If you're interested in how the tech industry perceives the eventual fall of cable and big sports media, Ben Thompson over at Stratechery is required reading.
Bundling economics often make a lot of sense, at least when the content pool is diverse (you're paying for Grandma's soaps too, after all, and you both pay less than what you would otherwise).
Under assumptions that apply to most information-based businesses, bundling benefits buyers and sellers. Consider the following simple model for the willingness-to-pay of two cable buyers, the “sports lover” and the “history lover”:
What price should the cable companies charge to maximize revenues? Note that optimal prices are always somewhere below the buyers’ willingness-to-pay. Otherwise the buyer wouldn’t benefit from the purchase. For simplicity, assume prices are set 10% lower than willingness-to-pay. If ESPN and the History Channel were sold individually, the revenue maximizing price would be $9 ($10 with a 10% discount). Sports lovers would buy ESPN and history lovers would buy the History Channel. The cable company would get $18 in revenue.
By bundling channels, the cable company can charge each customer $11.70 ($13 discounted 10%) for the bundle, yielding combined revenue of $23.40. The consumer surplus would be $2 in the non-bundle and $2.60 in the bundle. Thus both buyers and sellers benefit from bundling.
Bundling economics fall apart as soon as the relationship becomes too one-sided, though. Pretty much everyone agrees sports will be the last domino to fall.
The truth, though, is that in the long run ESPN remains the most stable part of the cable bundle: it is the only TV “job” that, thanks to its investment in long-term rights deals, is not going anywhere. Indeed, what may ultimately happen is not that ESPN leaves the bundle to go over-the-top, but that a cable subscription becomes a de facto sports subscription, with ESPN at the center garnering massive carriage fees from a significantly reduced cable base. And, frankly, that may not be too bad of an outcome.
Don Brown said in the postgame presser that Hill has missed a lot of time in the spring and he was happy to have him back getting reps. Wonder if he's still hampered and how that affected their rotation.
Is there gonna be a special teams version of this series? Curious if there's been any chatter about who will be returning kicks given that the top 3 options from last year (Peppers, Lewis, Chesson) are gone.
Wonder if they'll take it easy with the running given the remaining QB depth...if he takes a bad hit I don't want to have to see Morris out there agaist OSU. Don't see a huge benefit to putting him in the line of fire and blowing up an offense that's been clicking so far.
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If you're interested in how the tech industry perceives the eventual fall of cable and big sports media, Ben Thompson over at Stratechery is required reading.
Bundling economics often make a lot of sense, at least when the content pool is diverse (you're paying for Grandma's soaps too, after all, and you both pay less than what you would otherwise).
Bundling economics fall apart as soon as the relationship becomes too one-sided, though. Pretty much everyone agrees sports will be the last domino to fall.
https://stratechery.com/2017/the-great-unbundling/
https://stratechery.com/2016/the-sports-linchpin/
Don Brown said in the postgame presser that Hill has missed a lot of time in the spring and he was happy to have him back getting reps. Wonder if he's still hampered and how that affected their rotation.
Presser video (comments on Hill @ 0:13):
Is there gonna be a special teams version of this series? Curious if there's been any chatter about who will be returning kicks given that the top 3 options from last year (Peppers, Lewis, Chesson) are gone.
Wonder if they'll take it easy with the running given the remaining QB depth...if he takes a bad hit I don't want to have to see Morris out there agaist OSU. Don't see a huge benefit to putting him in the line of fire and blowing up an offense that's been clicking so far.