Comcast Can 'Tier' NFL Net
By Mike Reynolds -- Multichannel News, 5/13/2007 6:00:00 PM MT
Talk about taking a sack: New York Supreme Court judge Bernard Fried issued a summary judgment released last week that Comcast can move the NFL Network to a dedicated sports tier, a move that could result in the pro football league's channel losing as many as 7 million of its 41 million subscribers.
This week Comcast will officially notify the network and begin to tell its customers of its game plan to move NFL Network to a sports tier, which typically costs $4.95 per month on top of digital-cable outlays. The migration is expected to take place over the next 30 to 60 days.
Over the past three years, Comcast has carried the NFL Network on its “D2” package, its second most widely distributed digital package, which counts 7 million customers, as well as its sports tier, which has 750,000 subscribers.
The latter tally figures to grow with the addition of the NFL Network, whose major calling card is an eight-game, late-season package of primetime contests, and the rollout of the sports tier to Time Warner Cable systems that Comcast acquired through the cable operators' joint purchase of Adelphia Communications.
It was Comcast's plan to place the NFL Network on sports tiers in former Time Warner Cable markets that prompted the NFL to file suit last October.
“The final word on this issue is most likely going to come from the appellate courts. If this decision is upheld, the biggest harm will be to consumers,” the NFL Network said in a statement. “They will have to pay more for less.”
Comcast said that it “bargained explicitly for the right to place the NFL Network on a sports tier because it is the best and fairest solution for all our customers. This decision means that our customers who are NFL fans will be able to watch the NFL Network without burdening those who are not NFL fans with extra costs.”
Judge Fried found in Comcast's favor that an agreement it made with the pro football league in 2004 would allow it to move the NFL Network to a sports tier if the nation's largest cable operator didn't succeed in its quest to acquire rights to the out-of-market “NFL Sunday Ticket” pay-per-view package, or the aforementioned eight-game primetime package for Versus, then called OLN.
Sunday Ticket was retained by DirecTV. The NFL Network received the eight-game package in January 2006, despite OLN's $400 million-a-year bid.
Fried's ruling doesn't figure to help NFL Network efforts to gain wide distribution pacts.
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