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Comment by Niksko | Hacker News Reader

The irony for me is that the NHL is an excellent example of why piracy happens. Last hockey season, I could pay the NHL directly to get access to all hockey games from Australia. They have a Google TV app that was flawed, but worked well enough, and I was happy.

This year, because the NHL have done a deal with ESPN, I have to do a convoluted deal with a third party to get access to ESPN, and my experience is terrible. ESPN's Android app is terrible, the Google TV app flat out doesn't work, and casting from my phone to my TV craps out during period breaks and long ad breaks.

Piracy would be easier, better and cheaper than paying for things. It's the same reason Netflix reduced piracy, and now it's tanking. They created something that was easier, cheaper and better than piracy. Now with their increasing prices, declining quality, and fragmentation of their library, piracy is going to increase again.

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“We think there is a fundamental misconception about piracy. Piracy is almost always a service problem and not a pricing problem. If a pirate offers a product anywhere in the world, 24 x 7, purchasable from the convenience of your personal computer, and the legal provider says the product is region-locked, will come to your country 3 months after the US release, and can only be purchased at a brick and mortar store, then the pirate’s service is more valuable.” --Gabe Newell, [0]

[0] https://www.escapistmagazine.com/Valves-Gabe-Newell-Says-Pir...

He was right then, and he's still right now.

This was a big part of why Steam was such a success. You get free updates, online multiplayer, storage of your games, cross-platform support, etc

I absolutely love this comment, but very few creative media actually work like this. Valve is able to create a market where it makes sense to discount older games, which means that people buy more of them, and developers come out ahead. This works because Steam is fixed price pay-per-game - the more games you play, the more money comes out of your pocket and goes to the developers. This is quite possibly the most consumer-friendly business model you could pick where you still get paid for your work.

It's tempting to look at Netflix and say, "oh they're stupid, why would they stop being like they were in 2012". The reality is that 2012 Netflix streaming was never going to last. They were dramatically underpricing their subscription because nobody in the TV industry understood streaming[0] and thus underpriced their TV shows. When TV companies realized, "oh no, people are actually cancelling cable to subscribe to Netflix", they started to charge Netflix higher rates... because it turns out the TV business sort of just requires that $100 + ad revenue come out of your pocket every month no matter if the bill collector is called Comcast or Netflix.

Sports are like this but worse. Out of that $100+ads that cable costs, the ad revenue pays for the entertainment, and the $100 pays for the sports, because pretty much every sport is far more extravagantly expensive to run than you'd think, and never pays its way for anything[1]. This is also why sports will often have extremely customer-hostile business practices and weird blackout policies - because the audience itself has been sold to other companies who can then force them to pay more money.

[0] Remember how there was a writers' strike about a decade and a half ago, over, among other things, streaming royalties? TV execs genuinely thought that Netflix was never really going to take off and replace cable. Just like how the music execs thought downloads were never really going to take off and replace CDs.

[1] If you really want to get angry, look up how much money your city is paying in tax credits to your local sports teams.

Note that Newell's comments are from the perspective of the consumer. I, as the consumer, don't care at all about how expensive it is or is not to run a production company or cable channel or streaming service or sports team, I'm assessing quality, ease of access, and price.

>because the audience itself has been sold to other companies who can then force them to pay more money

Again, don't care. The point is that I, as the consumer, can't pay to watch NHL games in a reasonable way, but the pirate's product is better and free. So! Is it immoral to "steal" from ESPN/NHL in this way? Maybe, but it strikes me as kinda like Mr. Burns setting up a sunshade so as to be able to force everyone to use nuclear power for their lights -- it's a way to try to make money, and aw-shucks things are expensive [0] so they've gotta make money, but it's not going to work terribly well because of the realities of the medium and the consumer's experience.

>It's tempting to look at Netflix and say, "oh they're stupid, why would they stop being like they were in 2012"

Your straw-reasoner doesn't seem to get that Netflix isn't the owner of the content they're trying to get you to pay money for. Understanding that 2012-Netflix is streaming things they've licensed at rates reasonable to them is key to understanding why modern-Netflix stopped being like they were in 2012 -- the rates are no longer reasonable, so the content gets dropped. In contrast, the NHL is the owner of the content they're trying to get you to pay money for.

