Winner. If a certain outlet has rights to a specific team (say FSO for Reds), then it forces in-market Reds fans to watch via FSO, thus more viewers watch those commercials, thus ratings/income is higher. The noticable downside is that some territories stretch to ridiculously-wide areas. You want to see your "local" team? Try driving for over five hours to see them at a home game. Your only legal option to watch that game is a satellite provider's sports pack and not a basic TV package? Too bad. It's a misconception that blackouts are based on home/away games. Other than the NFL's policy of blacking out based on ticket sales, there are no such blackouts...they're all based off "a certain team's geographical market." One of the weirdest blackouts I remember was a situation where TBS had Braves games. Well, the Braves were playing the Reds and FS Ohio didn't have the game televised, but the TBS feed was blacked out due to it being televised in-market.
Check out DCU new deal with Flosports a monthly subscription steam only service based out of Austin to make things worse. Feel bad for their fans. I just don’t see how you grow a fan base with stream only. Walk into bar/restaurant “hey can you turn on the crew game?” “Sure what channel?” “Flosports it’s a stream.” “Hahaha fuuuuuuuccccc no we can’t”
I can see the "everything's streaming" mindset backfiring in a major way. Now if it was a situation where it was streaming with local situations (BCSN2 and Sinclair plus potentially others) allowed to make their own deals, I don't see why that couldn't happen. I found it intriguing that other cities never had deals.
Right and that is all i am concerned with. Just do not get the logic of going stream only. My only guess is they are actually paying for the product vs local TV which could be a loss in revenue for most teams. I didn't think the last TV deal was bad at all for the crew minus the issues some had with CW. Local TV is free or very inexpensive and everyone could watch. I do think its unfortunate that ESPN+ was blacked out and id like to think that could get worked out. I still have not been able to find where it is a league policy.
I am not sure. I could see it working quite well, depending... Not long ago, if you were a sports bar, you had DirecTV, because sports. That was a major part of DirecTV's marketing and without a doubt revenue. DirecTV carried everything, or at least all NFL, MLB, NHL, NBA, and most major college football and basketball. Streaming - and by that it is essentially ESPN+ now provides most major college football and basketball, MLS, and international soccer through ESPN+. NBC streams all English Premier League - you need Gold at least once a year for just about every team. You can get MLB and NHL streams for every game. The only issue is DirecTV's exclusive for NFL Sunday Ticket, but they offer that through streaming only as well. Oh, and DirecTV is going to a streaming platform. The key to this working is that the streaming app has to be easy to use. That had been the biggest objection that I had. But, now I've been subscribed to DirecTV Now for almost a year. I have an antenna and can get every local station that way, but rarely use it.
Sometimes I just want to watch at home. I didn't spend hours convincing my fiancee to let me have a 3 TV set up for nothing.
Here is an article... https://www.fool.com/investing/2019/01/05/what-cord-cutters-actually-want-is-cable-in-disgui.aspx
I prefer to watch at home vs. at a bar. Mainly because I don't want to pay bar prices for booze, get shit spilled on me, and be forced to stand all game.
I'm so over going to bars/restaurants/viewing parties to watch games. My interest in hanging out with a large group of people to watch the game is inversely proportional to how important the game is/how interested I am. For soccer, anyway. When I'm in a large group of people where there's a lot happening, it becomes harder and harder to pay attention to the match. It's certainly harder to HEAR, which takes away from the experience. And when there's food and beer and conversation, it all takes your focus off what's on TV. Which is fine if it's an Ohio State football game against a flea bag opponent, and you're at B-Dub's. But for a nuanced soccer game, you kind of need to pay attention. There are exceptions, of course. I watched a CBJ playoff game against Pittsburgh at the R-Bar a few years ago because I knew they'd be wholly 100% devoted to it, the sound would be up, and everyone would be giving it their full attention. And World Cup viewing parties, everyone will obviously be pretty focused there, and the communal aspect of it is pretty cool. Plus, sometimes you just feel like going out whether it makes sense or not. But mostly, going to a party and watching a game are separate activities. Anyone who CAN make that work, well -- I applaud you. Enjoy it.
I didn't know so many Columbus bars were packed with fans. I thought the opposite was true from what I read around here.
Any word on this years tv situation? Also, why black out espn+ to 75 miles? That’s a long way away to pick it up over an antenna. I asked spectrum what’s the cheapest package that gets Spectrum sports channel? Answer: $110 premium package. I asked if that channel is available under their $10/month pick 10 channels plan. Answer: nope. It’s not streaming channel. I heard spectrum was moving their sports channel to a new Spectrum One or some such. Anyone know anything about this?
Yes. The channel which used to be sports is now news. We know nothing about Crew games on TV for 2019 other than: ESPN+ is an option for those living 75+ miles away.
We have had espn+ for the past year. The picture quality is not good. The picture is not crisp and clear. The picture looks slightly off
I tried watching some of the bowl games on my WatchESPN account in Europe over Christmas/New Year and it said the content was not available in that country (as expected). I used Tunnel Bear to get to the US with no change - ESPN app seems to know one way or another your location and it didnt work. Our Smart TV is probably 5 years old or so. The annoying thing about it (and all smart TVs) is depending on which brand you buy, they limit the apps you can download. Eg. ESPN+ is simply not an option to download - have to watch via Roku/Apple TV which defeats the purpose of the Smart TV is pretty frustrating.
My cable channel and my streaming shows look good except for +. ESPN+ picture on my screen just looks a little fuzzy or just not right. All my .Other streamed shows look good. I use Spectrum for my wifi.
I'm having trouble justifying the inconvenience of dropping cable because it simply doesn't save that much money. Pay for internet and then the individual services and you are almost back to where I am for my cable package.
Are you currently paying for cable? For me, I was paying $75/mo for cable (only option I had with Spectrum),and $120/mo for DirecTV. So moving to a $40/mo streaming option saved me a bunch of money. And frankly, the picture, and user interface is so much better than the Spectrum cable I tried during my DirecTV days. And I don't have go through the hassle of calling every 8-10 months to haggle my bill back down $50, but still $10 more than when I started.
It seems the biggest difference is two-fold: 1) No need to spend $30/mo or whatever on equipment rental fees. If you have two or three or more TVs, such can get rather expensive. 2) No need to call in and haggle for a better rate. With that said, by the time someone gets done paying for umpteen services, is it really worth the difference? For me, I like having one box for all my TV channels. If I want to go from ESPN to FS2, it's not even a matter of seconds. On apps, I'd have to back out of the WatchESPN app, navigate to the FSGO app, navigate inside that app to get to my content and then maybe watch an ad before the content starts streaming. Marone! I'd never certainly pay for the HGTV app (if it were an option), but when someone I knew was on House Hunters, I watched.
This situation was key for one: ignoring for the moment how ridiculous this is, we have six televisions in our house. With DirecTV that would roughly be $42/month just in equipment fees plus the more than $120/month for the package I'd need to get the channels I wanted. Even with separate services, I'm still paying about half what I would be paying had I stayed with DirecTV. Considering the hardware I purchased, my break-even point was between ten and 11 months.