Amazon wins streaming rights for Thursday Night Football | Hacker News Reader

Amazon wins streaming rights for Thursday Night Football

sportsbusinessdaily.com

175 pointshuac148 comments

I hope Amazon markets this properly. My GF and I both struggled to even find the https://www.primevideo.com/ landing page after we signed up. They have two different interfaces... the amazon.com video section and a seemingly unrelated Prime Video site which was difficult to find on their site. I had to use chrome://history the following day after signing up for the 30-day trial.

Amazon is great at specific UX functionality but not so great at high-level information architecture.

Prime Video has a superior video player to Netflix thanks to the XRay feature which tells you which actors/songs are currently playing/acting during the current scene. I've used it countless times.

Speaking of Xray, for sports it would be great to see which players are currently on the field/court during a game, including which jersey number, and if possible the box score when you hover over the game. That would have been amazing during NCAA March Madness where I didn't know most of the young college players.

The only thing missing from the Amazon player which Netflix has is "skip intro credits" button.

I love this technology/product competition between the two none-the-less.

Xray is powered by IMDB, which Amazon also owns right? Is there an entity they could buy to power such a service for sports?

I've always believed each tv channel broadcasting games does the players report themselves (either in-house or contracted). Since the games are usually exclusive to a specific station, I can't imagine there's a big enough market for it to be a service.

X-ray shows the actors that are in that specific scene. Does IMDB have this information that they just don't show on their public site? That seems a lot more useful of a database than the few titles Prime offers it on.

There is a premium account for IMDB. Perhaps it is part of the paid service?

That feature is damn impressive. It's incredibly responsive and accurate.

Opta[1] provide stats for many sports. For example, in football(UK), Opta provide feeds that include many stats on the game before, during, and after. These feeds can be quite extensive. I imagine most sports have similar services available, though the level of detail I'm unsure on.

[1] http://www.optasports.com/

It's more likely that you would take the stats from Running Ball, who are the market leaders in 'in play' sporting statistics. These power all the betting sites live stats and all the Live Score type sites you see.

http://www.rball.com/

Opta powered the BBC football and most other sports stats, at least while I was there a few years ago.

Obviously, this might have changed now!

Opta only provides "on the ball" data for soccer, I know that much, and will only provide it in 5 minute increments.

There is much more accurate data available in Premier League games via ChyronHego, but they don't make that available real-time, and in fact the only people who get to see it are the clubs who are involved in the game.

There is a big, big demand for better real-time tracking of open play sports such as Soccer. Discreate "round-based" play games (baseball, NFL, etc.) are much simpler in some respects.

Cool insight!

I wonder if ChyronHego isn't available real-time due to not being able to provide it in real-time or just that there is not enough money on the table for them to do so.

I'm pretty sure the Opta data is available on a much shorter timeframe than every five minutes, as a side note.

I'm thinking of the Opta F24 feeds, which IIRC are provided in-play every 300 seconds. I might be out of date on that though.

The ChyronHego data is interesting. I've played with is as part of a hackney at Manchester City - a hack day my team won, actually - and it definitely has some value. I get the impression those guys are only really just getting started, but the value of the data is so immense, that they might need to remain cagey about access, no matter what.

They have improved this a great deal on the FireTV device where Prime content now has its own "Channel" just like HBO, Showtime, etc so you can separate what is Prime and what is Amazon Instant Video

on the Amazon Main website you have to click "Included with Prime" to get the prime only content

The big reason many people have to not canceling their cable is live sports.

If this is the new trend, it's catastrophic to cable providers.

Half the reason people I know use DIRECTV is to get out of network football games. They've had Sunday ticket on streaming for the past few years but it's like $400 up front and the streaming fucks up. $200 and YouTube live quality and I'll be damn happy.

That was me for 4 years. Just got out of my contract at the end of football season and it was a nightmare. Our bill was $300/mo during football season and I think around $240 outside of that. It was just too much to justify.

I was jerked around by their customer service on cancellation, which seems to be part and parcel of anything related to AT&T. I would love to see their entire business model completely upended.

> Our bill was $300/mo during football season and I think around $240 outside of that.

Holy hell I didn't realize service could get that expensive. It makes a bit more sense why my parents never got cable. I figured $80-100/month would get pretty much everything.

My bill was over $200/month until recently. That's without any of the sports packages.

