Further to that more recently on the same team:
Time Warner Cable to Take Staggering Loss on Bad Dodger Deal
Mar 24, 2015 •
Time Warner Cable is set to take a massive loss on its deal for TV rights to the Los Angeles Dodgers. Writing in the New York Post, Claire Atkinson reports the the writedown is expected to be as high as $1 billion.
“Time Warner Cable and Dodgers fans are facing a second season of silence from West Coast TV distributors who, so far, are balking at the price for carrying Time Warner Cable’s SportsNet LA, which carries the Dodgers games exclusively,” Atkinson writes. “The cable operator paid rights owners, led by Guggenheim Partners, $8.35 billion over 25 years, but has not been able to get rival pay-TV operators to carry the network at around $5 per subscriber per month.”
That’s left some 70 percent of Southern California households without games.
Also, 21st Century Fox had been a competitor for the Dodgers TV rights.
Sources told The Post that the market rate for the channel is more likely $3 per subscriber per month, meaning the charge will be almost $1 billion when adjusted over the life of the contract or in the region of $700 million in present-day terms.
“Comcast will be made whole,” said the source, suggesting this mess had to be cleaned up as a condition of Comcast’s proposed deal to acquire Time Warner Cable.
“Unless the deal closes, there will not be another [Dodgers] season shown outside of Time Warner Cable. I don’t believe they’ll get carriage,” a source told The Post.
Time Warner Cable declined to comment on financial details but CFO Artie Minson said on the firm’s second-quarter 2014 earnings call that it would reforecast revenue and operating income for the full year.
“So on a full year basis and including lost advertising revenue, I expect SportsNet LA to cost us around 50 basis points of revenue growth and 125 basis points of adjusted Ebitda growth,” he said.
Comcast’s proposed deal to buy Time Warner Cable offers TWC shareholders 2.875 Comcast common shares for each Time Warner Cable share.
One Wall Street source said: “You basically saw in their financials what a year looks like when they’re paying the Dodgers but not getting paid.”
This person added: “The price of [regional sports networks] were going up. Time Warner Cable wanted to lock in cost increases, they cut a deal that was a bridge too far and they ended up standing on the bridge.”
http://nypost.com/2015/03/24/time-warner-cable-expected-to-take-1b-loss-for-bad-dodger-deal/
Interesting when you try and force at on people - from I got from gleaming through the story is Murdoch will try and ram AFL down every ones throats in Australia. However without League won't he have to raise prices - this article shows what can happen and thats in a sport they like.
News Corp is a US company now and such a big deal is material and will be scrutinized so this will get very interesting if it isn't making a lot. I find it strange on the same weekend I have read more about Rugby League ever with Jarryd Hayne I then read about this tantrum from Murdoch against Rugby League when his channels carry NRL here and NFL. Extraordinary really, this tells you his days are surely numbered.
