I generally find broadcast sports to be incredibly boring, but saying 'good riddance to sports' is a great way to lose the political battle, which is what this really is.
It feels like the NFL is making every effort possible for me to be unable to watch games these days. They continue to do this, I might just give up on watching live games all together. The legal options are A) pay an expensive cable bill B) go to a bar C) have an antenna and live in a city.
Keep going NFL, eventually you'll piss off enough younger fans where you'll end up like the NHL.
Hopefully Aero will push them, through whatever means, to offer their content in a more direct manner (and by more direct, I don't mean the NFL Network). MLB.tv is a good example to go by. Let me pay $10/mo and stream the games anywhere. MLB.tv has limitations (blackouts make the service useless for home games), but it's a heck of a lot better than needing cable.
This year there was another legal option, not well publicized: $99 for NFL Sunday Ticket. That's every Sunday game live streamed over the internet.
The only problem with Sunday Ticket is the restrictions that are there to protect the broadcast industry: local game blackouts, no Monday Night Football, etc. I say, good riddance to the broadcasters! Go all in on internet broadcasts and get rid of the restrictions. It's not like the major networks are going to actually drop NFL games. Call their bluff.
It is, but DTV has an online streaming version of it. If you bought the anniversary edition of Madden 25 you got access to the streaming (and actual channel if you have DTV) for the season. It's pretty much the only reason I bought Madden -- it was ~$100 for the game + DTV combo.
There was a special deal where if you pre-ordered this year's Madden game for $99 you got NFL Sunday Ticket for "free". Of course, Sunday Ticket is worth more than the Madden game, so it was a ridiculous and silly deal, but no more ridiculous and silly than the rest of the contracts and regulations the NFL has for their game broadcasts.
I bought into that deal and have been hugely disappointed. Half the streams don't load and many other games are blacked out locally so I had to buy a TV antenna to watch them live. Despite my best efforts to follow the rules and watch legally, I still end up on sketchy free sites because they work more reliably.
The blackout restrictions are annoying, but I haven't had any problem with loading the streams that aren't blacked out. My major complaint is the poor quality of the streams; the bitrate is far too low. Hopefully the NFL comes to their senses and takes internet streaming in house soon.
eventually you'll piss off enough younger fans where you'll end up like the NHL.
What does this imply? Aside from the lockouts, the NHL has secured long-term broadcasting deals in Canada and the US to fulfill the growth that it sees in the North American market. Clearly the NHL isn't anything close to the NFL from a financial standpoint, but implying the NHL is some bottom-feeder, profitless sports league isn't right.
Anecdotes aren't data, but where I live in Minnesota, every hockey fan that up until 2 years ago always had season tickets, won't even contemplate buying them again.
These are people that have been buying NHL season tickets for their entire lives in what amounts to "hockey country".
We'll see how it affects certain teams but the NHL does have fallout from the lockout.
Even if folks don't end up pissed off, I think even just cutting down on exposure tends to have a similar effect. It's pretty easy to fill the gap left by one TV program with some other TV program. Or any number of non-TV activities, for that matter.
Torrents usually show up first thing Monday morning (US time), and are commercial free. So if you can stay off Facebook and refuse to answer your phone or check email (just in case) for long enough to download and watch the game, you don't need any of that hassle.
Or you could move to Europe and pay the NFL a hundred bucks a season for the same thing. (Probably not as good a dollar value as your other options, though, considering moving costs and all.)
"NFL Game Pass is not available in the United States and Mexico,* but you can still get unlimited access to NFL games:" Game Rewind and Audio Pass, they lock out their biggest fans in the US for live games online legally.
The AFL here in Australia does the same thing, you can watch the games for a decent fee but only if you're not in Australia. There is an iOS app but it has had mixed reviews, and not all games are available on Free to air each week, especially if your team is not the local one.
Suffice to say that these dodgy streaming sites are often the easiest and most convenient way of watching a game.
If you're already going to pirate the game (by torrenting it), there's plenty of free streams available online all over the place so that you can watch it live.
The subreddits at /r/nfl /r/cfb and /r/collegebasketball should all have links to streams if not on the sidebar then in the game threads. Other sports' subreddits probably do as well.
I'm curious what the optimal PPV price is for the NFL. I'd easily pay $10-15 PPV, any game. For now, they seem to actively make their product impossible to consume for fans of non-local teams.
Would you buy 20 out-of-market non-national games per season? That's about what they'd need to make up the revenue from the current Sunday Ticket package, if DirectTV's pricing (around $300/season) is any guide.
Maybe more consumers would buy access to games if they could buy them individually, so you'd end up with 4x the number of current Sunday Ticket subscribers buying at least 5 games a year. But that seems like a lot. Eventually you run out of sufficiently motivated out-of-market fans. Remember that the teams with big out-of-market fan bases are just the teams that get picked routinely for national coverage. I could easily see 6-8 Dallas Cowboys or Green Bay Packers games/year for free already.
It's a mistake to consider only the cost of the Sunday Ticket. If that were the only factor, the NFL could easily make up the difference. There's a ton of people who either don't or can't get DirecTV who would sign up to stream NFL games, so I'd be surprised if they didn't multiply Sunday Ticket subscriptions by a factor of at least 10.
