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Your local ABC channel, ABC News Live, Disney Channel, Disney Junior, Disney XD, Freeform, FX, FXX, FXM, National Geographic, National Geographic Wild, ESPN, ESPN2, ESPN3 (by authentication to the ESPN app), ESPNU, ESPNEWS SEC Network, ACC Network.
As would likely most I believe. Thus sports propping up this ancient model and myself being part of the problem.
I'm surprised Disney/ESPN is only $15/mo of the bill to be honest, I think Youtube is taking a hit there as I'd bet it's more than half the total base subscription fee.
It's probably more. They're just happy to keep your money.
What happens to big time sports when the fans are priced out of the arena and priced out of watching on TV as well?
My thesis for this is that most people aren’t sports fans, but they pay for sports whether they want to or not due to all the bundling. In a way, non-fans are subsidizing the content for fans.
My sneaky suspicion is that unbundling sports would be a cataclysmic event for the sports television industry. I would pay $15/month for ESPN but I wouldn’t pay $25.
What do you think?
This is partially because it benefits the conglomerates business models to have as many channels and content streams as possible to sell ad time on, and partially because for sports teams they can functionally name their price.
In seattle, the brand new hockey team is only available through Root Sports, a smallish production company owned by Warner media and the baseball team. You can only watch the new hockey team if you subscribe to a cable package or online cable package (YouTube tv etc).
Why would a brand new team with no established fan base want to not be in front of as many eyeballs as they can? Because they earn more money when someone pays them to put them behind a cable company.
At no point does this “competition”, which it isn’t, benefit consumers. We used to regulate things like this.
At some point the remaining subscribers can't pay the cost of the ridiculous fees charged for the major sporting events. When that happens the fees must come down, or the sporting companies must find a different solution.
Honestly a great solution for the major sports, like football in Europe, would be to great something like what the MLB did in the US. I know a lot of football fans who'd love to get a subscription for all the Champions League games. Just a fixed price and then watch any game you like. Why pay for Formula 1, hockey or even the Bundesliga, if you only care about the Danish Superliga and Champions League.
Edit: Something something, cost of living. $500 is 3300DKK, which would let you go to a bar, have a meal and four or five beers only seven times.
For that price, you get all the NFL games except Monday night and Thursday night games...
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This is the kind of BS that makes not only not buy sports, but to avoid it.
I don't understand how it's legal. Imagine if Netflix could force everyone in a geographic area to subscribe or lose the ability to stream all non-Netflix stuff. It wouldn't even make sense, but this is what happened here.
I think we should kick the Cubs out of Chicago for pulling a stunt like this during a pandemic when most people are barely able to pay their existing bills. Sports teams are absolute vampires that abuse the local population in the name of obscene profits.
It's actually worse than that. I've looked into it, because I'd like to watch Mariners and Kraken games in Portland (blacked out here too). Root Sportsis only available through cable providers and FuboTV or Directv Stream. No other streaming services offer it and there is no way to subscribe directly. It's a mess, so I generally don't watch the games or pirate them.
Back when Big Ugly Dishes were a thing it was far cheaper to piecemeal subscribe to your desired packages. Then DirecTV came along and forced the cable tv model on their subscribers and lobbied hard for laws that killed BUDs. I remember doing the math at the time and DirecTV was about double the price of a BUD.
Now we're back to adhoc subscription if you want to use a bunch of disparate apps and websites, so in one way it could be cheaper. But each streaming site charges retail prices to consumers so in aggregate it ends up costing as much or more than in the cable model. Even so the forced subsidy of ESPN in particular has always been a deeply aggravating thing for me. Sort of like agreeing to split lunch evenly and then discovering after the fact everyone's having sandwiches except the one guy who ordered steak.
Sure about that?
https://www.thelawyersdaily.ca/articles/12443/copyright-trol...
How about we just pay for the things we use? Imagine if a restaurant put a bottle of wine on your bill even though you don't like wine.
My sense is that there's very little really interesting scripted TV on non-premium streaming broadcast/cable at this point. I certainly haven't heard of any "must see TV" on any of the networks or even stations like AMC for ages.
I hate it, but I really do pay that much per month to watch a single game a week plus have the convenience for guests having access to "regular TV".
The content networks force an all or nothing contract. ESPN must be licensed for all subscribers or no ESPN option for anyone.
The same thing that forced me off of cable has forced me off of OTT.
Google is fairly asking that whatever price they pay for ESPN, that no other streaming service (including Hulu which Disney owns) gets a better price. Disney said no. This is the fundamental reason Google does not now have an agreement with Disney for the channels.
They could make several tiers:
- Youtubers-only content: no big media included
- Tier 2: the same + ABC, ESPN, etc...
- Tier 3: same as 2 + exclusive content only available for Tier 3 subscribers
would be a good business model rather than just charging to remove ads.
They strongarm a lot of providers and I'd be surprised if YouTube held out. They will lose subscribers.