[CBFF] Article: NFL and Direct TV

[Kenny Claxton]

Sounds like a bitter cable guy.

On 8/22/06, Steve Behrens <steve.behrens at gmail.com> wrote:
> Just stumbled upon this article, even though it was written before week 15
> of last years game, I thought it was a good read concerning the NFL and
> their deal with Direct TV.  The full article (with some other observation,
> picks, etc, can be found here:
> http://blogcritics.org/archives/2005/12/29/232113.php
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>  [image: Blogcritics.org] <http://blogcritics.org/>
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>
> I am sick: head congestion, sore throat, cough. The symptoms roughly
> correspond to a cold, but I am convinced it's something worse. Like
> pneumonia. Or Bird Flu. Hell, maybe it's a tumor. Whatever the case, I'm
> pretty sure I'm at death's door. Lucky I have made my mark on this world
> through my legacy of football picks.
>
> At least if I reach Heaven I can count on having NFL Sunday Ticket, or maybe
> I can just look down and see any game I want and even fly down for a close
> up view of the line play once I get my wings. On the other hand, if I wind
> up Down Below, my guess is the football viewing is pretty close to what I
> have now: the only sure thing is that the Lions game will be on.
>
> Actually, in Hell, all games are Lions games.
>
> But seriously, we live in an on-demand age. I can listen to any music I
> want, at any time I want, and have the choice of buying or renting it. I can
> time-shift movies and TV or simply order them when I'm ready to watch.
> Anything that isn't already on-demand is moving in that direction. How long
> do you think it will be until I can get my Rhapsody playlist streamed to my
> car? Or how about the entire inventory of Blockbuster ready to order through
> my digital cable box?
>
> So then why is it that I can only get a predetermined set of football games,
> theoretically tailored to my geographical market by some NFL bureaucrat?
> Instead of getting what I want, I get what some suit's idea of what a
> typical person who lives within a couple hundred miles of me might want to
> see on average. Did we take the time tunnel back to the Stone Age?
>
> For those not familiar with NFL Sunday Ticket, it is an extra cost package
> that gives you access to any the game you want (with a minor exception now
> and then). That's a pretty simple model. Pay roughly $250 up front and
> you're covered for the whole season. There are even optional add-ons like
> Short Cuts, a replay of an entire game with nothing but the plays,
> everything else is edited out. You can watch an entire game in 30 minutes.
> Cool, eh? All in all, it's a nice package; I would buy it every year without
> a second thought. The problem is, it is only available with DirecTV. That's
> right, no cable TV customer can have access to this; it is for DirecTV
> subscribers only.
>
> As much as I love watching football, I am not giving up my digital cable for
> it. So that means, if I wanted to see all the NFL games, I would have to
> have DirecTV installed and pay the Direct TV subscription of roughly
> $60/month plus the $250 for Sunday Ticket. Suppose I could arrange to do it
> for only five months out of the year for football season, that still jacks
> up the price of seeing the football games I want to $550 per year.
>
> Yet even if I were willing to pay that, I still couldn't do it. DirecTV
> requires a south facing line of sight for their little satellite dish to
> work. Sorry, I don't have that. For me to get NFL Sunday Ticket I would have
> to buy a new house, which jacks up the expense a bit. But my personal issues
> aside, why would the NFL grant this privilege to DirecTV, thus assuring it
> is only available to the relatively small cross-section of insane football
> fans who are financially willing and technically able to have DirecTV
> installed?
>
> The answer, as always, is money. DirecTV paid the Dr. Evil-worthy sum
> of 3.5billion dollars to the NFL for this exclusivity. And the rights
> are locked
> up through 2010. According to this
> article<http://www.multichannel.com/article/CA480250.html>,
> cable TV negotiators were "blown away" by how much DirecTV was willing to
> offer, but it's not all that shocking. NFL Sunday Ticket is the only thing
> that matters to DirecTV. It is just about the only reason to choose
> satellite over cable, especially now that cable companies are offering
> discount packages that include broadband and phone service. They really had
> no choice. If they lost Sunday Ticket, they could just pack it in and call
> the bankruptcy lawyers. Note this quote from a DirecTV exec:
>
> DirecTV will generate about $385 million in revenue this year from Sunday
> Ticket, and revenue has grown 20% during the past two years... If DirecTV
> grows its Sunday Ticket revenue each year by 11% to 12%, the company will be
> able to break even on the rights deal...
>
> That doesn't sound all that promising for DirecTV. If all you have to hang
> your hat on is Sunday Ticket and your target for Sunday Ticket is to break