It's around $80/mo here for basic digital cable here, for just the service. Go ahead and toss on equipment rental and other "fees" (read: hidden BS so we don't have to advertise our actual rates) and it quickly gets expensive for even rudimentary service.

Quite honestly, I'm thinking about upgrading my PS Vue plan from the "Access" plan to the highest one that includes HBO and Showtime, at $65/mo it's still a hell of a lot cheaper than even the lowest-tier plan I can get from the local cable company.

Sunday Ticket got much better this year with the addition of the Apple TV app. I'm a happy subscriber. Also, it's billed monthly and works out to ~$300 for the lowest tier (which still includes all games).

As far as I know, you still have to be a DirecTV subscriber, no? If not, this is awesome.

Nope. I've been using Direct TV's NFL Season Pass streaming only during the football season for two years now. No dish, no service otherwise.

Do you know where i can find the signup for this? I know a couple people who would love to switch off directv but want sunday ticket

They don't have the signup until it gets closer to the season, but the app is here: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/nfl-sunday-ticket/id32724336...

If you have means of streaming from what appears to be an IP outside of the US: https://gamepass.nfl.com/nflgp/secure/packages

You can get everything for around $270.

Do you have to use that non-US IP everytime you watch, or just during signup?

you need to use the IP when you login to gamepass website and launch the video player, so everytime you watch, but not necessarily while you watch

Just to clarify this a bit.

Most streaming sites authenticate you before letting your client know the IP, port and path of the stream. Once that is known, you can turn off the VPN or whatever, and stream like normal, so it should stream at a higher bitrate.

I can confirm that this service works well, streams live games in HD with minimal issues

If cable dies, then the remaining bandwidth can simply be used for the internet. The writing has been on the wall for a long time so it really should not come as a surprise to the cable companies. As an anecdote, all the people I know that used to have cable now only have an internet connection and get all of their entertainment from there, self included. I know nobody that still has cable.

That makes sense if you can get the networks OTA anyway. If your alternative to cable (or satellite) is a blank screen, as in my case, you're more hesitant to pull the plug entirely.

Amazon paid $50M for the worst game of the week.

Unless they're ready to move up 2 orders of magnitude, they're not getting close to the kind of money the NFL is looking for.

It's like getting a foot in the door, which is a big thing in itself.

Yes, in addition to the cash up front, imagine if Amazon can show an uptick in merchandise sales during/after the game:

"Your team just won with the winning play by $thisguy. Want to buy his jersey while you're here?"

Broadcast rights are just one of the places professional sports makes money.

It's more about giving people an extra reason to buy/keep a Prime subscription, similar to getting the Top Gear guys on board (Top Gear was the BBC's most syndicated show, and was massive all over the world, apart from the US). When you have the free shipping, you might buy that jersey at a later date. Amazon generates so much revenue that they can afford to take the long view with initiatives like this.

Is it just me, or is the amazon topgear absolutely unwatchable? It seems like a cheap ripoff and none of them seem remotely emotionally invested in it. Is it just the US market ruining car shows? Wheeler Dealers also comes to mind as having been ruined lately.

I haven't seen it, so I can't comment. I've seen lots of people complaining about BBC's "new" Top Gear with the new presenters, apparently it's lost all it's character.

The best car show at the moment (IMO) is Mighty car mods on Youtube, a pair of Aussie lads who love Japanese cars. They're absolutely hilarious and actually are really knowledgeable about cars.

I enjoy Doug Demuro on youtube. He reviews cars like the trabant, and buys weird cars like the Nissan S-Cargo.

100% agree. it feels like its lost everything that made the show great. theres absolutely no illusion anymore that these guys are fixing or modding these cars themselves, they seem to have no investment in the cars (remember richards car Oliver that he actually bought and took home from the Botswana special?)

It barely seems like they are even interested in cars anymore, everything felt overrehearsed and written, even the little quippy jokes to each other felt like they were done multiple time for extra takes.

Im not sure what exactly made TopGear so special, but it seem to me that whatever it was has been lost. maybe the guys are just too old or too rich to put in the effort they used to.

I certainly didn't find it unwatchable, but I agree with your sentiment. It's a little rough around the edges, especially with pacing and tone. It's kind of the uncanny valley of Top Gear. Something isn't quite right. That said, I still found most of the episodes entertaining, and there are a few great moments.

i am a die hard sports fan but i've cut the cord. Cable companies have the sketchiest, worst customer service I've ever experienced.

