NFL Sunday Ticket is examined by Steve Zipay of
NEWSDAY. Zipay writes that a "bull" market for NFL Sunday
Ticket has been created by the "passion of displaced
loyalists ... the fervor of Fantasy Football players and the
frantic addiction of Sunday bettors coupled with the
convenience and plunging prices of the pizza size direct
broadcast satellite dishes." NFL execs say 400,000
households and 7,500 bars and restaurants will order the
Sunday Ticket lineup of AFC and NFC games this season. Alan
Prince of Hempstead, NY's Bogart's Restaurants: "If you
don't have Sunday Ticket, you might as well be closed on
Sunday." NFL Enterprises VP/Marketing & Sales Tola Murphy-
Baran said the C-band dishes "were very big and very
expensive; now they're very little and they're at a price
that is roughly comparable to buying a color TV or a VCR.
The availability of football and the abundance of
programming - five HBOs, three Showtimes - has pushed the
fence-sitters off the fence." Although the NFL will not
release NYC and Long Island subscriber numbers, sources have
said there were approximately 14,000 subscribers statewide
in early '95 and that figure "is certain to have grown." A
New York small-dish installer recently said of the 200
dishes his company installed during the past six months,
over 25% intended to buy the NFL package. In a sidebar,
Zipay notes his own experience of the NFL's Sunday Ticket:
"Extended bliss! I'm sold on the mini-dish." For more
numbers on Sunday Ticket, see #29 (NEWSDAY, 11/24).
