TVAnswerman Has AT&T Predictions For 2020
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- Nov 29, 2003
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The NFL and AT&T both have a option to terminate the deal early, it will be on D* next season, but after that who knows.
AT&T and the National Football League are widely known to be at an impasse to extend their eight-year, $12 billion deal for Sunday Ticket, which was signed in 2014. Each had the option of opting out of that deal before it expired. But the sports news site said both parties missed the deadline to press the eject button.
AT&T and NFL to Stick With DirecTV ‘Sunday Ticket’ Deal Through 2020-21: Report
AT&T and the NFL have missed deadlines to opt out of their current deal for DirecTV NFL Sunday Ticket and will keep the live games package exclusively on the satellite TV carrier through the 2020-21 p
And this is what ATT has said about it-
DirecTV could walk away from a renewal of one its prized assets: It’s exclusive rights to the NFL Sunday Ticket package, which gives subscribers access to every Sunday afternoon game.
“There’s less profitability to support the decision [to renew],” AT&T COO John Stankey, who is also CEO of WarnerMedia, said in an interview with the Wall Street Journal. “It becomes less critical to the business over time.”
DirecTV Could Walk Away From NFL Sunday Ticket Renewal, AT&T COO Says
Current deal with the NFL runs through 2022
www.thewrap.com
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My opinion is if DirecTV cannot have an exclusive deal on NFL Sunday Ticket they will walk away. My reasoning is if its available via other providers then an amount of DTV customers who live by it will get it elsewhere. If it can be had somewhere else then its already gone, so why carry it unless DTV can get some rights to it very very cheap.
The NFL and AT&T both have a option to terminate the deal early, it will be on D* next season, but after that who knows.
AT&T and the National Football League are widely known to be at an impasse to extend their eight-year, $12 billion deal for Sunday Ticket, which was signed in 2014. Each had the option of opting out of that deal before it expired. But the sports news site said both parties missed the deadline to press the eject button.
AT&T and NFL to Stick With DirecTV ‘Sunday Ticket’ Deal Through 2020-21: Report
AT&T and the NFL have missed deadlines to opt out of their current deal for DirecTV NFL Sunday Ticket and will keep the live games package exclusively on the satellite TV carrier through the 2020-21 pwww.multichannel.com
And this is what ATT has said about it-
DirecTV could walk away from a renewal of one its prized assets: It’s exclusive rights to the NFL Sunday Ticket package, which gives subscribers access to every Sunday afternoon game.
“There’s less profitability to support the decision [to renew],” AT&T COO John Stankey, who is also CEO of WarnerMedia, said in an interview with the Wall Street Journal. “It becomes less critical to the business over time.”
DirecTV Could Walk Away From NFL Sunday Ticket Renewal, AT&T COO Says
Current deal with the NFL runs through 2022
Sent from my LML713DL using the SatelliteGuys app!
They will want to keep the exclusive for commercial customers, Directv has a near monopoly with bars/restaurants will they pay to keep. For residential I think the days of an exclusive for anyone will be over after the 2022 season. It will make more sense to the NFL to open it up and sell to any interested cable/satellite or streaming provider on a per subscriber basis, rather than a flat rate deal. They might even set up their own streaming and sell direct to consumers like MLB does.
The NFL will lose money if D* doesn't keep it ... but it is probably time for that to happen (when the contract is done).
The idea of the NFL running it like the MLB is also a good idea I think.
- Nov 29, 2003
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Based on AT&T COO John Stankey’s statement, they do not want to pay the high price anymore.
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Yeah, the way the contract is structured now, all DirecTV subscribers are indirectly subsidizing/paying for NFLST, whether they buy it or watch it. (And all of them get it for free their first year as a new customer.) AT&T pays a big price for NFLST and -- if I understand correctly -- they don't recoup that cost through actual sales of it to customers. Which means that AT&T is paying money to use NFLST as a giveaway to draw new customers to DirecTV (whether those new customers even care about NFLST or not). So DirecTV obviously has to recoup that expense through higher regular monthly prices on all their base packages. In other words, if DirecTV didn't have the NFLST deal, they should be able to offer slightly lower prices for their base packages.
Everything that Stankey has said in the past year or so on AT&T earnings calls indicate that they want to move their cable TV service(s) in the direction that the market is demanding: less expensive bundles. And doing that means "thinning out" the amount of content that those bundles carry, as he put it (because you can't cut costs without cutting content). This certainly suggests to me that AT&T is likely to ditch NFLST for residential customers, at least as the deal currently stands. (It also suggests to me that we're likely to see revamped, less expensive channel packages with fewer channels, although I still believe that HBO Max will become a non-optional part of those future packages.)
- Nov 29, 2003
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Less channels to get costs down is great in theory but broadcasters are going to fight every step, look at how they do deals now where they lump all the channels together, for example if you want the Disney Channel on your service, you have to also have to carry Disney Jr and Disney XD, if you want CBS you have to carry POP, AMC you have to carry BBC, etc, etc.
Broadcasters get fees and Advertising money from all those channels and will not want to give it up, if Disney lumped all 3 channels ( content)into one, then they increase the fee for that one channel.
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Yep, that's all true. But if anyone has the negotiating power to get the networks to agree to slimmer bundles, it would be AT&T and Comcast, the largest MVPDs in the nation. I'm not expecting miracles. But look at what AT&T did with Viacom last spring when they added some (not all) of their channels to their Plus and Max packages. Some, including Nick, Comedy Central, MTV, BET and VH1, made it into both packages while others, like Paramount Network, CMT and TV Land, only got put into Max. Others, like NickToons, MTV2 and Logo, didn't make it into either.
The bigger deal, I think, is to push off as many of those expensive sports channels into upper/add-on tiers as possible, so that they can offer a package that includes as many of the top 40 most popular channels as possible at the lowest possible cost. And the only sports net that ranked in the top 40 most-watched channels last year was ESPN (#6). NBCSN, FS1 and ESPN 2 ranked at 56, 59 and 61, respectively. Actually, those four are the only all-sports nets included in AT&T's Plus package, making it sufficient for casual sports fans. To get RSNs, college conference nets (e.g. SEC Network, Big Ten Network), and more niche sports nets (e.g. Golf, Olympic, MSG), you have to upgrade to Max.
- Nov 29, 2003
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The problem with that is Comcast and AT&T are not just providers but also Broadcasters, if they push for lower rates and/or combination of channels from other broadcasters, they would be expected to do the same.
Viacom then had no power or very little because it was just them, now it is CBS/Viacom and back to the same old, if you want to carry CBS you also have to carry all the Viacom channels, still a mess.
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All that matters is size/power. The more subscribers an MVPD has, the more a cable network owner needs them as a distributor. The more viewers a cable network has, the more an MVPD needs them in their line-up.
Whatever contracts that MVPDs got in place with Viacom before they re-merged with CBS will remain in effect for the length of those contracts. But yes, in a few years when it's time to renew the deal, it will probably be for the CBS and Viacom channels together.