Unfortunately, the Amazon TNF package is only for the games that will also be available over the air. NFL Network games will still require cable/satellite.

On the flipside, many have cut the cord because of the high cost of cable, partly due to the cost being inflated by being forced to have channels such as ESPN. Amazon purchasing the rights to sports increases the cost for those that do not care about sports.

There's also an cost inflation problem for cord cutters as well. Having recently moved, I discovered that the slowest cable modem plan which Spectrum (formerly Time Warner) offers is now 100Mbit. It seems the days of $30/mo broadband are over...

Yes, there's a major conflict of interest here. Entities like Comcast have incentive to impose bandwidth caps because then you'll be forced to acquire video content (by far the most bandwidth-hungry application) over your cable subscription to prevent fees.

I would kill for anythin beyond the 5mb I can get where I live. Most of my neighbors still cant get high speed internet. I am less than an hour from one of the us's 10 biggest cities.

ESPN is currently quite the quagmire for Disney corporate. Surprisingly, it's the business unit that makes up the largest amount of Disney's revenue, around 30%. [1] The last several posted losses for Disney (including the one just reported this month) have been primarily due to decreasing subscriber counts for ESPN.

ESPN royalties are ~$7 per subscriber; $7 of your monthly cable bill goes to Disney just for ESPN [2]. They are obviously collecting that from many people who are uninterested in sports, as most basic cable packages include ESPN (if not ESPN 2 and so forth).

Cord cutting is the single biggest threat to Disney right now, and I'm sure this, a major signal that people are excited to consume their sports via the web and that ESPN is inching closer and closer to death, has them crapping their pants.

When Amazon buys Disney World, will they replace Cinderella Castle with a giant cardboard box bearing the "Amazon Prime" tape? ;)

[1 (PDF)] https://ditm-twdc-us.storage.googleapis.com/q1-fy17-earnings...

[2] http://awfulannouncing.com/2016/espns-rising-cable-fee-is-no...

Who needs a fairy godmother if you have Amazon Prime Now? ;)

(only sorta kidding..)

I'm actually surprised how cheap ESPN is. In the UK, adding the two main sports networks (Sky and BT) adds something like $70/month, maybe more, to your bill. It's definitely not included in "basic" packages but i bet millions of people still subscribe to both. It's pretty much the only reason people have payTV, and something like 60% of households do have payTV as a whole.

You need five channels to get the equivalent of what BT and Sky provide with the Premier League, and you are absolutely bombarded with advertising. European football isn't really suitable to the same business model, so we have to pay for our sports.

I'm never one to resist change, but jumping to Bezos buying Walt's land seems a bit premature. Cord cutting may represent a move away from traditional coax cable packages...but actually delivering a non-trivial amount of revenue, subscribers, and staying power in an industry shouldn't be scoffed at.

ESPN is in a pickle, but they remain the Worldwide Leader. Sports as an entertainment business is changing (quite a bit at the other end, where new and old media companies wage increasingly expensive wars over content acquisition as the pro sports leagues recognize they have TV deal leverage), but the company has some technical chops and understands scale and being on-site for events in the old world and new that the Valley (and Seattle) shouldn't assume they'll immediately be able to crack.

tl;dr: Overpaying for Jim Nantz on Thursday night NFL "absolute poopfests" while running around shouting cord cutters overestimates tech's ability to take over traditional entertainment channels.

Oddly enough, TimeWarner (Spectrum) is giving me an overall discount on my bill ... in exchange for having TV service. What I mean is, my final bill for Internet+TV is _less_ than just Internet. I don't even watch TV. I threw the installation kit in a box and haven't ever set it up.

Seemed to me they were doing it to inflate subscriber numbers.

If TW is anything like Comcast, the bill is only lower until you start adding fees. I have six TVs. 5 additional cable boxes would be $50. Plus the "HD Technology Fee" - $10. Plus the sports access, network access, and various other fees, we would pay about $80 a month just in fees.

That's more than we pay for Netflix, Sling, CBS All Access and Hulu. We also have Amazon Prime.

I'm with you but technically it's not apples to apples. With 5 TV set top boxes you can watch on 5 tv's different content. Each of the streaming services you listed have login limitations so to get 5x streams you are paying double to triple service fees.

The Streaming services charge by Concurrent streams

Cable TV is fixed. I have 4 TV's in my home, only watch 1 at a time, rarely 2 may be one at any given time. So I would have to pay for a 2 concurrent stream account. With cable I would have to pay for 4 Boxes 24/7 just for the option of watching TV on them.

