Curious as to what everyone's thoughts are on the possibility of confederations and leagues either going OTT in addition to traditional network and cable broadcasts OR going completely OTT? I think the latter is not viable for all stakeholders, but there are leagues and rights holders who are/will be testing the waters (e.g., Serie A with IMG and Serie A Pass in countries throughout the world and UEFA with their streaming service coming out for the 2019-2020 season outside of Europe and North America. Surely, the Premier League could hit that sweet spot for the consumer/league better than NBC Sports and NBC Sports Gold do?! I'd pay $15/mo. for that content since live sports rights are what keeps cable afloat. Rights holder IMG and Premier League Productions partnered back in the day to create Premier League Pass as a way to provide our friends in southeast Asia and Oceania a way to watch their league and that seemed to be a relative hit. Expand on that idea, make every match accessible (NO MORE PAYWALLS) and on-demand along with all of the other content they produce (for longer than 7 days) and voila! After all, UK domestic TV rights are trending down and international rights are trending up, so figuring out a way to give the international audience easier access to your product seems like the wise move in the long run. Anyway, perhaps my reasons for posting this are purely selfish ones and most people would prefer to watch their soccer via cable. No data caps, a very consistent feed, channel guide, DVR capabilities built into your cable box, etc. are all legitimate 'fors' in the argument. However, I'm still not sold on cable truly providing good value for the money, especially here in the States where we get fleeced for everything already. Ultimately, I think the proliferation of OTT services is a good thing and will help to drive down ballooning costs as consumers are given more options to choose how and where to get their content. But I think the real cable killer for soccer fans would be to have more official direct-to-consumer services from rights holders that make it THE definitive way to watch one's preferred team and or league/confederation. For example, I subscribed to Strive Sports at the beginning of this season and have been absolutely amazed by what I get access to. It's been a complete game-changer for me! I would love to see more rights holders and leagues do something similar. I'm so much more invested in LaLiga and Serie A as a result and I'm sure others would be to if a.) they had access/a similar service existed here (ESPN+ is maybe the closest thing). Anway, those are my ramblings. Would love to here opinions on this topic as well as any personal experiences people have with any of the services mentioned above -- will this delivery model fully replace cable or will it always be supplemental?
I would love to have all the matches from a league to stream, as long as they have a good app for Roku/Amazon Fire/tablets etc, make replays available and archived, and don't plaster their site with results (or at least have a spoiler-free mode, like B/R now does), giving us the English-language world feed. And of course at a reasonable per month or per season price. ESPN+ is essentially doing this with Serie A, except for the one match per round they're running (and ruining with Bonetti and/or tickers) on cable. FSMP offers this for the Bundesliga as well but $20/month is ridiculous considering they offer virtually nothing else on the service. As for the EPL, while I miss the cable overflow channels with the non-NBCSN games, I like what they do with Premier League Pass and just wish they offered those unadulterated feeds for the NBCSN games as well as part of the Gold package. La Liga and Ligue 1 of course are under the thumb of beIN and their terrible Connect service, so here's hoping in 2020 when La Liga's rights come up they go more the route of ESPN+ or something similar.
I hate it. I'm not a big fan of international soccer, but I absolutely loved being able to watch whatever UEFA CL and EPL game I wanted. CNBC and USA used to show a second game at 10am ET on Saturdays...now, it's back to the days of Fox Sports World EPL coverage and when ESPN2 would show one UEFA CL game Tuesday and one game Wednesday. Even if I had Tuesday/Wednesday afternoons free, I'm not sure I'd watch with as much interest. I used to be able to watch 7/8 games at the same time each day without even trying. I'll pay for ESPN+ for MLS, but beyond that, I'm not paying for Bleacher Report or NBC or whatever else. These new packages are the equivalent of packages like NBA League Pass or MLB Extra Innings...if you need a ton of coverage or are a die-hard fan of a certain team, you'll pay. If not, you won't.
Streaming is not a good delivery service for live sports "as yet" on a consistent bases, to many problems, I was watching the Superbowl on the CBS app on the Roku and 2 minutes before the end of the game the feed kicked out and I could not get it back. I hear nothing but complaints on these forums about it.
CNBC has a 10:00 A.M. game when two of the big six are playing then. They had games on these dates in 2018-2019: February 9 January 19 December 22 December 8 November 3 (at 3:45 P.M. when it was the only game at that time) September 29 September 22 September 15 I pay for ESPN+ and NBC Sports Gold.
I think it really depends on the streaming service and their experience and capacity. I am a cord cutter and generally have been pretty happy with it. It's cheaper than what I would pay for cable, plus a ton of flexibility in terms of where and how I watch. I've found ESPN to be the best and most reliable. I suspect they are putting a lot of money into their streaming infrastructure anticipating a time when it does become the primary delivery model. I've actually found CBS to be pretty poor the few times I've tried it. Would love it and would probably cause me to cancel my Playstation Vue subscription, but I suspect we are still a ways away from it becoming financially viable for them in large markets like the United States. My reasoning is a lot of live sports actually lose money for the networks. But they are willing to pay the price as long as it brings eyeballs and visibility to the network. A direct to consumers streaming model would need to match the current rights payments, which I suspect wouldn't be possible at the moment, or the loss would be absorbed by the leagues themselves rather than the TV providers. Either way I suspect for the foreseeable future (next couple of TV contracts) the prem and the Champions League will be on traditional provider.