"First off, OLN will never take the rights to baseball away from ESPN. OLN has never seen the amount of money that would take." The rights for the cable package are a little over 140 million dollars per year according to Mediaweek. Though the rights will definitely go up, do you even know how much money Comcast has? They tried to buy Disney for 54 billion dollars! So unless baseball television rights suddenly jump up to 55 billion dollars, I think they can afford to acquire them! "Plus, even basic cable subscribers get ESPN, OLN is generally not available unless you buy a higher package." And that's precisely the point. It's exactly what Fox did back in 1994. They acquired the NFL rights without having a real sports division. But then they got affiliates almost everywhere. Comcast is currently trying to get on basic packages on all the cable companies, and the big point is to get as many subscribers as possible as they are trying to build up a competitor to ESPN, and with Baseball and Football rights, they offically will be.
posted by risnuff at 12:31 AM on September 05, 2005
OLN Could Be Seeking To Add MLB And Pro Lacrosse
"First off, OLN will never take the rights to baseball away from ESPN. OLN has never seen the amount of money that would take." The rights for the cable package are a little over 140 million dollars per year according to Mediaweek. Though the rights will definitely go up, do you even know how much money Comcast has? They tried to buy Disney for 54 billion dollars! So unless baseball television rights suddenly jump up to 55 billion dollars, I think they can afford to acquire them! "Plus, even basic cable subscribers get ESPN, OLN is generally not available unless you buy a higher package." And that's precisely the point. It's exactly what Fox did back in 1994. They acquired the NFL rights without having a real sports division. But then they got affiliates almost everywhere. Comcast is currently trying to get on basic packages on all the cable companies, and the big point is to get as many subscribers as possible as they are trying to build up a competitor to ESPN, and with Baseball and Football rights, they offically will be.