Videoage International October 2017

22 October 2017 V I D E O A G E Cover Story: Rocco Commisso U.S. communities.” The AT&T acquisition of 800,000 subs cost him $2.1 billion or $2,600 per sub, which was the going rate, breaking his streak of purchasing cable assets at below the industry average. For the AT&T transaction, Commisso had to raise $2.4 billion, “more than I needed. I over-financed myself so I did not have to do the next deal to survive,” he said. He continued: “In the beginning of 2002 we began to buy our stock. We bought 24 million shares in the open market from 2002 to 2008, and then bought back another 28million shares owned by Morris Communications in 2009. This set the stage for taking the company private in 2011.” Today, Mediacom is America’s second-largest family-owned MSO, after Cox Communications. Interestingly, Commisso views Mediacom as an MSO, rather than an MVPD, and Disney’s “In the current phase, we’re monetizing our network-strategy by becoming a broadband provider and the figures support this: In 2001 we had peaked at 1.6 million video customers, and only 100,000 data clients and zero phone subscribers. In 2017 our video has been reduced to 800,000 subs, data has skyrocketed to 1.2 million and phone subs to 500,000. “Of our $1.9 billion annual revenue, 50 percent comes fromnon-videobusiness, includingbusiness customers, like dentists, which is expanding,” he said, pointing to an article where he was quoted as saying, “If wasn’t for data we wouldn’t be around [and] our price for 50 Mbps service is the same today as our 1.5 Mbps service was 15 years ago.” And, Commisso added, “We don’t view OTT as negative because users need our ultra fast broadband services in order to access it. Plus, the proliferation of OTT services will further benefit us because we’re the perfect aggregator via our TiVo services.” In a burst of pride, after heralding the virtues and future potential of the cable TV business, he questioned the wisdom and foresight of publishers like The New York Times , The Washington Post , Gannett and others, who 30 years ago decided to sell their cable businesses. However, his biggest challenge may not be the future of cable TV, but that of U.S. soccer, his life’s passion since he immigrated to the U.S. at age 12 in 1961. He even got Columbia University to name its soccer stadium after him: the Rocco B. Commisso Soccer Stadium (even though his Cosmos play at theMCU Park in Brooklyn). “The NFL [the National (American) Football League] takes in $1.9 billion in television revenues annually for 16 games broadcast on Monday nights. For hundreds of games, including the telecasts of the national men’s and women’s teams, the MLS and the U.S. Soccer Federation bring home only $90 million. This is a system that needs to be changed and my idea of promotion and relegation could transform U.S. soccer for the better,” Commisso said, considering that over 24.4 million people play soccer in the United States. “As for further cable TV consolidation, the bulk of the deals have already been done: there is not much left. Most of the 700 small cable companies still in the business are too small to be a target, but we certainly are big enough to be an attractive target.” Which leaves open the possibility that Commisso would sell out his cable interest and concentrate on his Cosmos, thus closing the circle: Soccer gave him a start and allowed him to succeed in life, and with soccer he may very well celebrate retirement. By Dom Serafini (Continued from Page 20) Pyne clarified: “MSO (Multi-system Operataor) was a cable-centric term. As satellite and Telcos came into the mix in the late 1990s and early 2000s, we had to develop a term that captured all distributors of networks, which led to the term of Multi-Channel Video Programming Distributor (MVPD), which covered a distributor whether that be DirecTV, Comcast, Bskyb or Verizon. “Today, we enhanced the term to DMVPD, D standing for Digital (i.e., Hulu, Youtube TV). The distinction between OTT and DMVPD is that OTT is a service that delivers over the top (i.e., Netflix, Amazon, iflix), DMVPD connotes that the distributor also distributes linear channels as well as VoD and other services,” concluded Pyne. Continued Commisso: “The second phase was the conversion to fiber optics, which we started in the late ’90s and completed in 2003. We now have 65,000 miles of fiber [104,600 Km].