But the reason why this isn't profitable for the NFL is the billion dollars per year that DirecTV pays them to be exclusive. There probably wouldn't be enough of an increase in viewership to cover that. The $300 DirecTV charges customers is actually selling it at a loss considering how much they pay the NFL. Their bet is that they can make up the difference in $60-$100 per month subscription fees.
Maybe not 20, but 10 -- definitely. Try being a fan of any other Eastern Time Zone team in DC (and presumably NY suffers from the same situation). Even if your team has a pretty national audience (i.e. Steelers, Eagles, Patriots, Giants, etc.), the Rs and Ravens block out two weekly TV slots. Anyway, you end up with perhaps two games where your team is playing the local team, another 2-3 games of national coverage, but I'd definitely be willing to PPV at least 10 games (and I'd definitely consider dropping cable and PPV-ing all 16).
In the early 1980s when NFL was enjoying it's first rise to dominance on the national airwaves, PPV was seriously considered and debated. The potential audience was one of the reasons Al Davis moved the Raiders from Oakland to Los Angeles.
However, market research demonstrated that there was strong consumer resistance for the concept of paying to watch one's "local" team, and the market for PPV out-of-market teams was not deemed large enough.
(to the cite-your-source pedants: there is a book that says these things, I read it once, but I do not guarantee that my recall is 100% accurate, nor do I remember title of said book.)
The NFL is as large as it is because of Free TV (Network) broadcasts. While cable tv is largely thought of as ubiquitous, it's still the ONLY sport where I can watch 80-90% of local team regular season games and all of the playoffs OTA.
I'm a Patriots fan and their game is on ESPN tonight - this is one of the 10%-20% weeks for me. :( The NFL network Thursday night game earlier this season against the Jets was another (fortunately I was in the actual stadium for that one). Red Sox games are only available on cable (NESN). Because I "cut the cord" this year I basically missed the Red Sox season (although, quite honestly, my interest in baseball has waned over the years anyway).
It's felt like the tide has been going against OTA broadcast of sports for a while now, and that 10%-20% is growing instead of shrinking, so this story is a bit disconcerting. :-/
And, like almost everyone else here, I'd be willing to fork over cash for NFL Sunday Ticket and/or MLB.tv if it weren't for the archaic blackout restrictions... grr...
If you're in a "Primary Market" for an NFL team the game should be on broadcast. I'm not sure if/how it works for NFLN games but ESPN usually simulcasts on ABC in primary markets.
The primary markets can get it OTA, but the secondary markets are out of luck, which makes zero sense since the games can be blacked out in secondary markets. Eg. Rochester and Syracuse are secondary markets of the Bills. If the Ralph doesn't sell out, Rochester and Syracuse get blacked out along with Buffalo, but only Buffalo can get NFLN/ESPN games OTA. Rochester and Syracuse fans without cable cannot see the game.
In the parent's case, if they lived in Providence or Worcester or Portland, which are definitely Patriots markets, it wouldn't be on OTA :s
>> Aereo, the startup that features unauthorized streams of local broadcast signals.
This is a pretty loaded statement. As every legal objection so far has been struck down, and the streams are authorized by the Aereo user, it seems like disingenuous reporting to call the streams 'unauthorized'.
Hah, I had the same exact thought when reading that. Though like I said in my comment, I think the statement goes well beyond "loaded". It's just false.
I meant loaded because it could technically be considered true (the broadcasters certainly haven't 'authorized' Aereo's behaviour), but the term is obviously chosen to sway public opinion before the legal battle.
They didn't authorize me to eat a ham sandwich today, but that doesn't make it unauthorized.
More to the point. If I recorded a game on my DVR, and the DVR streams it to another DVR in my house, that is not an unauthorized transmission, either.
I got Aereo purely to watch NFL games legally. If this goes away, I suppose I could go back to pirating streams.
To be fair, NFL Sunday Ticket is a really great subscription service if you want to follow out-of-market teams (I considered getting it this year to keep up with the Falcons now that I've moved to NYC, though in retrospect I'm glad I didn't). It's too bad that local games are subject to arcane blackout and broadcast restrictions.
"Aereo, the startup that features unauthorized streams of local broadcast signals."
That statement isn't even loaded, it's just wrong. What makes Aereo so interesting to me is that its premise is unbelievably simple. It's a regular old [ridiculously small] TV antenna, but instead of plugging it into your TV, it's plugged in a few dozen miles away and it connects to your computer over the internet.
When the leagues say that Aereo cuts into their retransmission fees from cable companies, what they're saying is "we want people to use cable tv, and making broadcast tv easier to use makes that less likely."
No actually they're being rather straight forward. They gave you the exact reason why they want Aereo to be shut down. They don't care at all if people use cable, they just want re-transmission fees.
I don't agree with their position at all, but there is absolutely no reason to change their words or act like they're being indirect.
Aereo is causing a stink from the cable companies.
Cable companies have very little public good will.
Cable companies realize they can threaten NFL and MLB.
Cable companies lobby NFL and MLB to make statement.
NFL and MLB have enormous public good will.
NFL and MLB make statement.
"NFL and MLB have enormous public good will" is drastically overstating the case. Americans love professional football and baseball but the NFL and MLB are far from beloved institutions. I think the average fan is more likely to see this as another instance where the team owners are trying to screw over the little guy who just wants to watch the game.
What the broadcasters are saying is "we don't like this precedent of Aereo doing it for free, because then that means Comcast/AT&T/Verizon/etc are going to quit paying us retransmission fees as well"
The NFL and MLB are just being used as a pawn by the networks to crank up the pressure.
Well, no, when they say that Aereo cuts into their retransmission fees they mean that Aereo is retransmitting their signal without paying fees.
I don't support their fight against Aereo but I do get where they're coming from. If Aereo do it for free, why can't the cable networks turn around and say "we're not paying you retransmission fees any more, we're just going to do what Aereo does"? That would mean the networks lose a lot of money, and they're not exactly profit machines as it is. Get ready for a lot more ads.
To be fair, the cable company transmits 1 signal to everyone, with Aereo each person has their own attenna. It's not much different from a service like slingbox except that slingbox uses your actual home signal whereas w/ Aereo you are effectively renting an antenna.
Right, but that's just technical semantics, really. Aereo installs an individual antenna for every person to skirt around existing rules. By any objective analysis it's a total waste of time and money.
But that was the only technical method that was available to comply with the law. The supreme court practically laid out that business model for them in a prior decision.
It's a total waste of time and money, but it's also legal.
Pedantic but Aereo doesn't cut into retranmission fees, antenna viewing cuts into their retransmission fees. They are saying they don't want more people using antenna instead of cable. We can speculate why that is, probably antenna customers are less profitable or perhaps retransmission fees are a more stable income.
Yes- and that's why I don't support what they're doing. They're directing their legal wrath against Aereo (and so, Aereo's users) rather than attempting to solve what is actually a problem between the broadcast networks and cable companies.
But I do still get the root cause of what they're doing. And I don't particularly want my cable company to make even more money than they do already.
That would mean the networks lose a lot of money, and they're not exactly profit machines as it is
You're looking at this precisely how the NFL and MLB want you to look at it. The reality is that MLB and the NFL are congressionally-sanctioned monopolies that make a ton of money for the owners and players. Ever see an episode of MTV's Cribs?
The networks are "not exactly profit machines" as you say because the leagues are charging them so much. The networks in turn have to charge an arm and a leg to sports fans to make up for it. Sports fans are rebelling with both illegal and legal options like Aereo.
I don't know how things will play out but when you have a situation where a single person is making over $150,000 to play a single game of baseball, that's probably not a sustainable business model (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_sports_contract...).
What's funny, is Aereo has almost exactly the same business model as the first cable companies: in order to service valley communities that did not have line-of-sight with broadcasting towers, they would set up a large antenna on a mountain and pipe the signal to homes.
The main difference with Aereo seems to be that every subscriber has their own antenna.
And enter your local station callsign, it seems my local NBC affiliate in a top 30 market paid $23550 last year to the FCC. This is actually pretty extortionate for the FCC compared to my ham radio license which ends up being less than a buck a year. From memory marine radio licenses were like $5/yr?
Note that you need more than a broadcast license, many stations have microwave studio-xmtr links and maybe a mobile van or two it can all get complicated. Maybe its $16K for the big xmtr and everything else boosted it up to $23K.
So license fees are not being used as a centrally controlled market or whatever, it really pretty much only accounts for the costs of paper filing and professional evaluation of facilities WRT safety etc.
Auctioned off licenses for new stations can be quite expensive and that's a different problem.
An excellent way to make a small fortune is to start with a big fortune and then go into the broadcast industry. There's not much room for innovation or leadership, its pretty much all about financing. He who raises the cash the cheapest, wins.
This is a fed issue, as for municipals, the feds let them charge up to 5% of gross cable co revenue as a franchise fee, which is a separate issue.
As far as I know the state level usually doesn't get involved beyond tangential DNR wetlands protection type issues.
I think it inevitable that OTA broadcasting will end soon enough, except perhaps for PBS stations and religious broadcasters. The future of the TV bands looks a lot like the shortwave broadcaster bands today.
Exactly my point, and that kind indicates the endgame here.
As people cut the cord and try to get back to watching television OTA, the broadcasters could just vacate their licenses and auction the spectrum off to mobile carriers. They win both ways: the windfall from the spectrum auction and the move of OTA viewers back to paid-retransmission carriers.
I am an Aereo subscriber and they go through great pains to ensure I live in the market I say I do. So I don't understand how the networks view this as anything different than me putting up an antenna on my roof and watching their sports ball that way.
How does this impact them at all? If anything technology like this could tell them more about their audience then they could ever hope to know via traditional OTA broadcasts. But maybe that's the rub? They're scared that people will finally realize that not as many people are watching as they think?
Call me obtuse, but I still don't get it. Specifically, how is it any different than me using my own antenna? Does it just boil down to an OTA vs Cable war, and the networks/NFL/etc would rather everyone pay for cable instead of installing their own antenna?
The NFL doesn't really matter here. They are getting their rebroadcast fees from the networks no matter who is watching.
