FTR - More than $1B in TV sports rebates headed back to consumers after pandemic's lost year

After months of back-and-forth, it appears that money may begin flowing back to generally disgruntled sports pay TV subscribers in a year where live sports took a severe hit from the COVID-19 pandemic. Sports TV is notoriously one of the costliest parts of the whole TV ecosystem, a function of the massive rights fees paid to broadcast the events - which, as a real-time drama, are legacy TV's firewall against the streaming shift. But subscribers to sports networks have gotten little for their dollar this year, and providers kept collecting fees for the programming even as the pandemic disrupted college and pro sports, including baseball, basketball and hockey. Now the complicated system (including resolving insurance settlements) is set to spit some of those fees back to consumers as rebates. The total rebate from regional sports networks could reach $1.1B, LightShed analyst Brandon Ross says. While payouts could vary by market,

For further details see:

More than $1B in TV sports rebates headed back to consumers after pandemic's lost year