Dear Pro Sports Leagues: Can I Watch The Game Please?
from the and-make-it-easy dept
In Mike’s latest annual New Year’s message about innovation and opportunity, he mentioned how technology is allowing the masses to say “no” to impediments set down by those seeking to control:
“The key element this year: the power of large groups of people to make use of the technology to start to say, “No!” to those who have sought to hold back progress.”
A heady concept, but one which I think will only prevail as technology marches forward. That said, I had a slightly different take as a result of a personal story that happened on Christmas Day. Like many of you, I made the trek with my girlfriend to my parent’s house to exchange gifts, eat too much food, and sit around with my family and friends talking as the television sat in the background displaying football and basketball. As the night progressed, the food cooled, the board games became boring, and the way my family slings around red wine resulted in the urge to go home early in the evening. Since my girlfriend was kind enough to drive us home (sober, of course), I was free to do what I wanted in the passenger seat.
And what I wanted to do was watch sports. The tail end of the Bulls game was still on. The Bears game would shortly follow. Sports on radio never did much for me. I wanted to watch. So I yanked out my smart phone and checked out the NBA site, the NFL site, and the sites of our local television stations. What I found was what I expected: the local stations didn’t offer any streaming of the games, but the NBA and NFL have their versions of mobile streaming packages which generally start right around the $50/season mark. This gets you access to their respective broadcasts (not the local ones).
Here’s my question: why is any of this necessary? With that same smart phone, I could have gone to one of dozens of websites (evil, evil websites) that would simply stream the games I wanted directly to my device for free. More to the point, they’d stream the local broadcast that I wanted, complete with commercials. Why wouldn’t the major sports leagues do the same thing? If advertising is still the major money-maker for professional sports (and, along with merchandise, it is), why wouldn’t they want to increase their reach by offering their own free advertisement-laden stream? Coupled with location identifiers, I’d think the leagues could partner with local broadcasters to make sure that people were getting the same geographical broadcast they’d get watching at home. Again, the same commercials can be in place, so what’s lost? Why charge me $50 a season to watch the game on my phone or tablet, but not levy that same charge for watching on my television? It’s the ads that matter, isn’t it?
It seems I’m not the only one with this kind of experience, either. VC Fred Wilson relates a similar tale, touching on the additional idiocy of navigating local blackouts of games with many of these league packages, all in the name of protecting the same local broadcasters whose numbers could be boosted by offering free streams of the game:
“Last night we were turned into “pirates” as the entertainment industry likes to call us. As 2011 turned into 2012, the executives at Time Warner Cable and MSG Network were unable to make a deal to keep MSG on Time Warner Cable. My son was fuming and so was I.”
But he wasn’t fuming for long, as helpful Twitter followers showed him a plethora of sites where he could get the stream he wanted, for free, with none of that viewership resulting in revenue for the league or the broadcaster. Which is a shame, because if they wanted to, everyone could be making money off this stuff while enhancing the fan’s experience with a better quality stream.
And so we get back to the start of this piece, in contrast to Mike’s message of masses saying “no” to those who impede technological progress. Because in my case, driving home that blustery Christmas night, with only thoughts of Derrick Rose and Brian Urlacher in my head, I felt no urge to say “no”. I only recognized one sentiment as I glanced over the league’s packages for streaming and then turned to one of the evil, horrible, death-enducing sites that gave me the stream I wanted just in time to see Derrick Rose drive the lane and score the winning layup to beat the Lakers: I don’t need their packages.
Comments on “Dear Pro Sports Leagues: Can I Watch The Game Please?”
I'm cutting the cord next year.
The one thing I’ll miss is Nascar. With broadcast, antenna, and Tivo, adding Netflix, and Hulu+, I can get what I want cheaper than Cox or Direct or Dish – except for most of the Nascar races only on cable channels. I’d pony up $10 or $15 to nascar.com if they’d offer the service.
