If you think that the RSN bubble has burst, than what is the aftermath? I have a hard time believing that the TV money will regress to what it once was. I doubt that it goes higher, but I'm not sure it will recede to 10 Million a season again. Even at 40 Million per year would be a step up for the Nats.
I don't know if it has burst, but I would doubt anyone throws a bunch of money into a new team specific channel that is counting on a juicy carriage fee. Over the top video subscription services will eventually kill RSNs being able to force bundle. Without that, they will be left with either showing it for free and counting on advertising money, or selling it a la carte. Doing basic math, it is hard to see how either of those options could be worth over 40 million a year in gross revenue. Once they pay for production and everyone takes their cut, that is optimistically 20 million left for a team like the Nats.
CSN might pay in the 40-80 million neighborhood right now if they think they can get a dollar 2 more per subscriber. But it would be hard to imagine they'd pay that much without a competing bidder. If MASN was ditched and out of the picture, who else would bid? I doubt Fox would want to launch an expensive channel basically from scratch. A Nats run channel would probably be floated, but would probably be too risky to be considered a legitimate threat. Without MASN, I think it would be Comcast or nothing, and they'd know it.
