SNL Kagan revised its retransmission consent fee projections, saying Monday that it expects broadcasters to reap $9.3 billion in charges by 2020, nearly twice the $4.9 billion they are expected to gain in 2014.
The growth projections are based on rising per-month, per subscriber fees for TV station owners in recent negotiations, Kagan said in a statement, as well as a new set of expectations for what broadcast networks are asking in programming compensation from their affiliates. This comes despite recent regulatory efforts to chip away at TV stations bargaining positions. SNL Kagan’s projections call for retrans revenues to rise to $8.78 billion by 2019, versus their 2019 projection of $7.64 billion from last year.
Kagan estimates that the average retrans fee will rise to $1.32 per subscriber per month by 2017, putting TV stations above all but five basic cable networks in terms of affiliate fees per sub per month, with networks such as ESPN ($7.72) and TNT ($1.92) all still above that average mark. Most RSNs are projected to be significantly above this $1.26 benchmark.
SNL Kagan has also updated their reverse retrans projections, or the money that flows back to networks from their affiliate stations. Kagan nnow predicts that reverse retrans could increase from $1.53 billion in 2015 to $3.22 billion in 2020.
