NFL Strikes out with football network

OK, so that title is really strange: I used a baseball metaphor to describe football. But there is an article in today's Wall Street Journal about the upstart (and not-so-cleverly named) NFL Network, an NFL-owned channel all about football. In an effort to give the network a boost, the NFL saved eight games from the season exclusively for the network, hoping that fans of the gridiron would call their cable companies and demand that the channel be added. The problem: that didn't happen.

According to analysts, the leagues usually win in negotiations with cable companies, and this victory for the networks could be a sign of things to come. One reason the cable companies don't want to pony up the money for the channel (it would cost them as much as 70 cents per subscriber) is that, as popular as football is, it is still a relatively small percentage of viewers that would watch the NFL Network, and the network would raise costs for everyone. It's a classic case of concentrated benefits and diffuse costs.

But some speculate that the NFL may not even be that interested in the success of the network, that this is simply to show networks that they do have an alternative to selling games to them. According to an unnamed industry executive quoted in today's Washington Post, "From a business standpoint, I think the NFL Network exists solely for the NFL to use as leverage against the other networks every time its TV contracts are up."

As an NFL fan myself, but not a die-hard one, I think the NFL Network will be a tough sell to viewers. It only showed eight games this season, and none of them were particularly important match-ups: Most NFL viewers will be happy to watch their local teams and the important games on the networks. It's only a few fantasy football-die-hards that are gonna call up their cable companies to scream about missing the Browns-Steelers game.