Avoiding the carriage disputes that threatened to undermine their Aug, 17 launch, national cable channels Fox Sports 1 and Fox Sports 2 are on target for distribution deals with Time Warner Cable, Comcast, DirecTV and Dish, according to sources.
While the ancestors for those channels, Speed and Fuel, had existing agreements with the distributors, terms had to be renegotiated given the higher profiles that FS1 and FS2 will have nationally.
Fox had been getting below 30¢ per subscriber each month for Speed and about 20¢ monthly per sub for Fuel. Analysts expect subscriber fees from FS1 to triple in the short term, a key part of the motivation for Fox to dive more deeply into the national sports cable pool.
The deals have come in a climate that has seen stalemates elsewhere: DirecTV and the Pac-12 Networks are miles apart, while Dish and Time Warner Cable Sports, the RSN that carries the Los Angeles Lakers, are also deadlocked. Time Warner Cable is also in a standoff with CBS-owned networks.
