Hacker News Reader

Comment by emacdona | Hacker News Reader

Sigh... f*ck sports leagues/governing bodies. The reason some honest people pirate streams for sporting events is because they make it so annoying to pay for them. Some examples...

I live in the US.

I briefly took an interest in the EPL. If I wanted to watch all EPL games (or have the option of watching any particular EPL game), I'd have to subscribe to Peacock _and_ Fubo -- and I'm still not sure that gets me all games.

I briefly took an interest in the NHL (this was years ago, granted -- things may have changed). If I would have subscribed to their service, the ONLY team whose home games I couldn't watch would have been the TEAM OF THE CITY I LIVE IN (i.e.: "my" team).

My two favorite sports, though, are Cycling and F1.

I LOVE cycling. To watch every UCI race, I'd have to subscribe to GCN+ (they have the Giro), Peacock (they have the Tour de France and La Vuelta), and Flobikes (they have most of the Classics races).

THE ONLY sports governing body that has figured this out (for sports I like, anyway), is F1. I pay F1.com $80 a year and get MORE content than I would if I watched the races on ESPN. I can see EVERY RACE, EVERY QUALIFYING, EVERY PRACTICE. I can even choose WHOSE car I want to see the first person view from.

If you want to "stop pirates", make it easy for them to give you money and watch their favorite sport.

View on HN

If you lived in the UK, supported Tottenham and wanted to watch all their games in the 2021/22 season you had to:

Subscribe to Sky Sports (around £50-60 a month) for the Premier League games.

Subscribe to BT Sports (30 a month) for the Saturday early kick off Premier League games and the Europa Conference League games.

Subscribe to Amazon Prime for the 3 random weeks when they are showing the Premier League games instead of Sky.

Subscribe to Premier Sports (£12 a month) to see a Europa Conference League 2 legged qualifier.

And even then you couldn't see all the games legally in the UK because of the 3pm Saturday black out. You are forced to find a stream from another country where they are broadcasting the game.

Then when you are subscriped you get wall to wall gambling adverts during half time. For every other product you subscribe to, it is to avoid ads, but not television.

If you watch Tottenham despite all that, you deserve the pain their football causes.

Jokes apart, is the BT Sports "early kick off games" completely different from the Sky Sports game you mentioned? That's ridiculous. I was in England in Summer 2019 for the cricket world cup, and was shocked at how difficult it was to watch the games on TV. Wimbledon was very easy though, so maybe Tennis is way more popular?

Tennis is definitely not more popular.

It's odd that you seem to think popularity = it would be easier.

Soccer's popularity is what causes this issue because there is so much money to be made by splitting it up and selling to multiple companies rather than just one cheap, easy solution.

If Tennis attempted the same it would be so detrimental to its viewership it wouldn't be able to survive.

Unlike soccer which is so popular it can get away with it.

This is not about popularity though. Wimbledon is in a particular class of sporting events, known as the Crown Jewels, that are protected and must be shown on free to air terrestrial tv.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ofcom_Code_on_Sports_and_Oth...

> Soccer's popularity is what causes this issue because there is so much money to be made by splitting it up and selling to multiple companies rather than just one cheap, easy solution.

The reason they are split up in the UK is to stop a single pay tv gaining a monopoly on the broadcasts like in the past. So even if sky wished to pay all of the monies for all the games they can’t, they are limited to a set number of game blocks they can purchase, so the other providers get a chance at showing some games too.

It was meant to be a “good thing” but turned into the mess we have today.

However IIRC this only covers the premier league, TV providers can bid for all the games in other leagues. But not really much of a football fan so I don’t follow the subject that closely.

It would have made more sense to make the broadcast non exclusive….

> It's odd that you seem to think popularity = it would be easier.

Yeah, I can see how my line of thinking doesn't make sense. I was thinking popular -> can earn more from ads, less popular -> need subscribers, but there is no way tennis shows more ads than football

In India it'd be unthinkable to put cricket on paid channels, because the money is from putting ads wherever there's space

A lot of European countries have a list of events which must be freely available. I guessing Wimbledon is on that list in the UK.

