Is Dish Network's New Sling TV A Big Deal For ESPN and Sports Networks?
Two days ago Dish Network announced it was offering Sling TV -- an option to watch cable channels over the Internet -- without requiring a satellite subscription. For just $20 a month subscribers get access to ESPN, ESPN2, Disney, Food Network, HGTV, TBS, TNT, CNN, Cartoon Network, Adult Swim, Travel Channel and ABC Family. The announcement, by Dish CEO Joe Clayton, was immediately treated as big news. And it is big news when you consider that ESPN has never been available online before without a cable or satellite subscription before. That was the real crux of the announcement.
"It's the thing a lot people really miss when they don't have a pay-TV service," Dish President and CEO Joe Clayton said. "They want live sports. They want ESPN and ESPN 2."
Quite a few of you emailed and Tweeted me wanting to know what I thought this meant for sports and rights fees and the like so here are my thoughts on where we're headed and whether or not this is a big deal in the ongoing cord-cutting revolution.
First, let's start with a simple tutorial on the cable and satellite business -- you pay for every single channel that you receive as part of your cable package. Every single one. It astounds me how many people don't know this basic fact. I suspect this has to do with the notion of "premium" movie channels like HBO, Cinemax, and Showtime and the fact that they were unbundled from the beginning. We all understand that those channels are extra costs that we purchase a la carte and we actually see what those stations cost before we buy them. But every cable channel has a cost, often an insubstantial cost -- the average station costs somewhere around 15 cents a month-- but some channels have very substantial costs. For instance, every single person with a cable or satellite subscription pays over $6 a month for ESPN. That's $72 a year for just ESPN. ESPN2 costs around .74 cents a year or $8.88 a year. The end result is subscription revenue from ESPN, ESPN2, plus the addition channels of ESPNU, ESPNClassic, ESPNNews, and the SEC Network of around $8.5 billion. (ESPN's massive competitive advantage over ABC, CBS, NBC, and Fox is that it doesn't have to rely on advertising to pay for the games it buys. It gets the vast majority of its money from subscribers.)
Sports is the single most expensive aspect of all our cable and satellite television bills. But for those of us who are sports fans, we actually get a free ride for much of the cost. That's because every cable and satellite subscriber subsidizes the cost of our sports viewing. You, watching a hundred hours of sports a month, and your Aunt Gladys, who is watching zero, pay the exact same subscription fee. (Of course you're also paying for the Hallmark Channel and Lifetime, two stations that you probably never watch, that your Aunt Gladys watches with a heaving bosom. I'm sorry for the image.) We all watch a tiny fraction of the channels that we receive as part of cable and satellite bundles. According to a recent Nielsen study the average cable subscriber receives 189 channels but only watches 17.5 of those channels.
Here are the 13 most expensive channels in sports and what they cost every subscriber per month:
1. ESPN $6.04 or $72.48 a year
2. NFL Network $1.22 or $14.64 a year
3. Pac 12 Network .80 or $9.60 a year
4. ESPN2 .74 or $8.88 a year
5. SEC Network .68 or $8.16 a year
5. FS1 .68 or $8.16 a year
7. Big Ten Network .38 or $4.56 a year
8. NBATV .27 or $3.24 a year
9. NBC Sports Network .27 or $3.24 a year
10. CBS Sports Network .25 or $3 a year
11. ESPN News .23 or $2.76 a year
12. ESPN Classic .21 or $2.52 a year
13. ESPNU .21 or $2.52 a year
(The Pac 12 numbers are out of whack because the network isn't available in very many homes. You can see the revenue numbers at the above link.)
If you're reading this chances are you spend a lot of time watching sports on television. The threat of cord cutting and a la carte cable looms over the sports business because if everyone started paying for only the channels they want then all of the above channels would have to become much more expensive. How much more expensive? Last year "The Atlantic" magazine estimated that only 20% of cable and satellite homes would pay for ESPN. That is, only about twenty percent of us are diehard enough sports fans to demand ESPN. In that scenario the cost of ESPN would become $30 a month, or $360 a year. (Other sports stations would cost less, but would still be tremendous increases from what is paid now). The resulting squeeze would put ESPN's business model in real jeopardy since ESPN has guaranteed massive payouts to the leagues it does business with over the next decade and more. ESPN's entire business is effectively to act as a middle man, paying the leagues massive sums for their games and then receiving massive sums from the cable and satellite companies in order to be carried as part of their bundles. What happens if ESPN's subscriber numbers suddenly plummet? Well, they have to make up that money somewhere. Sports viewers would all have to pay much more for its programming.
ESPN derives its entire business plan from a simple fact -- sports fans want to see our favorite teams play and if we can't we will pitch holy hell over it. That demand is the reason they can charge so much to cable and satellite companies.
The reason why most of you reading this right now would never cut the cord on your cable and satellite subscriptions is simple -- because we couldn't watch the games then. I have Netflix and Amazon Prime and an Xbox One subscription for my kids. The only live television I watch all day long is either kid's programs -- damn you Sprout! -- or live sports. Everything else is off Netflix or my DVR.
So how does this all tie in with Dish Network's move to allow ESPN via a low-cost streaming service instead of via a cable or satellite subscription? It's a brilliant business move for Dish and ESPN, but the practical impact is negligible.
It's really just a new bundle.
Here's what Sling TV offers for $20 alongside the cost of those channels:
ESPN $6.04
TNT $1.48
Disney $1.21
ESPN 2 .74
CNN .63
TBS: .72
These are the six most expensive channels in this new bundle and they add up to $10.82.
I couldn't find the exact costs for HGTV, Cartoon Network, Adult Swim, ABC Family, the Travel Channel or the Food Network, but I think it's a fair assumption that the average cost of these stations is no more than .50 each and probably even cheaper than that. That would add an additional $3 to the bundle's cost.
This means the bundle costs Dish somewhere around $14 and they are charging $20 for it. When you factor in the lower cost to deliver programming via already existing broadband connnections, that's a pretty good profit margin for Dish.
But, and this is key, ESPN, TNT, and TBS get the same amount of money from this bundle as they do from the larger bundles already offered by cable and satellite companies. It keeps the cost structure the exact same.
How many people will subscribe to Sling TV? Probably not that many. Right now there are 10.6 million households that pay for broadband but don't have a cable or satellite subscription. This is primarily a sports bundle offering. How many sports fans have broadband but don't have cable or satellite subscriptions because it's too expensive. Not many, right?
So what's the real story here?
This is a pretty brilliant move by ESPN, TNT and TBS to combat accusations that sports costs are too high. Their executives can point to this offering from Dish Network and say, "See sports costs aren't too high, you don't even need a cable or satellite subscription to get ESPN for $20 a month."
With this new deal ESPN has neutralized critics of cable costs while still pocketing the same amount of money that they were already making off larger cable and satellite bundles. It's a brilliant business move, but despite all the sound and the fury it's really not changing anything at all.
