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Comment by pluc | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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.

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.

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.

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.

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