“ That’s nightly viewers, not overall viewers; not everyone is watching every game, of course. To convert nightly viewership into total subscribers, we’ll need to make a few assumptions. If the average fan buys a year-long package but only watches, say, 20% of their team’s games, that works out to 500,000 subscribers per team, with 20% of them or 100,000 watching every game. If the average fan watches 10%, that’s one million subscribers. Let’s split the difference and call it 750,000.”
Maybe I’m cynical, but that seems wildly optimistic
Yeah, that's insane. People who watch 20% of a team's games are not voluntarily buying a $100/year subscription. I would say people watching 75% of games would likely buy a package, and they'd be lucky to get more than half of that audience paying for a standalone product. 50,000 average subscribers to the team would be close to the ceiling for a $100/year+ package, and then you're killing any exposure to your sport if you are limiting your audience to people willing to pay to watch.
Also, the 100,000 number he is using is wrong. Must be double counting the home and away audiences as the average household viewing is in the 50,000-60,000 range per team.
One example is already out there. Bally's sportsnet+ was able to get only 200,000 across their entire footprint which includes about 25 NBA/NHL teams and 5 MLB teams that agreed to be on the streaming service. That's less than 10,000 per pro team. There is no universe where that number climbs to 750,000 per team even if it is the only way to get a team's games.
Local rights out to bid to Amazon/Max/Peacock/Apple/Paramount/ESPN+ has got to be the future for everyone not the NFL. It's the only way to monetize local tv rights and still get some solid revenue.
A bunch of local standalone services would be an eventual disaster to the leagues. ESPN is talking about going standalone around 2024-25. Once that happens, the decline of the bundle will accelerate even more quickly, and MLB is going to need a solution quickly.