Piracy is a business decision
Piracy is a business desision by the major media companies, if it wasnt then they would have provided what the public want at the price the public would pay. They have had many people better qualified than me to suggest business models for them and have rejected every one. I think the media companies have made a concious decision not to complete with Piracy and blame them for their “problems” Why couldnt the AA’s provide a site with all the music, films and other media that people want and charge a small flat rate for people to download, they could then COLLECT that revinue and pass it on the owners of the copywrite themselves.
Re: Piracy is a business decision
stop trying to bring sense into the conversation, before you get censored!
Local sports blackouts have always irritated me because so often it was the local community that put up the money to build the stadium in the first place so it is really the leagues telling the community that supports them to screw you.
The leagues worry that showing a local game on TV will cause people to not buy tickets for the game which is total bunk. The two events are a completely different experience. It’s just like theaters who worry that releasing a movie on video at the same time as the theatrical release will cut into movie attendance which is also total bunk because they are two completely different experiences.
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I don’t understand local blackouts either. Many people just simply can’t or won’t afford to go to live sports (or concerts). So if you want them as a customer, you have to give it to them in their homes. The ones who do go to live games/shows actually seem to prefer it to sitting at home. Just look at all the fans packed into stadiums in freezing weather. They could be in a warm home, watching on an HDTV with surround sound, drinking $6 6-packs instead of $6 beers. But instead they are packing the stadiums. So what they need to realized is there are 2 types of customers and tailor an experience for both of them.
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Who is the most likely to watch a game on tv but the local market and in numbers usually far more than those that go to the game? The leagues are giving up their most important revenue stream on a false idea that running the games locally will effect ticket sales.
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“I don’t understand local blackouts either.”
That’s because they’re un-understandable. Case in point, see the Chicago Blackhawks in the Bill Wirtz vs. Rocky Wirtz eras. In the 90’s all home games were blacked out and attendance was roughly 30% capacity on average. Now every game is televised and the stadium is sold out every night, because more people can follow the team. Local blackouts are the dumbest theory in modern history….
But Tim, football wouldn’t exist if the NFL couldn’t extort large sums of cash from people like this!
Imagine how much money the NFL would lose if they couldn’t charge every cable subscriber a couple of dollars a month, even the ones with zero interest in watching football! Those mean cable companies tried to stand up for all the football haters who want cheaper cable bills, so the NFL had to say NO and stop their fans from watching the games! That way the cable companies will be forced to give in, and pay the NFL more, and raise everyone’s cable bill again!
And not charge people for watching football online! That’s crazy! The NFL can extort millions of dollars from TV channels like CBS/NBC/Fox/etc that show football games, so course it should be free for you on the TV! They already paid for it for you! But who’s there to extort millions of dollars from when you post the game on the Internet! That’s piracy! Until someone pays the ransom… err, ‘broadcasting fees’ of several million dollars to the NFL that is. Sure they could ‘extort’ those millions of dollars from the people who pay for their ads to run during the football games, but then the NFL would have to charge them double the price, and the ad people say no way to that!
And lastly the blackouts when not all the tickets are sold, that’s a vitally important thing for the NFL to make money! You see, despite what the NFL pretends, people don’t really enjoy watching football games from the stands that much, but the NFL NEEDS to sell those tickets at outrageous prices in order to feed their families! Most NFL people would only make a couple hundred thousand dollars a year without the ticket sale revenue, you try to feed a family of 2 (yourself and a spouse) on that kind of money! So in order to sell their tickets they have to blackmail football fans like you into buying the tickets!
Won’t the NFL lose even more money if they stop local fans like you from viewing the games online? Sure, short term, but next time you’ll know to listen to their blackmail and buy up tickets for the local game! That will more then make up for the lost revenue long term!
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“The NFL can extort millions of dollars from TV channels like CBS/NBC/Fox/etc that show football games, so course it should be free for you on the TV!”
