Granville...seriously...you have no idea what actually happened. What was actually promised...what was said..what people knew when they said it. No idea at all. None of us do.
The key in your post is "I think". If you're right, Crane has no case. But Crane claims he has evidence otherwise - that at least one party knew that it wasn't true.
SPOILER ALERT: AT&T never offered a thing! No one did but DirecTV according to testimony at the hearing. Comcast literally brought to the Astros and Rockets ONE PROVIDER with an offer that everyone agree would have them losing millions and millions of dollars even if that offer were made by all the other providers.
That's true as far as what Comcast brought to the Astros/Rockets as worthy of consideration. But it's possible AT&T suggested something smaller than Comcast was willing to accept and it just never made it that far. At least if I were AT&T, I'd at least have offered $0.01 per month.
That's a fair point. They may have made an offer that was so low that it was never presented to the Astros/Rockets.
So where did the numbers come from in the last thread. Maybe not the numbers in this particular deal. Someone even posted the going rates for Fox and ESPN. I'm just saying it doesn't seem reasonable for him to have been caught totally off guard
We have numbers that are agreed to...what we don't have are numbers that were actually offered but not accepted either from Comcast to providers..or from providers to Comcast. Comcast guards those as proprietary/confidential. Comcast's entire argument is that THEY were caught off guard. So if they were caught off guard, then why in the world would Crane have been prepared for it? Comcast is a major player within that industry...the Astros and Rockets were selling media rights and coming along for the equity ride.
No...he talked in generalities..."far less than we were told...about half of what we were told...etc."
But...but...but...that doesn't fit the narrative that Crane is just a greedy SOB, is holding out for money, and punishing the fans in the process because he hates us. Please keep that mess out of here.
I know this was mentioned in the other thread so I'm not arguing. It still makes no since that Comcast would accept losing that much money. There has to be something else to that that hasn't been made public.
It's not ideal...but Comcast and the Rockets can live with it. For Comcast, it's another market...it's an enterprise issue as they try to develop their regional model across the country, competing with Dish and FOX. The losses are a rounding error to a company the size of Comcast. They'd just rather have market penetration. For the Rockets, the equity doesn't matter. It would be great to have...and they're not thrilled it's not there....I'm sure they're very disappointed. But their broadcasting agreement alone puts them in the top 1/3 of the NBA for media dollars. With revenue sharing as extensive as they have in the NBA, it just isn't a huge deal. But in MLB..with limited revenue sharing...and division rivals already locking in equity deals in addition to broadcasting agreements...you can't lose the opportunity..and you certainly can't afford to have the opportunity be a loser like this. Everyone had different needs going into this...or different thresholds they had to hit...it's why it's absolutely insane that they entered into an agreement initially where any one of them could veto out the others. I get the Astros wanting that...I don't get the Rockets giving it to them. You can't afford to get in deals like that where someone clearly has different needs/desires, and there's no way out for you.
No one ever got rich losing money. Yes maybe Comcast could afford it ad part of a bigger plan. Not the rockets.
The Rockets wouldn't be losing money....they'd be losing an opportunity to make money. The Rockets, themselves, would not be losing money.
Partnership would lose money. Rockets woulds get more money from media rights fees. Net = positive for the Rockets. (same for the Astros, but not enough to be worth it for them)
And beyond that, clearly the company agreement for the partnership gave the Rockets some discretion in even making cash calls. They refused to make the last cash call.
so was comcast supposedly paying them a larger media rights fee than say a fox would to compensate for those losses?
