Today Sling TV and their parent company Dish announced that talks with Univision have broken down. According to Dish Univision has walked away from the talks after Dish pushed back on a 75% price hike Univision wanted.
“Univision is demanding DISH pay roughly 75 percent more for channels whose ratings have declined among DISH viewers by approximately 30 percent over the past five years. In fact, ratings for its flagship Univision channel have declined by nearly 40 percent since 2012. These trends are only expected to continue.” Dish said in a statement sent to Cord Cutters News. Dish went on to say “despite the direct-to-consumer Univision Now app costing $7.99 per month, Univision is asking DISH to pay almost double that amount for its DishLATINO and Sling Latino customers to watch the same content.”
“Univision is calling for price hikes designed to impact the Latino market we have served for more than 20 years,” said Alfredo Rodríguez Diaz-Marta, Vice President of DishLATINO and Sling Latino. “We are disappointed and saddened by Univision’s threats to block our customers from Univision news and entertainment content, especially during such challenging times.”
This comes just a few days after Dish raised their price on their popular Sling Orange plan to $25 a month. With networks like Univision asking for a 75% increase in the fees paid by Dish it is no wonder that after 3 years Sling TV had to raise their price.
Dish is no stranger talks like this. Recently Sling TV’s President talked about the crazy high fees local channels charge providers like Dish and Sling TV. During a talk at the Pay TV Show in May 2018, he predicted that locals will cost $15 a month next year. Now the question is will Univision pull their channels from Dish and Sling or will both sides find a deal. For now, a blackout is looking like a very real possibility.
Update: Univision just sent Cord Cutters News the following statement:
Univision has not left the table and is prepared to continue negotiating when DISH shows that it is serious about paying fair value for our services. DISH insists on paying Univision only a fraction of what it pays our English-language peers. DISH’s latest offer to UCI is an insult to our viewers, who depend on us for vital news and information that we provide like no other. DISH is just going through the motions and has provided hollow offers that hardly represent true negotiations.
We remain ready and willing to negotiate with DISH, but we will not roll over and let them continue to devalue the programming our already-underrepresented community relies on. Given the fact that our networks perform extremely well on their service, the question becomes: why doesn’t DISH treat Univision fairly?
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