I know you’re being sarcastic, but the whole point of the piece was that the NFL should be partnering with the broadcasters not only on OTA/Cable TV, but on the streams as well. Location identifiers will make sure the same ads from TV are shown in the stream. It’s a complete win/win.
“Sure, short term, but next time you’ll know to listen to their blackmail and buy up tickets for the local game!”
Considering most football stadiums are near-full capacity the past few seasons, that seems silly….
It's like the neighbor kid who owns the only basketball
You will play on his terms, the way he wants, when he wants or he will take his ball and go home. Some people are control freaks and lets be realistic, greed is at the heart of it. Because of this greed, you would think they would find ways to get it everywhere in order to make more money. But their control freak nature tells them that control is the only way to feed the greed.
Re: It's like the neighbor kid who owns the only basketball
Eventually all the neighborhood kids realize that they much prefer playing without the sulking bully. Everybody wins: kids play happily together, sulking bully stays home alone with his ball.
Opportunity for stings
If they went with free streams and used the Silverlight platform (like Netflix, NBC Sports – Olympic Games, etc) they could set up their player to receive a command to display a unique ID on top of the video in random places that can be referenced back to the viewer’s IP address.
When someone rebroadcasts a stream via a screencap program, all the network would have to do is send out the command during the game and see the IDs appear instantly on the unauthorized streams. A free stream is low hanging fruit so you can bet some people would easily be caught by this. They could kill the stream for that individual user and then hit them with a lawsuit or criminal charges. They could later prop up those cases in a PR campaign.
Re: Opportunity for stings
-1 for DRM silverlight/anti-opensource supporting
Re: Re: Opportunity for stings
Well it’s possible to add a unique frame in any video stream server-side with an ID on top but a client-based solution would be more cost effective. Another “problem” content industries would have with an open streaming format is that it would conflict with their ideas about charging for permanent copies. I’m not a supporter of DRM because there’s no value added to the consumer and on the business side of things it’s pretty stupid since the decryption keys are stored in memory it can always be cracked somehow. Or if a DRM system hasn’t been cracked yet, people can simply use screencap hardware or software to save the stream for personal use. I’m also not a supporter of Silverlight. I’m just hypothesizing that what they’d probably decide to use anyway can be adapted to catch some people who rebroadcast.
I’ve wondered the same thing about EPSN3. ESPN generally streams every game that they broadcast, which is nice. But they generally only have 2 or 3 commercials per game, so I end up seeing the same commercial 10 times. Plus, I get to look at the ESPN logo while in spot that I assume is reserved for a local commercial? I don’t understand why they don’t just stream the same commercials that are on TV.
Are they selling the ad time for streaming separately?
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“Are they selling the ad time for streaming separately?”
Yes, they do. I have a old high school friend who broadcasts some of the ESPN3 games as a color commentator for football. The reason it’s so dumb in the case of ESPN is that those broadcasts are ALL NATIONAL. There may be some local affiliate ads sold, but most are nat’l. Why wouldn’t the package online spots in with they’re tv spots? More importantly, why not just stream the nat’l broadcast with the commercials, just like the “pirate” sites do?
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Easy. Because they’re setting themselves up for additional stream-only revenue in the future.
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“…in the future”…..
Which is already in the past cause they have sat on their hands and not done squat to offer everything they can offer.
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> I’ve wondered the same thing about EPSN3
Does the Ocho stream dodgeball matches?
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> I’ve wondered the same thing about EPSN3
Does the Ocho stream dodgeball matches?
Not just sports
I had an experience with SYFY this past year over a very similar situation. My wife and I love Eureka and Warehouse 13 and although we don’t have cable, we watched all the previous seasons on Hulu and/or Syfy.com The first few seasons of the shows had episodes available for online viewing one week after the first airing. So it wasn’t too bad and we didn’t have a problem with that. This past year, all that changed.
