Pay more for ESPN?
The rising price of television sports contracts is hitting American cable and satellite subscribers in their wallets, whether they like it or not. Most are not even aware of extra charges they pay monthly due to these high contracts. In a Poll Position national scientific survey we asked, is the ability to watch the ESPN TV network at home worth $4.70 a month to you? An overwhelming majority of Americans, 66% said no, 15% said yes, 19% had no opinion.
According to SNL Kagan, a research company, ESPN earns around $4.69 a month from subscribers, even if they don’t watch sports, or watch very little sports programming. The monthly price is expected to cross the $5.00 a month threshold this year. On the whole, American TV subscribers pay about $100.00 a year for sports shown on all channels, whether they watch sports or not. For example, the National Football league recently brokered a 27 billion dollar deal over nine years with the major TV networks. Add in big contracts between the networks and NCAA football, NCAA basketball, NBA basketball and Major League baseball, and well, you get the picture. Cable and satellite bills are likely to go up to help pay for those contracts.
Back to ESPN specifically, young Americans in the 18-29 year old age group are most against the idea of paying to be able to watch ESPN with 75% against it versus 17% saying they would pay.
More men than women would not pay to be able to watch ESPN with 68% of men saying no to the fee, 18%said they would pay it, 14% did not have an opinion. Women weighed in with 63% saying they would not pay $4.70 a month to be able to watch ESPN, 13% said they would, 24% offered no opinion.
Poll Position’s scientific telephone survey of 1,139 registered voters nationwide was conducted December 18, 2011 and has a margin of error of ±3%. Poll results are weighted to be a representative sampling of all American adults.
What do you think? Vote in our online companion poll and comment below.
The online companion poll in which you can vote provides unscientific results, meaning it’s a tally of participating Poll Position users, not a nationally representative sampling.
Poll Position is committed to transparency and upholding the highest professional standards in its polling, explaining why we provide you with the crosstabs of our scientific polls. Crosstabs provide a breakdown of survey participants by age, race, gender, and political affiliation. Here are the crosstabs for this poll: Poll Position Crosstabs-ESPN
You can learn more about our polling methodology here.
