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View Full Version : Why Sunday Ticket Is Not On Cable

Atlanta Dan
10-30-2007, 05:28 PM
Gregg Easterbrook has a looong explanation in his Tuesday Morning QB column as to why Sunday Ticket has not gone to cable.

Money quote for me:

By 2004, DirecTV worried that if it lost Sunday Ticket, it would deorbit and go out of business. So DirecTV bid about $400 million a year for Sunday Ticket, a fantastic sum -- roughly two-thirds as much as NBC pays for "Sunday Night Football" broadcasts to the entire nation, plus a Super Bowl broadcast every third year. With 1.6 million subscribers at $250 apiece, DirecTV has about $400 million in Sunday Ticket revenue, essentially all of which goes directly to the NFL. Sunday Ticket became DirecTV's loss leader.

http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/page2/story?page=easterbrook/071030

Interesting read.
revefsreleets
10-30-2007, 06:20 PM
Good stuff. Shows the complexities involved. And I don't think the dish companies were wrong to bid that high, either. Just about everyone I've actually talked to about this said they'd dump the satellite in a second if cable would get Sunday Ticket.

But it's bad for business for everyone if the dish companies go belly up, especially now that the phone companies are getting into selling television. If their are several alternatives, the prices will have to go down. If they don't, we're looking at price fixing, which is a whole other apple cart that I don't particularly feel like toppling right now.
Godfather
10-30-2007, 10:10 PM
The dish companies would still have a good selling point--after a natural disaster you get your service back a lot quicker.

We had cable when Katrina hit and service was out for weeks and spotty as late as November (understandable since the phone and electric lines were a higher priority). If the dish had been here, it could have been taken down before the storm and put back up afterward.

Expand that to all the different disasters that can happen in various parts of the country and it's worthwhile to have a dish.
klick81
10-31-2007, 10:54 AM
Well, in the case of a natural disaster, I would PROBABLY not be too worried about watching TV for a long time.
Cape Cod Steel Head
10-31-2007, 02:51 PM
Well, in the case of a natural disaster, I would PROBABLY not be too worried about watching TV for a long time.But what if it was football season?:tt02:
KYSteelersfan
10-31-2007, 04:03 PM
But what if it was football season?:tt02:

I would move to the closest Steeler's TV :helmet:
klick81
10-31-2007, 04:06 PM
But what if it was football season?:tt02:

lol