The NHL could unwind itself from predatory audience-eyeball-deals, just as I, as the consumer, could jump through flaming hoops to get a low-quality legal stream, but neither party wants to do that. So!

[0] I'm well aware of the horrifying practice of municipal (and even higher levels of government!) spending on private sports arenas, but I was under the impression that sports teams printed money. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_professional_sports_le... suggests I'm not wrong...

Yes, you are correct that the NHL sets the price of the content. And if fans were to lose interest or move to piracy, then Newell's argument would absolutely apply.

The problem is that, as it stands, sports fans aren't going to do that. Remember, these are the same kinds of people who shout at city governments to keep subsidizing sports arenas so they don't lose "their team". The NHL has a massive money spigot and they're going to keep it flowing for as long as they can.

> same kinds of people who shout at city governments to keep subsidizing sports arenas

In San Diego, we had a stadium which had hosted 3 Super Bowls. The NFL team owner arranged for multiple referendums on the question of city subsidies for an improved stadium in a San Diego location he preferred. These votes failed. Then the owner moved the team to Los Angeles.

American fans: You can loose the bonds of subsidy to teams that believe they can get anything and be paid to take it.

> Out of that $100+ads that cable costs, the ad revenue pays for the entertainment, and the $100 pays for the sports, because pretty much every sport is far more extravagantly expensive to run than you'd think

I think it’s kinda the reverse - e.g. the AHL is able to pay its players, televise its games, and make do with an order of magnitude less revenue than the NHL. After adjusting contracts, etc. the NHL could presumably do the same.

> "oh no, people are actually cancelling cable to subscribe to Netflix"

Because Netflix was a better service than cable, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to see that. The change came from TV companies wanting their own streaming service too, basically bringing back the cable model to the internet.

If they don't want to depend on Netflix, why don't they cooperate to build a unified and neutral streaming service where they can share the revenue? Every Internet user would want to subscribe to that.

> If they don't want to depend on Netflix, why don't they cooperate to build a unified and neutral streaming service where they can share the revenue? Every Internet user would want to subscribe to that.

That’s exactly what Hulu was meant to be. It’s a fair thought that well-positioned people shared, but it turns out it’s not so simple.

You mean…cable

Disney/HBO content is worth a lot more - they both have multiple billion dollar franchises - than Netflix.

> The change came from TV companies wanting their own streaming service too, basically bringing back the cable model to the internet.

With streaming, the middle man is cut out (versus cable) which makes a huge difference. Rather than buying a package of 100 channels from the cable company, I can instead subscribe to individual packages of content direct from much smaller packages of channels. Although I am paying more for the content I want, I save money because I'm not forced to subscribe to dozens of channels I will never watch.

A "unified and neutral streaming service where they can share the revenue" already exists. That's called cable - and 2012 Netflix was just a better, more convenient, and cheaper version of that.

Part of the whole premise of how the Internet was supposed to disrupt the publishing business was disintermediation - i.e. cutting out the middleman. Instead of everyone selling their works through a distributor, they'd sell them direct to the public. And that's basically what every streaming service turned into - including modern Netflix.

Cable companies used to be good, too. The shenanigans they resorted to with "packages" and price discrimination were the result of the same pricing pressure from the TV networks that killed 2012 Netflix. When Netflix refused to play that game, the TV networks decided to disrupt Netflix, because they own the content and Netflix owns nothing.

Sometimes innovation sucks.

> A "unified and neutral streaming service where they can share the revenue" already exists. That's called cable

A true neutral streaming service would be like a pirate streaming site: available globally, no geofencing, and one price for everything. 2012 Netflix showed that it can work.

In Canada, I can't even buy the NHL's own product to watch hockey games! They black out their own local games because they've sold the rights to someone else. The NHL wants me to buy cable, then get not one, but four channels in order to watch one team (since RDS split the rights with TVA Sports and they are both specialty channels, that you must subscribe to their parent channels to get, or in case of RDS it _is_ the parent channel, but _must_ come with their child channels). Thanks but no thanks.

