Bell, Rogers to put squeeze on sports bars
Next month brings an NHL playoffs with a decent amount of Canadian teams in the mix, which is likely to pack the nation’s sports bars in the annual rite of anguish and alcohol.
And so, the country’s sports broadcasters have decided they want to ensure they are receiving their proper cut of all the fun. And of, this being Canada, the sorrow.
Bell and Rogers, the twin conglomerates of the sports-media landscape, are removing their main sports channels from the bundled packages available to businesses that have a liquor licence. They will then offer TSN and Sportsnet — and their various regional feeds — as stand-alone packages at significantly increased fees. So, where they previously had those channels available at a cost not unlike a typical residential subscription, now bars and restaurants will have to pay specifically for the right to have TSN and Sportsnet in their lineups.
Smaller bars — less than 100 seats — will be charged about
ROGERS, BELL, WANT CUT OF THE FUN, CRANKING UP FEES FOR TSN, SPORTSNET
$120 monthly for both channels on top of existing fees, and the cost increases according to seating capacity. The new prices — not that anyone was keen to put them on the record — will also apply to customers who subscribe to those channels through a third party like Shaw or Telus. Shaw confirmed Tuesday that the new prices are set by the channel owners, regardless of service provider.
It cannot be a coincidence that Bell and Rogers, generally fierce competitors, are making this change at the same time. One could wonder about the optics, not to say the legalities, of changing prices at the same time, but at the very least it looks like cahoots are involved.
The roots of all this are easy to understand. More and more people are giving up cable subscriptions, or not getting them to begin with, and younger adults in particular tend to stream what they watch at a time of their choosing. For live events like sports, they will head to a bar to watch.
With that decline in television viewership — late last year the CRTC reported Canadians spent more on Internet packages than television subscriptions for the first time — and with broadcasters now forced to offer some kind of ala-carte pricing for their channels, it is not surprising that the major sports broadcasters would look to bars who are showing their product to an audience of dozens, or even hundreds, as a way of capturing some of that leaking revenue back.
In a message provided to its business customers about the changes scheduled for May 1, Bell provided the following explanation for why it is charging extra for its sports channels: “The new rates are designed to more accurately reflect the commercial use of the sports channels and the value that these channels represent to commercial establishments,” it says. “We believe that sports programming is a powerful attractor for bar and restaurant patrons, and that the investment to continue to receive these channels is a good business decision for most establishments.”
Or, put another way: Why are we doing this? Because we can.
Just like a viewer might not want to pay for a suite of channels he never watches — this was the argument behind the CRTC’s forced unbundling of channel packages — the broadcasters have apparently decided that they don’t want to treat their sports channels as having the same value to a bar as, say, the History Channel or
WOULD SOME BARS SIMPLY TURN OFF THE TVS RATHER THAN PAY A LARGE INCREASE?
HGTV. Bell and Rogers are placing a bet that restaurants and bars will be willing to eat the new fees because the alternative would be to tell sports-minded patrons that no, the game is not on here, but can I interest you in a particularly spicy episode of Love it or List it? I think they might list it!
While the bar owners of the country are understandably displeased by this development — people as a rule do not like it when their fees are increased — it will be interesting to see if many dislike it so much that they won’t go along. Would some bars simply turn off the TVs rather than pay a large increase for TSN and Sportsnet? Would they turn around and increase prices for their beer, hoppy or otherwise?
This would, if nothing else, not endear Rogers and Bell to the Canadian sports fan who is long used to watching the game over a couple of pints at their local. Both companies are multibillion-dollar telecommunications conglomerates, and between them they also happen to control not just the television (and radio) broadcasting rights for almost every major sporting event in North America, and, in the case of Canada’s biggest market, they own a majority of all the sports franchises.
Putting the boots to Joe and Jane Sportsbar is a bit of an awkward look, and doing it just as NHL and NBA playoffs begin, and the MLB season gets underway, is not particularly subtle. Pay up, or else. Sports is big business, we are often told. And there it is, another reminder.