly impossible, all you can do is pick your battles. Before Fox sold itself off to Disney I was "subsidizing" . the Murdochs and Fox News just by watching baseball or the Simpsons. I try not to use Amazon but I still read the Washington Post and use thousands of sites powered by AWS. I have a lot of friends who quit Facebook (sometimes very loudly and proudly) but still use all their other products.

julio 2021-01-23 19:38:32 UTC #95

I hear you. At the same time, though... if a la carte subscriptions mean that sports teams will have to accept less money (and salaries come down), is that a bad thing - given that the alternative (the current situation) is that a large percentage of households that don't care a whit about professional sports are massively subsidizing MLB and other professional sports?

In an a la carte TV world, MLB would have to make a decision about its current MLB-TV blackout policies. If the cable business dies (overdue, IMHO), they can engage fans with baseball-only subscriptions. Yeah, not everybody will pay to watch the Phillies; and the revenue available from those who actually will pay to see the Phillies may be less than the revenue from a duopoly extracting money every month from hundreds of thousands of households who don't give a hoot about the Phillies, and paying a portion of that money over to the Phillies.

zambonir 2021-01-23 20:03:00 UTC #96

They won't, really though. If you're currently able to get NBCSN Philly, you would have the same eligibility for an online Phillies-only, "local" package. And you'd still have to buy another package/network for national games. And if you live in Mets territory you won't be able to get the Phillies package. Maybe it would fix some of those tweener areas, but I would think unbundling might make it worse, not better, i.e. the teams themselves would aggressively define their territory in the same way the rightsholders do now. And the fact that MLB sold most of MLBAM to Disney means they/ESPN is still in charge.

andyb 2021-01-23 21:32:59 UTC #97

No it would not be a bad thing. But it is in the process of happening and things will get ugly. What I am saying with the "kill the golden goose" comment is that greed is killing it. I think all these RSNs get $5-$8 per month per customer. This is compounded by RSN rights creep in that many markets now have 2 different channel groups like I do, MASN and NBCSW. So if I had Comcast I would probably be paying over $10 a month. I only get the NBCSW channels so I probably pay closer to $5.

Zoom back 10-15 years though and these fees were more like $2-$3. Pre-MASN that is what I paid for the Comcast Sports Net channels that had all the major sports (MLB, NBA, NHL). So in the span of 20 years my sports fees for local teams have increased by like 300%. Inflation was probably about 50% total. If these RSNs had stuck with fee increases close to the rate of inflation there would not be a problem here. They just got greedy and used their limited monopoly power to raise fees (and screw the non-sports customers to some degree). Now the pendulum is rightly falling to having the sports customers pay. I am OK with that. It is just my streaming package is not lowering their price as they are dropping sports channels and adding entertainment channels I don't care about.

Non-sports fans used to have the grievance. Now sports fans do. Neither is really right. It is all about these channels using their monopoly power. Now whether there should be legal action against that is unclear. I am just lamenting that these RSNs are killing sports on TV and the quality of the broadcasts. So me, the sports fan, is going to purchase less of that and just watch Netflix more often. It is their own greedy fault.

zambonir 2021-01-23 22:30:35 UTC #98

A lot of this is on the teams too, they formed the partnerships - in some cases including equity, as with the Yankees and Phillies and now the Cubs' new channel - that helped fuel the monopolies and increases. Also most of the companies that sell the cable packages and Internet signal also owned one or more of the RSNs at some point or another (an ever-changing patchwork with all the mergers).

ATT owns one my RSNs and until recently I still couldn't get it on their TV service - nor could I get the other one, since it's Comcast.

The NBA is much better with all this stuff than MLB, that's for sure. You can still buy any non-local NBA game a la carte, and there are also limited local packages. I don't like the NBA enough to splurge for League Pass, but I have bought one or two Sixers games in between the national broadcasts. And I also don't like the NBA/the Trail Blazers enough to care that I don't get their Comcast RSN - but I can buy a 15-game package for $34.99 (local only but no additional provider account needed).

julio 2021-01-23 22:49:55 UTC #99

zambonir:

julio:

In an a la carte TV world, MLB would have to make a decision about its current MLB-TV blackout policies. If the cable business dies (overdue, IMHO), they can engage fans with baseball-only subscriptions.
They won't, really though. If you're currently able to get NBCSN Philly, you would have the same eligibility for an online Phillies-only, "local" package. And you'd still have to buy another package/network for national games. And if you live in Mets territory you won't be able to get the Phillies package. Maybe it would fix some of those tweener areas, but I would think unbundling might make it worse, not better, i.e. the teams themselves would aggressively define their territory in the same way the rightsholders do now. And the fact that MLB sold most of MLBAM to Disney means they/ESPN is still in charge.

If I didn’t live in the Phillies’ territory, I could buy a Phillies-only mlb.tv subscription, without blackouts, NOW. And I would! (Given that I have subscribed to the Phillies-only offering, even with blackouts, that would be rather a no-brainer!)

zambonir 2021-01-24 02:23:26 UTC #100

Yeah, I forgot that that even exists, the cost is so close to the full MLB.TV subscription that I've never considered it.

For what Comcast is paying the Phillies, and given the Phillies are an equity partner, I don't blame them for not being interested in your business. For them it's not even about the carriage fees for the sports network, it's about having cable customers overall. If I lived in Philly I would certainly give up my cord-cutting to get XFinity, because I would also want hockey and basketball. Here in Portland I don't want basketball only - or the local team - enough to do that.

There just aren't enough of you to who want this more narrow, cheaper product to replace what Comcast gets out of the current arrangement. Which won't last forever, but close to it! (I believe it is until 2039).