I remember the days where you paid for Service to the home, not service per device. then the FCC gave the cable companies a special exemption to allow them to start Encrypting the signal that is when they started to screw people over on the Box fees.

I cant wait for the day the Electric Company can charge be by the outlet, and then start charging me more based on the type of appliance I plug into said outlet

>> then the FCC gave the cable companies a special exemption to allow them to start Encrypting the signal that is when they started to screw people over on the Box fees

Admittedly, I don't mind this because it has drastically improved service availability and quality in my area by stopping people from stealing cable.

Would it matter anyway if it is all digital?

We only have three people in the house. So all three of us could watch live tv simultaneously with Sling. Hulu gives us errors once in a blue moon if we try to stream from multiple TVs, but for the most part, it hasn't been a problem. It's also not usually a problem with Netflix or Amazon Video.

But all this is a moot point if you don't have unlimited data. You might not end up saving.

If someone is throwing the install kit for TV service into some box for later returning, I doubt they are telling TW "Yeah, I have 5 TVs, all of which are HD. Sure, I'd like to pay an extra $100/month for something I have no intention of watching."

Once you get one set top box that is capable of HD, they charge you the "HD Technology Fee".

Then say you have no hd tv. So, no hd fee. Am I missing something?

Then you don't get an HD capable settop box. So you watch everything in SD?

If you're not connecting the settop box, why do you care if it's SD?

Nope, it's lower all-in.

When it happened, about a year ago, the final bill was $10 cheaper. Today it's a bit less, I think $5; they shifted a couple values around.

That is because they massively overcharge for unbundled Internet Service, you will pay for Cable TV, even if you do not want want it

This throws back to the Phone Companies and DSL where you had to buy a bundled POTS line to get DSL.

Having recently bought a home, the worst part was moving to an area where I had to give up the fiber connection I had through Cincinnati Bell and going back to Time Warner. I thought I'd kicked them out of my life for good, was paying much less for an incredible speed and the reps were super nice.

Be careful with that and watch your bill carefully. I signed up for internet service recently. The TV bundle wasn't that much more expensive. I read the fine print and they were going to tack an additional $16/mo in fees for the television; $8 going to sport channels.

Now I pay exactly $29/mo of internet, nothing more.

Yup, I check the bill every month.

Our final bill before all this was $70/mo for internet (100/20). After the deal it was $60/mo for Internet+TV. That's final bill; that's the amount we pay on our credit card.

I didn't do anything special. I don't even complain to TimeWarner about anything (a friend of mine gets discounts by calling and complaining about internet speeds). They offered the deal when I went in to drop off their cable modem, cause I had bought my own (and yes, the deal is $10 cheaper even taking into account removing the modem lease).

The only thing I can think of as to why I got "special treatment" is that I've never, ever had cable TV on my account with TimeWarner, and always told them no when they nagged me with random phone calls. So maybe they offer this deal to customer who they know will never subscribe, because having the subscription is worth the $10/mo to them.

Thursday Night Football, along with all the Sunday games, are on broadcast network TV. Only Monday Night Football is on cable (ESPN)

Of course, you can still get a package with DirectTV that lets you view all the games.

I never understood Twitter's TNF streaming. I couldn't watch it on the phone, and when I tried the website, I saw a small video (no audio) of the game, with live tweets. I was genuinely confused and turned off by the experience. I wanted to watch the game, just like I would have on television, but instead I got this neither fish nor fowl experience, that was the worst of both.

Twitter should have never gotten the contract at all, because they don't have a video client that runs on my television. Facebook doesn't either, and that's why Facebook shouldn't have gotten it either.

Watching video in a browser is lame when I have 55 inch display literally feet away. I want my content there. That's where I watch OTA television, Netflix, and Hulu. If you can't provide it to my television, you've failed. (Yeah, you can hook your computer up to your screen via HDMI, but it's janky as hell, and a horrible experience. It's the 21st century equivalent of taping a magnifying glass to your television and calling it a "big screen" http://www.tvhistory.tv/TV-Magnifying-Lens.JPG)

I was very pleased with Twitter's stream. I'd say it was one of the best quality NFL streams I ever seen. Not in so much terms of resolution per se but in terms of quality - lack of compression artifacts, stuttering and so on. And the audio was fine.

