Unfortunately, it doesn't look like you can watch replays on ESPN+ through either Roku or a SmartTV menu without a risk of being spoiled. Watched a replay of a Euro 2020 qualifier last night and the icon you need to click on to start the replay has a picture of one of the teams involved celebrating a goal! At first I thought, surely they're just showing a well-known player celebrating a goal from some random previous match. But, no, it was from this particular match! Then one wonders how big is the spoiler? Are they just showing a picture of a random goal celebration from that match (already a big spoiler in a sport that average under 3 goals per match, mind you), or are they showing a picture of what essentially sums-up the entire match - one of the winning team celebrating?
English and Portuguese language rights for the Copa America have gone to ESPN+, they plan on airing all the games live.
Hopefully, with time, the providers will come to realize that a sizable portion of their customers cares about spoilers. (Contrary to what some people on this board might have you believe) And that they'll redesign their UI to eliminate or hide spoilers.
Yeah, I mean I have no idea what proportion of the general population care about spoilers, but among the sub-group of individuals who are searching for a specific replay its pretty damn high!
By sharing this observation with us, you've now made it worse. For example, I was blissfully ignorant of this, assuming as you did initially that it was a generic thumbnail photo they used. Now thanks to this post I'm going to be spoiled when I wouldn't have been before.
MLB, NBA, NBC, NHL, BR Live, Youtube TV, etc. have all gone above and beyond to try to avoid showing spoilers so there's no real need to defend caring about spoilers. There's not a ton of value to spoilers anyhow and even pissing off 3% of your base with spoilers doesn't make sense. The majority of platforms have responded.
That's good to hear. But apparently there are still streaming providers who need to get on board. As I said, and continue to say, hopefully all the feedback that they get from users will improve their UI's, and I hope also standardize them... but that's another topic.
ESPN completed two new deals with collegiate athletic conferences that will mean more high profile football and basketball games exclusively available on ESPN+. The deals are with the American Athletic Conference and the Big 12. Both conferences are getting raises from ESPN. Unless ESPN keeps using Plus as a loss leader, I would expect a price increase in 2020 or so when these deals kick in. The deals also include airing non-revenue sports like soccer. If you're interested in college soccer, you'll get a lot more of it than is now available.
Or perhaps they will splinter their offerings the way NBC does, requiring different subscriptions for different sports? I hope not, because that will ratchet up the overall cost of streaming very quickly. Unless they offer each sport for $20-25/yr rather than NBC's $50/yr (I'm quoting PL Pass price as that's the only one I'm familiar with)
ESPN already had the American Athletic Conference. Fox has/had the Big 12, Big Ten, and Big East. In Football, which the Big East doesn't exist for, losing the Big 12 will hurt Fox, and of course they have to share with the Big Ten Network they own. I don't have a count, but even if ESPN+ didn't have the top conferences, they already had plenty of NCAA Soccer for both genders.
Yeah, I'm troubled by this. ESPN still makes too much money from the Comcasts and Verizons of the world to separate their ESPN+ and cable money, correct? You kind of need both if you are a sports fan going forward. That's brutal. As the streaming services(fubo, YTTV, etc.)raise their prices, we are getting closer to the point where it costs the same for the inconvenience of going in and out of apps as it did for those bloated cable contracts if you want what you had from fios, etc. 3 years ago. Not great, bob.
I'm assuming that ultimately (and sooner rather than later) the cost of getting all the same content digitally will cost the same or more than those big cable prices we've had for years.
I agree with you in general but the term you are using is a bit vague. Meaning, "all the same content" does not really exist on most providers. There's stuff that's on digital platforms that you have never been able to get on Cable/ Dish. (Or you only had it available to you for like a couple of years or so.)
I expected someone would probably pick me up on that. Yes there's extra digital content that wasn't available before. But what I don't necessarily think that is the argument for me having to pay more by the month. I think cable providers used to use that justification for higher prices in the past: "look we're giving you 500-1000 channels!" (most of which you could care less about) More to the point, I was trying to say is that I expect we'll have to pay at least as much digitally to watch the "channels" or competitions that we used to be able to watch via cable. If I'm still not conveying that precisely enough, let's just move on.
Has this been verified by more than just one source? Seems like World Soccer Talk is the only one reporting this.
Chris Harris has some ITKs over at ESPN so he isn't bullshitting here... If you want to wait for the official PR, that'll take a little while (maybe after the NBA Finals?)
No intention to imply it was BS, just wondering why no one has mentioned it other than just that one website.
How many sources are there for news like this? It’s not like it’s going to be on the front page of the Washington post.
Like they say every story has two sides, who's right who's wrong (?) https://media.sportbusiness.com/news/espn-denies-copa-america-2019-deal/
Yup, this is the reason I am asking if there is another source that verifies what World Soccer Talk is reporting.
Hmm...I'm a bit skeptical with the denial. I guess they want to announce it around the time that the NBA Finals are on...
As an update, I have seen more and more websites say it will be on ESPN* including CBSSports today: https://www.cbssports.com/soccer/ne...nfo-start-times-brazil-opens-against-bolivia/
Another source below, but what is odd is that when ESPN Deportes had the World Cup in Portuguese language ESPN Brazil had TV rights in the country of origin as well, that's not the case with Copa America 2019. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_Copa_América
Kudos for the Coppa Italia final on ESPN2 today with 1) no ticker 2) the score/clock from the world feed instead of ESPN's typical too-large one Demerits for going with the Mark Donaldson/Matteo Bonetti crew behind the mics.