My only thought about making the price lower (with less extras) is that the NFL may be helping subsidize that decrease so it may not hurt Direct as much. But that said, I bet alot of posters have no idea how much a money losing propositon NFL Sunday Ticket is. It does depend on alot of subs as you point out, and as I mentioned with money not available for alot of people like in the past, Direct and/or the NFL saw the writing on the wall, and now have a lower priced package. I honestly believe it's to keep subs more, and hope that new ones sign up. I also believe Sports in general, and ST specifically is keeping Direct's price higher than it would be. I certainly can't prove it, but I have to think some of the cost of having ST is passed to every subscriber in the package prices. Ditto MLB IE by the way, that too may not be paying for itself as Dish can tell you.