I really enjoyed Twitter's TNF streaming. I usually watched on my laptop or phone and enjoyed seeing the tweets integrated into the experience.

I really have a hard time with Amazon's prime video player and offering, the UI needs more work. Hopefully this will work internationally like Twitter's version did.

I agree, it was odd to try out an internet company but then give it to one that doesn't have a way to stream to TVs/media players. I don't want to watch football on a small monitor, and I'm not so hardcore of a fan that if I'm out I'll be streaming it on my phone somewhere. I'm sure I will watch a few games on the fire tv this year though.

All the twitter games were simulcast on CBS... Not sure what the point of having them on Twitter was...

Probably an attempt to court young people and cord cutters.

Some people don't seem to know that many of the popular channels come free and over the air like radio.

Hopefully they will be broadcasting in 4K. It could be an influential driver of people with 4K TV's to try out Amazon Prime.

I'd bet the has 4K TV and doesn't have Amazon Prime segment to be pretty small.

Probably.

Vizio's TVs are pretty much all Smartcast (Chromecast) now. Chromecast doesn't work with Amazon Video, which is the main reason I don't watch it despite having Prime.

Semantic correction, but it's really Amazon who refuses to let their streaming garden exit their hardware garden. I'd say it's more that Amazon Video doesn't work with the Chromecast. Since, you know, that's driving a lot of Fire Stick purchases (fellow frustrated Chromecast and Prime owner here).

This is the reason I don't watch Amazon Prime video. It's so dumb to have to have a separate device for everything.

I bought a roku. Plays both amazon and netflix perfectly with a great interface.

I'm planning on buying a Fire TV stick. Plugs into your TV like the Chromecast, and plays Netflix, Amazon, Hulu, HBO, etc.

Even on a single Android device, you have to use Amazon's special snowflake app store to get Amazon Prime video. So I don't bother.

Is this a very new phenomenon? My Vizio 4K TV from 2015 has the Amazon video app built in.

Works fine on XBox though.

True. Twitch stopped working with Chromecast immediately after Amazon bought them, so the story checks out.

Maybe thats' sarcasm, but twitch works with chromecast still.

to be fair google wants 30% of all video sales on chromecast which means pay content usually loses money for amazon on that platform. I thought they allowed non-pay content on chromecast though eg prime video.

Are you maybe confusing Google Play and Chromecast? You can't buy anything on the Chromecast you simply steam to it. Apps just need to support it as a output target.

Amazon Video works on Roku boxes and the iPhone and iPad. It does let you AirPlay to an AppleTV.

I've always just cast the fullscreen video in Chrome to the Chromecast on the TV we have without a built-in Amazon "app". A bit clunky but works fine, unlike any of their mobile apps and non-Fire receivers.

Indeed. For some reason Amazon, appears to have a major axe to grind with Google only - I'd hazard it's their market dominance and the threat of the Play Store platform. Just makes it even more irritating. You can buy a Roku on Amazon too...Not a chromecast.[0]

[0]http://lifehacker.com/amazon-banning-the-chromecast-is-unbel...

If it sounded otherwise, my bad.

I was certainly aware of the causer of incompatibility :)

They are actually not producing the games themselves, just the online streaming rights, so I think it will be capped at the 720p the games are usually recorded at.

I just want to watch local games on my HD antenna. Being locked out of a Patriots MNF game, forcing me to either go to a bar or watch an illegal stream, is simply absurd.

Why is this absurd? It's expecting you to pay for their product.

You do realize that he's paying, right? They force you to go to the game physically to watch it (unless the game is sold out), which IMO is pretty unreasonable.

Really? How much did the person watching at home pay?

It's not absurd. I don't like it, but it's not absurd.

Not sure if you're familiar with blackout rules. [0] It's complex but basically, even if you have paid for cable or for NFL GamePass (online), you can still be blacked out for local games.

It's absurd because you paid for the games and you should be entitled to the same content whether you're in Michigan or California. Even if you haven't paid, it's absurd because it reduces exposure to the local football team, which can only hurt them in the long run.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Football_League_telev...

watching it over a regular broadcast is paying for it. you're watching ads.

You're also watching ads on any paid steam.

No the point is to entice ticket sales. If the game is sold out its broadcast..

Don't forget that many of the stadiums are at least partially funded by taxes.

I think the Patriots might be the one exception to that.

