Congressional Pressure allowed cable companies to bid for MLB

[ClubSteeler]

Makes you wonder what is going to happen to the NFL.

Since a deal is already in place, I will assume that is will be exclusive to D* until the current contract expires. After that? With this precedent, I would be shocked if NFLST wasn't on cable in a few years.

Now when future contracts are negotiated, and it is known that they won't be exclusive, hopefully the contract cost will drop and we'll start to benefit from the competition by seeing our prices to these sports packages go down. I especially hope that this NFLST and it's 300% price increase over the last handful of years starts to get some relief.

[Earl Bonovich]

IMHO... probably nothing.

One big difference in this case:
It was on Cable (and other providers before), and was switching.

Sunday Ticket was never on another US carrier before DirecTV.

IMHO: You won't see any price competition on those sports packages.
MLB basically is setting the price point for EI, based on the terms of the contracts.

If you are looking for a "price releif for the NFLST"... IMHO: Prices will go up... as you don't have any guaranteed population... so if you have to fork out 350 million... you need to make sure that you make up that money... so they will probably RAISE prices, to make sure that any drop in subscriber counts... will still offset the cost.

Also the government doesn't have as much "dangling" over the NFL as they do for MLB (the monopoly argument)...

[Dolly]

Makes you wonder what is going to happen to the NFL.

Since a deal is already in place, I will assume that is will be exclusive to D* until the current contract expires. After that? With this precedent, I would be shocked if NFLST wasn't on cable in a few years.

Now when future contracts are negotiated, and it is known that they won't be exclusive, hopefully the contract cost will drop and we'll start to benefit from the competition by seeing our prices to these sports packages go down. I especially hope that this NFLST and it's 300% price increase over the last handful of years starts to get some relief.
It might just mean that more people will be paying out big bucks :lol: I don't think the NFL will fold to pressure like baseball did. After all they are the NFL :rolleyes:

[Earl Bonovich]

IMHO: The Congressional Pressure... need to be directed towards eliminating the affiliate model. AKA: Get rid of the root reason why some of these packages have to exist in the first place.

With today's technology advances, it is crazy to think that you have 250 "copies" of programs being rebroadcasted all over the place.

[iceman2a]

Makes you wonder what is going to happen to the NFL.

Since a deal is already in place, I will assume that is will be exclusive to D* until the current contract expires. After that? With this precedent, I would be shocked if NFLST wasn't on cable in a few years.

Now when future contracts are negotiated, and it is known that they won't be exclusive, hopefully the contract cost will drop and we'll start to benefit from the competition by seeing our prices to these sports packages go down. I especially hope that this NFLST and it's 300% price increase over the last handful of years starts to get some relief.


The NFL does not opperate under an "anti-trust" waiver granted by congress as MLB does! Congress has much more influence over MLB because they can revoke that waiver! How much a revocation would efect MLB I don't know, but MLB doesn't want it to happen so when Congrss sez jump, MLB sez "how high"!

[dodge boy]

[QUOTE=Earl Bonovich;899385.

Sunday Ticket was never on another US carrier before DirecTV[/QUOTE]

Not necessarily true, it used to be on C-band a few years ago and at about 75% of the price D* was charging at that time. My Cband provider's bill had Echo star on it, I think they still sell c-band programing along with DishNotwork......:grin: