|
|
|
| Sat, Nov. 14 - - Mobile - RSS | |
|
|
Sports fans, fouled
Fans caught in the middle between money-hungry leagues and television-programming providers
Date published: 3/11/2008
SHOW me the money. In today's NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell came the other day before a House subcommittee--Congress having solved all the great problems of the Republic--to complain that the Federal Communications Commission isn't enforcing its rules regarding equal treatment by cable companies of unaffiliated networks. Because the companies won't put NFL Network in their basic lineups, he argued, fans must pay extra to get the network--if they can get it at all--and the eight games a season it carries. The cable companies--the ones that raise your bill a couple of bucks every other month to cover the "rising cost of quality programming"--also claim victimhood. They feel shut out by the NFL's exclusive "Sunday Ticket" deal with DirecTV, the satellite provider which is also the exclusive carrier of Major League Baseball's "Extra Innings" package. Subscribers to those deals have access to telecasts of every game. That includes, of course, a particular game involving the favorite team of a fan who lives outside that team's local market. Fans are willing to pay the price for these services, and the NFL knows it. It's able to negotiate these exclusive deals because of the exemption it enjoys from antitrust rules. The real justification for the exemption is that it allows the league to negotiate television rights for all NFL teams and then spread out the revenues. Left to bargain independently, a Washington or New York franchise would reap much higher revenues than, say, Jacksonville. Such a discrepancy would doom the NFL. Despite its pleas to have NFL Network more readily available to viewers, the league's real motive behind the network, members of Congress say, is to move toward self-controlled subscription programming for all NFL games. How nice. Rather than receiving appreciation for their roles as loyal customers, fans are held upside down and shaken until their pockets are empty. This is one of the true conundrums of modern television sports entertainment: Viewers and spectators, whose money makes all aspects of pro sports so lucrative, are treated like fill dirt by both the leagues they worship and the programming providers at whom they so willingly throw cash. Ah, fans. Their interest may wane and their ire build when a players strike clears the field, or their favorite stars snack on steroids, or a family outing to the ballpark requires a second mortgage, or owners take once-proud franchises and produce a decade of losing seasons. Evidently, fans' lust for thrills, action, and suspense will never subside however hard they're kicked. Fans, instead of submitting to these shearings, should roar to Congress, demanding that it tailor an antitrust exemption that allows revenue sharing, but frustrates the monopolistic greed that increases costs to sports consumers.
Date published: 3/11/2008
|
 |
|||
|
|||