Nope. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gillette_Stadium

Did you miss the below quote from the linked article?

"...After the Hartford proposal fell through, Robert Kraft paid for 100% of the construction costs, a rare instance of an NFL owner privately financing the construction of a stadium."

Concurrently announced was a new road to access the stadium from U.S. Route 1, and an additional 3,000 parking spaces to accommodate the increased number of fans.. In other words the stadium is only part of the total construction costs. But, politically indirect costs where an easy sell.

I'm going out on a limb to speculate that a stadium costs more to build than a parking lot...

The patriots stadium construction was owner funded.

"After the Hartford proposal fell through, Robert Kraft paid for 100% of the construction costs, a rare instance of an NFL owner privately financing the construction of a stadium."

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gillette_Stadium]

Concurrently announced was a new road to access the stadium from U.S. Route 1 so not quite.

That doesn't mean the city paid for it. If you start a new land development to put up houses, you often cover all the costs associated with putting in roads and signs. Not saying that's what happened here but one sentence saying a road was put up doesn't indicate paid for by taxes.

Sports blackout rules are pretty much the definition of absurd.

You can watch if the game is sold out

Which a patriots game will be.

Local games are simulcast over the air.

Seconding this; if a game in on MNF check your local ABC feed.

The NFL eliminated the "black-out" rule back in 2014. All home games are available on local TV.

So Amazon seems to be competing pretty hard for my streaming dollars.

I subscribe to Netflix and I buy a HBO Go subscription when GoT comes around (and cancel it right afterwards)

Given the good things I've heard about a few of Amazon's shows (the Man in the High Castle for instance), I'm tempted to give it a try.

But I'm not going to pay for two streaming services at the same time. I just don't stream enough to make it a feasible choice.

I reckon this is a good problem to have. Lower costs for me, and higher content quality

Amazon is the better deal if you only go for one, their content library has gotten better and better.

Also, consider the other perks you get with Amazon, shipping, music, books etc

No question they have the infrastructure to do this well. I was impressed with the quality that Yahoo managed when they streamed some live games last season - perfect clarity with zero buffering and very little choppiness to the stream that some other providers don't always manage.

I use Prime video extensively and it works great, but I've not seen them attempt a live stream. I actually don't know how big a technical challenge it is compared to static streaming.

Amazon owns Twitch so I'd say they have some experience with that

YouTube is my overwhelming choice, you want to be on a platform that is in some form substituting TV. Twitter, FBLive, Amazon, AppleTV, XboxLive etc. are all nice but are sideshows.

YouTube and Netflix are the only two real games in town, but YouTube is the overwhelming front-runner.

Thursday games are usually the worst, so I'm not sure what kind of a coup this is. Really, the NFL needs to bag the whole idea of Thursday games

Agreed. TNF doesn't allow teams enough time for preparation and physical recovery from the previous week's game. Especially when the previous game takes place on Sunday or Monday night.

The Redskins had a stretch this past season where they had to play MNF on 11/21, and then TNF on 11/24 -- only 2 full days in between. That scheduling was absurd.

Is it really that big of a deal if that happens once in awhile? I'm probably opening a huge can of worms with this comparison, but NHL players play 3-4 games a week all the time. Granted, both sports are tough as hell on the players.

Football is much more tough than hockey and needs recovery time. Hockey is tough but Football you have running backs/WRs getting hit on every other play. You have the QB getting knocked down 3-5 times a game. The the offensive line is having a pushing and hand war with the defensive line on every single play while playing strategically and covering additional players. The WRs have to sprint on every play. And for special teams you have the opposite team running at you as you run at them.

When will VR sports streaming become a thing?

I want to watch a match virtually from within the stadium.

Steve Ballmer talked about this recently on a podcast, and said that they are working on it. It would allow you to buy a "virtual ticket" for any seat in the building.

I think it's a pretty great idea for fans who live far away from their favorite teams.

Sporting events (and experiences like concerts more broadly) seem like one of those areas where VR could actually find paying customers. There's a proven market for subscribing to watch this sort of activity and it avoids the physical interaction/feedback challenges that a lot of other VR applications have.

The tech still needs to get better and there are certainly questions of viewer fatigue etc. But it certainly seems like a very plausible use of VR.

i don't get this. You get a better view of the game on tv (multi-angles, commentary, etc.). You go to arenas for the experience, of getting there beforehand, tailgating, going with your friends/kids. You get a worse view but you get a better experience. Why would you use VR for a worse view without the experience?

