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Comment by chipgap98 | Hacker News Reader

No I think you're right. The one big thing that has yet to really move online is sports. Once I can watch all the games I want online, cable is going away

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This is an area where MLB is way ahead of the rest. There was even a nice article linked here a while ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9416565

Yup... to the point where (as mentioned before) MLB is running HBO Now. (HBO's attempt at doing it inhouse with a bunch of ex-Microsoft peeps failed...)

The problem is that like a lot of other streaming content, sports has to follow archaic rules designed to protect the broadcasters. Specifically for MLB, you are not able to stream any game from your local market's team(s). This nullifies the biggest market who would be interested in streaming games.

The funny thing is they actually stream the local broadcasts (you choose which one you want) and then cut out the commercials. If they showed the commercials I don't see how it's different than watching locally on TV, except there's even more money involved because you paid a lot more than the carriage fee for MLB.tv.

It's even a nice compliment to watching it on TV because you can watch on a mobile device. ESPN lets you stream stuff if you have a cable subscription, but you can't stream local games with MLB.tv regardless of your cable subscription.

"If they showed the commercials I don't see how it's different than watching locally on TV..."

I have always wondered about this. I have to assume television broadcasters (e.g. the regional Fox Sports networks) who pay billions over decades to have broadcast rights want to protect their hegemony on TV. But in general you would think that they could sell their advertisers on the fact they are also being viewed by online subscribers. Maybe the advertisers don't want their otherwise local commercials broadcast, but then that doesn't explain why I can watch commercials when I watch a regional channel from another state.

"ESPN lets you stream stuff if you have a cable subscription, but you can't stream local games with MLB.tv regardless of your cable subscription."

But ESPN doesn't really let you stream local stuff of the US's big 4 leagues. It is unfair to compare the professional sports streaming options of ESPN3, Fox Sports Go, NBCSN, etc with those of the 4 leagues considering that none of the broadcasters can broadcast ANY games, much less be blackout-stricken.

I was always under the impression that those rules were designed to protect the venues, not the broadcasters. I.e., if you're local and want to watch the game, you should come to the ballpark and watch it live. As I recall, there was a time when a game would be blacked out on local broadcast as well if the stadium wasn't sold out.

Since baseball stadiums rarely sellout (unless you're AT&T Park) I think it's more to protect the broadcast agreements with whatever local cable network it is that caries the game. The NFL used to have agreements like the one you mentioned, where the game was blacked out unless the stadium sells out - but I think they got told they couldn't do that anymore.

I did a bit of reading and apparently it varies by sport. I.e., the NFL blackouts work as I understood them to protect the stadiums, but the MLB and NHL blackouts work differently and are designed to protect the local broadcasters. TIL.

Maybe initially, but the markets carved out are so huge to make attending a game from most of the market impractical. For example, Iowa is in the local market for the Chicago Cubs, Chicago White Sox, Milwaukee Brewers, St. Louis Cardinals, Kansas City Royals, and Minnesota Twins. [1] That means that people in Iowa on any given night might only be able to watch 9 of the 15 games on MLB.tv.

[1] - http://deadspin.com/mlbs-awful-blackout-rules-are-finally-un...

Their customer support is top notch too. I had noticed a video quality issue after the All-Star break and at first, figured it was just some crappy old standard definition cameras at one of the baseball parks. When it continued to the next location, I realized something else was up. I emailed MLB.tv support and they had the problem fixed during the game in about 20 minutes.

I watched the most recent Superbowl via streaming. Technically, streaming sports is about as easy as streaming any other video. One big hurdle is all the licensing because there is a lot of money involved. Edit: The other hurdle is horizontally scaling live streaming video to over 100 million devices.

Networks like the NFL Network are doomed as soon as most NFL fans realize they could be streaming literally any game they want to watch from a Netflix-style service, or watch any number of games in a community from a curated Cytube-style list, instead of having just the 1 game at a time.

Once the NFL put together the NFL Network it quickly started using it to broadcast games. It isn't doomed by streaming, it provides some (much?) of the stadium side infrastructure that is still necessary for streaming.

Is there a way to legally stream sports like the big football game in february, without already having a cable subscription? That's the one thing (well, aside from big bang theory) my family and I miss from cable.

I was surprised to find it so easy to stream from NFL.com last winter. Maybe adblock software helped. And the television ads were included in the stream and so were basically unavoidable. I used the old-fashioned adblock of muting the stream during the television commercials.

If you are close enough to a big city, you should be able to use free-to-air TV broadcasts. You can get an ATSC receiver for your PC if you don't have a TV, and DVR software that lets you skip commercials and run your own replays as you like.

Not completely true. Everyone wanting to want to watch it at the same time causes issues. Other videos you can distribute the video to caches ahead of time, so the burden on the outgoing connection is less.

Are you describing a problem between live streaming and pre-recorded video? How does Twitch handle their load? How many more people are watching the average football game vs watched "Twitch Plays Pokemon" at its peak?

Edit: TPP had 60,000-70,000 simultaneous viewers on average, with a peak of 120,000.[1] In 2014, each NFL game had about 17.6 million viewers.[2] So an order of magnitude increase. How well does live streaming video scale horizontally?

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twitch_Plays_Pok%C3%A9mon#View...

[2]http://tvbythenumbers.zap2it.com/2015/01/09/nfl-2014-tv-reca...

MLB streamed to 60 million viewers on opening day this year. [1]

Granted that is 14 different events being streamed, but they eclipse Twitch in terms of live streaming by a huge amount.

[1] - http://techcrunch.com/2015/04/07/mlb-com-hits-home-run-with-...

You can take the Eurovision Song Contest as example.

Millions of people watching via livestream, overall (including TV), the largest annual TV event (197 million overall)

Livestreaming scales very nicely horizontally, if done properly.

And this is an event that is completely done without any ads or commercial investor backing it.

stephengillie, "twitch plays pokemon" maxed out at 121,000 concurrent (according to Twitch) viewers, last years Super Bowl maxed out at 120,800,000 viewers. So yes, I would say it is a considerably different scale.

That's already very possible too, they just need to make it unrestricted. For those outside the US services like NFL/MLB/NBA Game Pass are really fantastic. I can watch live, on demand, and condensed versions of any game.

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