Report: Google has made a bid for Sunday Ticket | Hacker News Reader

Report: Google has made a bid for Sunday Ticket

profootballtalk.nbcsports.com

33 pointsorionion57 comments

> Apple, per the Times, remains the perceived frontrunner. CEO Tim Cook has met with league officials, Cowboys owner Jerry Jones, and Patriots owner Robert Kraft regarding Sunday Ticket. The Times writes that Apple "has made winning the package a priority."

Apple keeps investing so much into exclusivity deals and extended free trials to try to boost usage, and yet the only people I've ever seen recommending Apple TV+ content are those in the Apple blogosphere.

EDIT: Ted Lasso probably came closest to mainstream acceptance and yet... https://trends.google.com/trends/explore/TIMESERIES/16586976...

Huh? I don’t watch sports but Apple Original series are some of the best TV right now.

Like what? Might be my bubble but I've literally heard more about an offshoot of a basically dead franchise (House of the Dragon) than about anything out of Apple.

For all Mankind - probably the best scifi show right now.

It's not saying much to be honest. I find myself fast forwarding through any scenes that don't take place off planet.

Severance, Dr. Brain, Defending Jacob, and WeCrashed were the only good shows I found on Apple TV+. That said those are all extremely good.

> I find myself fast forwarding through any scenes that don't take place off planet.

Hah, yes. I would also have preferred more space scenes and less family drama and office politics.

Severance is one of the best TV shows I've seen in years.

Paul Walter Hauser is killing it in Black Bird.

Tod Lasso is pretty much universally loved by friends of mine who have watched it. You don't have to be a soccer fan to watch it.

I don't know as many people who have watched Severance, but it's an incredibly good show- as long as Season 2 maintains the quality, I think it'll rank up there with shows like The Wire and Breaking Bad.

Severance is great but a really slow burn.

Ted Lasso, Severance, Prehistoric Planet.

Severance, Morning Show, Black Bird, Mythic Quest to start.

Severance, Black Bird (airing now), Slow Horses, Foundation, Ted Lasso, and early parts of Servant.

We’ve watched Defending Jacob, See, Home Before Dark (kids show), Servant and they were very good, quality shows

I had Apple TV+ for a year for free and never saw anything appealing enough to get me to use it.

The first year felt sparse, but it's been a different story lately.

I agree, with the only exception to that (and then again it seemed to me most people discussing it simply pirated it) is Ted Lasso, which is quite popular in some niches (football(the one called soccer in the US) and Football Manager related subreddits for instance).

What? Ted Lasso is really popular. The Morning Show too. Coda won best picture. All three of those are pretty mainstream. Not Netflix show levels of mainstream but certainly not limited to the blogosphere.

Those shows/movies barely register when compared with Stranger Things: https://trends.google.com/trends/explore/TIMESERIES/16586976...

Stranger Things is literally the most popular streaming show ever.

That's like comparing The Larry Sanders show to Seinfeld.

Hey Now!

This isn't exactly an apples-to-oranges comparison. Stranger Things had the advantage of Netflix being a dominant player in the streaming market for many years. Let's compare Ted Lasso with House of Cards, Netflix's first foray into creating an original series:

https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&geo=US&q=%...

Ted Lasso is doing pretty good!

Anecdotal, but I've never even heard of Coda.

And yet it won the Oscars this year... I mean a fair number of people would see it just because of that.

I have never heard of any of those shows

The only show I have ever heard about on Apple tv is Mythic Quest

I see what you did there.

Who cares how popular a streaming service is? Just look at reviews and such to find series/movies you'd like. Apple TV+ has a lot of good stuff IMO; I'm really enjoying Shining Girls at the moment.

For whatever it's worth: I don't have Disney, Netflix, HBO, or Hulu. I do have Apple TV, for Ted Lasso, The Morning Show, Coda, For All Mankind, and Black Bird.

A bunch of other shows that are not great and I don't watch them, but they're not terrible, at least.

No offense but having "Cupertino" in your username kinda reinforces my point :)

Oh noes, someone's looking.

No, I don't work at Apple, never have, never will.

No but chances are you are heavy in the Apple Echosystem which was the point. Apple TV needs to break out of Apple Fans...

I own zero apple products, and have no interest in Apple TV being the first.

That is the point, how many Apple TV users also own an IPhone, iPAD, and a Mac computer?

You mean ecosystem?

> how many Apple TV users also own an IPhone, iPAD, and a Mac computer

just one of those.

They might be mostly confined to Apple fans; I don't know. They do seem, in general, to want a universe of fanboys. Fortunately, Apple TV isn't very sticky that way, so far at least. I watch it completely on non-Apple equipment.

If they didn’t mean “echosystem” it’s the greatest typo of the decade

That's why I made it a question instead a statement. It works either way.

Still, it's kinda like "AppleNumberOneSuperfan says he likes Apple TV".