The networks are the ones making extra revenue by forcing the cable companies to pay them to carry shows on their systems. The historical reasons for this are complex but I would refer you to a nice NPR podcast that explains it better:
So back to the problem at hand: Aereo has found a way to skip around those carriage fees that the networks demand. The courts have backed them up. So the real problem is that the cable companies are now asking "why should we pay if Aereo is not?"
It's not a cable-vs-OTA war, it's the networks-vs-everyone-else.
That's even stranger - apparently Aereo only allows you to use an antenna where you have your CC billing ZIP code. Which means I can't just sign up for any programming I want. How is Aereo any different than me installing an antenna and Slingbox? Sure, it's more streamlined and the user doesn't have to screw around with hardware, but conceptually, Aereo could even mount the antenna where the user is and stream from their home Internet connection.
I was under the impression Aereo would rent you an antenna+DVR in any place, so you could watch programming from another state/country. As-is, I can't see what the fuss is about...
Plenty of spaces like restaurants or airports leave sports on TV. If it cost them more money to show sports, they might not play the games at restaurants, and perhaps might even turn the TV off. That's a win for folks like me that dislike background screens displaying anything[1], and particularly dislike sports playing. Now if only CNN, Fox, and other "news" stations would do the same...
1: After not having TV for years, I'm drawn to any screen like a bug to light. I find it extremely difficult to focus on things if there's a screen in the background showing any sort of moving image. I notice people that do have TVs seem to be able to just leave them on as ambient audio/video.
The frustrating thing is that more people would pay up for MLB.tv if they didn't have these stupid blackout rules in place. It's the way business is done in the industry, but I can't stand it. Let me throw my money at you, MLB.
Right now I have to hit Aereo for a good chunk of my team's blacked out games since I'm in a terrible spot for reception, thus I can't get it on my TV. They can still see me in their viewer metrics, and I am still adding value for their advertisers with Aereo. For the stuff I can't get on Aereo, I can sometimes find it on MLB.tv, but not always (depends on which network is the primary on the game and whether there are blackouts).
Sports broadcasting rights are a mess, and they're missing out on a lot of money by not doing something less stupid.
Also, college football is even worse about this. Cable-cutters would gladly pay up to be able to watch their team all season. You can get the low profile games/teams on WatchESPN (ESPN3) (if your ISP pays a toll), but if the game is on ESPN or ESPN2, you're probably out of luck unless you've got a TV subscription with your ISP.
As a non-american MLB.tv was great this season! No blackouts, every game, hi-def, choice of home or away commentary. I would gladly pay for that every season, and for the NFL. I would even rather they show commercials instead of a blank screen.
That's somehow ironically funny. Someone outside of the US gets a better selection than someone inside the US, where the actual product "lives". Blackouts are messed up. And pretty easy to circumvent for online stuff like MLB.tv (if you have the knowledge and want to hassle with it).
The blackout rules aren't stupid. They're in place because the numbers support it. The teams make more money with the blackout in place than without it.
It's so surprising that people can't understand that the sports league aren't filled with idiots.
What's funny to me is… isn't this exactly how cable TV came about in the first place? Putting a broadcast-TV receiver on a hilltop with good reception, then piping the signal to homes without good reception? Cable's business model has changed over the years, but I wonder if most of the case law supporting Aereo's use would be cases originally fought by the cable companies themselves.
I would pay to watch NFL and NBA games in HD in a format that doesn't require me to download additional plugins besides Flash.
The NFL won't even show you live games in the US. You can watch them only after the broadcast. Also it took them forever to provide te All-22 stream where their only excuse was "we don't think fans should have this footage because they might criticize the coach"
The NBA website is just a mess to use and if im paying something like $250 a season for it I expect it to at least function properly.
And don't even get me started on stupid blackout rules. Ugh.
I keep forgetting why extending the reach of a free broadcast is such a problem. More viewers==more ad revenue, right?
Oh, right, it's because the major broadcast stations don't actually want people to watch their broadcast; they'd rather people buy cable, watch their programming there, and be paid by cable for the privilege. Plus the ad revenue.
And why do the sports leagues care? Kickbacks out of the same system. The article even says so: "The leagues collect about $100 million of the $300 million broadcasters receive from “compulsory” license fees paid by cable and satellite outlets, the brief stated". Plus the money the broadcasters keep is used to buy the sports content.
So: this is just another attempt to discourage cord-cutting and preserve the (huge) cable money stream. If people can actually watch the broadcasts (which, I'm convinced, only exist due to historical and political inertia), it's one less reason to have cable.
But why do we need trickery like Aereo to watch OTA programming? Some of it is convenience, but a large part is because the "digital TV" transition seems to have removed reliable reception for lots and lots of people. I'm 13 miles from a whole host of 1000MW towers, and can barely get a decent signal. That's just terrible. It ought to work fine 50 miles away. I'm not big on conspiracy theories, and it's probably just poor execution, but it sure is tempting to think that the digital broadcast transition was subtly sabotaged to push people to cable.
So good luck to Aereo. I don't think they're breaking any laws, just threatening an old business model. And that shouldn't be illegal. Sorry, entertainment industry (including the leagues): cable is gonna fade, whether you like it or not, so you better learn to deal with it. Deal with less money, lean more heavily on ads, or, even better: use the Internet! I'd pay the NFL directly for a decent streaming solution, but that'll never happen because it would tread on the toes of the networks. Maybe let the networks sell streaming directly? That would tread on the toes of the affiliates! Oh well. Figure something out.