> even, well, that's not what I would call a robust business plan.
>
> The NFL does this because they believe that by limiting out-of-market
> viewers to the niche audience of DirecTV, they can continue to extract
> outrageous sums from the old-school networks for the market limited
> offerings they currently provide. It's the best of all worlds for the NFL.
> DirecTV pays them an exorbitant amount for exclusive out-of-market game
> rights, but the DirecTV audience is small enough that the traditional
> networks (FOX, CBS, ESPN, etc.) don't freak out at the competition and don't
> balk at paying an exorbitant amount for their usual line-up of games. The
> League is swimming in green.
>
> The odd man out here is, of course, the football fan. You have to shell out
> some healthy cash for the privilege of jumping through DirecTV's hoops to
> see out-of-market games, or you live with what the NFL thinks you should
> see. And it's going to be that way for the next five years at least. In
> other words, it'll be 2011 before the NFL can even consider stepping into
> the '90s. How lame is it that I can't just contact Comcast and pay $5.99 or
> thereabouts to get the game I want to see, like I can with most other
> sporting events? So much for the on-demand world.
>
> Can you imagine a more lucrative business than the NFL? Internally it is run
> like a totalitarian communist autocracy, but externally they are savagely
> capitalist. Sort of like what would happen if Josef Stalin mated with Ayn
> Rand. So many other businesses survive by their connection to them that they
> pay ludicrous amounts of money for sponsorship contracts just to stay
> solvent. And governments (read: taxpayers) finance their major investments
> in fixed assets. It's good to be king.
>
> Believe it or not, there was a time when things were worse for viewing
> football games. At least we get Sunday and Monday night games. When I was a
> mere lad, there were no prime time games. You got the Lions game and one
> other in-division game on Sunday. Apart from that, you lived with 30 seconds
> of highlight clips on your local news broadcast. It was the dark ages.
> Didn't have none of your high-falutin' ESPN *Sportscenter* or your HBO *Inside
> the NFL*.
>
> *Monday Night Football* opened a whole new world. I would wake up Tuesday
> morning and be looking forward to Howard Cosell doing the half-time
> highlights. I'm sure my Mom had to come in and turn off the little black and
> white TV in my bedroom every Monday, because I couldn't keep my eyes open
> past half-time.
>
> *MNF* didn't put prime time sports on the map; most localities broadcast the
> local team's baseball games at night all summer long. What it really showed
> was the viability of out-of-market games as prime time programming. It could
> have been two lousy teams from the west coast, but it was still the highest
> rated show in the Detroit market. When *MNF* came along, we finally saw the
> marketability of the game itself, rather than just the local team.
> Besides *Sunday
> Night Football*, *MNF* begat *Monday Night Baseball*, which begat TBS and
> WGN cable casting Braves and Cubs games nationwide, which begat any number
> of cable operators showing night baseball and NBA games. Interesting that
> even though it started with the NFL, MLB and the NBA are more flexible in
> their scheduling now.
>
> This Monday marked the last ever *Monday Night Football* broadcast on ABC.
> Next year it moves to ESPN (and ESPN's Sunday night game moves to NBC),
> where presumably the excruciating crew of ESPN Sunday night announcers will
> take over. Ironically, one of the legendary *MNF* highlights is the gruesome
> scene of Lawrence Taylor breaking Joe Theismann's leg. Now Joe gets to be
> the color man on Monday Night Football. I wonder how many people will tell
> him to "break a leg" before his first show. Let's hope NBC, which takes over
> Monday night's game, will be able to do a quality job. They'll have Madden;
> if they pair him with someone sharp (Costas maybe? You could add Jaworski
> for even more insight...) and avoid Hank Williams Jr.-itis, they may do
> well. Personally, I'd bet they do something stupid like hire Terrell Owens
> when he gets suspended next time, or have William Hung do the half-time
> soundtrack, or have Richard Lewis do color.
>
> By the way, I once saw Joe Theismann waiting for a plane at Dulles airport
> in DC. He was wearing these obnoxious salmon colored Bermuda shorts.
> Definitely not on his color chart. He dresses as obnoxiously as he
> announces. He's not much bigger than me. I think I could've pantsed him. I
> should have just on general principle. And maybe called out, "LT says
> Hello," as I was running away. (Yes, I know it's apropos of nothing, when
> you're lying in front of the TV hacking up chunks of your internal organs,
> life's regrets are particularly vivid.)........
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-- 
"He may look like an idiot and talk like an idiot but don't let that
fool you. He really is an idiot."

 Groucho Marx