That's not an insignificant percentage though. It's steadily declining. That said, ESPN/Disnwy has likely recouped some of that lost revenue, or at least offset some of it through their OTT subscription offerings.
I believe you already know this and were asking more rhetorically, but no it does not include streaming cable bundles. YTTV, Hulu and Sling have at least 12m additional subscribers from what I can tell, and they pay the same or similar carriage fees as traditional cable providers. So the drop off of cable is not as pronounced, at least from the perspective of the broadcaster of the key channels that are part of nearly all streaming bundles. Fringe channels that are not as commonly included in streaming bundles are getting punished.
I'm 99% sure that they're not included, but I haven't seen anything that actually confirms it. There's also the issue of Sling TV listing total subscribers around 2.3 million, but I haven't seen a breakdown of the Orange, Blue, and Orange+Blue specifics. I've seen 5 million for YouTube TV about a year ago, 4 million for Hulu Live TV a little farther back than that, 1.2 million for FuboTV, and that 2.3 million for Sling. So yeah, 11-12 million seems like a safe bet.
We looked at Sling, but ESPN and Fox Sports being on different packages made us a no-go. I understand for balancing costs, bit it's a bummer.
I had Sling for a bit. Then tried Hulu Live TV with the Disney+/ESPN+ bundle, and then moved to YouTube TV. They all have issues. Sling is the best if what you want to watch is on one of the packages only. Hulu is the best if you want to watch ESPN+ content since it's integrated into the UI. YouTube is the best if you want the DVR storage, now the multiscreen viewing, and soon the NFL Sunday Ticket bundle. It was cheaper than Hulu until this latest price hike. I think I mentioned it earlier, but I can't believe nobody is trying to do the sports streaming equivalent of Philo. Philo is 70+ channels without any sports channels or local networks. Literally just give me all the sports channels, minus the RSNs, and I'd gladly pay $30-40 a month for it. I'm sure the reason that's not available is Disney and probably Comcast not wanting to participate.
We went YouTubeTV to Hulu Live to nothing. We were watching nothing but sports live, and with MLS and USNT games not on the platforms any longer, away we went.
Aye, which is why we added HBOMax. We'll do the basic Peacock package too (the TNT games are on Peacock as well so we can pay $5 a month rather than a whole cable package).
The 2022-23 college football final averaged 22 million viewers on ESPN. So at the very least two thirds of ESPN subscribers didn't watch it.
It started with MLB, then MLS, now: https://appleinsider.com/articles/2...-bid-for-english-premier-league-soccer-rights
Article says they want domestic distribution rights. If it is correct, the US market wouldn't be part of the bid
But that's because NBC has those rights wrapped up through 27/28. If Apple get English broadcast rights, they will certainly go after US ones when they're available.
Isn't that a Premier League problem? I don't believe NBC actually has cameras in the stadium, they are just grabbing the international feed.
That feed is a mezzanine quality feed that needs to be compressed and distributed locally (and over the streaming service). Usually the satellite link is taken in at NBC's facility and converted to the correct frame rate and colorspace. UK is PAL50 and the US is NTSC 29.97 or ATSC 59.94. Sports is usually higher frame rate (increasing the data rate) so when bandwidth is an issue the bitrate is dropped to accommodate the frame rate. Ideal would be 12-15Mbps at the top of the adaptive ladder at 1080P60.
Good catch. On a quick read I didn't notice that. But PHEW! Even if NBC were to shift 100% to Peacock, which I REALLY don't want them to do, nor do I think they will, I'd still rather have them in charge than Apple. At least from what I've seen in their roll-out of MLS Season Pass, which has growing pains to say the least. I suppose Apple could end up being the most terrific platform/coverage there's ever been, but they have a good long ways to go before they achieve that. And I'm content to wait for them to cut their teeth with MLS or UK-rights to EPL.
Their main issue with MLS is UI related. I haven't seen issues with actual match coverage except for occasional video stuttering. The Ui though - oh man, sooooo bad.
Yeah the UI needs serious work. If they want to they could fix that pretty easily I figure. ATV+ video quality, including the freezes or crashes (which on a small sample size, I'd say is worse than most of their competition), should also be fixable, it's just harder for them to know about the type & frequency of problems we're having. And then there's the "content" itself, which includes announcing crews, pre-game, post-game, highlights, weekend wrap-ups, etc. I've only watched 1-2 NYRB matches, so it's too early for me to pass judgment on this, but my take is that at this point they're pretty far behind where MSG/NBC's production has been, for NYRB/EPL respectively.
I think for fans of teams that already had decent local coverage this is a lateral or even backwards step. For most of the league though, the production quality is a massive improvement.