I decided to run a twitter poll asking how much would you pay monthly for single a la carte ACC Network cable or digit channel?
How much would you pay monthly for the ACC Network if you could buy it as a single ala-carte cable or digital channel?
— AllSportsDACC (@AllSportsDACC) July 9, 2017
With the carriage rate of the of the ACC Network projected to be somewhere between .30 – .60, would it be more profitable to offer it as an a la carte channel?
We will the say the ACC Network can pull .45 a subscriber fee and 50 Million subscribers. The SEC Network has nearly 70 Million subscribers, so that is a fair estimate.
That’s $270 Million the ACC Network can generate in a year. Judging from my poll that had had over 300 voters, the average price an ACC fan would pay monthly for the ACC is $5.27.
We’ll even round down to $5. That’s 4.5 Million subscribers required to match the bundled Version. It’s hard to say if a ACC Network would pull that many subscribers even in the cord cutting era. For example the WWE network has 1.6 Million subscribers.
I tend to think even in a cord cutting era, that the ACC Network won’t get that many subscribers. Cable companies don’t seem ready to have completely a la carte offerings either.
That said even if the ACC Network can generate 250,000 digital subscribers at $5, that another $15 Million that can added to the $270 Million. As cord cutters increase, you can offset some the losses with a $5 channel. If the cable companies ever offer a la carte, they can charge $5 a month there too.
Definitely the ACC should continue with the linear bundled cable channel. They will do this too. That’s still the most profitable method to distribute a channel, but I do think in the cord cutting era a digital offering at $5 which seems to be the correct price point should be offered as well.
