That is like comparing apples to oranges. I mean, me, I am right there with you and would prefer HBO to ESPN every day of the year. But I could care less about most sports (I did watch the Cubs in the playoffs on SlingTV but that was TBS not ESPN). But my husband who almost solely watches sports has little use for HBO (he’ll watch GoT and Bill Maher but that is it) but he gets a lot of use from ESPN. To him, ESPN is worth way more than HBO. We compromise. We get SlingTV during football season and HBO during Game of Thrones. All in all, that is a lot more money going toward getting ESPN than going towards HBO, but we both get what we want.
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Maybe I’m under estimating the size of this market who will pay more than market value for ESPN, but I watch sports more than HBO too. I am subscribing to SlingTV 50% because of ESPN. My point is there is a market value placed on stand alone services. It’s unrealistic to predict that a large market segment will over pay.
HBO $15 per month
Showtime $9 per Month
Sling $20 per month
Hulu $9
Netflix $9
CBS all access $6
Starz $9
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You’re underestimating how greedy and obtuse these companies can be.
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Well the article this thread is all about states almost 60% of people would drop ESPN to save $8. That means at least that 56% of people value ESPN at LESS than $8, so really we disagree about the 44% of people who value ESPN at $8 or more.
I don’t think I’m going so far out on a limb to say that if only 44% of people would pay $8, that less people would pay $20 or more. My guess is maybe 10-20% of people would pay $20 and 5-10% would pay $30. That is not enough volume to be sustainable. ESPN would end up losing the rights to major events to more profitable competitors.
Edit: The article itself says that only 6% of people would pay $20. So what are we arguing about again?
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No ones arguing really. We’re all speculating wildly. That articles “citation” is the results of a survey we know nothing about.
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Nope, just one at a time - same as sling. At least between the Roku and Android apps. I don’t have any other devices to test it on but when one is opened, the other stops. Seems two streams wouldn’t be unreasonable.
I don’t see what’s wrong with making ESPN be like HBO. Those that want it, pay for it, instead of it running up the cost of cable tv for everyone. Of course Disney doesn’t want that option.
One of the issues with making ESPN OTT is that the contracts with the providers prohibit ESPN from doing so. In order to offset the loss of 7 million subs over the past two years, my guess is that the next round of negotiations will allow ESPN to be sold OTT. In turn, ESPN will have to allow the providers the option to place ESPN in a separate sport package. IMHO, once ESPN allows OTT, this will finally crack the traditional provider model and other programmers will re-structure their contracts to allow OTT. Now the wish of many to have ala carte will finally happen (yes, I’m aware that C-band used to allow ala carte but those days are long over).
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