The National Football League said Comcast Corp. makes cage-fighting and bull-riding available to nine times as many subscribers as the NFL Network, even as the network consistently draws more viewers.
The comparison, in documents filed with the Federal Communications Commission, is part of the NFL’s attempt to force Comcast to increase the number of its cable television subscribers who get the league’s NFL Network.
A regulatory hearing set to begin tomorrow in Washington will determine whether Comcast acted properly in 2007 when it moved the NFL Network, including live broadcasts of football games, to a sports package that costs extra and has 2.1 million viewers. The NFL said it should be carried alongside Comcast’s own sports programming, Versus and Golf Channel, which are available to at least 19.8 million of the cable company’s 24.2 million subscribers.
The case “is really about money and the NFL’s insatiable thirst to maximize monopoly profits at the expense of everyone else,” said Comcast, the largest U.S. cable operator, in its filing in advance of the hearing. The NFL raised its fee by more than 350 percent after adding eight late-season games to its network, according to Philadelphia-based Comcast.
The NFL filed its complaint against Comcast in May. The FCC’s media bureau in October made an initial determination that Comcast improperly demanded a financial interest in the NFL’s programming. It sent the case to the agency’s judges for a recommended decision that would need approval by the FCC’s appointed commissioners to take effect.
Former NFL Commissioner Paul Tagliabue and Comcast Chief Executive Officer Brian Roberts are among potential witnesses at the hearing before Administrative Law Judge Richard Sippel, according to the filings in the case.
Live, Taped Games
Comcast illegally favored its Versus and Golf Channel over the NFL Network, which provides live and tape-delayed games and the annual draft of prospective players, the NFL said in its filing. The league also said Comcast illegally demanded a financial interest in the live games, the network’s “most valuable asset.”
The NFL sought “an exorbitant surcharge” after adding the eight games to NFL Network, Comcast said. It said Versus and Golf Channel charge less than half as much as NFL Network “for programming that offers greater variety and is not available elsewhere.”
The NFL’s claim that Comcast sought a financial interest in NFL Network is the result of a “tortured theory” that should be “rejected as unsubstantiated,” Comcast said.
An NFL victory in the hearing could embolden operators of sports channels, already a significant cost for cable operators, to demand more, said Matt Polka, president of the Pittsburgh- based American Cable Association, a trade group for small and mid-sized cable operators.
‘Bad for Consumers’
“It would be a bad, bad thing for consumers,” Polka said in an interview. “Sports programming is the most expensive programming on cable today.”
The FCC proceeding comes as the two sides negotiate over whether Comcast will continue to carry the NFL Network after a current contract expires April 30. Comcast won’t comment on the negotiations, Sena Fitzmaurice, a spokeswoman, said in an interview today. The NFL is “open to negotiating a new agreement,” Dan Masonson, a league spokesman, said in an e- mail.
According to the NFL’s filing, Comcast said in discussions in 2005 and 2006 that it wanted to buy rights to the eight live games for Versus.
Comcast’s ‘Retaliation’
“Your relationships with the cable industry are going to get very interesting,” Roberts told Tagliabue after the league licensed rights to the NFL Network instead, according to written testimony from the former commissioner cited in the NFL’s filing. That “foreshadowed Comcast’s retaliation” against the NFL, Tagliabue said in the testimony.
“I have no recollection” of such a discussion, Roberts said in written testimony submitted to the FCC on June 20.
“I do recall communicating to Mr. Tagliabue that I was disappointed” and “that I foresaw that the NFL was likely to continue to face difficulties persuading cable operators” to give NFL Network broad distribution, he said.
DirecTV, Dish, Cox
The NFL Network is delivered to about 36 million homes, the NFL said in its filing. Among satellite and cable companies carrying the network are DirecTV Group Inc., Dish Network Corp. and Cox Communications Inc., NFL spokesman Dennis Johnson said in an interview.
DirecTV subscribers can buy live access to more than 200 Sunday NFL games a season, according to the satellite services’ Web site.
“For years, the NFL has discriminated against Comcast and other cable companies by refusing to give them the same carriage rights,” Comcast said in its filing.
Cable companies that don’t carry NFL Network include Time Warner Cable Inc., Cablevision Systems Corp. and Charter Communications Inc., Comcast said in a June 20 filing.
(Source: Bloomberg)
