ESPN in the coming years likely will be "sold directly to consumers instead of as part of a cable or satellite package," and how the net and college football conferences handle this inevitability will determine how fans watch and "in large part how athletic departments fund their programs," according to Andy Staples of SI.com. One "basic assumption" is that at some point before these current league TV deals expire in the middle of the next decade, home Internet service "will improve to the point where it will allow for a clean 720-, 1080- or even 2160-pixel (4K) stream that never pixelates and never buffers." This means the way viewers pay for the games they watch "will eventually change." Disney "wants ESPN bringing in the same amount of money as it does now," which is "going to be a challenge" in an OTT marketplace. Currently, cable and satellite subscribers "pay more than $6 a month just for ESPN." Staples: "Would you be willing to pay $25 or so per month for ESPN? Your answer probably depends on what else you would want to buy." Meanwhile, the way viewers watch ESPN "might change." The net "could still program an over-the-top system the way it does a cable-based one, but it doesn’t necessarily have to spend money to produce shows to fill every hour across multiple channels." ESPN will "have to find a price point that works for the masses, but it still must deal with the rising costs of rights fees." The reason ESPN "can leverage such high fees from cable companies is the threat of customers enraged by the fact that they can’t see their team’s games." The key to ESPN’s dominance of the marketplace "remains live events, and those are only getting more important to programmers and more expensive." ESPN and competitors such as FS1 "will need the rights to premium live sporting events more than ever to drive subscribership in the era that’s coming" (SI.com, 8/3).
Y'ALL COME BACK NOW, YA HEAR? In Des Moines, Andrew Logue noted if the unbundling of cable TV packages comes to fruition, the business model for college athletics "could unravel," and viewers "may not like what’s exposed." For the past 30 years, the collegiate power brokers "have soaked up television money," but the TV industry is "entering an age of cord-cutting and a la carte." Negotiations for future rights fees "could be trickier." ESPN and other networks "have been on a decade-long spending spree," and they will "have to be more cost-conscious moving forward." On the other hand, live sports programming "is a highly sought-after commodity." Passionate fans "typically DVR less, meaning they’re less likely to skip through commercials." But giving subscribers a chance to choose "means the end of a shell game" (DES MOINES REGISTER, 8/3).
