| FTBL No ESPN: Dish Network

[JoshB]

Contracts run out when they run out. Price increases happen during negotiating new contracts. Sling/DISH contract was only until 9/30. Without seeing the contract terms for the last contract and the new one I am not going to blame either of the billion dollar companies.

Reportedly they wanted another $1 billion, which is astronomical. As a DISH customer I definitely was not happy about the outage, but at the same time I also don't want the $180 bill I already pay to grow even more because of Disney's greed. No, DISH isn't innocent at all here, either. Whatever the amount they have to shell out for an extension is going to get passed on to us no matter what despite already stupidly insane fees.

 

[rocknthefreeworld]

Value depends on the length of the contract, number of subscribers, etc. Sports is the problem in all of this. You and I are the problem in all of this. Every contract negotiation between a sports provider and a cable company winds up like this. Bally is slowly losing viewers because of it. ESPN has lost 8 million viewers and $1 billion dollars in revenue due to that. We want every game possible on TV and this is the price. Don't like it? Stop watching at all. But the number of people who left Sling or Dish for YTTV over that 48 hours shows that most are willing to pay the price.