Official word on FOX Sports 1?

[king3pj]

MLB has their app which you do pay for the season to watch home and away games of your team. The problem is I don't think

I have been a subscriber of MLB.tv for 3 seasons now. It doesn't work like that. If you are a fan of an out of market team or simply don't care what team you are watching as long as you are watching sports then great. Most of us actually are fans of a particular team though. I don't care about Boston and NY. I want to see my Tigers games and they aren't available to me through MLB.tv because I happen to live in the State of Michigan. I use MLB.tv to follow action from around the league but it isn't an acceptable alternative to FSN Detroit.

College football is even harder. Your team might play on 3 or 4 different channels throughout a season. There is no online package you can subscribe to to see all your teams games.

 

[dishfan82]

That's what I was going to mention but I hit sent before I finished the post. I was going to say I didn't think it showed every game. Even bravo is like that now. With bravo they eliminated a lot of shows from their website from viewing online and you have to access it through pay tv. Live sports are what keeps me paying for tv as well.

 

[king3pj]

They show almost every game. The only exceptions are the ESPN Sunday night game and the Fox Saturday game. They black out live broadcasts in a team's home area though. So if you are a Tigers fan living in Michigan you get no live Tigers games. If you are a Tigers game living in Alaska (or almost everywhere else) you would get all of them live. The only way MLB.tv will ever be a replacement for your local RSN is if the MLB drops the local blackout restrictions.

 

[LASooner]

I expect these channels won't be available anytime soon. Fox will put some of their more popular College matchups, maybe a big UFC fight that would normally be PPV or a Big MLB game, ala Yankees/Red Sox and try to use these offerings to enrage fans of said teams to put pressure on the carriers who aren't on board. We've seen this script play out many many times before. Why would this one be any different?

 

[cosmo_kramer]

I expect these channels won't be available anytime soon. Fox will put some of their more popular College matchups, maybe a big UFC fight that would normally be PPV or a Big MLB game, ala Yankees/Red Sox and try to use these offerings to enrage fans of said teams to put pressure on the carriers who aren't on board. We've seen this script play out many many times before. Why would this one be any different?

Did you see the promo shown during the MLB all-star game??

 

[harshness]

The problem is, the money required to spend on sports contracts dictates that channels like ESPN be placed in ALL your packages.

Rest assured that it is ESPN's negotiators that dictate carriage in all packages and nobody or nothing else.

 

[gadgtfreek]

I disagree. Im not letting ESPN off the hook, because they opted to spend the money, but since it was spent to get all the rights, they have the require to be in all packages to pay for their commitments to the NCAA, NFL, etc...

On one hand, people love that ESPN has expanded and carries so much sports (personally love being able to see almost all my ACC and SEC fball), but on the other hand it's caused some negative effects.

 

[harshness]

I disagree. Im not letting ESPN off the hook, because they opted to spend the money, but since it was spent to get all the rights, they have the require to be in all packages to pay for their commitments to the NCAA, NFL, etc...

We're on the same page. It just seemed like the post that I quoted didn't directly target ESPN as the one and only source of the problem.

 

[gadgtfreek]

Gotcha, understood.

 

[psychotrope]

Well, first you said the appeal to advertisers is higher, which makes perfect sense, and is why advertisers pay a higher rate for airtime than for non-sporting events. So how does that translate into the channels demanding higher transmission fees on top of the higher advertising revenue they get? That's just double-dipping.

Of course you are right. And you make an excellent point. Why should they NEED to be paid a higher carriage fee when they are supplementing their budget with higher advertiser fees? In this case, I think that what is happening is that as advertisers assign a particular channel or its program a higher estimation of value, that may raise the overall estimation of the value of the channel for everyone in the industry. If McDonald's thinks live football games are worth more money than a sitcom per 30 second spot, multiplied by the whole advertising industry, that would lead to a higher value of the content/channel's estimation amongst the community which includes the carriage providers. Similar to the stock market -- it's the estimation of value that often drives the price rather than the actual value. And we haven't even begun to discuss the value to viewers of the live tv experience of sports versus other programming and I dont' intend to start that discussion.

Is it fair? What is "fair" anyway? Let's not go there either. But it is what it is and I could be way off, but that's my guess as to why they are able to "double dip" as you so eloquently put it.