The NHL is 100% the cause of NHL piracy. I have the money, give me an option that isn't retarded.

Exact same thing with the NBA. Paid for their product but needed to sub to a couple local outfits to get coverage on all my teams games. It was super frustrating how bad the experience was. Now paying two separate subs to catch all the games.

I live in Leafs region and last I checked I think you have to be subscribed to three different premium cable channels to watch all 82 Leafs games.

Similarly frustrating is trying to follow tennis in Canada. There is no comprehensive tennis streaming option, the ATP and WTA use separate apps that each have a $20/month subscription, and do not have rights to show any major tournaments. So for four months out of the year, you’re actually paying $20 for two weeks of tennis coverage, and you also need to pay for TSN streaming if you want to watch the biggest tournaments. All this adds up to $60+tax/month to follow _one_ sport!

I really enjoyed the TennisTV app in the US, but this year they updated it and added a bunch of 'features' and now its slow and ugly and the logo is big. It still 'works' but it's not nearly as good as it used to be. My biggest gripe with tennis coverage is exactly what you are saying where the Tennis app doesn't stream the grand slams. I couldn't even figure out how to watch the French Open. I was too afraid to purchase the wrong streaming option. Was it Peacock? Or TennisChannel App? Or something else? I have regular nbc. ESPN streams the other slams, but they stuff matches with commercials and it completely ruins the viewing experience if you are coming from TennisTV.

Last US Open ESPN would play the same Home Depot commercial over and over and the first part of the commercial is someone using a circular saw. I have a massive phobia to saws and I couldn't change the stream fast enough to not see it in the commercial so I inevitably gave up. I'm a massive tennis fan, but I rarely watch the grand slams. .

The worst part of all this though is that there is a TennisTV App for the men's and a TennisChannel App for the women's. It's unbearable. Tennis coverage is broken. mdm_ you are not alone on this one.

You can buy a sportsnet subscription for $12/mo, directly from sportsnet, and stream all the NHL games (and more) live in the sportsnet app.

I got it for the playoffs, it was easy, and I was ok with the pricing.

Sportsnet has the same blackout policy to not infringe on whoever owns the rights in Quebec.

The cause of sports piracy and all of these weird deals is because games are most valuable in the regions of the participating teams. It's a Gordian Knot of rights issues, and it exists as a way to extract as much money from fans as possible.

And the teams want it this way -- both the Leafs and Canadiens are tied into telco/cableco ownership, who has a vested interest in getting you to pay more for games.

That's correct. If I lived in Montreal and wanted to watch all the Avalanche's games, there would be no issues. If I live in Montreal and want to watch the local team, I need to agree to get fucked three different ways.

I'm sitting in my chair wearing a Red Wings jersey as I type this, and I haven't watched a single game this season after several years as an NHL.tv subscriber. I always had to do some shenanigans to be able to watch my team, but as they ramped up their protections to prevent people from ever being able to watch their home team, I eventually gave up and cancelled my subscription.

Haven't seen a game since and now I spend my weekends watching F1 cars drive around in circles. They seem happy to have me as a fan so that's where my money goes these days.

After Putin's invasion in the Ukraine, Formula 1 management has cancelled the airing deal with the Russian sports channel that aired the races. Comically, this led to an immense improvement in coverage: long time TV commenters started commenting the races live on their page in VK, without the video stream, and others started streaming the race video, mixing the audio stream with their commentary. An there are NO FREAKING ADS! Ads were a curse - they took up almost 20% of the race time, but now there are simply none. And commenters and streamers get a lot of donations from fans for their service. Imagine that?!

If you are in Russia, please do whatever you can, however small, to bring this war to an end. Nobody is winning.

When people said the same thing about Iraq and Afghanistan, what did you do?

I voted and advocated for change in directions I felt were healthy and positive.

Well, I too have always voted against Putin and his gang, and was always very vocal about my political views. Somehow, it didn't help.

