The Sports Business Journal (subscription required) reports that NBC Sports Network will add 7 million households per a tier move spurred mainly by the Dish Network. The move could add $30 million per year in revenue for the sports channel.
The essence of these gains is that NBCSN will be more accessible to households as tier placement on Dish, Cablevision and Suddenlink are retooled. By February 1, NBC indicates NBCSN will be in 85 million homes from 77.5 million at the beginning of 2014.
SNL Kagan lists distributors paying about 35 cents per subscriber a month for NBCSN which airs the World Series of Fighting. The organization has another event running on NBCSN on Saturday.
Payout Perspective:
The accessibility of the channel has been elevated right on time for the Winter Olympics which begin next month. The move in tiers and addition of more homes moves its distribution closer to Fox Sports 1 which is in 87.7 million homes according to the SBJ article. The carriage fee of 35 cents per subscriber is less than half of what FS1 wanted from its distributors (80 cents). As you may recall, Fox relented on the carriage fee issue until later. With the additional households, NBCSN becomes a little more competitive with FS1 making WSOF’s time buy on the network look like a good investment.
Nice, hopefully it means more Main Events cards.