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Originally Posted by WilderPegasus
It wouldn't be for short term bucks either. It would be to increase subscription rates for LeafsTV long term. And that's where the money is in sports these days. Sportsnet isn't going to be affected by it. Everyone will continue to subscribe to it.
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Actually, the money in sports these days is in taxing cable subscribers for channels they don't want. ESPN alone rakes in over $7 billion a year in subscriber fees. (
Source) Since cable channels are normally sold in tiers and not à la carte, most subscribers have to pay for sports channels whether they watch any sports or not. The money raked in from cable bills far exceeds the total revenues of the à la carte sports channels like LeafsTV.
As for Sportsnet, there's only one reason people will continue to subscribe to it if you take away the programming most viewers want to watch. That's, you guessed it, the tiers again. You can't unsubscribe from Sportsnet without losing a bunch of other channels that you probably do want. But if Sportsnet is perceived as having no value, it will only encourage people to ditch the whole idea of channel-based cable TV and switch to streaming and downloadable video — Netflix, Hulu, Amazon, iTunes, and many others. The cable industry cannot keep charging its customers more and more money for the same services. That militates against moving popular programming from basic cable channels onto high-priced premium services.