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Comment by niravshah | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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.

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