The prolonged war is a US strategy. Asking a random Russian citizens to stop it is like asking a random American to stop it

This is a weird framing. “Prolonging the war is a US strategy” only makes sense if you believe Russia has an unassailable right to conquer Ukraine. If Russia wants to stop the war, it need only withdraw its forces. The US is only prolonging the war in the sense that it’s preventing Russia from winning it. It’s unreasonable to expect the rest of the world to roll over and play dead because easing Russia’s conquest would shorten the war.

Russia needs to control Ukraine to prevent NATO. Ukraine is a pawn in a larger game. The US is prolonging the war to deplete Russia but the strategy is costing Ukraine lives, Ukraine cities, causing a European energy crisis and costing the west wealth all while making China stronger.

That’s a completely delusional viewpoint. Russia can claim to need anything it wishes to, but that doesn’t entitle it or a resistance-free conquest. Russia invaded another sovereign country, which is obviously the thing that is costing all of those lives. The idea that you can invade your neighbor and then hyperventilate about them fighting back is childish and naive. It’s comical to rain artillery fire on another country and then blame America for proving the ammunition to shoot back. Again, your frame only makes sense if you think Russia has some special, magical right to invade its neighbors and kill their citizens, which practically no one outside of Russia believes.

Yes, it’s killing lots of Ukrainians, causing an energy crisis, and enhancing China’s relative position. Those are the horrifying consequences of Russia’s invasion, not of the fight against it. There’s no world in which you get to invade another country and then shame them for fighting back, at least without the derision of the rest of to world. What did you think would happen? “Ah, Russians think they ‘need’ to do this, better lay down and die”,

Of course the US is funding and arming Ukraine. It would be foolish not to. But what game are Ukrainians a pawn in? The fight for their own survival? If Russia doesn’t want to be “depleted” it need merely leave. The decision has always been in Putin’a hands.

Russia has the same degree of agency as any other country, but you are acting like it’s the pawn in its own foolish war. Perhaps Russia is a nation of children who think they are merely blown about by the wind, unable to take responsibility for even their most explicit actions?

Putin repeatedly kicked a massive tiger and then acted hurt, full of righteous indignation, when the tiger’s claws came out. No amount of mental gymnastics is going to change that.

Russia cannot leave or NATO will let Ukraine in and put troops/bombs on the edge of Russian. Failing to understand that makes you an easy pawn. Calling millions of people children tells me you are out of your depth.

You are the one claiming Russians are children, but with different words. You say Russia has no choice, but you are also claiming the American response is a strategy to prolong the war, as opposed to, say, the natural reaction. So in your telling, Russian behavior is compelled and mechanical, utterly lacking agency, and the US is, somehow, from the other side of the planet, the one with agency on how the war goes. That is a child and an adult.

Pawns are the players not making choices.

I don’t think that; I think instead that Russia is being foolish and contemptible in prosecuting an unjust and insane war, and is surprised to find out the world isn’t playing along. They are adults and they are responsible for their actions. And obviously the war is their action.

> The prolonged war is a US strategy.

If so, that's a stupid strategy. Russia can easily defeat the US's strategy by leaving Ukraine.

Russia cannot give up the Ukraine anymore than the US could not let Canada fall into the hands of China. Ukraine is a buffer to NATO.

It's a Biden strategy.. so classifying it as stupid makes sense. The thought is to prolong the war so Russia becomes weak and wastes resources and go bankrupt. Meanwhile it benefits China..

that's the same thing as asking people in europe to please do whatever they can to influence NATO's behavior...

or asking somebody in Colombia to please help stop all that cocaine (or dunno)

there's something deeply flawed in the assumptions of how the world works when pleading to a random person in a country to please please influence the actions of the international institutions controlling the country.

The main sponsors of war with Ukraine are EU and US who continue to buy oil and gas from Putin. It is estimated that since Feb 24 EU has paid more than 60 Billion Euro [1] for resources stolen from Russian people. If this revenue stream would dry out, Putin's economy would collapse overnight. So the most effective strategy is to cut the payments, now.