The first two episodes of each shows as available 1 week after airing, but every other episode after that had a 2 month wait for online streaming. That was insane. So I wrote an article about it on my personal blog and it caught the SyFy twitter account’s attention:
http://ezknight.net/?p=123
Turns out that SyFy just couldn’t get it through their thick head that people don’t like artificial viewing windows, especially when such windows are as insane as a 2 month gap. People complained when Fox switched to a 8 day window. I am surprised that the 2 month window didn’t get SyFy more flack.
Re: Not just sports
SyFy is so clueless.
They should imagine Greater!
Re: Re: Not just sports
SyFy is owned by NBC/Universal and whatever conglomerate owns those companies. It makes about as much sense as “Professional Wrestling” being on there. I think the mistake you are making is thinking they care.
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Huh, I didn’t realize SyFy was owned by NBC. It all makes sense now…NBC is owned by Comcast…a cable company. The last thing a cable company wants to do is make it painless for freeloaders like Mr. Knight to cut the cord 😉
Re: Re: Re:2 Not just sports
> The last thing a cable company wants to do
> is make it painless for freeloaders like Mr.
> Knight to cut the cord
Not sure how watching on Hulu is freeloading. You have to sit through all the same crap advertising there that you do on broadcast TV (and you can’t even FF through it).
Re: Not just sports
That sort of thing is the reason I make an effort to remain SyFy-less.
Re: Re: Not just sports
Ghost hunters, Wrasslin, Destination Truth, all the paranormal crap-are why I remain…
No, I’m not even going to call it the same sound of something I enjoy.
Re: Not just sports
Wow. They went right past “oh crap, our decisions are causing us to lose paying customers!” to “you are a thief!”…a perfect example of content industry asshattery in less than 140 characters.
Wow.
Your point about recording is spot on, too.
Re: Not just sports
+1 Intarwebs for Eureka and Warehouse 13! They (along with BSG) almost make me want to forgive SyFy for destroying Andromeda and Sliders (amongst other).
Re: Not just sports
Quoting your blog post in order to make a broader point:
“These companies […] see their customers not as fans, but as an enemy who must be kept in check.”
I’ve given this a lot of thought, and I think you (and Tim, and the guy from VC) are proceeding from a false assumption.
We (consumers, movie goers, TV show/sports fans) are not the customers of the companies that produce these things. The advertisers are the true customers, we (or perhaps more specifically, our minds) are the product that is actually being sold.
Taken in that light, the behavior of the major sports leagues, networks, and movie companies is a bit more understandable (if not agreeable) — they are simply trying to improve the quality of the product they are selling, by _not_ showing ads to people who are smart enough to not actually be influenced by any of the the advertisements.
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“We (consumers, movie goers, TV show/sports fans) are not the customers of the companies that produce these things. The advertisers are the true customers, we (or perhaps more specifically, our minds) are the product that is actually being sold.”
That’s the point. Why are they limiting their audience? If advertisers are the customer, we’re the product. The more of us, the more they can sell the ads for….
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“That’s the point. Why are they limiting their audience? If advertisers are the customer, we’re the product. The more of us, the more they can sell the ads for….”
I said “quality” not “quantity.”
I’m willing to bet it’s been a long time since you bought a product based solely on an ad you saw on TV. I can’t remember the last time I did.
There are people out there who do still shop based on TV ads — at least the industries we are discussing seem to think so. These people are also _not_ the same people who will hop online to pirate something they are missing due to a black-out or ridiculous release window. They’ll simply watch something else – like “wrastling” or Paranormal Jersey Shores.
Targeted advertising pays a premium, and this is advertising targeted towards people who are likely to act based on that advertising.
I’m not saying that you’re wrong, or even that this logic makes sense. Just saying that it’s my hunch for the real reason behind the shenanigans we’re discussing, and that it comes rather naturally from the real customer-product-producer relationship that’s at work.
If advertising is still the major money-maker for professional sports (and, along with merchandise, it is), why wouldn’t they want to increase their reach by offering their own free advertisement-laden stream?
