Sports Not the Glue Holding TV Bundles Together

While ESPN is a key element of Sling TV’s core $20 per month over-the-top service for cord-cutters, sports may not necessarily be the tie that keeps the traditional pay TV bundle bound together, multiscreen specialist Clearleap found in a new consumer survey. Clearleap, in an online survey of 435 consumers age 18-49 conducted in January, found that only about a third (36.58 percent) of sports fans would pay $20 or less per month to stream sports without a cable subscription. A much larger group -- 51.34 percent -- said they wouldn’t pay for such a service at all. Just 8.05 percent said they’d be willing to pay between $21 to $49 per month, and 4.03 percent said they’d pay more than $50 per month.

“There isn’t a lot of evidence to support the notion that sports are keeping subscribers tied to the bundle,” Clearleap noted in the study. “Even those respondents who identified as sports fans weren’t overly tied to the bundle because they needed their sports fix – nearly half said they watch plenty of other shows that require a cable subscription.” The results of the survey “challenge many of the widely held assumptions about what’s keeping many consumers from cutting the cord,” Clearleap said.