Sign of the times, Bulls viewership down 63%

[dougthonus]

I would guess plenty of people still consume TV by watching sports on it. That's why DIRECTV, Uverse, Fubu etc are paying to carry CHSN. And the people with those services are getting regular reminders that the Bulls exist. With an app-only situation that would go away.

Remember, with OTA they're also not paying a powerful middle man like YouTube TV, Xfinity, or Hulu. So even if the ad revenue is much smaller, at least they keep all of it. Hard for me to guess on the costs associated with the actual broadcast equipment though.

I'm not sure what your point is here, you say it's really important to be on the carriers in paragraph one, then say OTA cuts out important middle men in paragraph two, but the people in paragraph one are less important middlemen.

You seem to be contradicting yourself, so I'm not sure which of these things you actually believe. They could easily license their content out to all those stations as an add on the way HBO max does, where if you have any of those platforms, you can add on your on demand app version for the same price as buying it separately.

This would have gotten you listed on all those platforms.

I personally think OTA will actually increase in usage in coming years (as it was always intended), because people are just so uninterested in packaging. I haven't paid for a full time year round tv package in like 9 years, and only paid for a package at all (YoutubeTV) for portions of some years since then for the sole reason of watching the Bulls. So for many cord cutters like me (and by cord cutter I actually mean package-cutter), OTA is the best and only way to get casual exposure to stuff I have mild interest in (occasional football, PBS, etc). So companies are realizing that it's not OTA vs an app or package for many people, it's ad-revenue via OTA vs simply nothing.

In theory I agree, you are paying this insane premium to watch live sports on traditional TV, and I canceled my 1k a year youtubetv subscription to go OTA with the Bulls and NFL. That said, it doesn't seem to be the way the world is going.

IPTV is the great solution to all of this though if you don't mind a little bit of hassle and questionable legality.

[dougthonus]

I'm no expert, but it seems basically impossible that if they cut the stuff you suggest, but kept the games + pre & post (which requires a separate studio), that you'd somehow be able to sell the product for 10% of the current price.

FWIW, I don't really know, it's not my industry. I would wager that 95% of their eyeballs on the station and thus virtually all the ad revenue comes from the pre / post / and actually games. I would guess that the cost of doing OTA is not worth the revenue it brings in and the cost of producing the rest of the content to have a full "station" is not worth the revenue it brings in.

I'd guess you could maximize revenue by getting rid of all your costs that don't add value, streaming the app for basically nothing, and then making all your money off the ads. There are full companies that do that and don't charge a subscription for the ads, and they don't have the viewers the Bulls do.

The only question about how much you charge for the app is whether or not you get enough paid subscribes on the app that going pay for watch gets you more than having more subscribers for free. Not sure of the math, but I'd guess there are massive operational cost savings you could have, and then you could spread the team out to more people and engage with a younger audience better.

Could all be wrong, since I don't have the numbers, but there are many businesses that operate this way, so it's not like it is an unproven model. You could also then sell your app as a plugin to all the main providers for the same fee you sell it separately and give them whatever their cut is like every other station selling an app, so that people get integration into the platforms you watch.

I would guess if you did these things your ratings wouldn't have dipped by 63%. The team is worse and not that interesting, but the viewership drop is probably way more correlated to the difficulty / cost in watching than anything else. Ie, people aren't going to change their cable provider or pay $20 a month.

[dougthonus]

TBH, I think the only thing that would make people happy is doing an app and making it available for free. I think a lot of people wouldn't pay anything whatsoever to watch the Bulls and would only do so if it were available for free or as part of a service they would already be subscribing to regardless of whether the Bulls were on it.

All the network providers will let you add on your app to their content for some fee. The problem is the pricing of the app. They're trying to make money off app sales while also offering free OTA. Just offer free app (or really cheap app) and allow it to integrate into all the providers and all this goes away.

I can't imagine they're making enough off the app sales relative to what they're losing on eyeballs, but again, I don't have the numbers, so it just is a thing that defies reason to me, but sometimes things that seem unreasonable on the surface are still true. Could also be that they made a gamble and lost (they figured they'd win the comcast negotiation eventually and didn't).

