Quote:
Originally Posted by Strange Brew
I don't really follow the cable unbundling saga but assuming it does start to unravel. would the regional sports networks benefit from a la carte pricing, or be damaged by it? There won't be a hockey only channel, they would be on a channel with basketball and baseball. Wouldn't such a channel pull their weight, relatively speaking?
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The math is devastating to these American RSNs. Take the Dallas Stars as an example. They average about 10,000-15,000 households per game, which is about average for the non-hockey US markets. There are about 1.5 million cable TV households in the Dallas DMA, all paying in the neighborhood of 3 or 4 dollars a month.
They are collecting 50 to 70 million a year in carriage fee rates from 1.5 million people and only 1% of those who are paying for it are actually watching it. If they went true a la carte, and all their regular viewers were willing to pay for it, they would need to charge $300 a month for the channel.
The advertising revenue and fees charged a la carte would not pay for production costs for most American hockey franchises.