One-on-One with Chase Carey

Wednesday, March 12, 2008 | 5:04 p.m. | By Liz Mullen | Comments | Print

"Would I have preferred for it to have stayed an exclusive product of the NFL Network? Sure," said

DirecTV CEO Chase Carey

DirecTV CEO Chase Carey on the NFL's decision to let over-the-air broadcasters carry the final regular-season game between the New England Patriots and the New York Giants.

Carey acknowledged that the satellite television provider was not thrilled that the NFL had agreed to allow other networks to broadcast the game, though he understood the regulatory and other pressures under which the NFL was operating.

"I would have preferred the game stay on the NFL Network as we expected," Carey said during a one-on-one interview Wednesday at the IMG World Congress of Sports. Carey, however, declined to reveal the nature of DirecTV's talks with the NFL on the subject, saying, "We address those issues privately between us."

During the interview, Carey addressed a wide range of issues, including the dangers of too much fragmentation of sports broadcasting, balancing the costs and the benefits of broadcasting sports and how the current economic downturn was affecting DirecTV.
Carey said that the "quality" of the company's 17 million subscribers had thus far insulated the company from the economic effects of the subprime mortgage meltdown. Although the company is continuing to keep an eye on the economy, "It really hasn't affected our business in a meaningful way."

Carey said that because DirecTV's customer base is passionate about sports and willing to pay for it, the satellite provide is more able to make deals like the one it recently signed with Big Ten Network. But, he added, "Make no mistake about it, cost in sports is an issue for us as it is for everybody else."

News Corp. sold its controlling interest in DirecTV to Liberty Media in February. Carey indicated there could be some changes for the satellite company with the new ownership. "I think that the changes that will evolve over time will be that Liberty … will have a degree more flexibility to pursue what opportunities make sense for us," Carey said.

Carey expressed an interest in broadcasting more international sports and sporting events on DirecTV, but was not as optimistic about broadcasting high school sporting events. "I think on the high school level, its an area that a lot of people have talked about, but not a lot has happened," he said, adding that it was hard to balance the costs of producing high school games against the small viewership.

Asked what sports he thought had the biggest growth potential, Carey said "soccer." But he added that despite the perception that the NFL has no room to grow, "it actually gets stronger." Carey added, "I think baseball has had a nice run."