WWE to move Wrestlemania off of PPV?

[jdw]

I'm looking at Dave's piece in the 10/03/11 WON on the WWE Network survey, and is it me... or is there a rather staggering lack of understanding about the NFL Network and NBA Network?

 

Speaking with people involved in the cable industry over the past week, they said clearance is not going to be fast, noting that after eight years, the NFL Network is still only available in about 70% of cable and satellite homes and NBA TV is only in 55%.

 

This survey would appear to have one or two purposes. Either it’s about garnering results to pitch to cable providers to get them to link the WWE Network with the NFL and NBA, so they can piggy back off the muscle of the more popular sports for clearances.

 

[...]

 

Being able to be linked with the NFL Network and NBA TV in a premium package would have huge advantages based on the deal cut. There are so many variables, but as long as they were linked with the muscle of the NFL to gain clearances and be the headliner, being a preliminary match version of the package, perhaps even preliminary money on a strong tier could make it an instant success. The type of economics they are talking about has not been hinted past the point of Vince McMahon saying that for the company, this can be a game changer. Plus, WWE would have a new platform for sponsors, as well as for in-house products. But for compatibility, that may require another change of image and having to embrace the sports end of the sports entertainment term, something the company has been running from for a long time.

On the first paragraph, it appears that Dave's "people involved in the cable industry" failed to mention to him that the reason the NFL Network and NBA Network aren't at 100% clearance is because the two sports monopolies have resisted carriers putting them on Sports Tiers and instead have been insisting on being put on the digital equiv of Basic. As we've bounced around in this thread, there's a reason for that:

 

Sprts Tier = Monthly Fee based on # of households subscribing to the Tier

Basic = Monthly Fee based on total # households subscribing to the Carrier

 

Say the carrier has 10M households. 100K subscribe to a Sports Tier.

 

10M Basic Households > 100K Sports Tier

 

The NFL knows this, as does ESPN. It's why ESPN isn't on a Sports Tier, but squeezes more money out of carriers than anyone on a per household basis: they're on Basic. The NFL went that route, have stuck to it, and have taken carriers to court fighting it.

 

The NFL will never join hands with the NBA to go on a Sports Tier, let alone the WWE.

 

Look... I'm not in the cable industry, and I don't play one at home. But like a lot of us, I've followed the NFL vs Carriers battles, with Time Warner and Comcast being among the more brutal ones. It's newsy stuff. You'd think that in the past decade of the concept of an WWE Network being out there (along an MMA one conceptually popping up more recently) that Dave would even on a casual way follow how some of the other niche networks did business and the issues that came up relating to them.

 

Some of us here have gotten a little granular on programing, including looking at how other cable channels fill their schedule with re-runs / re-airs. I suspect some of us have even at times in the past decade done the equiv of "fantasy booking" to fill up what a weekly schedule could look like. I bet I did 5-6 years ago and now can't remember what I pulled out of my ass. But that's granular.

 

Carriers, tiers and fee rates... that's basic stuff. I get that Dave was relying on "people in the industry", but either (i) they gave him some really info, (ii) they aren't as in the cable industry as Dave thinks, or (iii) Dave didn't get what they were saying.

 

I suspect it's a part of all three, because I don't think it's possible for anyone understanding tiers in the carriage industry wouldn't instantly tell Dave:

 

"That NFL thing isn't going to happy. The NFL wants to be Basic. That's why it's not on Time Warner. They'll never go tier on anything other than the DirecTV package, and will never partner with someone like the WWE."

 

John

[Marty]

John (or anyone else): Does the NBA Network in the U.S. fall under the same category (general basic package)? (I ask because I'm in Canada.)

 

It's moreless like that here in Canada, too, wrt the NFL Network: If you have digital cable (with the carrier I have at least, I haven't researched the others specifically, though I imagine it's no different), then you have the NFL Network. You need a specific package (not a tier, a package) then you have the NBA Network as well, mind you it's the most popular package of the carrier. At the same time, the NHL Network is on a sports tier.

[jdw]

The NBA has largely pushed to get NBA TV onto basic / digital basic equivs. They dropped their fee to Time Warner to get it done, and moved off the Sports tiers at Comcast and DirecTV and many other carriers.

 

The Big 10 Network has done the same thing: pushing carriers to be on basic on Big 10 Markets. When Nebraska joined, they worked with the carriers in Nebraska to transition off the Sports Tiers and onto basic / digital basic.

 

Pac 12 Net and the Pac 12 Regional Networks will do the same thing.

 

The move is to get away from being on Tiers. The content providers all want to be on basic because they believe (rightly) that $0.08 to $0.20 for All Households is greater than $0.50 to $1.00 for the far smaller number of Specialty Tier Subscribers. Especially as people look at their raising bills and start dumping stuff they don't watch much. I recently dumped my HBO/Showtime/Skinemax tier because I just wasn't watching much of it. If there's an HBO series that I like, I can always by the season DVD's on discount for less than I'm paying annually for the tier.

 

I pitched a few other useless tiers that I got when subbing to a package a while back: just didn't get any value out of them when the special pricing of the package ran out.

 

John