Earlier in the week, former ESPN reporter Joon Lee wrote an opinion piece for The New York Times divulging that it costs $4,785 for a hardcore Boston sports fan to follow their favorite teams. On top of that, he conveyed how he subscribes to nearly all services that offer live sports, some of whom include YouTube TV, NFL Sunday Ticket and Apple TV+, and pays a total of $2,634 per year. Within his piece, Lee outlined how leagues are selling games to the highest bidder and rendered difficulties faced by consumers and businesses that view sports as a communal outlet. Dan Le Batard dedicated part of a segment on his show to discussing the matter, revealing the remuneration delineated in the article.
“That hurts the consumer, the customer,” Le Batard said. “The streaming age has created all sorts of oil wells for the teams, but they are really alienating their customer.”
As Le Batard was disseminating his opinion on the matter, Nothing Personal podcast host David Samson was shaking his head. From there, he chimed in and explained that the lack of local television revenue is hurting teams in baseball rather than helping them. Le Batard countered this point by asking if Samson could tell him that the NFL and basketball are not being helped by new revenue streams that engender more lucrative television contracts.
“Yeah, their revenues are up, and payroll is tied to revenue, so player payroll is up as well,” Samson said. “It’s totally tied into one another, and so are you talking about fans being hurt because they’re paying more to watch games for the NFL.”
As the segment continued, Le Batard argued that Samson does not care about the consumer. Samson subsequently voiced that he was never the owner of an MLB team, but rather the team president of the Miami Marlins. While Samson does not believe that having to buy every necessary streaming package to watch all local MLB or NBA teams is not a fair way to do the comparison, he did not see the article and doubts that it is what Le Batard was expressing. Mike Ryan, producer and personality on the show, added that he made the decision not to pay extra to access some of the local teams in his cable package and that it has become “super expensive” to watch all the sports one wants today.
“I’m sorry – what is your expectation?,” Samson said. “That you should just be able to get any sort of content you want for free?”
“That’s what it’s been,” Le Batard replied. “The reason you’re going to get this hostility is because you’re now trying to charge [for] something that you were giving away for free. It’s why this show’s not behind a paywall. We did not want to do that to our fans.”
Jon “Stugotz” Weiner, co-host of the program, mentioned how consumers were never getting the programming for free but were rather unaware that it was being included in their cable bill. Ryan understood this point and acknowledged that he was paying for a cable package that gave him the RSN, but he is still paying for that package and now has to pay more to view Miami Heat and Miami Marlins games. Samson clarified he was arguing that all companies look to increase revenue and that it comes at the expense of the consumer.
“Whether there’s a fuel surcharge, whether you go to the grocery store and every now bag costs a nickel. When you rent a car, there’s a car tax,” Samson said. “In Miami, there’s the hotel tax for tourists or for people who prefer to be on the hour, so this is not a new concept by any stretch.”
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