[jnrjr79]

I'm no expert, but it seems basically impossible that if they cut the stuff you suggest, but kept the games + pre & post (which requires a separate studio), that you'd somehow be able to sell the product for 10% of the current price.

FWIW, I don't really know, it's not my industry. I would wager that 95% of their eyeballs on the station and thus virtually all the ad revenue comes from the pre / post / and actually games. I would guess that the cost of doing OTA is not worth the revenue it brings in and the cost of producing the rest of the content to have a full "station" is not worth the revenue it brings in.

It's also not my industry, but I think this is probably not right. Once you add pre/post, you need a studio and a crew for it. At that point, the marginal additional cost of making some other shows is probably not insane. I'd figure the way to really cut costs is to just do the games and have no studio content.

I have no idea what they pay to broadcast the station OTA, but you figure it can't be all that much, given there are tons and tons of channels that broadcast OTA and they would stop if they didn't view it as worthwhile.

I'd guess you could maximize revenue by getting rid of all your costs that don't add value, streaming the app for basically nothing, and then making all your money off the ads. There are full companies that do that and don't charge a subscription for the ads, and they don't have the viewers the Bulls do.

The only question about how much you charge for the app is whether or not you get enough paid subscribes on the app that going pay for watch gets you more than having more subscribers for free. Not sure of the math, but I'd guess there are massive operational cost savings you could have, and then you could spread the team out to more people and engage with a younger audience better.

Could all be wrong, since I don't have the numbers, but there are many businesses that operate this way, so it's not like it is an unproven model. You could also then sell your app as a plugin to all the main providers for the same fee you sell it separately and give them whatever their cut is like every other station selling an app, so that people get integration into the platforms you watch.

I would guess if you did these things your ratings wouldn't have dipped by 63%. The team is worse and not that interesting, but the viewership drop is probably way more correlated to the difficulty / cost in watching than anything else. Ie, people aren't going to change their cable provider or pay $20 a month.

IMO, it is telling that literally zero NBA teams (to my knowledge) are doing it the way you suggest.

I think this discussion is also a little too Bulls-centric, for understandable reasons. CHSN is a project that they have to think about in terms of decades. There are also 3 teams involved. It's darkly hilarious that all 3 of those teams are terrible, so I imagine they are doing very poorly in terms of subs, but I imagine the idea is that some of these teams will become good and then subscribers will come. They're probably willing to take the viewership hit in the short-term for the long-term upside of a direct subscription problem.

I also just think the Bulls were surprised that Comcast refused to pick up the network, even though that's been the trend with RSNs nationally. The whole launch of CHSN felt very rushed/last-minute. They really didn't have their ducks in a row.

One other funny thing to me is I wonder to what extent you reduce people's willingness to pay for the app by broadcasting OTA. By giving away the games for free, it sort of suggests that nobody should need to pay for them, at least if they are in the local market. Marquee, by contract, doesn't do this, and I never see anyone complaining about access to Marquee (even though as a YouTube TV subscriber, I don't get it an would need to pay $20/month for it).

[League Circles]

I would guess plenty of people still consume TV by watching sports on it. That's why DIRECTV, Uverse, Fubu etc are paying to carry CHSN. And the people with those services are getting regular reminders that the Bulls exist. With an app-only situation that would go away.

Remember, with OTA they're also not paying a powerful middle man like YouTube TV, Xfinity, or Hulu. So even if the ad revenue is much smaller, at least they keep all of it. Hard for me to guess on the costs associated with the actual broadcast equipment though.

I'm not sure what your point is here, you say it's really important to be on the carriers in paragraph one, then say OTA cuts out important middle men in paragraph two, but the people in paragraph one are less important middlemen.

You seem to be contradicting yourself, so I'm not sure which of these things you actually believe. They could easily license their content out to all those stations as an add on the way HBO max does, where if you have any of those platforms, you can add on your on demand app version for the same price as buying it separately.

This would have gotten you listed on all those platforms.

I personally think OTA will actually increase in usage in coming years (as it was always intended), because people are just so uninterested in packaging. I haven't paid for a full time year round tv package in like 9 years, and only paid for a package at all (YoutubeTV) for portions of some years since then for the sole reason of watching the Bulls. So for many cord cutters like me (and by cord cutter I actually mean package-cutter), OTA is the best and only way to get casual exposure to stuff I have mild interest in (occasional football, PBS, etc). So companies are realizing that it's not OTA vs an app or package for many people, it's ad-revenue via OTA vs simply nothing.