Check out: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ofcom_Code_on_Sports_and_Other...

heh. not sure if that's a internal joke from them... but they did wait until nobody is getting signal from airwaves to put in place rules limited to airwaves distribution. bloody marvelous.

How do? This list was drawn up in 1991 when pretty much everyone was still using signal from airwaves

I think most people got "signal from airwaves" in 1996.

Most people still do, although don't necessarily use it very much.

Does iPlayer over Wifi count as "signal from airwaves"?

There are certain sporting events which are required to be broadcast free on terrestrial TV. Wimbledon and the FA cup final are the two that I can remember this applying to off the top of my head.

Infuriating. I was pissed because I couldn't easily watch "all games in a given league". You only want to watch your team, and you STILL have to pay for four services to get "most" of the games.

I'm not a football fan but that 3pm Saturday Blackout thing is so archaic:

"The football blackout is the rule that no Premier League, Football League or FA Cup matches be broadcast on live television on Saturday between 2:45pm and 5:15pm. Games may be played on that day and on that time, but they are forbidden to be televised – with Saturday televised kick-offs mostly occurring at 12:30pm or 5:30pm."

"This follows a rule set in place since the 1960s, when Burnley chairman Bob Lord successfully convinced fellow Football League chairmen that televised matches on Saturday afternoons would negatively impact the attendance of lower league games."

"He was convinced, for instance, that if Manchester United were to play Liverpool on Saturday at 3pm, fans of lower division teams would instead opt to watch the match on television instead of attend the match of the team they actually supported."

"As a result, the financial income of lower league football would be reduced."

"More than 40 years on, the rule is still in place. Foreign matches are also affected by the blackout – a broadcaster would not show the first 15 minutes of a match in La Liga that kicks off at 5pm UK time, for example."

Source: https://archive.is/DQwsk#selection-1539.0-1601.218

There are cheaper ways to hurt yourself than trying to watch Spurs.

Me: While this is amusing, come on, they're sixth in the Premier League, this is not in any way what a masochistic relationship with a sports team looks like.

Also me, Googling:

> Tottenham Hotspur's performance against Newcastle United on Sunday was so poor that the club is going to refund those that came out and showed support for the team.

So that result aside, they're not awful but for the money they've put into their team and their stadium (and the raised expectations that has brought) the return on that has been pretty poor domestically and in Europe

I'm in the UK. I wanted to watch the recent Masters golf tournament and it turns out it was on Sky Sports. They also had a deal for six months subscription at ~GBP18/month on a month to month streaming only contract. Fine I thought, I also enjoy F1 and 20/20 Cricket, I guess that's reasonable value for three sports I have a passing interest in.

Upon reaching the checkout it turns out I needed to pay another GBP6.99/month for something called "Boost" to allow me to watch in 1080p.

I gave up.

What is the 3pm saturday blackout?

Games that happen at 3pm on Saturday are only allowed to be shown on TV to, uh, every country in the world except the UK. It is the stupidest holdover from Olden Times which has meant the fixture list is now fragmented across almost the entire week to accommodate broadcasters whilst attendances at those matches are still (modulo e.g. being a Monday night) "good".

https://www.football-stadiums.co.uk/articles/football-tv-bla...

No matches are televised in the UK on Saturday Afternoons between 3 and 5:30(?). Allegedly, it's to encourage people to attend games rather than watch them.

Not so much to encourage them to watch Premier League games (the ones that would otherwise be televised) but to encourage them to go to support their local team with hundreds or thousands of others.

In this way, at least, the motivation is pleasingly different from the US blackouts which are aimed at getting you to attend the home games of your big league team.

I don't understand why half the games are still played at 3pm on Saturday at all. Yes, it's a very convenient time, but if 60% of the games already get moved, why not move the others?

The split in EPL matches amongst different providers is because of the EU trying to stop one company dominating the broadcast of matches. They were trying to introduce competition but they didn't really think of how it would affect the viewers.

Coming soon - Apple TV! They also bidding for Premier League...