Online broadcasts and television broadcasts would be in competition for the same eyeballs as they are now in other sectors. Legacy players don’t want to change especially if online ads don’t pay them as much(they don’t… yet). The leagues, broadcast networks and probably the players unions will push back against the internet as long as they keep getting record profits. If television continues to decline they might be forced to stream someday or mess with the internet before that can happen by lobbying Congress to pass laws like PIPA or SOPA.
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“Online broadcasts and television broadcasts would be in competition for the same eyeballs as they are now in other sectors. Legacy players don’t want to change especially if online ads don’t pay them as much(they don’t… yet).”
But that’s my point. You don’t have to change over to anything. Instead, partner w/the local broadcasters to stream the local broadcast basded on location IDs and all you’re doing is upping your broadcast viewership. You might not be able to charge for much more than a small add-on ad charge for the stream at this point, but as of now you’re not getting ANYTHING from the “pirate” sites, so who cares? It’s essentially free money.
Streams with no commercials
The other funny thing not mentioned. There’s an app for the iPhone called WatchESPN. It does exactly what it sounds like, it streams the ESPN family of channels (the live broadcasts) if you have an account with a participating cable company.
The funny thing is it actually does not show commercials, it just streams a message saying “There’s a commercial in progress. We’ll be right back”
I find this odd since as the viewer, I’d be perfectly fine with having the TV commercials while I’m watching the ESPN stream.
Re: Streams with no commercials
The problem (and please correct me if I’m wrong) is that in order to get WatchESPN you have to currently subscribe to ESPN through a very specific cable provider. My ISP pays for ESPN3 and it is kinda nice to be able to watch some sports on the go (via my home server and VPN) but for the vast majority of us it isn’t an option. And I would give my eye-teeth for FiOS in my area.
Live sports is the holy grail of cable cutters. I will likely never have cable again, and until they get their act together and sell a package for streaming, the NFL and NBA won’t be getting a dime from me outside of whatever revenue they may get from my eyeballs watching an OTA broadcast.
MLB is one of the worst offenders. If Astros games are blacked out, they are done so even 170 miles WNW. But, if I purchase the $120 MLB package…..they are still blacked out.
How is that incentive to do anything but pirate, butt pirates?
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butt pirates? That channel is an extra fitty.
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*subject to local brownouts
I gladly pay 20 a month to watch my beloved Blackhawks in the middle of Georgia. I occasionally watch another team but mostly just the Hawks. I would love for the English Premier League to figure out how to get streaming going so I can watch my Tottenham Hotspur. I’ve given up on the NFL doing anything for fans and I am lucky that I live just far enough outside of Atlanta so I get to watch all the Falcon games.
Seems like the pro sports leagues could figure out a way to get all matches streamed. Couldn’t be that hard, heck to just broadcast the Fox or CBS telecast. The leagues supposedly owns all the broadcast rights to every game anyways, I don’t see why that wouldn’t work.
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Finding streams online is easy. When I want to watch the Seahawks play (and for the last few seasons there hasn’t been much reason to), it usually takes a few minutes to find a stream and hook my tablet to my TV via HDMI. The quality is crap, although being able to watch commercials from the UK or Australia is pretty cool. I would gladly pay $20 a month for streaming access. They’re basically burning money at this point.
What I hate most is the local blackout rules. I pay my cable provider extra for the premium sports package that includes tons of sports channels. Among those are west coast only channels (I live in Detroit)
Yet any time there’s a game on (Say, San Jose vs LA in hockey) it’s blacked out in my area – Detroit.
Why? It’s not like I was going to hop on a plane, travel 3,000 miles and buy a ticket. Why can’t I watch? I’m paying for the channel.
Your numbers are a bit off
Directtv pays a lot of money – over $700 million a year – to be the exclusive US provider of NFL sunday ticket (access to all games). Directtv charges $400/season to access the online/non-satellite version of the service. wikipedia
There is too much money locked up in this exclusive contract for the NFL to be giving away their streams for free. While media companies often act irrationally with their content, many times the content is locked up in high value exclusive contracts.
