The NFL's Dranconian TV Rules

When you have a product, usually the best way to sell it is to make it available to as many people as you can. The NFL is staunchly resistant to this marketing approach. They deny access to so many games it's getting ridiculous.

1) I have always hated living in New York because on most Sundays you get the Giants and the Jets and nothing else. This rule was instituted to protect the attendance figures at the games. But the Jets and Giants sell out every single game. There is no conceivable reason why the New York market can't get an extra game on Sundays opposite a game of one of the local teams playing at home. Both networks would be affected equally by allowing this so it makes no sense why they continue to show only one game, a game that more than 50% of rabid football fans in the area are not interested in, unless they want to sell more NFL Sunday Ticket Packages.

2) The NFL only offers its Sunday Ticket on DirecTV. Why does the NFL risk alienating many of its fans who can't or don't want to subscribe to DirecTV. Let's look at the financial ramifications. DirecTV has about 16 million subscribers, about 2 million of them subscribe to NFL Sunday Ticket at a cost of about $250 a year.

DirecTV has 16 million subscribers, about 2 million of them subscribe to Sunday ticket at a cost of about $249 a year. That means Sunday Ticket generates about $500 million in revenue per year. DirecTV is paying $700 million a year ($3.5 billion over 5 years) for the exclusive rights to Sunday Ticket. That leaves them with a shortfall of at least $200 million, but to DirecTV they recoup that money by not losing those 2 million customers to cable. That extra money is the cost of keeping those customers and getting other revenue from them. It also is one of their best ways of acquiring new customers.

But I don't see why this deal works for the NFL. If roughly 12% of DirecTV subscribers buy the package don't you think they could get about 5% of current cable customers or 3.5 million more subscribers. If they could get that many subscribers by offering it on cable, even though they lose the premium paid for exclusivity, I think they'd make a lot more money. And they wouldn't be depriving customers of their product.

I don't understand the NFL's shortsightedness on this issue. I don't think the sports bar lobby is powerful enough to do anything about it, even though sports bars do pay higher fees to show the games I doubt they would all of the sudden stop buying the Ticket just because more people had it in their homes.

3) And the NFL's latest bit of television hegemony, the NFL Network. The NFL wants to push its new network, and I understand that. But they are asking the cable companies for 70 cents per customer. That's ridiculous. I am a huge football fan and even I would balk at paying $8.40 a year for a network I'll watch 8 to 10 times a year. How can people who don't care about the NFL (and there are some) be forced to pay that fee?

The cable companies have reportedly offered several other remedies (putting the network on a premium package and charging any amount to customers who choose to pay it or carrying the network only for those games at a fee), the only thing the cable companies won't agree to is forcing all their customers to accept the NFL Network and to pay more for it.

When I was a kid the last two weeks of the season would feature two Saturday afternoon games. One week it would be the Giants, and the Jets the next week. This would give the New York market 2 games on Sunday that didn't feature New York teams. Usually that gave me at least one extra chance to see the Redskins. This season, in order shove the NFL Network a little farther down our throats there is one Saturday game in each of the last three weeks, plus two more Thursday games, but no Saturday games for the networks this year.

NFL, listen up. You've got it good right now. The NFL can do no wrong. It is wildly popular and people can't get enough of the league. So give it to us. Never deprive the paying customer of your product to prove a point.