MLS Season Pass on Apple TV has been great. Way better content, way better stream quality, and no blackouts. Such a better experience than the hodgepodge of OTA TV, ESPN, ESPN+, FS1, RSNs etc that it has been in previous seasons.

It’s been great in many ways, but the user interface is horrible. Why they show the scores on the thumbnail for replays is beyond me. Time shifting is all about not knowing the outcome beforehand. It’s as if this was created by people who don’t understand sport ball at all. But I don’t know what excuse they can use for burying the replays in the first place such that I found others on the web thinking the same as me—that only recaps are available for past matches.

On several platforms you can disable the "Show Sports Scores" setting. However it is ridiculous that setting doesn't exist everywhere they support Apple TV (for example... macOS).

The full replay thing is also silly, but they did change that recently. It's now a separate tile instead of a long press on the latest tvOS/macOS.

wait, uk still have the 3pm Saturday black out?

It's free to watch down the boozer mate.

Exactly this. I am a rabid women's soccer fan. I study and follow the draft like a professional coach, watch as many matches as I can, drive three hours to NWSL matches when I can, try and catch overseas games when possible, and I am continuously frustrated by the broken state of sports streaming. The NWSL shows up on ParamountPlus, unlesss its on CBS, unless its on CBSSN, unless its on Twitch on like three different Twitch channels - it is maddening as a hardcore fan and in no way leads to a casual fan having an easy time to watch.

I am heartbroken too at the amount of historical matches that will be lost because they simply aren't available. NWSL, FA WSL, International Friendlies or International Cups. It will all be lost over time as streaming partnerships change. The key to making better players is a better soccer culture and that means the key is to have them watch the game, love the game.

I have had seasons where I have almost quit as a fan because how frustratingly disorganized it all is. I know partnerships are important, but these leagues need to start pushing for their own streaming infrastructure or unified streaming partner or they will see the sport tip into irrelevance with the general public.

Yes, americans gets screwed over with the CBSSN matches, as it requires a cable account. To top it off, the replays of CBSSN matches take up to 48 hours to appear, while CBS matches up to 24 hours, and P+ much shorter.

The twitch deal ended last season, but americans only had to deal with one twitch channel, which aired the twitch exclusive matches. The other twitch channels were exclusively for international viewers, and they had to have multiple channels due to matches being on at the same time.

With the twitch deal over, international viewers can watch on NWSL's own website again, like we did years ago, before the ESPN and later twitch deals.

When it comes to international sports, the whole "where to watch" is so painful, especially women's sport, as it's covered less, and most broadcast deals are in the local country, and very rarely international coverage at all.

The brits have done a great job with FA Player, but also in selling the international rights to broadcast companies. Their lawyers though... the rights contracts are so shitty. To take England/FA WSL as an example, Viaplay bought the rights, and they air the matches that receive proper tv production in England (2-3 matches per round), but they also force FA to geoblock the other matches, so we can't watch them live on FA Player, only on demand 24 hours later.

They even geoblock short clips on twitter. Utterly bizarre, as these international broadcasters aren't posting similar clips.

I presume you're fairly knowledgeable of men's soccer too, even if it's not your cup of tea.

What are important things that are different in the women's game? Tactical style, practical impact of rules, physicality of contact fouls, etc? Are brawls (controlling for country/culture) as common in women's soccer as in men's?

Brawls no, not that I'm aware- though there are very opinionated fan-bases and supporters groups even state-side who have had great success protesting owners, abusive coaches, etc. In England the women's game was banned for fifty years so likewise, the fan base never developed the same way as the men's though that's changing.

I tend to watch big matches on the mens side so I will answer what I can. The physicality of women's matches here in the states is high, just check out I think Sierra Gordon on twitter a few days ago where she posted a rather, surprisingly, dirty blindside play by Alex Morgan. The women are scrappy, and play rough physically like they are in college still- whereas the men tend to hold themselves back more if you watch closely. The women tend to play every match of the league full throttle and that's because by the end of the season, you usually have four or five teams fighting for a playoff space.

