At the end of August, Los Angeles Clippers owner Steve Ballmer rejected an offer of $60 million per season for the team’s TV rights from Fox Sports Prime Ticket. The prevailing sentiment at the time was that Ballmer and the Clippers would keep the rights in-house and start and over the top service.
That hasn’t happened yet, and the Clippers also don’t have a new TV deal with Fox or Time Warner, which owns the rights to the Lakers and the Dodgers. And if Ballmer does want to go back to Fox, that $60 million deal won’t be on the table – according to a report from Forbes, Fox’s new bid is somewhere around the $50 million mark.
As a result, Fox rescinded its $60 million offer and has come back with a lower bid–somewhere in the low-to-mid $50 million range–according to one league executive. When asked about the TV deal a Clippers spokesperson said the team does not comment on on-going negotiations. A spokesperson for Fox Sports did not respond to an email request for comment about the negotiations. One media rights expert, who is not working on the Clippers-Fox deal but who has worked on many deals between professional sports teams and broadcasters, said “That (Fox lowering its offer to the Clippers) would not surprise me at all.”
Ballmer and the Clippers are stuck between a rock and a hard place. They have a vastly superior on-court product than the Lakers right now, but their brand is, and arguably will always be, weaker than their inter-city rivals. And while Lakers ratings are down 17% this year, they’re still averaging 92,000 viewers per game this season, a higher average than the Clippers.
So while the cable sports bubble hasn’t burst yet, the Los Angeles Clippers appear to be the first team that overplayed their hand and could end up getting less than they expected – despite still likely doubling their average rights fee.
[Forbes]