In theory I agree, you are paying this insane premium to watch live sports on traditional TV, and I canceled my 1k a year youtubetv subscription to go OTA with the Bulls and NFL. That said, it doesn't seem to be the way the world is going.

IPTV is the great solution to all of this though if you don't mind a little bit of hassle and questionable legality.

The team(s) believe that there is value in being with carriers and/or OTA for the reasons I've described (exposure). Doesn't mean that value is critical. Obviously they aren't on some carriers like youtube, Xfinity and Hulu by choice - they don't like whatever terms were offered. On the other hand, they do like the terms offered by other major carriers such as DirecTV, U-verse and Fubu. It's entirely plausible to me that YouTube, Hulu, xfinity simply didn't want to carry CHSN at all if the OTA was going to be an option. And for whatever good or bad reasons, CHSN obviously thinks it's better strategy to control things more themselves, so they're taking the risk. For now at least, they are confident in their ability to offer all games for free or very low cost to everyone without having to negotiate and excessively bend to carrier power. I don't think any of us can know yet whether it will be good or bad business for quite a while. I personally think it's a solid move to retain full control over their product while getting all types of eyes on it, which wouldn't be the case with either a traditional channel like the regional sports networks preceding it or an app-only solution.

I'm still struggling to understand why anyone is miffed at watching every Bulls game for a total max of $120/season. Cheapest it's EVER been to watch them. And free for me and plenty of others who want it via OTA. But bottom line, IMO the OTA + dedicated app is am excellent combo solution.

[League Circles]

What new medications is everyone pumped to try after watching these TV ads all season? Lol

[dougthonus]

IMO, it is telling that literally zero NBA teams (to my knowledge) are doing it the way you suggest.

The way I suggest is pretty forward thinking. I agree, no one is doing it that way now.

However, from just looking at this thread, three teams are doing it the OTA way, and all three seem to be showing down relatively with this switch.

I think this discussion is also a little too Bulls-centric, for understandable reasons. CHSN is a project that they have to think about in terms of decades.

From a decades perspective, I think my approach becomes even more important. You can add other content onto the app, but why would you want to start a new serialized channel in this day and age?

There are also 3 teams involved. It's darkly hilarious that all 3 of those teams are terrible, so I imagine they are doing very poorly in terms of subs, but I imagine the idea is that some of these teams will become good and then subscribers will come. They're probably willing to take the viewership hit in the short-term for the long-term upside of a direct subscription problem.

The amount of viewer loss seems absolutely massive relative to the change in these teams destinies from one year to the next though, so I don't think it's _just_ the team. The hit we're talking about from already low numbers is massive. That said, I agree the teams are not interesting and that does muddy the waters.

I also just think the Bulls were surprised that Comcast refused to pick up the network, even though that's been the trend with RSNs nationally. The whole launch of CHSN felt very rushed/last-minute. They really didn't have their ducks in a row.

Completely agree, even though I think this isn't the best long term decision, the implementation of this decision was really poor and very clearly a plan B option. They had to have been hoping to have some other negotiation with NBC sports or have some other plan that fell through or just some total gross incompetence to try and launch this on that timeline without any of the important contracts lined up. It's easy to see how a better implementation of this (simply eating whatever comcast's deal was as an example) would have probably gone over smoother. If they were on the higher price tier, then so be it, let people then yell at comcast for putting them in the wrong price tier instead of you.

One other funny thing to me is I wonder to what extent you reduce people's willingness to pay for the app by broadcasting OTA. By giving away the games for free, it sort of suggests that nobody should need to pay for them, at least if they are in the local market. Marquee, by contract, doesn't do this, and I never see anyone complaining about access to Marquee (even though as a YouTube TV subscriber, I don't get it an would need to pay $20/month for it).

I have no idea really, but this gets back to what I said, I think you were better off making the app free, even if it was just for a year while you sort things out, or making the app reasonably priced. Again, I think what they did was very 10 years ago thinking and doesn't mesh well with what will be required in the future, but we'll see how it pans out. As you note, there are a lot of different factors and it's hard to pull out any one and say this is what would have worked.

