Retrans Fees Seen Hitting $6B By 2018

SNL Kagan today updated its industry retransmission fee projections and now expects that TV station owners’ retrans fee revenues could reach $5.50 billion by 2017 and eclipse $6 billion by 2018, versus the $2.36 billion projected for 2012 .

These projections are higher than those in its November 2011 forecast, when it projected that retrans fees would reach $4.86 billion by 2017. SNL Kagan said the increased projections are due to the success of a wider range of TV station owners in securing sequentially higher retrans fees from multichannel operators over the last year of negotiated deals.

By 2015, that $4.28 billion approaches 10% of the total $43 billion that multichannel operators are projected to pay in affiliate fees to basic cable and regional sports networks. SNL Kagan analysis indicates that by 2018, the projected $6.05 billion of retrans revenues would be approximately 23% of the expected $26.2 billion in TV station ad revenues.

SNL Kagan projects that by 2018 the average fee paid per TV station will be slightly less than $1, while each multichannel subscriber will be responsible for aggregate retrans fee revenue of $4.86 per sub per month.

For all five major broadcast networks combined in 2015, multichannel providers are expected to pay $3.49 per month, or an average retrans fee of 74 cents per TV station per month, which is significantly below the $6.37 per sub per month that multichannel providers are projected to pay for ESPN, $1.50/sub/month for TNT or the $1.49 sub/month for NFL Network.