Cliche
How cliche of you – engaging in drunken piracy!
World Cup was the same way. The only way to watch it here in St. Louis (a pretty big soccer town) was to find a bar that had the right satellite package. You could stream it online, but our cable Provider Charter was not a member of the approved accounts to stream from.
The TBS app for the iPad has the same problem.
I can’t stand content protection.
I worked as a phone tech support for DirecTV for a while, and the rules surrounding sports games availability are just absurd. Apparently, the main reason you can’t just watch any game you want, ESPECIALLY from the leagues themselves, is that they give complete broadcast rights for a game in an area to local broadcasters. Thus, even if you have a massive (expensive) sports package deal from your cable provider, the games most likely interesting to you – such as games involving a local team – are blacked out, so you must watch it on a local channel, with local ads.
I suspect that the leagues get a ton of money giving out exclusive broadcasting rights certain games to local broadcasters, way more than any kick-back they get from ad revenue the stations get. They are then contractually obligated to make sure that every single person within the sports region can only watch the game on a local broadcast.
Oh, what’s that? DirecTV isn’t offering that local channel yet? Too bad, this 300+ NFL package still won’t let you see a local game. NFL rules.
easy answers
i’m always a little bit confused when i read articles asking why businesses don’t have better business models. as fan/consumer, our needs are vastly different from the owners of the content. we want better cheaper access, they want to erect barriers that require payment to bypass. if nobody ever paid for access they would move to a different model where they could still make money. so, the current model must work in some fashion, and your beef is with the people who pay for access, for they are the ones keeping this model alive. why do people pay for cable and still have to watch ads? because they will. the real power of consumer choice is choosing not to pay for something.
Re: easy answers
Good points.
On the other hand, emerging technologies are ignored surprisingly often by corporate decision-makers. Look at what’s been happening with music, cinema, publishing. Far from being the visionary titans of capitalism we imagine, corporate execs are frequently the panicky foot soldiers of prolonged rearguard efforts.
I’ve never had, and probably never will have, a “TV provider.” I’m not alone. And in my market, the cable company with the sports monopoly has been losing subscribers as their rates rise. That’s revenue they’ve lost, or have never had in the first place. Why not make a little of it back?
I go to home games as often as I can swing it –that won’t change– and our arena is always sold out. All I really want is to watch my NBA team at home for the games I can’t get to, and I would cheerfully pay to stream broadcasts, commercials and all.
I’m an opportunity no one’s taking advantage of.
There is a pretty awful case of industry BS for Phillies/Flyers fans living in certain areas of Pennsylvania. Comcast Sports Net is the local broadcaster of virtually all Phillies/Flyers games, but because of what they call the “terrestrial loophole” (something to do with how CSN broadcasts with a microwave as opposed to a satellite), they are allowed by the FCC to withhold their feed from other carriers such as DTV.
Now, for some people in certain areas of PA, they are considered to be within the local market (and subject to blackout restrictions) for these games BUT they are unable to be served by Comcast (who up until the recent introduction of FiOS, was the only carrier who could carry the channel). What this meant for these certain customers, was that there were literally NO legal avenues to watch the games. They could buy NHL center ice, or there computer streaming package but they were blacked out.
Talk about encouraging piracy
The author had the opportunity to pay and chose not to because he felt it was owed to him?
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This anontard had the opportunity to understand the point and chose not to because he felt it was owed to him?
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For those who find reading challenging, I did NOT have a choice to pay for what I wanted. What I wanted was my local TV broadcast on my phone, with my local commentators, for one game. The only people offering that, at ANY price, was the illegitimate site. Try again…
serious about making money
If you are serious about making money in the long run you must know how much money you can afford to bet on each game and how big your initial bank should be. Nice resource 🙂