The other day I was talking to someone that had a source at one of the satellite companies (I can't remember if it was dish or directTV) that said they were working on putting a digital antenna in their box. Basically, the idea was that the vast majority of customers could just use the digital antenna to get the local channels and since it was built into their box it would be 100% seamless to the user. And then they would only have to pay the retransmission fees for those that couldn't get good enough signal.
Even if they didn't turn them on, they would have some leverage as the networks tried to rake them over the coals for retransmission fees
This is nothing more than a huge bluff from the NFL/MLB on behalf of the major networks.
The networks have seen the lower courts mostly rule in favor of Aereo, and are now pulling out all the stops to play the scare card by floating the possibility to the public of losing NFL games on Sundays.
I'm not sure what the exact legal details of the NFL's current broadcast agreement with CBS/FOX are, but I believe they currently receive upwards of $1bn a season from each network, extending out to 2021. Are they seriously just going to leave all of that on the table and take their chances with plummeting viewership and/or bank on the majority of fans purchasing some sort of season package?
In Boston, the RedSox are only available on NESN, which required a $50-$60 cable package to get last time I checked. So from my view, the end of Free TV broadcasts is already here. Because cable tv isn't free.
Meanwhile the NBA gets which way the wind is blowing in, and I CAN watch nearly every game without having to have cable through a Game Time subscription.
Wow, could this mean the end of overpaid, media-hyped sportspersons being on American TV all the time, and American people actually getting off their asses and going out and reducing the obesity rate? Yay! I hope they cut "free" game broadcasts and force people to pay $1000/month to watch them.
Also, The NFL and the NHL are registered as "tax free organizations", which means that those of us paying taxes have to pay more because these corporations are too greedy to give up a fair share of their (enormous) profits. This makes the hypocrisy of them crying about "free" broadcasts extremely irritating.
A comment like this reeks of ignorance and adds nothing to the dialogue.
If you wanted to vouch for the reduction of sports on broadcast television with reasons related to health that are backed up with facts or citations, rather than speculative opining, you could have, and should have, done so.
The "sports" word was mentioned, so yes, we can expect a deluge of holier than thou prejudiced nerds explaining in very ethnocentric terms why sports is bad.
I had to look up what "ethnocentric" meant, but I don't think I am "evaluating other peoples and cultures according to the standards of my own culture" here. Perhaps you could elaborate?
(Also, even if I was, don't we all unconsciously view things through the lens of our cultural upbringing? Fail to see how this could be either comical or depressing. Or perhaps you want opinions to be restricted to only people from your own culture?)
Yes, it means exactly that. As in, nerds who have lived in their own geek culture bubble all of their lives, aggressively and prejudicedly judging sports culture from the perspective of their own comfort bubble, without ever truly experiencing it with an open mind or truly trying to understand why people enjoy those things and behave that way. Jock-bullying. It's very common in nerd circles, if only as a reflexive against the injustices against nerds, both real and imagined.
It's comical/depressing because nerd crowds are generally very self-congratulatory on how open-minded, liberal and intelligent they are.
And then this kind of reflexive antagonist behavior against jocks bubbles up, and we're forced to realize that no, just because geeks paint themselves as these smart and open-minded people does not mean it is true.
Sometimes, they're no better than bullies, insulting ways of life that they've never tried, simply because it is different or because they are expected by their group to dislike those things.
This has nothing to do with jocks. If anything, it might be considered bullying people-who-watch-sports-yet-are-in-no-condition-to-play-sports-themselves. You'd think nerds constitute a greater proportion of that than jocks. I don't know much about jock culture, but I'm assuming (perhaps wrongly) that physical fitness plays a part?
Why stop at sports? Let's start bullying people-who-love-music-but-can't-play-an-instrument-themselves! Or how about people-who-watch-movies-yet-can't-act-their-way-out-of-a-bucket? Those people definitely deserve our scorn...
I'm not entirely sure which side is 'reeking of ignorance' here.
Go to any so-called sports bar. The majority of people are obese or overweight and look as if they'd be hard-pressed to run a hundred yards. Look at the majority of commercials during sports games broadcasts. They are typically Doritos, McDonalds, or something else related to fatty, unhealthy food. To go shopping in most places, you have to get your ass in a car since the bloody mall is like 20 miles away, and when you get there, the aisles are full of frozen pizza and cookies instead of fresh produce and meat.
Don't bother nitpicking my statement (it is obviously an exaggeration) -- just notice all these things about your "game Sunday" next time. But since you seem almost slavishly devoted to "omgsomeoneinanewspaperorscientificjournalsaiditsoitmustbetrue" sources, here are some.
As I said in the parent, don't bother nitpicking. To appease you, substitute the typical American living room on "game day" for the sports bar. I guarantee you the obesity rate is not lower.
I have a hard time believing that obesity is causally related to "college football" or televised sports in general. Except perhaps the fact that it's a sedentary activity, but a sizable chunk of HN probably spends far more time working in front of a computer.