(I personally think that EU should have stopped buying energy resources from Russia in 2014 after Crimea annexation. Instead, EU countries increased energy dependence on Russia and continued to fuel Putin's oppression and war machines)

As for my personal efforts, well, I don't think that there is a realistic way of doing something significant. I have protested Putin's regime for more than 10 years, was detained once, cops threatened to plant drugs on me, and do nasty things to my family. I don't think unarmed protests have any prospects in stopping Putin's regime anyway: Ukraine has an army with heavy weapons, Javelins and Baryaktars, and help from the West, and they still have difficulty stopping Putin's orcs. And whatever he has thrown on Ukraine he has at home - so good luck fighting that barehanded. By now I think everybody understands that if the protesters will gather enough strength so riot police would not be able to disperse them, he'll just order to mow the protesters down with machine guns and flamethrowers.

So, a few years ago I moved most of my business offshore to EU, and pay ~zero taxes to Putin's regime, but now this virtue signalling campaign by western businesses cancelling everything russian actually creates great difficulties to simply function. Russians were discriminated even before by EU and US institutions and banks, and now this discrimination is turned up to eleven. The sad irony is that most of these discriminating measures actually help Putin, like idiotic ban of Visa / Mastercard payments - now Russian people have great difficulty paying for foreign VPS services, for example, and can only visit websites that perpetuate existing state propaganda.

[1]: https://crea.shinyapps.io/russia_counter/

Thank you.

Yeah, because this is how wars are stopped. /s

No, no I am not.

If I were winning, the demagogueries we call democracies would be extinguished from existence, and new nations would be forming in their place.

And as far as Russia goes; it would have never gotten this far if 'I' were winning.

The Cabal is winning, and they have been for years now. Russia vs Ukraine is just their latest plaything.

Nothing we do or say will end this bullshit until the rest of you do what is right for once in your lives, and not just whatever is most convenient to you.

Have a nice day. Might be your last. Who knows? Nobody.

It's "Ukraine", not "the Ukraine":

https://time.com/12597/the-ukraine-or-ukraine/

I know, but it is almost a meme. Long before even 2014, Ukrainians formed a sizeable chunk of Russian internet. And one particular phenomenon were the demands by some Ukrainians to spell "в Украине" ("in Ukraine") instead of "на Украине" ("on Ukraine"), as is the norm in Russian language.

("в Украине" does not really have negative connotations, and sounds about as correct in Russian as "on Ukraine" sounds in Russian. Still, some Ukrainians are offended by this form and believe it to be a denigrating towards their independent country. Needless to say that after Crimea annexation such demands increased tenfold and, after the war started, a further tenfold)

There are other Slavic languages like Czech and Polish, which have exactly same spelling "na Ukraine", but Ukrainians somehow give them a pass. Coming to our issue, some Ukrainians also insist that Ukraine should be called THE Ukraine in English. I sometimes comply with this request.

They have asked to not be referred to as "the Ukraine".

This is all the justification that is required.

Respect them or don't. There is no try.

The ones I saw many times demanded "the". It seems you can't make everyone happy.

I’m from Poland and this is final year that we can watch F1 on TV or via F1.tv. Starting with 2023 F1 in Poland becomes available exclusively via streaming on ViaPlay. And those guys are hell-bent that 780p is best for sport because 60fps is more important than picture quality. Liberty Media is up for a rude awakening.

Is that a type and you meant 480p?

Hey! There are turns and stuff in an F1 race! It's not a circle!

Same issue as a Wings fan outside of the market area (Detroit) in Chicago.

Yes, but it's important to remember that Detroit Sucks.

Ayyyyyyy

Baseball is the worst. Their app is pretty great but you can't watch local games because they've sold rights to Bally's so you need a cable TV subscription. The Sunday morning game is only on Peacock and that's a separate fee. The Friday night game is only on Apple TV, but at least it's free. The Sunday night game is on ESPN, so again you need a TV subscription. Every once in a while, some game is only on Facebook or YouTube.

Why won't they sell me a tier in their app where I can see all the games? I don't mind paying more.

And if you live in Iowa, you can’t watch six teams regardless.

Yeah, those are the "local" games whose broadcast rights were sold to somebody else.

When I was in Hawaii I couldn't watch any of the west coast teams - Mariners, Angels, Giants, Dodgers, A's, or Padres because they were the local teams.

