From Magic Bullet to Sunday Ticket

DirectTV’s “Sunday Ticket” draws fire from Pennsylvania senator

By NATASHA T. METZLER
Associated Press Writer
WASHINGTON (AP) — The National Football League’s ability to negotiate exclusive sports packages is under fire from the outgoing chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., twice said he would introduce legislation in the next session aimed at eliminating the league’s freedom from antitrust laws.

Specter said the NFL should not use the exemption to negotiate exclusive programming packages such as DirectTV Inc.’s “Sunday Ticket,” which allows viewers to watch teams outside their regional market.

“As I look at what the NFL is doing today with the NFL channel with the DirectTV ... a lot of people, including myself, would like to be able to have that ticket,” Specter said.

But the 1961 law that gives the NFL this freedom should not apply to DirectTV because it is not “sponsored programming,” said Stephen Ross, a law professor at Pennsylvania State University and chair of the school’s sports law institute. He said the Pennsylvania senator could be using the threat of legislation to pressure the NFL to make changes voluntarily.

Access to out-of-market football games was one of many consumer fairness issues addressed during the hearing. Another hot topic was whether cable providers should be forced to share sports broadcasting rights with every service provider in an area.

David Cohen, executive vice president of Comcast Corp., said his company has not made a local Philadelphia sports network it owns available to DirectTV because it is one way his company can stay competitive with the “Sunday Ticket” package.

“What is sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander,” he said.

 

Gregg Easterbrook must be creaming his pants.
As a NFLST subscriber for 10 years, I have 3 complaints, 1) for what you're paying -- there shouldn't be any blackouts and 2) you shouldn't have to pay an extra $100 for games in HD and 3) games on your local CBS or Fox affiliate should not be blacked out.
My guess is that the NFL settles and makes the ST available to cable as part of a compromise to get the NFL Network on more cable systems.

 

Habeas corpus and the NFL antitrust status.
Two things I thought would last forever.
Thanks, Arlen.

 

I know this isn;t a beef with spector, but with the cable company. I love how cable companies across the board are cryign their eyes out over NFL network charging higher premium prices to carry the games, but they think it's fine that they routinely raise their rates without any options. "You want this channel, oh, it's on the upper-tiered package, that'll be another 12.99 a month."

Insert rant here: OK, I will. ;D It's a business. I live outside of an area where I want to watch the Steelers play, so I shelled out the money for DirecTV, which I absolutely love by the way, and I also shelled out the money for Sunday Ticket (see previous comment about sattelite). I made the choice. Most everyone can get DirecTV service, unless you live deep in the woods or on the wrong side of an apartment building, and DirecTV played the game and paid the money to the NFL for the right to carry the games. If Comcast or adelphia or any other cable or sattelite company wanted to get in on it, they had the chance to shell out the money. They chose not to. Don't cry about it later.

 

Arlen Specter is still alive?
I just figured that all the key players in the Warren Commission debacle would all be six feet under by now.

 

i've never understood why people pay for NFL ticket unless it's solely to watch their favorite team because they live in a different TV market. basically NFL games are all on at the same time, so how many games can you watch at once? me, once i get some money coming in, i'm getting the mlb extra innings or whatever it's called so i can watch a different baseball game every night. teams play at different times and have different off days, so i figure over a 162-game season you could probably watch your favorite team and watch plenty of games of other teams. of course i don't spend that much time in front of the TV so i'd never watch that much baseball, but it's there if i want it.

 

That's certainly part of it, but when I sit down on a Sunday, I have the Steelers game on, and I usually pick out one more game to flip to at commercials. Then, at the tail end of the 1:00's, there are almost always two or three games going down to the wire. It's nice for that, and it's great for fantasy football fans. I also get to choose from the three 4:00 games instead of just watching what the networks feed me. To me, ST is worth every penny, even if it goes up.

 

I've had Extra Innings since 2001 and I love it.

 

ST is fantastic.

And it will be hard for DirecTV to not be the sole provider of it. They just signed a new deal, want to say six years, that kicked in this year that makes ST exclusive to DirecTV. And they paid a lot of $$$$ for it.

 

Sunday Ticket is good. The SuperFan package with the Shortcuts of the games is even better. I watch most games each week thanks to that.

 

yeah i can understand flipping around. and it pisses me off when i want to watch some NFL but due to the arcane rules that no one understands, the home team is playing at 4 so there's no game on at 1 i get nothing to watch. i'm just saying that when it comes to spending money, i'm cheap, so if i don't see the value in it, as opposed to extra innings, where you can watch your home market team, your favorite team and out of market teams. just my two cents.

 

The NFL is like a drug dealer working a schoolyard, I'll give it to you free (cheap) for a while, then charge you like hell.