[HomoSapien]

Somewhat unrelated, but does KC Johnson no longer write articles? Is he 100% Twitter and on-camera appearances? If so, I think that's an underrated loss. We no longer have an obvious standout beat reporter who is covering the team. I know other guys exist such as Cowley, Mayberry, etc. but KC's articles were a little more prolific and accessible for whatever reason.

[League Circles]

IMO, it is telling that literally zero NBA teams (to my knowledge) are doing it the way you suggest.

The way I suggest is pretty forward thinking. I agree, no one is doing it that way now.

However, from just looking at this thread, three teams are doing it the OTA way, and all three seem to be showing down relatively with this switch.

I think this discussion is also a little too Bulls-centric, for understandable reasons. CHSN is a project that they have to think about in terms of decades.

From a decades perspective, I think my approach becomes even more important. You can add other content onto the app, but why would you want to start a new serialized channel in this day and age?

There are also 3 teams involved. It's darkly hilarious that all 3 of those teams are terrible, so I imagine they are doing very poorly in terms of subs, but I imagine the idea is that some of these teams will become good and then subscribers will come. They're probably willing to take the viewership hit in the short-term for the long-term upside of a direct subscription problem.

The amount of viewer loss seems absolutely massive relative to the change in these teams destinies from one year to the next though, so I don't think it's _just_ the team. The hit we're talking about from already low numbers is massive. That said, I agree the teams are not interesting and that does muddy the waters.

I also just think the Bulls were surprised that Comcast refused to pick up the network, even though that's been the trend with RSNs nationally. The whole launch of CHSN felt very rushed/last-minute. They really didn't have their ducks in a row.

Completely agree, even though I think this isn't the best long term decision, the implementation of this decision was really poor and very clearly a plan B option. They had to have been hoping to have some other negotiation with NBC sports or have some other plan that fell through or just some total gross incompetence to try and launch this on that timeline without any of the important contracts lined up. It's easy to see how a better implementation of this (simply eating whatever comcast's deal was as an example) would have probably gone over smoother. If they were on the higher price tier, then so be it, let people then yell at comcast for putting them in the wrong price tier instead of you.

One other funny thing to me is I wonder to what extent you reduce people's willingness to pay for the app by broadcasting OTA. By giving away the games for free, it sort of suggests that nobody should need to pay for them, at least if they are in the local market. Marquee, by contract, doesn't do this, and I never see anyone complaining about access to Marquee (even though as a YouTube TV subscriber, I don't get it an would need to pay $20/month for it).

I have no idea really, but this gets back to what I said, I think you were better off making the app free, even if it was just for a year while you sort things out, or making the app reasonably priced. Again, I think what they did was very 10 years ago thinking and doesn't mesh well with what will be required in the future, but we'll see how it pans out. As you note, there are a lot of different factors and it's hard to pull out any one and say this is what would have worked.

Are you using the app now? Tbh I don't really know what IPTV is. I'm just curious how the ads on OTA compare in frequency, type, and length to the ads on the app. Basically I'm wondering if the ads on OTA are possibly worth more to CHSN due to whatever factors than the streaming ads on their app are.

[dougthonus]

The team(s) believe that there is value in being with carriers and/or OTA for the reasons I've described (exposure). Doesn't mean that value is critical. Obviously they aren't on some carriers like youtube, Xfinity and Hulu by choice - they don't like whatever terms were offered. On the other hand, they do like the terms offered by other major carriers such as DirecTV, U-verse and Fubu. It's entirely plausible to me that YouTube, Hulu, xfinity simply didn't want to carry CHSN at all if the OTA was going to be an option. And for whatever good or bad reasons, CHSN obviously thinks it's better strategy to control things more themselves, so they're taking the risk. For now at least, they are confident in their ability to offer all games for free or very low cost to everyone without having to negotiate and excessively bend to carrier power. I don't think any of us can know yet whether it will be good or bad business for quite a while. I personally think it's a solid move to retain full control over their product while getting all types of eyes on it, which wouldn't be the case with either a traditional channel like the regional sports networks preceding it or an app-only solution.

