New York -- Sports programming deserves all the money it
gets and then some, at least from the perspective of sports networks.
"Going forward, I would argue that the value of sports is
increasingly geometrically," Tracy Dolgin, CEO of YES Network, said during a
panel session at the Sports Business and Technology Summit in New York.
The reasons are well known: most sports viewing is done live
and, as Dolgin said, you can watch any TV show you want on Netflix, other
"over-the-top" services or even on DVD if you are willing to wait
long enough. "Sports is not: sports is available one way. It's the product that
makes you keep your cable subscription."
What's more, multichannel video distributors sell more than
just video -- but "there's nothing better than video to hold a broadband
customer," Dolgin said.