> I have a hard time believing that obesity is causally related to "college football" or televised sports in general.
Correlation is not causation, but it is correlation...i.e. things which will affect college football viewing might affect obesity as well. Ergo, if college football becomes too expensive to watch, maybe obesity rates will reduce. This is my hypothesis; only an actual experiment can show if this is true or not.
From your second paragraph I can see that you have no idea how the NFL and NHL are structured or operate. Of course, you're too pretentious to even try to understand the business because they're just "media hyped sportspersons."
If "how they are structured" is going to be an argument for calling a 9 billion dollar franchise a non-profit organization, yeah, I'm not sure I want to hear that argument.
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[ 2.4 ms ] story [ 196 ms ] threadKeep going NFL, eventually you'll piss off enough younger fans where you'll end up like the NHL.
I say this as a diehard football fan.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-04-08/news-corp-says-it-w...
A lot of broadcast TV business models are about to get (ugh, I'm so sorry; I hate to say this) disrupted.
EDIT: Edited to correct "Fox News" to "Fox" in general.
The only problem with Sunday Ticket is the restrictions that are there to protect the broadcast industry: local game blackouts, no Monday Night Football, etc. I say, good riddance to the broadcasters! Go all in on internet broadcasts and get rid of the restrictions. It's not like the major networks are going to actually drop NFL games. Call their bluff.
What does this imply? Aside from the lockouts, the NHL has secured long-term broadcasting deals in Canada and the US to fulfill the growth that it sees in the North American market. Clearly the NHL isn't anything close to the NFL from a financial standpoint, but implying the NHL is some bottom-feeder, profitless sports league isn't right.
These are people that have been buying NHL season tickets for their entire lives in what amounts to "hockey country".
We'll see how it affects certain teams but the NHL does have fallout from the lockout.
Torrents usually show up first thing Monday morning (US time), and are commercial free. So if you can stay off Facebook and refuse to answer your phone or check email (just in case) for long enough to download and watch the game, you don't need any of that hassle.
Or you could move to Europe and pay the NFL a hundred bucks a season for the same thing. (Probably not as good a dollar value as your other options, though, considering moving costs and all.)
ps. Don't tell me who won the Seahawks game!
Go Hawks.
This is my second year using NFL Game Pass. It’s excellent. And the cost of VPN + Game Pass subscription is less than cable.
Suffice to say that these dodgy streaming sites are often the easiest and most convenient way of watching a game.
The subreddits at /r/nfl /r/cfb and /r/collegebasketball should all have links to streams if not on the sidebar then in the game threads. Other sports' subreddits probably do as well.
Good
Maybe it'll put an end to head-injury peddling, rape-festooned garbage pit that is American Football.
http://thinkprogress.org/health/2013/10/14/2777431/maryville...
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-11-13/head-injuries-make-...
What about NFL Sunday Ticket?
Maybe more consumers would buy access to games if they could buy them individually, so you'd end up with 4x the number of current Sunday Ticket subscribers buying at least 5 games a year. But that seems like a lot. Eventually you run out of sufficiently motivated out-of-market fans. Remember that the teams with big out-of-market fan bases are just the teams that get picked routinely for national coverage. I could easily see 6-8 Dallas Cowboys or Green Bay Packers games/year for free already.
But the reason why this isn't profitable for the NFL is the billion dollars per year that DirecTV pays them to be exclusive. There probably wouldn't be enough of an increase in viewership to cover that. The $300 DirecTV charges customers is actually selling it at a loss considering how much they pay the NFL. Their bet is that they can make up the difference in $60-$100 per month subscription fees.
However, market research demonstrated that there was strong consumer resistance for the concept of paying to watch one's "local" team, and the market for PPV out-of-market teams was not deemed large enough.
(to the cite-your-source pedants: there is a book that says these things, I read it once, but I do not guarantee that my recall is 100% accurate, nor do I remember title of said book.)
It's a TV sport.
EDIT: local team
It's felt like the tide has been going against OTA broadcast of sports for a while now, and that 10%-20% is growing instead of shrinking, so this story is a bit disconcerting. :-/
And, like almost everyone else here, I'd be willing to fork over cash for NFL Sunday Ticket and/or MLB.tv if it weren't for the archaic blackout restrictions... grr...
If you're in a "Primary Market" for an NFL team the game should be on broadcast. I'm not sure if/how it works for NFLN games but ESPN usually simulcasts on ABC in primary markets.
In the parent's case, if they lived in Providence or Worcester or Portland, which are definitely Patriots markets, it wouldn't be on OTA :s
This is a pretty loaded statement. As every legal objection so far has been struck down, and the streams are authorized by the Aereo user, it seems like disingenuous reporting to call the streams 'unauthorized'.
More to the point. If I recorded a game on my DVR, and the DVR streams it to another DVR in my house, that is not an unauthorized transmission, either.
To be fair, NFL Sunday Ticket is a really great subscription service if you want to follow out-of-market teams (I considered getting it this year to keep up with the Falcons now that I've moved to NYC, though in retrospect I'm glad I didn't). It's too bad that local games are subject to arcane blackout and broadcast restrictions.
