Unless you are among the very small percentage of citizens who thinks that there are not enough National Football League games on television already, you may not have noticed that the NFL owners have started their own network to televise certain NFL games. And as if on cue, a dispute has arisen between two particularly distasteful business interests — the NFL owners and some of the country’s biggest television cable companies. The two sides are effectively playing a high-stakes game of chicken over whether the NFL Network is going to be available to a large part of the country.
The NFL reportedly left about a half-billion on the bargaining table in its last round of television-rights negotiations to reserve for the NFL Network eight late-season prime-time games featuring attractive teams with wide followings. The first took place on Thanksgiving night between the Kansas City Chiefs and the Denver Broncos, but it was available in less than half of the 90 million or so homes wired for cable or satellite.
Indeed, in an absolutely appropriate bit of fate, ailing Chiefs owner Lamar Hunt — who has lobbied his fellow NFL owners for 37 years to put a Thanksgiving Day game in Kansas City — had to listen to his Chiefs beat Denver on this past Thanksgiving Day night over the phone in his hospital bed. As with most NFL fans, Hunt was unable to view the game because the hospital he had been admitted to is not hooked into the NFL Network. So, his daughter held the phone near her television while he listened on the other end.
Cable operators such as Cablevision Systems Corp. and Time Warner Inc. are balking at carrying the network because the league wants to boost what it charges them each month to carry the network to a reported 70 cents per subscriber. The NFL currently charges those companies a the fee of about 20 cents per subsciber to carry its non-NFL Network games. Moreover, NFL owners are not only insisting on a high price for the NFL Network, but they are also pushing to have the network included as a part of each company’s standard cable package, which doesn’t charge subscribers premium fees to get the network. Cable companies are contending that customers who do not watch the NFL should not be required to foot the bill to indulge those who want those games.
The NFL owners are banking on cable company customers pitching such a fit that there companies will give in to the NFL owners’ demands. On the other hand, some publicity-seeking politicians are already using the spat as a reason to attempt to extend the government’s regulatory power over the “key” issue of whether a few NFL games will be televised. From my viewpoint, I hope the cable companies hold firm, the NFL owners put even more games on their little network and that market forces inform NFL owners what millions in the Los Angeles area have already discovered with regard to live NFL games — that life without the NFL is not all that bad.