Why I Got to Watch the Packers Lose (And You Probably Did Not)

Aside from the fact you might not have cared about the Packer game last week, unless you lived in a local market (Milwaukee, Green Bay, or Dallas), you couldn’t have watched it anyway.  Due to the stalled negotiations between the NFL and cable providers, with Comcast and Time Warner leading the way, only about 4 million homes had access to the game.

 

In a nutshell, the NFL has rejected offers from various cable networks and decided to show 8 regular season games on their own NFL Network.  In order to carry the NFL Network, the NFL was asking for 70 cents per cable subscriber, which is more than twice the amount channels like CNN and Discovery get.  The NFL argues that its games are premium programming and deserve this amount.  However, the cable providers assert that it’s not worth it for only 8 games and a lot of irrelevant programs for the remainder of the year (proving that there is not life past football season).

 

Maybe this is just the NFL being stubborn about their “premium” programming.  Maybe they already realize that it is not fair to ask the cable companies to pay twice as much for a channel that is only relevant 8 days of the year for about 4 hours.  Maybe this is a matter of strategy on the part of the NFL, starting high with no intention of being taken seriously, with the hopes that the cable companies will meet them in the middle.  You could view this as an opening negotiation gambit from the NFL who is willing to sacrifice one or two years of programming to make their point.

 

Another way of viewing the stalled negotiations is to view this as a negotiation between parties of equal power (see Stephen Fatsis of the Wall Street Journal or NPR’s take on this) and to conclude equal power can sometimes be a complete block to successful negotiation.  The NFL has a good product, the cable companies have plenty of other shows, and each can afford to wait.  The only loser are external—the fans around the country—who had to go to a bar to see the game or just catch the highlights later. (Oh, the other losers were the Packers who unfortunately lost 37-27.)

 

Regardless, as one of my students put it, if the biggest problem we have with sports right now is that we have to get out of our homes, be social, and enjoy the game with friends at a sports bar, maybe we should stop complaining.

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