AT&T SportsNet — a regional sports network offered in Pittsburgh, Houston, and Denver — is hoping to close up shop in March and allow the franchises it holds the television rights to reclaim their rights. Chris Mack of The Fan Morning Show believes Pittsburgh sports fans would be more than willing to pay nearly $200 a year to watch the Pirates and Penguins, which currently air on the station, in a streaming service.
“If people said to you you’ve gotta pay X amount of dollars as part of an al a carte system to just get the Penguin games and the Pirate games, would you pay separate so to speak?” co-host Colin Dunlap asked. “Or an app? Would you do that? Because I would.”
“Yes, because it’s the one thing that’s the most difficult to ensure you have access to when you cut the cord,” Chris Mack said. “It’s the one reason — for example in our house, we haven’t cut the cord completely because I want to ensure A) I have access to those games and B) that I also have access to DVR those games, so if I miss one I can go back and watch it later.
“It’s something I get the feeling they’ve already been thinking about, and they should have already been thinking about it. (Pirates owner Bob) Nutting should be calling up … Penguins owner John Henry, he’s an 80% owner in NESN and saying ‘Hey, how do you do it up there?’ because it works for the Red Sox and Bruins.”
“If you got a bill in the mail,” Dunlap asked, “and it said ‘Here’s the dollar amount’ one that you’d feel comfortable paying on a year basis … how much is that bill that comes in your mailbox? How much are you willing to pay for that channel and that channel only?”
“At least $10 a month,” retorted Mack. “$10-$15 a month.”
“Pittsburgh is still a really strong local market. That’s not a number you can fudge. You see it in the ratings. They bragged about that and rightly so,” Dunlap said.
“I think in Pittsburgh, that is a model that could work,” Mack added. “There are other markets where it won’t work because when the baseball team falls out of contention for five years, people do stop watching altogether… in Pittsburgh, people will watch. They may not go to the games all the time, but they will watch. They love their teams too much to not watch.”
