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Time Warner Cable Faces Lawsuit Over Sports Package Bundling
Author: Scarinci Hollenbeck, LLC
Date: June 28, 2013
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Time Warner Cable will soon square off against angry customers who brought a class action lawsuit against the cable giant over sports package bundling. Subscribers are being forced to pay higher costs for sports channels they don’t want.
Time Warner recently paid out $8 billion for the rights to carry L.A. Dodgers baseball games and $3 billion for rights to carry Los Angeles Lakers basketball games. However, in carrying these exclusive sports channels, many local network subscribers will now be required to pay as much as $4 more for the Lakers channel on their cable bills each month for these packages, many of whom say they don’t want the channels. Once the Dodgers channel is up and running, another $4 to $5 will be tacked on to local cable bills each month.
The group who brought the case against Time Warner argues that non-sports fans cannot unsubscribe from those networks because they are bundled with their expanded basic levels of their cable, satellite, or telephone service, the New York Times reports. They contend that bundling packages in this way is a violation of entertainment law and are seeking to draw more support from the public against the cable giant.
“A very large segment of the consuming public is not sufficiently interested in Dodgers games to pay $50-$60 per year, but they have no way of unsubscribing from either the Lakers or Dodgers telecast, which together will add (or will if unrestrained) about $100 per year to the subscriber’s TWC bill,” the complaint read. “TWC’s bundling results in defendants making huge profits, much of which is extracted from unwilling consumers who have no opportunity to delete unwanted telecasts.”
The legality of bundling has been a issue facing cable providers in recent years, and many cable subscribers and networks decry the practice. Most notably was Cablevision’s anti-trust lawsuit against Viacom, in which it argued against being forced to pay for 14 ancillary channels it did not want in order to gain access to eight main channels.
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