Of course one of the reasons Sunday Ticket is only on DirecTV is that they’re the only ones who were willing to carry is as NOT pay-per-view. That’s how the cable companies wanted to handle it and the NFL said hell no. Also the networks that pay them $1 billion objected to that level of game choice being available to so much of the population. Really the NFL is not going PPV or subscription, there’s simply no way to do that and make the move revenue positive. All they have to do is look at what happened to boxing, the NFL is just not that stupid.
I don’t think you can draw a paralell to boxing-the sport has tanked, while the NFL on the other hand has seen nothing but success.
I can see the day when the NFL goes all pay per view, by game. I can assure you that 95% of the “Steeler Nation” (aka “yinzers”) will pay $50 every week to watch the Steelers on TV. The NFL will charge $50 per game for individuals and $300 per commercial establishment (bars, clubs etc) for games. I think the day of “free” NFL on TV is coming to an end.
Discostu, you've been a voice of sanity on this thread until you got to this one.
Sunday Ticket is pay-per-view but it is a package, much like MLB Extra Innings, ESPN GamePlan or NBA League Pass. You pay one cost for a package of games. The reason DirecTV carries it and nobody else is because it is a "loss leader". It costs more money in rights fees than DirecTV gets back. DirecTV agreed to this provided they were the exclusive distributor of Sunday Ticket. They then heavily promote Sunday Ticket and add subscribers who are only customers because they can get Sunday Ticket. When satellite had such a small market share of the cable/satellite universe (mid-1990s), this was a calculated gamble to gain customers.
The NFL then shopped Sunday Ticket to the other cable/satellite systems in 2006 at the end of the exclusivity contract they had with DirecTV. Nobody else took it because nobody likes losing money. DirecTV, on the other hand, had no choice but to pick up Sunday Ticket because they'd lose a bunch of NFL fans if they didn't.
Now, this is a different topic than NFL Network. The issue with NFL Network is that the NFL agreed with some cable operators to carry the channel on a digital tier but that same agreement was not okay when it came to negotiating with Time Warner and Charter. The NFL has already set a precedent but they don't want to carry that same precedent to larger cable companies.
Why? Because they need eyeballs to sell the advertising rates they want to charge and will have less eyeballs if their channel is on a digital tier than on a standard tier. If they are on a digital tier, cable can raise rates only on those with that tier. If they are on a standard tier, the cable company must raise rates on 97% of their customers. All that for a channel that only carries 10 live games a year.
So why did the NFL agree to the digital tier with some companies but not others? The strategy was to use public pressure on Time Warner and Charter to make them capitulate to the NFL's demands THEN go back and force the other companies to do the same thing citing Time Warner and Charter as the precedent. Right now, Time Warner and Charter are arguing that the existing cable deals are the precedent.
That's where the battle line is drawn. The NFL wants two standards so they can then go back and force the higher standard on the smaller companies. The larger companies are telling the NFL that they've already set the industry standard and fairness demands that they treat all cable carriers by that standard.
BTW, it is true that shopping channels *pay* cable companies to carry them. Also, most religious channels offer their programming free, believeing their mission is to evangelize not turn a profit. That's why both channels are frequently carried because they don't cost cable operators anything and add to the total number of channels they can offer.