In addition, establishments would HAVE to pay $30.00/month for it and those could be doled out like individual licenses. In other words, you pay $30.00/month for one license but charge by occupancy so if you are greater 100 occupancy you need 2 licenses, greater than 200 you need 3....
This is essentially how DirecTV charges for their sports packages, like Sunday Ticket, Extra Innings, regional sports networks, (oddly, the Golf Channel is an add on), etc, with delineations in 50 viewer segments. Basically anyone that can see the TV is counted, so it's more based on occupancy than seat number and it's the same for fights, UFC, etc. - even Comcast does this for PPV events.
I'm not sure that it would be effective though. The way the pricing is structured, it makes more sense for larger places to get it, as it's a huge base number for these things and the increases aren't at all structured coherently. I think last time I bought it, the base 1-50 cost was something like $1500, 50-100 jumps a little to $2300, then 100-150 is doubled to $4600, but stays the same for 150-200, before going up again. Not many 50 seat places are bringing in enough from it to cover the initial tier nut, which is why you don't see all that many small places have it. And I think it would be the same for ESPN.
The place I'm at now has a total occupancy of about 140, so let's use that structure. We have 3 TVs, two in the bar, one in the dining room. I know for a fact my owner would never pay an additional $1,100 ($30 x 3rd tier x 12 months) for ESPN in addition to his cable bill (which is already inflated for businesses), just to have ESPN. And I can think of a lot of places that wouldn't do it either, both real life and hypothetical. I think in the end, they lose taking that route, which is to say nothing of how that would even work with the individual cable companies agreeing to it.