I think you are overthinking the thought that went into CHSN. It seems like it was cobbled together last second because things fell apart and they did a lot of their math based on things that didn't happen. I would guess they view CHSN as a complete disaster, so when you talk about all these things about "they are confident" or "obviously think", I don't think that's necessarily true at all.

I think they got put in a weird spot unprepared by NBC sports backing out, then thought they could just fire up a new channel and get the same terms without NBC's leverage due to all their other channels, and ended up with a weird mismash of junk that has failed to reach their audience.

I don't think this is where CHSN wants to be at all, and I think part of that was they didn't have enough time to execute, and part of it is they probably picked a poor strategy.

I'm still struggling to understand why anyone is miffed at watching every Bulls game for a total max of $120/season. Cheapest it's EVER been to watch them. And free for me and plenty of others who want it via OTA. But bottom line, IMO the OTA + dedicated app is am excellent combo solution.

I think for the people willing to do the OTA it's fine (ignoring the quality of the OTA on their channel in particular is super poor). For people forced to change providers or move to the app, most of them probably do not want to cancel their provider, so its just an extra $120 per season not moving from something else to $120.

I'm in your boat though, I canceled YTTV and did OTA to save the money, invested in the HDHomerun to resolve the basement issue and watch on my phone etc.

[jnrjr79]

Doug - is it your read that NBC "backed out" as opposed to the 3 teams wanting to start their own venture, which resulted in NBC shuttering given it really didn't have any content anymore? That would make me more sympathetic to CHSN, frankly, if it was sort of created out of necessity at the last minute.

[League Circles]

The team(s) believe that there is value in being with carriers and/or OTA for the reasons I've described (exposure). Doesn't mean that value is critical. Obviously they aren't on some carriers like youtube, Xfinity and Hulu by choice - they don't like whatever terms were offered. On the other hand, they do like the terms offered by other major carriers such as DirecTV, U-verse and Fubu. It's entirely plausible to me that YouTube, Hulu, xfinity simply didn't want to carry CHSN at all if the OTA was going to be an option. And for whatever good or bad reasons, CHSN obviously thinks it's better strategy to control things more themselves, so they're taking the risk. For now at least, they are confident in their ability to offer all games for free or very low cost to everyone without having to negotiate and excessively bend to carrier power. I don't think any of us can know yet whether it will be good or bad business for quite a while. I personally think it's a solid move to retain full control over their product while getting all types of eyes on it, which wouldn't be the case with either a traditional channel like the regional sports networks preceding it or an app-only solution.

I think you are overthinking the thought that went into CHSN. It seems like it was cobbled together last second because things fell apart and they did a lot of their math based on things that didn't happen. I would guess they view CHSN as a complete disaster, so when you talk about all these things about "they are confident" or "obviously think", I don't think that's necessarily true at all.

I think they got put in a weird spot unprepared by NBC sports backing out, then thought they could just fire up a new channel and get the same terms without NBC's leverage due to all their other channels, and ended up with a weird mismash of junk that has failed to reach their audience.

I don't think this is where CHSN wants to be at all, and I think part of that was they didn't have enough time to execute, and part of it is they probably picked a poor strategy.

I'm still struggling to understand why anyone is miffed at watching every Bulls game for a total max of $120/season. Cheapest it's EVER been to watch them. And free for me and plenty of others who want it via OTA. But bottom line, IMO the OTA + dedicated app is am excellent combo solution.

I think for the people willing to do the OTA it's fine (ignoring the quality of the OTA on their channel in particular is super poor). For people forced to change providers or move to the app, most of them probably do not want to cancel their provider, so its just an extra $120 per season not moving from something else to $120.

I'm in your boat though, I canceled YTTV and did OTA to save the money, invested in the HDHomerun to resolve the basement issue and watch on my phone etc.

Fair enough, certainly possible that this was a scramble on their part and that they were unprepared, or at least that they predicted that they could work with all the existing carriers and/or NBC regional SN. That said, and I'm just speculating, but I would guess they had all these OTA tower spot deals already secured and ready to go in case their prediction failed.

