Don't forget that, as a non-sports-watcher, you get to pay a fee to subsidize all the sports channels you don't watch. It's not even the cost of the channels, per se... you get the extra "regional sports surcharge" on top of that.
All of these companies use sports as a major buying motivator, like in the UK Sky basically went mad on buying every sport they could. I would assume the extra subscription alone doesn't cover the high licensing prices they pay, so they spread out the cost to all the other consumers too but just charge a bit extra to the sports fans.
Are there other genres (for want of a better term) where this applies?