SNL Kagan revised its retransmission consent forecast Monday, predicting that broadcasters will take in $5.5 billion by 2017, passing the $6 billion mark by 2018.
Kagan expects broadcasters' retrans haul to reach $2.4 billion this year.
These projections are higher than those in Kagan's November 2011 forecast, when they projected that retrans fees would reach $4.86 billion by 2017.
The increased projections are due to the success of a wider range of TV station owners in securing sequentially higher retrans fees from multichannel operators over the last year of negotiated deals.
Kagan analysis indicates that by 2018, the projected $6.05 billion of retrans revenues would be approximately 23% of the expected $26.2 billion in TV station ad revenues.
SNL Kagan projects that by 2018 the average fee paid per TV station will be slightly less than $1, while each multichannel subscriber will be responsible for aggregate retrans fee revenue of $4.86 per subscriber per month.
For all five major broadcast networks combined in 2015, multichannel providers are expected to pay $3.49 per month, or an average retrans fee of 74 cents per TV station per month, which is significantly below the $6.37 per sub per month that multichannel providers are projected to pay for ESPN, $1.50/sub/month for TNT or the $1.49 sub/month for NFL Network.
