Hank Williams Jr. may be singing a new song very soon: Are you ready to pay more for some football?
For those who replied “no” . . . well, too bad. Because even if you don’t care for the savage ballet and its weekly marquee matchup featured on ESPN’s “Monday Night Football,” you’re still going to pay more for it.
According to analysts, cable subscribers will be forced to fork over $2 more a month in 2012 for ESPN sports channel (which promises up to 500 more hours in additional pro football coverage), thanks to its recently signed 8-year, $15.2 billion deal with the NFL.
Today, ESPN charges cable operators $4.89 a subscriber. It wants to increase that to $7, and everyone expects that extra $2 will be passed along to customers.
While celebrating in the end zone, ESPN’s allies decided to deflect blame to providers, offering this lovely response to consumers who are struggling to pay their rising bills:
“Well, we don’t control the price of cable operators,” said Matthew Polka, president of American Cable Association.
Polka went “into the lion’s den” earlier this week and questioned the financial ramifications on ESPN Radio in Orlando, Fla., rather than scream, shout and threaten the sports giant as Dish Network’s CEO Charles Ergen did last week. Ergen is looking at pulling ESPN off his basic satellite service and place the sports programmer on a more expensive tier.
With NBC, CBS and Fox already providing pigskin games on Sundays — not to mention the barrage of college games on Saturdays — will the rising cost of ESPN cause people to eventually call up their provider to “cut the cord” and cancel their service?
The thought of not having cable or satellite sounds scary, but so does the news last week that 15 percent of Americans are living in poverty.
“Consumers are reaching a point in this awful economy when they may have no choice,” said Andrew Zimbalist, professor of economics at Smith College, who has written more than 20 books on the business side of sports, including “Sports, Jobs and Taxes.”
“No question, there are going to be fewer and fewer people with basic-cable packages over the next few years.”
Craig Moffett, an analyst for Bernstein Research, agrees.
“With this many people living below the poverty line and household income steadily decreasing, you can expect TV bills to be one of the first things to go. What are die-hard football fans supposed to do — ponder having a third meal or watching the game?”
Polka, who dubbed ESPN the worldwide leader of hyper-inflationary price hikes, said he wouldn’t be surprised to see Congress step in one day and make ESPN an a la carte choice like HBO.
Both Moffett and Zimbalist believe Disney, which owns ESPN and ABC, would do whatever necessary to avoid that. In addition, current contracts that are firmly in place between ESPN and its cable and satellite providers can’t be easily broken, no matter how unhappy Polka is or what Ergen threatens.
“No question, Disney holds a lot of leverage,” said Moffett. “Sports fans who want the games will pay, and those who don’t care about football will be forced to pay or lose basic packages.”
ESPN declined comment for the story.
Time Warner Cable and Cablevision, which both have a long-standing policy against discussing agreements with programmers, also declined comment.
Subscriber scramble
ESPN’s $15.3B contract extension could have basic pay-TV consumers paying about $25 more a year to get sports programming
Time WarnerCable
Now: $674
2012: $708*
Cablevision
Now: $516
2012: $540*
*Analyst estimates of annual spending on basic cable plan.