Hacker News Reader

Comment by philwelch | Hacker News Reader

Apparently not. You must not be a sports fan if you think it's a solved problem; there is live streaming of about 2 NFL games a week and a handful of English, French, and Italian soccer league matches. Everything else is pirate at best, or stupidly requires you to have a TV subscription anyway. Olympics and World Cup are each once every four years, streaming them is helpful but not really a full solution.

View on HN

The current problem is that NBC is the only network that has streaming rights for the NFL. This is basically just an artifact of their deal with the NFL. Most likely when it comes time to renew contracts that exclusive clause will be marked out and the NFL will allow all stations that have rights to broadcast games online.

The NFL is pretty much the trend setter in the sports world when it comes to media. They were the first to figure out the right way to do a TV deal back in the early 70s, the first to start their own network, etc. It's only a matter of time.

The problem is the massive amount of revenue the NFL gets from television deals. They would need a paid streaming plan, with many of the same blackout provisions, to make up for that.

Given the existence of MLB.tv and NBA League Pass, I'd say the NFL is behind on online streaming of their games. MLB.tv especially is quite good compared to anything the NFL offers.

Can you get NBA League Pass without a television subscription? It used to be bundled with a Dish TV programming package of the same name, can you just pay for the streaming? (Obviously, you can't pay for either right now, as there is no NBA.)

Yes. NBA League Pass Broadband. I've had it for a couple years, and dumped cable when it came out.

http://www.nba.com/home/leaguepass/index.html

That'll be worth checking out if there's an NBA season this year. Does it truly have the whole NBA? No blackouts?

Like MLB's option, League Pass blacks out your local games if they're on TV. One hopes that next time around the TV contracts include a mechanism for a) revenue sharing with the networks for these packages, and b) showing online streamers the same ads they'd see on their local affiliate.

It has some blackouts, including games that are on national TV (ESPN, TNT, and I think NBATV, which is kind of stupid for the NBA to black out. Some of these games stream on their own sites.) It also blacks out "local" broadcasts; when I lived in Seattle, I couldn't get Portland games.

It has a 2-tier price system. At the lower price, you select up to 7 teams to watch; to get all 30 teams, you have to pay a little bit more.

It's not a perfect system, but it's getting better.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com