Re: The Boston Celtics Mailing List Digest V10 #286

[PScottman@xxxxxxx]

In a message dated 7/30/2003 9:16:39 PM Eastern Daylight Time, Celtics-Digest-Owner@xxxxxxxx writes: But for those of you old enough to remember, do you remember the calls that "pay TV" would be taking over?  Well, it is.  What percentage of sports is now on network as opposed to cable?  Is it that far a leap from basic cable to premium cable to League Pass?
Not a long leap at all. There are several teams that package their "A list" games (maybe 10-15 games a year) and sell them exclusively as pay per view (even with a sold out arena) in their local area - San Antonio is an example (at least they used to do that when I lived there in the early nineties - I would doubt it's changed).  I'm pretty sure Indiana does the same thing. Price back then was about $10 per game and even if you had the dish it was blocked on League Pass.  It would be a simple step to move to all pay-per-view for every game (local) and NBAtv for all other for the league, but I think they understand that the backlash would be immediate and likely devestating. With ticket prices exploding television is the only other avenue the blue collar fan has (why do you think among the middle and lower middle class that sports like NASCAR and X games have exploded in popularity? Simple - low costs). It wouldn't be too bold to predict a renaissance of radio - a medium I've rediscovered recently - for the major sports, although if they could find a way to make you pay for that too I'm sure that they would.