That statement isn't even loaded, it's just wrong. What makes Aereo so interesting to me is that its premise is unbelievably simple. It's a regular old [ridiculously small] TV antenna, but instead of plugging it into your TV, it's plugged in a few dozen miles away and it connects to your computer over the internet.
When the leagues say that Aereo cuts into their retransmission fees from cable companies, what they're saying is "we want people to use cable tv, and making broadcast tv easier to use makes that less likely."
I don't agree with their position at all, but there is absolutely no reason to change their words or act like they're being indirect.
The NFL and MLB are just being used as a pawn by the networks to crank up the pressure.
I don't support their fight against Aereo but I do get where they're coming from. If Aereo do it for free, why can't the cable networks turn around and say "we're not paying you retransmission fees any more, we're just going to do what Aereo does"? That would mean the networks lose a lot of money, and they're not exactly profit machines as it is. Get ready for a lot more ads.
It's a total waste of time and money, but it's also legal.
But I do still get the root cause of what they're doing. And I don't particularly want my cable company to make even more money than they do already.
You're looking at this precisely how the NFL and MLB want you to look at it. The reality is that MLB and the NFL are congressionally-sanctioned monopolies that make a ton of money for the owners and players. Ever see an episode of MTV's Cribs?
The networks are "not exactly profit machines" as you say because the leagues are charging them so much. The networks in turn have to charge an arm and a leg to sports fans to make up for it. Sports fans are rebelling with both illegal and legal options like Aereo.
I don't know how things will play out but when you have a situation where a single person is making over $150,000 to play a single game of baseball, that's probably not a sustainable business model (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_sports_contract...).
The main difference with Aereo seems to be that every subscriber has their own antenna.
They don't want it to happen, that doesn't mean it can't be done.
Maybe the broadcast networks need to implode sooner than later.
Visit
http://www.fccfees.com/query_all_2008.asp
And enter your local station callsign, it seems my local NBC affiliate in a top 30 market paid $23550 last year to the FCC. This is actually pretty extortionate for the FCC compared to my ham radio license which ends up being less than a buck a year. From memory marine radio licenses were like $5/yr?
Note that you need more than a broadcast license, many stations have microwave studio-xmtr links and maybe a mobile van or two it can all get complicated. Maybe its $16K for the big xmtr and everything else boosted it up to $23K.
So license fees are not being used as a centrally controlled market or whatever, it really pretty much only accounts for the costs of paper filing and professional evaluation of facilities WRT safety etc.
Auctioned off licenses for new stations can be quite expensive and that's a different problem.
An excellent way to make a small fortune is to start with a big fortune and then go into the broadcast industry. There's not much room for innovation or leadership, its pretty much all about financing. He who raises the cash the cheapest, wins.
This is a fed issue, as for municipals, the feds let them charge up to 5% of gross cable co revenue as a franchise fee, which is a separate issue.
As far as I know the state level usually doesn't get involved beyond tangential DNR wetlands protection type issues.
I think it inevitable that OTA broadcasting will end soon enough, except perhaps for PBS stations and religious broadcasters. The future of the TV bands looks a lot like the shortwave broadcaster bands today.
As people cut the cord and try to get back to watching television OTA, the broadcasters could just vacate their licenses and auction the spectrum off to mobile carriers. They win both ways: the windfall from the spectrum auction and the move of OTA viewers back to paid-retransmission carriers.
How does this impact them at all? If anything technology like this could tell them more about their audience then they could ever hope to know via traditional OTA broadcasts. But maybe that's the rub? They're scared that people will finally realize that not as many people are watching as they think?
The networks are the ones making extra revenue by forcing the cable companies to pay them to carry shows on their systems. The historical reasons for this are complex but I would refer you to a nice NPR podcast that explains it better:
http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2013/09/27/226891181/episode-...
So back to the problem at hand: Aereo has found a way to skip around those carriage fees that the networks demand. The courts have backed them up. So the real problem is that the cable companies are now asking "why should we pay if Aereo is not?"
It's not a cable-vs-OTA war, it's the networks-vs-everyone-else.
I was under the impression Aereo would rent you an antenna+DVR in any place, so you could watch programming from another state/country. As-is, I can't see what the fuss is about...
1: After not having TV for years, I'm drawn to any screen like a bug to light. I find it extremely difficult to focus on things if there's a screen in the background showing any sort of moving image. I notice people that do have TVs seem to be able to just leave them on as ambient audio/video.
Also, I'm not sure I've ever been to a bar or restaurant with a TV that was OTA only (without a cable or satellite hookup).
Right now I have to hit Aereo for a good chunk of my team's blacked out games since I'm in a terrible spot for reception, thus I can't get it on my TV. They can still see me in their viewer metrics, and I am still adding value for their advertisers with Aereo. For the stuff I can't get on Aereo, I can sometimes find it on MLB.tv, but not always (depends on which network is the primary on the game and whether there are blackouts).
Sports broadcasting rights are a mess, and they're missing out on a lot of money by not doing something less stupid.
It's so surprising that people can't understand that the sports league aren't filled with idiots.
The NFL won't even show you live games in the US. You can watch them only after the broadcast. Also it took them forever to provide te All-22 stream where their only excuse was "we don't think fans should have this footage because they might criticize the coach"
The NBA website is just a mess to use and if im paying something like $250 a season for it I expect it to at least function properly.