As far as them being confident, I just meant that they likely feel some increased sense of control over their product now that for the first time they don't have to deal with a middle man if/when they don't find the terms appealing (YTTV, Xfinity, Hulu) yet still can get revenue and exposure to their markets when the terms are right (Directv, fubu, Uverse). Before they had their own distribution option via OTA and their app, they really had very little bargaining power. Yes, maybe they take a revenue hit this year, but maybe holding out in negotiations with YTTV, Hulu, Xfinity will end up making them more in the long run. Sometimes you need to posture indefinitely to get the right long term deal.

I don't think there is anything weird or junky about what they're offering now. I think TV packages are weird and junky lol. I kinda question the alleged numbers on how they're reaching their audience (because I don't believe that they get accurate info on OTA viewership). But more importantly, a short term dip might be a long term success BECAUSE of the short term sacrifice (it's a gamble for sure), and equally as important, number of viewers is not necessarily a function of numbers of viewers. One example is that right now, they are probably missing out on viewers that can't get OTA to work and don't want to pay $120/season to watch all the games. How much disposable income does the typical viewer of that description actually have? (Which drives ad revenue value).

Like let's say that they went from getting $3/month from Xfinity or whoever to $20/month from 20% the number of people who now pay for the app. That's a plausible number I just made up of course, but would reflect increased profits in the face of lower viewership.

[jnrjr79]

The team(s) believe that there is value in being with carriers and/or OTA for the reasons I've described (exposure). Doesn't mean that value is critical. Obviously they aren't on some carriers like youtube, Xfinity and Hulu by choice - they don't like whatever terms were offered. On the other hand, they do like the terms offered by other major carriers such as DirecTV, U-verse and Fubu. It's entirely plausible to me that YouTube, Hulu, xfinity simply didn't want to carry CHSN at all if the OTA was going to be an option. And for whatever good or bad reasons, CHSN obviously thinks it's better strategy to control things more themselves, so they're taking the risk. For now at least, they are confident in their ability to offer all games for free or very low cost to everyone without having to negotiate and excessively bend to carrier power. I don't think any of us can know yet whether it will be good or bad business for quite a while. I personally think it's a solid move to retain full control over their product while getting all types of eyes on it, which wouldn't be the case with either a traditional channel like the regional sports networks preceding it or an app-only solution.

I think you are overthinking the thought that went into CHSN. It seems like it was cobbled together last second because things fell apart and they did a lot of their math based on things that didn't happen. I would guess they view CHSN as a complete disaster, so when you talk about all these things about "they are confident" or "obviously think", I don't think that's necessarily true at all.

I think they got put in a weird spot unprepared by NBC sports backing out, then thought they could just fire up a new channel and get the same terms without NBC's leverage due to all their other channels, and ended up with a weird mismash of junk that has failed to reach their audience.

I don't think this is where CHSN wants to be at all, and I think part of that was they didn't have enough time to execute, and part of it is they probably picked a poor strategy.

I'm still struggling to understand why anyone is miffed at watching every Bulls game for a total max of $120/season. Cheapest it's EVER been to watch them. And free for me and plenty of others who want it via OTA. But bottom line, IMO the OTA + dedicated app is am excellent combo solution.

I think for the people willing to do the OTA it's fine (ignoring the quality of the OTA on their channel in particular is super poor). For people forced to change providers or move to the app, most of them probably do not want to cancel their provider, so its just an extra $120 per season not moving from something else to $120.

I'm in your boat though, I canceled YTTV and did OTA to save the money, invested in the HDHomerun to resolve the basement issue and watch on my phone etc.

Fair enough, certainly possible that this was a scramble on their part and that they were unprepared, or at least that they predicted that they could work with all the existing carriers and/or NBC regional SN. That said, and I'm just speculating, but I would guess they had all these OTA tower spot deals already secured and ready to go in case their prediction failed.

As far as them being confident, I just meant that they likely feel some increased sense of control over their product now that for the first time they don't have to deal with a middle man if/when they don't find the terms appealing (YTTV, Xfinity, Hulu) yet still can get revenue and exposure to their markets when the terms are right (Directv, fubu, Uverse). Before they had their own distribution option via OTA and their app, they really had very little bargaining power. Yes, maybe they take a revenue hit this year, but maybe holding out in negotiations with YTTV, Hulu, Xfinity will end up making them more in the long run. Sometimes you need to posture indefinitely to get the right long term deal.