This is where it gets asinine - back now 20 years ago the local San Diego network that made a deal for the Padres also made the game free to stream for anyone in the San Diego area - that was nice. I doubt anyone is doing that these days. I don't even care if I get the ad-filled stream (for awhile you could get "raw video" feed on the MLB app, which was fun because when the game went to commercial you'd just see whatever the last camera that had been on wandering around the park) - make it so we can get the game!

And don't even get me started on the "it's easier to be a fan of a team far away than your local one" that is so common now because of all the restrictions.

Why would the Yankees, who own the YES Network, want to give up carriage revenue from that TV network? And it's not just the Yankees -- a surprising number of teams are tied up with regional sports networks, and they're more interested in maximizing that revenue than providing a good online product. And sports fandom is generally localized to the team's location ("we'll root, root, root for the home team/if they don't win its a shame"), so that local cable deal is generally one of the biggest sources of revenue (generally on par with ticket sales).

The only reason why the MLB has a good app is because they can capture the thin slice of revenue teams miss out on from out-of-market fans with that app; there's generally not enough of those fans to drive a per-team standalone subscription service (although the MLB does offer one, it's not price-competitive with the full league option), so the league does it as a whole.

If I would normally see Yankees games on the YES network and I watch a Yankees game on the MLB app, MLB should send a portion of my subscription money to YES.

The issue is that MLB.tv is a lot, _lot_ less expensive than what the Yankees make by offering a cable channel (where they make a lot of money from people who never even tune the channel, because of carriage fees). So that $160/year you pay the MLB would have to outweigh all that money that YES makes because they have exclusive rights to carry games in their broadcast area.

Are you willing to pay $300/year+ for MLBtv?

> Are you willing to pay $300/year+ for MLBtv?

For every game? Absolutely. Sign me up.

For me to get my local teams and the games on ESPN I have to subscribe to a mid-level cable package which costs something like $1000 / year. To get the Peacock games, it's another $5 / month.

> Are you willing to pay $300/year+ for MLBtv?

Given how many people I know who pay $80+ a month for cable only for sports, I guarantee you'd get a lot of takers for a "stream any game, any time, anywhere, $350/yr" plan for any of several major sports, including baseball.

The copyright monopolists always defeat themselves with their little "deals" that nobody really cares about. They run their little profit maximization schemes with the full knowledge that consumers have no choice but accept it. The service they offer is always of such poor quality that nobody would be giving them the time of day were it not for the actual government-enforced monopolies that rob people of choice.

"Piracy" is the full realization of the potential of our computer and internet technologies. They will never, ever be able to compete it with it without legal backing.

maybe - what about the animation and camera action on NFL football games. I don't watch sports but you have to be impressed if you watch what they built. I think of it more like Rome or Las Vegas..

Not enough to justify copyright monopolies.

Welcome to the UK, where the Premier League matches are split between three different broadcasters. So there isn't even one place you can go and be sure of being able to watch your favourite teams. Instead you need to see if Sky, BT or Amazon have got the rights to that particular game - all of which require paying for.

In the US, I would like to watch football games from my favorite team.

This team is in the Pac-12, which has its own media company https://pac-12.com/

My choice is literally just: 1) Subscribe to Satellite, or XFinity(comcast), or sling and make sure I pick a tier that has the Pac12 Network, ABC and FOX (local affiliates that carry some home games) and ESPN, and between them get many of the games live.

I would much, much rather just give my money directly to the pac12 network, and be able to live-stream all of the football games for my teams I like (and basketball, etc)as they happen, but apparently, that isn't a thing.

Piracy is so much easier, because of the business descisions that have been made by media companies to offer 'exclusive' content.

I seriously doubt that out of all the problems Netflix is having, the majority is due to piracy. Netflix content doesn’t have the mass market appeal of Disney/HBO. They don’t have the IP that gets people excited nor do they have the multiple outlets of revenue to fund content like Disney.

And before the typical “I don’t like Marvel drek” response, a bunch of HN posters don’t matter. Disney has multiple billion+ franchises

All of ESPN's streaming solutions are awful. "Your event is starting soon" messages half hour into events, events on the wrong channel, events not cutting over, and the list goes on

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