Reminder: You’re Not Watching Sports Without Cable TV

US sports fans are pretty much required to get pay TV. In large part because ESPN, the country’s most powerful cable channel, has locked up the rights to the biggest sports leagues and events -- or at least a portion of them -- usually for a decade or more.

Those rights are very expensive, of course. Nathanson figures ESPN will pay $3.8 billion for those games this year, and $5.1 billion by 2017. And the TV networks that don’t have those rights -- like Viacom -- like to argue that these expenses will eventually weaken ESPN, as consumers who don’t value sports will cut the cord or won’t sign up for it in the first place. Pay-TV operators, meanwhile, are paying ESPN $6 for every subscriber each month, whether or not they watch (or want) the channel, according to research firm SNL Kagan. That cost is expected to reach more than $8 by 2018.