Um... no. I have an Android phone. No i-anything but I do have the Mac.

Which is why I got AppleTV for free, but now I'm paying for it.

I dunno. My parents and their peer group can't stop recommending Ted Lasso, Coda, Greyhound, etc. It seems to me their audience skews older.

Apple ecosystem is the Jitterbug of the rich.

Random fun fact about the origin story behind NFL Sunday Ticket is that it was aided in creation by Jon Taffer, the guy thats famous for Bar Rescue. He was the sports bar operator of the year in the 1990's and then was approached by a satellite communications company and came up with a plan to present to the NFL. NFL liked the idea so much they decided to do it on their own and put Jon Taffer on the advisory board.

if you want to learn more.. https://www.whiskeyriff.com/2021/10/10/did-you-know-that-jon...

Here's what the budget-phone, non-laptop owning masses can look forward to if Apple has the Sunday Ticket:

* First, install Apple Music on your phone. If you don't have a smartphone, you might just be out of luck here.

* Sign up for or create an Apple ID in Apple Music. Yes, Apple Music, even though you want TV.

* Start an Apple Music trial.

* Log in to the Apple TV app using your account, now that you have a valid account that will let you sign in.

* Use the Apple TV app to upgrade your account to Apple TV+

* Cancel your Apple Music Trial.

This is... absurd? I hope that the product folks are on top of this if they acquire the Sunday Ticket.

For the record, this is the advice currently on 9to5mac.com and is how I subscribed to watch Foundation on Android TV.

Why would they change it if you follow through with it?

Why should products be easy to use?

Honestly that is a good question for the NFL. Why was Sunday Ticket not available on cable systems? Why are great games often blacked out in favor of a "local" team's games (even when local may mean another state or hundreds of miles away)? Why does RedZone have a hard cutoff at 8pm even if overtime games are still in play?

Because I didn't and never will.

Why are you recommending such a circuitous method involving an unrelated phone app when simply trying to access Apple TV in a web browser will lead you to the link to create an Apple ID—whether that browser is on a phone or not?

Because you can't use that Apple ID to then play TV. You need the Apple Music activated account and trial, so you may as well use the Apple Music app to make it.

> You need the Apple Music activated account and trial

That's obviously not accurate. It may be a sufficient workaround for whatever roadblock you hit, but it certainly isn't a requirement; I've never used Apple Music with my Apple ID and had no trouble obtaining Apple TV+ service. A more reasonable hypothesis is that you need to do something with a brand new Apple ID to establish it's authenticity before you can activate a free trial of Apple TV+, and the Apple Music workaround is but one of many options. What kind of error did you hit when trying to go straight to the TV+ trial with a brand new Apple ID?

Sunday Ticket has never been for the masses, it has always been exclusive to DirectTV, which has far fewer subscribers than cable.

According to the New York Times, Google has made a bid

Seems like you should take the Florio attribution out of the headline, since he is not the one breaking the news, just repeating it (as usual).

I guess now that they cost as much as cable they have to become cable to keep up.

Assuming this goes through (whether it’s Apple, Google, Amazon, or whoever), I could see this becoming a cultural tipping point where your ‘average American’ sees the encroachment of big tech into ‘everyday American’ things - more than ever before. All cultural interactions will now be dominated by big tech, whether it’s sports, film, music, or literally anything they see through a screen.

I subscribe to YouTube TV but I hope Apple wins because YouTube TV is compressed to garbage bitrate 720p and Apple TV+ is not.

https://archive.ph/20220724184255/https://www.nytimes.com/20...

#$%! Pay wall link: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/24/technology/sports-streami...

Apple, Google, Amazon, Disney...

The NFL is about to get paid.

Teams should be trying to lock up key players with long term contracts, and shouldn't blink at big dollars to do it. The salary cap is going to explode and we'll be marveling at teams that are paying only $45M a year for a top-10 QB.

Google would be able to prevent you from watching football because they don't like your political views.

This is a worrisome development, and it's entirely within the realm of possibility. Imagine getting your Google account suspended because you uploaded a video that YouTube decided was "misinformation", or you wrote a document in Google Docs that contains unacceptable text in Google's mind, or you wrote a particularly spicy comment somewhere.

They shut down your account, and there's no way to appeal the decision, or even speak to someone at Google to find out what you've done wrong. As a result, the only way you'd be able to watch football from that day forward is to go to a friend's house or sports bar.

Although perhaps this is exactly what needs to happen to bring this problem into the national consciousness.

Google doesn’t care about political views. Just what makes them the most money. Too much victimizing amongst some people. If Google was actually on the left or liberal why would they time me again do shady anti consumer/customer stuff with their ads and why did they collude with anti poaching? most people are apolitical or in the middle. Those people are who Google is appeasing. So Google is harsher with people to the extreme. Regardless of which side you’re on.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com