[opendtv] Re: TV Technology: DirecTV To Offer NFL Sunday Ticket Live as St
- From: Craig Birkmaier <craig@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: "opendtv@xxxxxxxxxxxxx" <opendtv@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Wed, 12 Aug 2015 07:37:18 -0400
On Aug 11, 2015, at 12:22 PM, Daniel Grimes <dan.grimes@xxxxxxxx> wrote:
But one might ask, why is it limited to just "live out-of-market NFL game
every Sunday", for, "residents of apartments, condominiums and town homes who
are not receiving DirecTV service, or customers who were not able to install
a DirecTV dish due to an obstruction or other restriction. In addition,
DirecTV is offering the service to students at four-year universities at an
exclusive price."?
Why not sell it all to anyone like MLB.com does? And why isn't this already
available for other sports?
Dan
Good questions, but this is exactly the kind of situation I keep talking about
with respect to obtaining the rights to stream any type of programming over the
Internet.
NFL Sunday Ticket has been the exclusive "prize package" that DirecTV used to
build its subscriber base at the expense of cabled MVPDs since the mid '90s.
All NFL games are televised, but only a small percentage get the national
audience, by design. The league places emphasis on local markets with its
traditional broadcast coverage; you get your local team if the stadium is sold
out, and now the league is moving away from the blackout rule. You get a second
game, which is usually a national feed.
The NFL partnered with DirecTV to offer a premium package with all out of
market games. The in market game is still exclusive to the broadcaster in your
market. The cost of this package has been about $200/year. DirecTV recently
signed a new eight year deal at a cost of $1.5 billion/year to continue to have
this exclusive package. Apparently they added the ability to sell the package
to those viewers who cannot access the DBS service.
Why restrict it to only those who cannot get the DVS service and four year
university students?
1. The NFL package drives subscriptions to the DirecTV MVPD bundles; so if a
customer can see the satellite they must get a DBS bundle to be eligible for
the NFL package.
Why not offer a complete OTT MVPD bundle and NFL package to he potential
customers who cannot see the satellite? They would need the rights for every
network they would include in the MVPD bundle.
2. Since they a paying for the exclusive rights to the NFL games, they
apparently added the OTT streaming rights to the new contract. One could
conclude that the NFL agreed to extend the rights to those who cannot access
the DBS service and University students. The students get all kinds of special
deals, as they will become highly sought after customers when they graduate,
and most live in dorms and apartment complexes that have broadband and MVPD
services, but not DirecTV.
The NFL is in a much stronger position that MLB in terms of controlling the
markets for their games. Almost all games are sold out, while very few baseball
games sell out. Baseball teams play 162 games, while NFL teams play 16 games -
a total of 256 games versus 2430 for MLB.
If you like to follow your local (or favorite) baseball team you may or may not
be able to access the games via your local MVPD - mostly via regional sports
networks. There are not many games left on broadcast TV. But the NFL makes sure
you can access all of your local teams games via broadcast TV. So MLB uses the
Internet to let people access their games.
There are other premium packages for sports nuts, some of which can be OTT.
ESPN has a college football package called Game Plan that is sold by the MVPDs
and telcos for Internet access. It provides access to 12 games a week and
costs about $115 per season or $24 for a single weekend.
Bottom line, each sport has unique challenges, and they are using the Internet
to reach people who are willing to pay a premium for their sport.
Regards
Craig
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