Suppose every channel wanted a $.40 increase?
At 100 channels (and there is a lot more) your bill would go up by $40/month.
Is that acceptable?
I have seen where Verizon wants to agree, but want to remove it from lower tiers to help offset the costs. Remember that cable providers pay for every subscriber that has access to a channel regardless of viewership.
To keep that in perspective, a LaLiga game had 750K viewers in the US in March (http://worldsoccertalk.com/2018/03/08/laliga-tv-ratings-surge-750000-watch-barcelona-atleti-game-bei...). But that is out of 40M households that can view it. So that is less than 2% of all possible viewers. Assuming Verizon has equal numbers, you can see why they might want to remove it from some packages.
You may be ok with paying the increase for a channel you want to see. But others aren't. And the same is true the other way. I am sure there are channels you would rather not pay for.
Unfortunately, lesser viewed channels are usually the ones that have the worst contract negotiations IMHO.
