Comcast in control with ‘perfected’ plan

Baseball fans in Washington know too well the power of Comcast.

Many Nationals fans are not able to watch most of the team’s games because the cable company refuses to carry the Mid-Atlantic Sports Network (MASN), which produces the broadcasts and is a competitor to a Comcast subsidiary.

The dispute highlights the emergence of Comcast as a key player in sports, with holdings in every segment of the industry, from distributing and producing games to owning teams and arenas.

In this region, Comcast operates Comcast SportsNet Mid-Atlantic, which broadcasts Washington Wizards, Washington Capitals and Baltimore Orioles games, as well as local college basketball and football contests.

Comcast owns similar networks in Philadelphia; Chicago; and Sacramento, Calif., and recently partnered with the New York Mets and other cable companies to produce baseball games in New York. It owns the Golf Network and recently paid more than $200 million for a three-year deal to broadcast National Hockey League games on OLN, formerly the Outdoor Life Network.

“Sports programming is popular,” said Comcast Executive Vice President David Cohen. “As a major distributor of content, we know how many of our customers like their sports.”

Comcast also is the majority owner of the Philadelphia Flyers of the NHL and Philadelphia 76ers of the National Basketball Association, as well as the minor league Bowie Baysox, Frederick Keys and Delmarva Shorebirds baseball teams. It owns the Wachovia Center and Wachovia Spectrum arenas in Philadelphia and the naming rights for the Comcast Center at the University of Maryland.

In 2004, Comcast unsuccessfully sought to buy the Walt Disney Co., which would have given it ownership of a host of channels, including the most powerful network in sports, ESPN.

But Comcast has been criticized in some cities for using its status as the top cable provider to block competitors from carrying Comcast networks, as in the case of Washington, the Nationals and MASN.

“One of the greatest complaints about the cable industry is that they use the fact that they control the pipe to control what gets on,” said Marc Ganis, president of SportsCorp., a Chicago-based sports business consultant. “There are a lot of people who feel that’s unfair.”

In its home city of Philadelphia, Comcast refused to allow competing satellite carriers such as DirecTV to carry Comcast SportsNet Philadelphia, which broadcasts most Phillies, Flyers and 76ers games.

Normally, federal regulations known as “open-access” laws do not allow providers of content to block a competitor from carrying a network if it is delivered via satellite. But Comcast found a way around that regulation because Comcast SportsNet Philadelphia is delivered terrestrially.

The result, critics said, is that competing services have struggled to gain a foothold in that city.

“The idea is that you lock up the content and then deny that content to a rival,” said Hal Singer, an economist who has represented MASN in its battle with Comcast. “Once you do that, you lock in customers. They’ve perfected this strategy in Philadelphia.”

Comcast officials say Philadelphia is the only city in which competitors cannot broadcast Comcast channels and that having exclusive content is common in the industry. DirecTV, for instance, is the sole provider of the National Football League’s Sunday Ticket package, which offers live broadcasts of every game.

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