Baseball is slowly dying. Fewer kids play it or even watch it, and now it will be even fewer. And Comcast is making a nice Kevorkian cocktail to speed things along.
Comcast SportsNet Philadelphia, already one of the nation’s priciest regional sports networks, is seeking a subscriber surcharge on behalf of the wallet-busting, 25-year, $2.5 billion TV rights deal it negotiated with the Phillies in January.
As part of the deal, at least 33 Phillies games will relocate from the over-the-air – and free – TV station WPHL17 to the cable sports network.
Comcast SportsNet Philadelphia is asking pay-TV operators, including Comcast itself, to pay for those additional games on cable, according to multiple pay-TV operators who declined to be identified.
The sports network has warned that it would black out 33 Phillies games on the TV systems that decline to pay.
Comcast Cable has agreed to the extra charges. Pay-TV operators will either pass the surcharge along to customers with cable-TV rate hikes, or absorb the new costs. Comcast said it has no changes to announce to its cable rates.
Taxpayers are already subsidizing baseball, through their new stadiums and tax subsidies. Now they won’t even be able to watch games without paying for them.
Just plain greed. People should boycott them, but they won’t.
It’s become the matra of all sports and media apparently – squeeze every last penny you can out of fans. I quit watching sports when they switch to pay-per-view. I used to save my money and go see our local bush-league team, but then they revamped their stadium, tripled ticket prices and quadrupled ballpark food. A fun week night date was transformed into a huge and not fun expense. The last straw was when they closed off cheap seating and started selling ‘Corporate Boxes.’