Yea, screw ESPN3’s model. It makes perfect sense for the content providers to offer their service to direct, however. HBO, for example, can get the full retail price from each viewer and keep the margin the cableco was making. Most viewers won’t care if they pay $10 to Dish or $10 to HBO. It will also help HBO in the negotiations next time Dish tries to push back when they need to renew their contract. Why would HBO not go direct? The problem I see coming is the viewer’s hassle factor maintaining subscriptions to each content provider. Sure credit card autopay makes it easy but a real pain when Home Depot screws up and forces a card number change. There is a need in the market for a clearing house where you put in your credit card /ACH info once and just check the boxes as to what content you want. I think this is the way to give people a la carte channels without the cableco dinosaurs needing to do anything. So who is going to start this business? If you could get 0.1% of the $80B pay TV market you would be raking in $80M a year…
PC Blaze Broadband From: Af [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Ken Hohhof via Af Sent: Thursday, December 4, 2014 9:23 AM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: [AFMUG] ESPN3 There seems to be a trend toward a new business model, like CBS now has an individual subscription service. That’s the right way to go, we can hope Disney/ESPN finds themselves all alone with their cable channel model, and decides to start offering individual subscriptions. The content providers are also starting to regularly get pushback from the cable and satellite systems about the fees they want to charge at renewal time. I think ESPN3 is on the wrong side of history. If you want to be an OTT content provider, you sell subscriptions direct to the subscribers who want your content. From: Jason McKemie via Af <mailto:[email protected]> Sent: Thursday, December 04, 2014 4:44 AM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: [AFMUG] ESPN3 Don't contribute to that business model. On Wednesday, December 3, 2014, Brett A Mansfield via Af <[email protected]> wrote: I've seen a lot of ISPs and WISPs offering ESPN3 for free now. Nobody can seem to or is willing to tell me how they get that set up. I'd really like to offer that to my customers. Anyone able and willing to tell me how to do that? Thank you, Brett A Mansfield
