Comcast Chairman Urges ‘Serious Dialogue’ on Sports Network Prices

Comcast would participate in talks on sports programming costs, cable’s “most complicated issue,” Chmn. Brian Roberts told a Thurs. Progress & Freedom Foundation lunch. “It is time to call for a serious dialogue on this subject,” Roberts said: “We are at a tipping point… you see leagues starting channels, you see college leagues starting channels.” There is a “sea change occurring with the amount of new sports channels that are created,” but with no real public debate about who should underwrite them, he said.

“It’s the same thing that happened with stadium financing,” except that involved public discussion, he said. “When you get up to $100 a year that [subscribers] have to pay, whether they watch a ballgame or not, that’s going to be a lot of money,” he said.

Roberts’ concept “starts to sound a lot like a la carte,” said Bernstein analyst Craig Moffett, who participated in Q&A with Roberts and 2 other analysts. Most a la carte advocates’ interest in consumer choice involves decency, but serious talks about changing the way consumers pay for sports content could give a la carte advocates a policy boost, he said.

Sports content doesn’t differ from other programs, Parents TV Council Dir. Govt. Affairs Dan Isett said: “They're inextricably linked.” None has a “supply & demand equation to keep prices in check,” he said, adding that Roberts’ “business doesn’t operate under a free market. It certainly sounds like he’s beginning to acknowledge that.” Roberts’ statements recall Cablevision Chmn. Charles Dolan’s comments on sports programming costs a year ago, before Dolan became the largest cable CEO to support a la carte pricing, Isett said.

Roberts included phone competition in his remarks. Rules to boost phone competition are 4 times as important as rules for video competition, he said. “Promoting voice competition deserves Washington’s attention more than promoting video competition,” since voice competition could save U.S. companies $10 billion-plus the next 5 years, Roberts said, citing an MiCRA study commissioned by NCTA. “I'm not here to ask for more regulation. I'm looking for better, smarter regulation designed to promote facilities based competition,” he said.

If the FCC starts a rulemaking on cable ownership limits in a current media ownership review, Comcast would ask to raise the 30% cable cap, Roberts said, responding to UBS analyst Aryeh Bourkoff’s query. “If there’s a rule pending, we certainly would have a point of view that that’s not the right number,” he said.