And don't even get me started on stupid blackout rules. Ugh.
Oh, right, it's because the major broadcast stations don't actually want people to watch their broadcast; they'd rather people buy cable, watch their programming there, and be paid by cable for the privilege. Plus the ad revenue.
A guide to laws surrounding cable retransmission: http://www.fcc.gov/guides/cable-carriage-broadcast-stations
And why do the sports leagues care? Kickbacks out of the same system. The article even says so: "The leagues collect about $100 million of the $300 million broadcasters receive from “compulsory” license fees paid by cable and satellite outlets, the brief stated". Plus the money the broadcasters keep is used to buy the sports content.
So: this is just another attempt to discourage cord-cutting and preserve the (huge) cable money stream. If people can actually watch the broadcasts (which, I'm convinced, only exist due to historical and political inertia), it's one less reason to have cable.
But why do we need trickery like Aereo to watch OTA programming? Some of it is convenience, but a large part is because the "digital TV" transition seems to have removed reliable reception for lots and lots of people. I'm 13 miles from a whole host of 1000MW towers, and can barely get a decent signal. That's just terrible. It ought to work fine 50 miles away. I'm not big on conspiracy theories, and it's probably just poor execution, but it sure is tempting to think that the digital broadcast transition was subtly sabotaged to push people to cable.
So good luck to Aereo. I don't think they're breaking any laws, just threatening an old business model. And that shouldn't be illegal. Sorry, entertainment industry (including the leagues): cable is gonna fade, whether you like it or not, so you better learn to deal with it. Deal with less money, lean more heavily on ads, or, even better: use the Internet! I'd pay the NFL directly for a decent streaming solution, but that'll never happen because it would tread on the toes of the networks. Maybe let the networks sell streaming directly? That would tread on the toes of the affiliates! Oh well. Figure something out.
The networks have seen the lower courts mostly rule in favor of Aereo, and are now pulling out all the stops to play the scare card by floating the possibility to the public of losing NFL games on Sundays.
I'm not sure what the exact legal details of the NFL's current broadcast agreement with CBS/FOX are, but I believe they currently receive upwards of $1bn a season from each network, extending out to 2021. Are they seriously just going to leave all of that on the table and take their chances with plummeting viewership and/or bank on the majority of fans purchasing some sort of season package?
Which makes my ex employers kick in the balls to the sky monopoly even more sweeter
Also, The NFL and the NHL are registered as "tax free organizations", which means that those of us paying taxes have to pay more because these corporations are too greedy to give up a fair share of their (enormous) profits. This makes the hypocrisy of them crying about "free" broadcasts extremely irritating.
If you wanted to vouch for the reduction of sports on broadcast television with reasons related to health that are backed up with facts or citations, rather than speculative opining, you could have, and should have, done so.
It'd be comical if it wasn't depressing.
(Also, even if I was, don't we all unconsciously view things through the lens of our cultural upbringing? Fail to see how this could be either comical or depressing. Or perhaps you want opinions to be restricted to only people from your own culture?)
It's comical/depressing because nerd crowds are generally very self-congratulatory on how open-minded, liberal and intelligent they are.
And then this kind of reflexive antagonist behavior against jocks bubbles up, and we're forced to realize that no, just because geeks paint themselves as these smart and open-minded people does not mean it is true.
Sometimes, they're no better than bullies, insulting ways of life that they've never tried, simply because it is different or because they are expected by their group to dislike those things.
Go to any so-called sports bar. The majority of people are obese or overweight and look as if they'd be hard-pressed to run a hundred yards. Look at the majority of commercials during sports games broadcasts. They are typically Doritos, McDonalds, or something else related to fatty, unhealthy food. To go shopping in most places, you have to get your ass in a car since the bloody mall is like 20 miles away, and when you get there, the aisles are full of frozen pizza and cookies instead of fresh produce and meat.
Don't bother nitpicking my statement (it is obviously an exaggeration) -- just notice all these things about your "game Sunday" next time. But since you seem almost slavishly devoted to "omgsomeoneinanewspaperorscientificjournalsaiditsoitmustbetrue" sources, here are some.
1) Map of obesity rate in the US for all states from 1985-2010. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Obesity_state_level_estima...
2) In 2012, the NFL generated $9.5 billion in revenue http://www.businessinsider.com/sports-chart-of-the-day-nfl-r.... Yet, it is registered as a non-profit organisation, which essentially means that all of us are indirectly subsidizing it as taxpayers. http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/09/25/1241265/-Wait-the-N...
http://filipspagnoli.files.wordpress.com/2009/12/percent-of-...
I have a hard time believing that obesity is causally related to "college football" or televised sports in general. Except perhaps the fact that it's a sedentary activity, but a sizable chunk of HN probably spends far more time working in front of a computer.
Correlation is not causation, but it is correlation...i.e. things which will affect college football viewing might affect obesity as well. Ergo, if college football becomes too expensive to watch, maybe obesity rates will reduce. This is my hypothesis; only an actual experiment can show if this is true or not.
Go to any so-called tech conference. The majority of people are obese or overweight and look as if they'd be hard-pressed to run a hundred yards.
Stop being a douche.