As a baseball fan who doesn't live in a city with a team, I would definitely use this. You're right that you don't get the full experience with VR, but I disagree that the view isn't part of the experience. So if the choice is no experience, only TV viewing, or some little bit of it, I'll take VR. Not every time I watch, of course, but every once in a while, definitely.

EDIT: I just realized that you're probably focused on football. Football isn't a great live sport for viewing, so I get where you are coming from there. The pregame experience (tailgating) is the biggest reason to go to a football game. I've done plenty of tailgating where we never go into the game at all.

For other sports I think this makes more sense.

concerts in VR you say?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4kcIy9XGmwI

NBA already has this... http://nbavr.ca/

Reviews were mixed, I've read that it's a great experience and has huge potential, but there is a lot to be desired with the camera positions. There are two(?) cameras, one located at the middle of the court, courtside, and one right below the net. So you can see dunks right above you.

Only need to signup 500k people to break even.

So cable and all its burdens is just followimg the cordcutters. Please amazon, let the sportsball fools pay their own way. I cut cable partly to avoid paying the sports tax.

>Amazon has wanted to put sports rights on its Amazon Prime video service,

Amazon wants me to cancel my Prime Video Service....

I would have rather gotten Season 3-n of Alpha House than Football or any other sports.. If they start investing in sports over premium content they can count me out...

I have been a prime member almost from the beginning of prime, I own 6 fireTV devices, and a few Kindle's, I am deep in the Amazon eco system, I will rip them all out over sports..

I dropped cable TV originally because I grew tried of most of my payment going to subsidize sports, and having my channels interrupted with "Live Sports"

Where did it say they were transferring funding from Alpha House to ThNF?

They cancelled Alpha House awhile back, I do not believe I implied they cancelled because of NFL, I simply stated I think the 50 million would have been better spent on that show than buying any NFL garbage

That said every company has a Budget, and the 50 Million they are giving to the NFL for their over priced waste of time is 50 Million they could have spent on quality original entertainment, or buying some back catalog somewhere.

personally I would get more enjoyment if they released a video of Jeff Bezos burning 50 Million in a 55 Gallon drum...

//I can not stand the NFL....

So it was fine when my logistics membership was subsidizing your TV viewing, but now that Amazon is offering something I want to watch, it's awful they are using memberships to subsidize something not everyone wants?

Okay then.

>So it was fine when my logistics membership was subsidizing your TV viewing,

No, it is not. I have also advocated for a Shipping only Prime.

I have a problem with the "Everything including the Kitchen Sink" Prime,

Clearly not everyone agrees with you but honestly I'm in the same boat.

Why does it have to be either/or?

So if they pocketed the $50 million or did share buybacks or similar you'd be ok, but you have an ideological problem with sports and will cancel over them?

He's probably concerned that going forward a certain large percentage of his "Prime" subscription will go toward sports, just like cable:

https://consumerist.com/2014/08/05/espn-accounts-for-more-th...

...I doubt Amazon will get that bad, but it's definitely a good reason to currently avoid cable. Really, for people who don't like sports, the notion that watching people throw a ball around costs vastly more than the other channels is baffling. I really don't want some heavyweight imbeciles getting my money when I want to watch news/movies/comedy/etc.

This just seems like such a strange attitude, given the veritable ocean of non-sports content out there at the moment. If your show got cancelled, it's almost certainly not because of sports; rather, it's exceedingly likely that it's up against some other show (or shows) which drew a larger audience.

In fact, realize that up until very recently a great deal of non-sports content only got created because sports were used as leverage against the cable companies. The bundling that happened on major cable networks required cable companies to carry channels which comparatively few people watch in order for the cable company to be allowed to carry e.g. ESPN. If you're a fan of indie content/comedy, you should be happy about the existence of ESPN et al, otherwise your show would likely not exist.

That's funny, because if they had made another season of Alpha House instead of getting Thursday Night Football, I would have cancelled my Prime subscription. It all evens out in the end I guess.

>> It all evens out in the end I guess.

unlikely, most of the cord cutters I know did so for simlair reasons to me. We have no intrest in sports and grew tried of the Sports Tax on our entertainment content.

Most of the people I know that still subscribe to a traditional packaged TV service do so mainly because of live sports

Amazon is attempting to get more people to "cut the cord" with this move, but they are risking alienating the people that already have.

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