Women foul more as their technique is generally worse, because of a lack of high level coaches in the youth side to engrain habits. That being said, they don't complain and fake like the men do. Some preppy youth players come in w that prep-school attitude as I like to call it, but in a season or three its usually out of them.

Tactically the game is slower, the game has more upper 90's goals, but a lot of that is lack of proper youth training too. Canada's womens soccer team had a female coach who drilled average passing speed as a team into them and they almost rivaled the mens statistics. I think that was 2011 or 2015 and they did v well. Do some research on that and you can probably find a whitepaper. Average passing per minute or something like that. Tactically too, a superstar or two still is capable of greatly influences the game at a high level, like basketball.

There's a common polycule meme where every new member pays for a different digital media subscription service and it's shared between everyone. If you get together with a few friends it's possible to split the costs of all these services. If you're sufficiently tech savvy, each person can run a VPN from their home so it doesn't look suspicious from the streaming service's end. Here's a video showing how to do this with Netflix [0].

I remember growing up it would be really common for people to split the cost of a PPV fight and VHS recordings would be passed around. It seems pretty similar.

Community-based media sharing is great. I wish it was possible for me to lend all of my Steam games when I'm not using them.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9CunwUs08og

I have no interest in doing all that work to share. I do have an interest in paying hundreds of dollars to guarantee access to any game, any time, any place I want, but apparently that is not a product they want to sell.

For example, I would pay $200+ to watch Tennis Opens, but I need it to be a simple transaction and 1 click to watch the game from the schedule page on the tennis association website.

Tennis is better than most sports with the glaring exception of watching the grand slams (which are the 4 biggest tournaments!). Otherwise TennisTV does a pretty good job of letting you watch all other tournaments live/on-demand. So, not as good as the F1, but sounds better than the EPL, NHL, etc.

> Community-based media sharing is great. I wish it was possible for me to lend all of my Steam games when I'm not using them.

You can do that, actually. It has some pretty big caveats, but if you are not actively playing anything on Steam then your library can be lent out to others... all you have to do is sign into their computer using your Steam credentials.

You can also just share your library with another account.

done this, the whole account gets locked iirc, and not just specific games

Wait, Steam offers you a "share library" feature but then locks your account when you use it?!

Not as in an account ban, it just only lets one copy of the game in question (or one game total? Haven't used it much) run at any given time. No different to lending your friend a Nintendo cartridge, except that it requires less running around. :)

Only one person can play from your library at once. So you are essentially lending the whole nintendo.

The frustrating thing is just that I cannot play free games on my steam account (hi dotas) whilst lending a paid game to ma famile.

They've fixed that. I had the same problem a few years ago and now if you properly add the game to both libraries it works fine.

> If you're sufficiently tech savvy, each person can run a VPN from their home so it doesn't look suspicious from the streaming service's end.

If I'm going to the trouble of exposing a VPN service over the internet for my friends, it's not so I can also pay for a streaming service.

I think for polycules it makes sense to have such practices, as a filter for people who don't want to contribute/share even something as simple as a subscription, and to make sure that they are on the same page with the membership of the other partners: if they don't agree with sharing the password, they might not be a good fit. People in polycules share partners, which is something so intimate, most people wouldn't be ready to do it (me included). It takes a lot of work and communication to maintain not just one relationship to one person, but multiple ones to multiple people. Paying for a subscription that you share with others is comparatively easy. And obviously, for existing members, having additional people means more subscription services you can watch.

> I wish it was possible for me to lend all of my Steam games when I'm not using them.

I suspect there are so many great deals on Steam specifically because it's not possible.

> If you want to "stop pirates", make it easy for them to give you money and watch their favorite sport.

I don't disagree, but that isn't something Mux is in a position to do. They just provide video streaming infrastructure -- they're in no position to demand that various sports broadcast rightsholders change their policies.

That's fair. My main objection is labeling _everyone_ as "pirates". Technically, yes, they are pirating the steam.

But some of those people are also PAYING to watch plenty of games in whatever sport they are "pirating" streams for. Calling these people "pirates" fails to acknowledge that they are also "paying customers" who are frustrated with how complicated it has become to pay for the product they want to watch.

