Paul Smalera

My latest story in the Big Money is a tale of the Goofus and Gallant of sports network startups, the NFL and MLB Networks. Goofus thinks he should retain sole ownership of his network and dictate carriage terms to the cable companies. Gallant sees the value of sharing ownership of the network with cable companies, so that everyone is happy. Goofus thinks customers will drop cable for DirecTV just to get a few extra late season Thursday night games. Gallant wants to bring the games to the customer, appearing on more services and devices than any other startup network in history. Which do you think has been more successful to date?

Read about the other ways in which baseball has learned from football’s mistakes in creating its MLB Network and Extra Innings package, here:

MLB Network Hits a Home Run: How baseball learned from football’s mistake and pulled off the biggest cable launch ever. | The Big Money.