ESPN Wants Its Ambiance

BMI claims ESPN has paid “below market fees” for broadcasting and distributing music played at live sporting events and wants to charge it for the “vast amounts of music played loudly and prominently in stadiums and arenas” that gets heard by viewers through the broadcasters’ microphones, as noted by the Hollywood Reporter.

ESPN filed suit against BMI in February, claiming that because it acquires music rights through direct licenses with artists, publishers and libraries, the company should be able to use a blanket license that grants permission to use BMI’s songs at a flat rate, lower than what other sports networks would pay.

While ESPN wants the fee to reflect the amount ESPN pays in its direct licenses, BMI said a more reasonable precedent would be the 300 blanket licenses it offers other cable networks. Under the previous bulk licenses BMI has arranged, news and sports networks pay 0.1375 percent of its gross revenue.

In 2014, BMI estimated ESPN’s gross revenue at $11 billion, so the sports network’s percentage fee would be $15 million in an agreement similar to those BMI references. The matter is before a New York federal court, and BMI has said that it “looks forward to the opportunity to represent our songwriters, composers and publishers” in the suit.

Separately, Disney CEO Bob Iger said recently that ESPN is considering a streaming service aimed directly at consumers. While the network has been losing millions of subscribers in the past two years, such a service would give cable companies the right to remove the network from their core subscription packages.