I don't think there is anything weird or junky about what they're offering now. I think TV packages are weird and junky lol. I kinda question the alleged numbers on how they're reaching their audience (because I don't believe that they get accurate info on OTA viewership). But more importantly, a short term dip might be a long term success BECAUSE of the short term sacrifice (it's a gamble for sure), and equally as important, number of viewers is not necessarily a function of numbers of viewers. One example is that right now, they are probably missing out on viewers that can't get OTA to work and don't want to pay $120/season to watch all the games. How much disposable income does the typical viewer of that description actually have? (Which drives ad revenue value).

Like let's say that they went from getting $3/month from Xfinity or whoever to $20/month from 20% the number of people who now pay for the app. That's a plausible number I just made up of course, but would reflect increased profits in the face of lower viewership.

That last part is an interesting point and I'd love to see the actual numbers on how much revenue they get from each method of distribution. This reminds me a little of a popular Substack writer who leaves a major publication like the New York Times. The NYT has a subscriber base of more than 11 million people. The most popular Substacks have paid subscribers in the thousands, not millions, generally, but at $10/month or whatever, there are people making $800K/year, so it's a better deal for the writer, even if fewer total people are reading their stuff.

[League Circles]

In the same way the Bulls may have assumed that the carriers would give them the same deal they gave nbcsn or whatever, the carriers may have wrongly assumed that the Bulls would cave and take whatever deal they could get. For all we know, chsn got super cheap leases in the OTA tower broadcast setups with an option to renew long term, and if the carriers give them what they want after a year, they can transition away. So many unknowns.

[dougthonus]

Fair enough, certainly possible that this was a scramble on their part and that they were unprepared, or at least that they predicted that they could work with all the existing carriers and/or NBC regional SN. That said, and I'm just speculating, but I would guess they had all these OTA tower spot deals already secured and ready to go in case their prediction failed.

Well they were scrambling to get these up and didn't have them all up before launch.

As far as them being confident, I just meant that they likely feel some increased sense of control over their product now that for the first time they don't have to deal with a middle man if/when they don't find the terms appealing (YTTV, Xfinity, Hulu) yet still can get revenue and exposure to their markets when the terms are right (Directv, fubu, Uverse). Before they had their own distribution option via OTA and their app, they really had very little bargaining power. Yes, maybe they take a revenue hit this year, but maybe holding out in negotiations with YTTV, Hulu, Xfinity will end up making them more in the long run. Sometimes you need to posture indefinitely to get the right long term deal.

Sure feels like they've lost this negotiation to date and will make less money then their old scenario, which they left not of their own choosing but of NBC's choosing. Maybe this was the best pivot for them, but you are spinning it like this was strategic rather than they got dumped in this boat (and IMO executed poorly once in it).

I don't think there is anything weird or junky about what they're offering now.

Their quality OTA is poor compared to every other channel and tons of people are frustrated using it. That's junky. They aren't available on the biggest cable provider in their market (by a huge margin), that's junky.

But more importantly, a short term dip might be a long term success BECAUSE of the short term sacrifice (it's a gamble for sure), and equally as important, number of viewers is not necessarily a function of numbers of viewers. One example is that right now, they are probably missing out on viewers that can't get OTA to work and don't want to pay $120/season to watch all the games. How much disposable income does the typical viewer of that description actually have? (Which drives ad revenue value).

Yeah, maybe it will work out in the long run, we will see. They can certainly make adjustments to the problems they have had so far over time. They can suck it up and take comcasts offer. They can figure out a way to do other things, we'll see how it goes, even if it is a loss today, it doesn't need to be a loss forever.

Like let's say that they went from getting $3/month from Xfinity or whoever to $20/month from 20% the number of people who now pay for the app. That's a plausible number I just made up of course, but would reflect increased profits in the face of lower viewership.

I don't know what happens to their add revenue in the scenario where they have 63% fewer viewers, but I'm guessing it dwarfs whatever they are getting on selling the rights.

[kodo]

Quality of CHSN OTA:


Quality of ABC OTA: