DirecTV Impact: AT&T Saves $17 Per Customer Monthly on U-verse Content Costs

One of AT&T’s primary motivations for buying DirecTV was to get better deals on programming costs, and as AT&T Senior Executive John Stephens revealed, those savings are big – bigger than many of us probably expected. DirecTV was paying an average of $17 less per month for content than AT&T was paying for U-verse customers, noted Stephens. Multiply the average $17 savings by six million U-verse video customers yields monthly savings of $100 million. And as contracts come up for renegotiation on an ongoing basis, there is an opportunity to get even better pricing reflecting the combined clout of both the DirecTV and U-verse base, Stephens said.