Fans First

Putting Fans First

Putting Fans First is a new coalition of sports superfans and concerned consumers uniting to address the soaring cost of TV sports programming.

Putting Fans First counts among its members over 31,500 individual sports fans, consumers and taxpayers as well as several leading organizations. A partial list can be found here.

Membership is open to everyone – SIGN UP HERE. We also seek individual and corporate support, and we currently receive corporate support from Comcast.

Most cable companies want to carry sports networks like the NFL Network, but many are proposing to give fans the choice of subscribing to it as part of a "sports tier." That way, these expensive new niche networks don't have to be paid for by everyone.

But the networks are saying NO – they want every cable customer to have to pay for it – even though the leagues have already sold their major games to other networks.

Putting Fans First will shine a bright light on this problem. We demand that the leagues set an example of good sportsmanship – let the superfans choose to pay for it, but don't stick the cost of it on everyone else.


	.. IMPORTANT MESSAGES FROM PFF Shame on NFL Detroit Free Press "How dare the NFL commissioner paint his ownership cartel as helpless victims of a rookie salary structure that's wrongly eating into teams' insane profit margins?" Read more> NFL Network May Partner with ESPN Wall Street Journal "An agreement would represent a big shift in strategy for the NFL: abandoning its effort to force cable operators into carrying its own network and thus paying it lucrative monthly fees. It would also send a message to other professional sports, which have enjoyed rising television fees for years …" Read more> Comcast, Big Ten Sign Carriage Deal Reuters "Comcast will initially carry Big Ten as part of its expanded basic level of service in seven states with Big Ten universities ... Comcast may elect to move Big Ten to a broadly distributed digital level of service in most of its systems in those states." Read more>