John Canzano writes:
Comcast Xfinity subscribers in Oregon, Washington, Southern California, and other pockets. Consumers may soon discover that live sporting events are blacked out, even if they paid a $10 fee to upgrade to a sports tier. Fans are faced with either dumping Comcast and cutting the cord, or waiting out what one industry expert called “a game of chicken.”
The reasoning is:
Oregon, Washington, UCLA, and USC officially joined the Big Ten in August. Those four new markets were previously considered “outer markets” by Comcast. The distributor paid a modest monthly carriage fee to the Big Ten Network (estimated to be somewhere in the 15-25 cents per subscriber range) to carry live games in those markets.
• Previously, in those four TV markets Comcast situated the Big Ten Network on its “More Sports and Entertainment” tier. It charges a $10 upgrade fee and bundles it with a bunch of other sports stations for value.
• Now, the Big Ten Network (Read: Fox) views those schools as an “inter-market” just like the other 14 conference schools. The monthly carriage fee for in-market live sports programming is much higher (think: $1.25 to $1.50 per month).
• Fox wants Comcast to not only pay the higher “inter-market” rate but also include the Big Ten Network on its basic tier like other carriers (Read: DirecTV, Hulu, Fubu, YouTube TV, etc.). The channel would not only be available to all Comcast subscribers, Fox would be entitled to the ($1.25 per subscriber) fee from all customers, not just those who paid for the sports upgrade.
So you leave the Pac-12 due to Media Rights Revenue and poor distribution and get this instead...