The future of Sunday ticket

Sporting News, The, Dec 10, 2001 by Fritz Quindt

Brethren, I've experienced heaven (or is it nirvana?) on autumn sabbaths. This exalted state rests between channels 701 and 715 on DirecTV--hallelujah, NFL Sunday Ticket! The view from my Barcalounger is glorious. See, I don't just watch the three or four network games on any given Sunday. I GET EVERY GAME! Lead a chaste and decent life, pay less than $1 per game, and you, too, can be blissful.

Sunday Ticket, age 7, was among the first all-you-can-eat subscriptions that now include baseball, NHL, NBA, college football and basketball. NFL bacchanalia is offered only in a seasonlong pass and is limited to DirecTV and C-band (Big Bertha) dishes, and has 1.4 million subscribers. Very uncultish. (DirecTV has 10.3 million subscribers.)

Tola Murphy-Baran, NFL senior vice president/marketing, can tell you Sunday Ticket targets "displaced fans," such as Broncos faithful in Kalamazoo or ex-Raiderettes in Los Angeles. With up to 13 games on 13 channels, no waiting, it's at its remote-control best when the game of choice is a rout, like 49ers-Colts on November 25. Also, when several are competitive, a la October 28, when six were decided by four or fewer points, a seventh went into overtime and the finger toggled down the dial for thrill upon voyeuristic thrill.

Fantasy players and gamblers (gasp!) swear by the bonus Sunday Snap channel, with real-time scoring and statistics indexed by channel. That little goal post next to Jacksonville? It means the Jags are in the red zone; excuse me while I flip to 712 to see whether Brunell puts 6 on the board.

It's a shame everyone won't get into heaven. Not when Sunday Ticket costs $179 (there is a $189 special during dish-giving season that includes the final month of this season plus all of next), almost rich enough to sound pay-per-view alarms in Congress.

DirecTV pays the NFL $150 million annually; that exclusive ticket builds an image. "We use it to differentiate between us, EchoStar and cable," says DirecTV senior marketing director Chris Brush. But Sunday Ticket's business plan, heretofore sharp as the satellite picture, has gone fuzzy: EchoStar (aka Dish Network, 6.7 million homes) is in the process of buying DirecTV, and the deal may or may not be done by the end of the 2002 season, when DirecTV's Sunday Ticket contract expires.

Will the NFL renew with a satellite monopoly for a (theoretically) smaller rights fee? The league could cash in by shifting Sunday Ticket to the digital-cable exploding universe, except it can't; its Fox/CBS/ABC/ ESPN treaty allows only satellite retransmissions.

Also, Murphy-Baran admits to angst over "Sunday Ticket's potential to cannibalize our broadcast audience and undermine stadium attendance" Read: It may not be in the NFL's interest to televise all its games to all souls.

FRITZ QUINDT fquindt@sportingnews.com