I don't think he wants to include Alexander at all for public relations reasons. No reason to file the lawsuit then. Had tons of time. I don't think that tells us that it didn't happen. I have clients waiting out filing lawsuits all the time for all sorts of reasons. If Crane was still hopeful they would find a deal otherwise, then he wouldn't file that lawsuit for fear of it interfering with CSN negotiations. If he saw the MFN, that will be easy for Drayton to show. All Drayton has to do is show where it was sent...that it was included...that it was documented and that he shared those documents with Crane. Ultimately, though, it's not the existence or even disclosure of the MFN that's most important...the Crane group could have known all that...and it's still possible that Comcast knew those rates were unattainable but said otherwise to Crane, knowing that Crane and his group were relying on them for that information. That's actionable.
Wanted to expand on my own comment. Mostly to block the quote and response from LHF. Here's the crux of the problem. The Rockets may be financially able to cover the losses for the first 10 years and reap the benefits over the last 10. I'm basing this on getting all the providers in place at whatever rate was offered. The Astros it seems according to Crane's statements would lose equity to Comcast in exchange for Comcast covering their share of the losses and then have no benefit the last 10 years because their equity had evaporated. They would get their media rights every year but nothing else. Edited I had the last sentence attributed erroneously to the Rockets.
This is a public relations meltdown at this point.... He didn't include Alexander because Crane still needs him if he seeks to get a good deal elsewhere. If Drayton is able to verify that he did send the document, it contradicts Crane's statements and cast doubts on his verbal rate assurance claims.
Since it would be quite easy to prove that the MFN was sent to Crane if indeed they sent it, it seems odd that Crane would argue otherwise. For that reason I'm inclined to believe Crane on this issue (even though I think he is kind of a douchebag) because it would only hurt him to make a claim like that and then get totally refuted as soon as McClane's lawyers show where in the 5 books it was communicated to Crane.
1. Agreed..I just think it's far worse if he sues Alexander. And you're right...these two need each other, for better or for worse. 2. I agree with that.
Well, technically, Crane is saying that the original projections for CSN-H are crap now, so rather that locking ourselves into a crappy deal for 20 years just to sustain CSN-H, we'd like to use our out-clause and walk away and let all the parties move on and find something that works best for them individually. Comcast and the Rockets are trying to prevent that outcome through the bankruptcy filing, so now it's escalated.
Certainly - because the original business plan sucked and was no longer valid. So they looked at a bunch of different alternatives, as they should. The idea that they should just try to make CSN-H work as-is with lower rates is silly if they have other alternatives worth exploring.
The plan certainly isn't as lucrative as it once was but not all parties think it sucks or else they would all pull out of it. Crane had to scrape up every nickel he could to buy the team and by his statements regarding losing equity to Comcast may not have the cash flow to run a Network.
Absolutely. But why should Crane (the largest owner) have to do what's in the best interests of the Rockets and Comcast at his own team's expense? Why shouldn't he pursue alternative models that are best for his own team and his investors, especially given that the deal was negotiating specifically to give each team the right to veto any deal they didn't like? Or he doesn't want to throw money down a pit to cover losses of a network that is projected - by people who were woefully wrong once already - to make money 10 years from now. It's a flawed business venture. Two parties want to continue it because it's they see it as better than nothing. One doesn't because he sees it as worse than the alternatives he could find.
Currently his best course of action is to make weak claims of being duped to make up for money he promised to his investors. That's going to be the next lawsuit. All those people who got on the Crane Train. He sure didn't announce any alternatives last week. His alternative was to get money from Drayton. Owning a team usually involves making money down the road when you sell the team. That's what Drayton did.
From the Phillies fan site with CSN Houston mentions: http://www.thegoodphight.com/2013/11/27/5148454/Phillies-TV-Deal-update All's Quiet on the TV Front By 88Lindros88 @Eric_Lindros on Nov 27 2013, 7:00a 13 It's been a little over a month since the reports that a Phillies TV deal was likely to be signed within the next 30 days. Those thirty days have come and gone, and there is no new Comcast-Phillies partnership to announce. I pinged Howard Megdal, the source of the original 30-day window rumor, as to whether he had any updated news on the topic. That's a possibility. Or they could have hit a snag in negotiations, or any of dozens of other possible scenarios. Reading the tea leaves here for a moment, it doesn't much look like the Phillies expect to be flush with cash any time soon, judging from their free agent acquisitions (or the lack thereof), the types of players they've been rumored to be coveting, and the comments Ruben has made to the media over the past few weeks. On the other hand, a deal might be imminent and the Phillies just prefer to not spend it on free agents this year, or could they surprise everyone and end up submitting a massive bit for Masahiro Tanaka, if the NPB-MLB posting system is settled this off-season. While new information on the Phillies TV deal is scant, the Houston Astros television deal has been in the news lately. I've previously mentioned that the Astros situation is one that bears watching as a sort of canary in the television rights fee coal mine. CSN Houston has not been able to get into enough homes in the Houston area to be able to pay the Astros their agreed upon annual fee of $80 million dollars, and so in September filed for bankruptcy protection. This week new Astros owner Jim Crane sued previous Astros owner Drayton McClane alleging fraud and negligent misrepresentation of the Houston Astros as it pertains to the Crane's purchase of the Astros. The Crawfish Boxes has an excellent run down of the allegations, and responses by McClain and Comcast (this series of comments explain some of the details of the deal). Crane is basically saying the deal McClane entered into with CSN Houston prior to his selling the club was designed specifically to inflate the sale price of the team by misrepresenting the value of the TV rights agreement, and was not indicative of a TV deal that was workable. Wendy Thurm has a synopsis of the Astros/CSN Houston legal issues up at FanGraphs. The implications of these lawsuits for the Phillies are hard to assess. If the new Comcast-Phillies deal is all but done, as Megdal's original reporting indicates, then they probably have very little to do with any negotiation. If that is not the case, it's still not clear that the Houston situation will have much bearing on the Phillies. If Crane's allegations are true the current CSN Houston deal was never constructed to be a working TV rights deal, and if one were to rework that deal to make it viable it would likely have to include lower annual payments to the Astros along with CSN Houston charging lower carriage fees to the local Houston-area broadcasters. Those lower payments would then have to be reworked into estimates like the one I provided in October, but ultimately it doesn't have a significant effect on the result. The Houston CSN mess could well be a one-off situation, with little import on the rest of the league. The failure of their regional sports network does necessarily mean other regional sports networks are also doomed to the same fate. The new information that has been made public in these lawsuits does give me a little more confidence that the RSN landscape isn't yet collapsing, and assuages my fears of the "bursting TV bubble" a little bit. Things like this and this still concern me over the longer term, but they're certainly not Phillies-specific problems.
Actually, his preferred course of action was to walk away from the whole thing and forget it all happened, as was supposed to be his right. Had that been allowed, no one would be getting sued right now, and the Rockets would likely be on TV.
Crane didn't threaten to walk until CSN H filed for bankruptcy. The judge will decide what Crane's right is. And you are naive if you think that Crane wouldn't have sued McLane anyway. What deal would the Rockets be under to get on TV by now? To get maximunm value they likely have to be tied to the Astros and Crane has squat to present at this point.
Crane didn't threaten to walk until he went nearly three months without getting paid, which was his right. They filed for bankruptcy to stop him from doing that.