The people that Mux are applying the word “pirate” to here are the people doing the streaming, not the people watching the streams. The people doing the streaming aren’t only “making paid content free to access”; they’re also putting up ads on these sites, making a profit off of IP they didn’t create.

It’s analogous to bootlegging: buying a fake Gucci bag is not unethical; but producing one is.

More importantly, for-money streaming pirates are terrible customers Mux doesn't want to do business with. The kinds of pirates we're thinking about from a decade ago weren't trying to make a quick buck, so they were using things like BitTorrent that had everyone sharing bandwidth.

> More importantly, for-money streaming pirates are terrible customers Mux doesn't want to do business with.

Yep. Their entire business is illegal, so breaking a few more laws by signing up for CDN service with a stolen credit card is no big deal.

> My main objection is labeling _everyone_ as "pirates". Technically, yes, they are pirating the steam.

They (Mux) aren't doing that. The blog specifically talks about going after the people using their platform to distribute the streams, not the people trying to view them.

Having your service used to distribute pirated material is not good. Becomes a big liability, especially if you aren't proactive in trying to stop it.

But they're not paying Mux. Why so angry at Mux for shutting down abuse of their system?

The whole comment section is weird. Is people not realizing Mux has nothing to do with sports rights? They're just a streaming provider that gets misused and have to foot the bill when people use them to stream stuff illegally.

Fair, but that's not the consumer's problem either.

Gaben is right. Piracy is a service problem.

I agree, since Netflix and others are around I don't see much point in spending time and effort on finding a pirate copy of movie X that I can't find on the streaming platforms. i typical move on.

There's definitely a trend of moving back to pirating, just because all the studios and channels are opting for their own service and removing content from Netflix. I don't want to pay for Netflix, Peacock, HBO, Disney+, etc. Not to mention, the tools for finding, downloading, and locally streaming content has become super easy.

Can confirm.

We had a shared-house discussion recently about this. Everyone put their hand up to pay for one streaming service, except for the people who said they'd prefer to pirate their video because it's so painful to pay for.

They did not do the same for music because it's unnecessary - everyone has their own Spotify/Apple subscription that gives them access to all the music.

Heads up that a Spotify family plan is cheaper for 6 people than 6 individual plans.

What happens to that if one of us moves out and has to go back to a single plan?

I just want to buy reasonably priced DVDs.

As I slowly grow crotchety and old I've really become fed up with the giant corps. I've taught dozens of both older and younger folk how to use a VPN and a torrent client. I've had one parent accuse me of teaching their teenager how to steal. I told them you're damn right, your kid is a sharp young woman and she is learning from the best.

Media companies like to claim that each act of piracy costs them huge sums of money. That isn't true, but I wish it was.

F1 has this absolutely nailed. I fear that if it gets popular enough in the US ESPN will buy exclusive rights and then you'll have to have a cable package in order to watch it.

It was easy for them to nail it and un unfair comparison to soccer or cycling.

In F1 there is only one serie/league. And that doesn't give you access to all 4 wheel motorsport, let alone openwheel ones. An F1 subscription doesn't give you access to formula E, formula nippon, national formula 3 championships, or the different motorsport series accross the world. Nor does it give you access to rallying. MotoGP did the same and I used to watch all their races. Now since I want to watch cycling anyway I only pay for eurosport which allows me to watch most races as well as superbike, moto and car endurance, as well as some rallying and formula E. But there is no way I will pay separarely for MotoGP and F1. In that case they just lost a viewer for good.

Also, for 1 F1 grand prix there are 20 to 50 soccer play or cycling races. The thing is cycling races and tv rights aren't managed by the governing body, but by different orgs. On one hand this is annoying to us because ASO, RCA and Flanders Classics (the 3 majors organizers) can sell rights to different channels. On the other hand a monopoly wouldn't necessarily better for the sports, the riders and the smaller races. If there had to be a monopoly, I would wish its shareholders would be the racers themselves but that won't ever happen.

It actually hasn't, which is really frustrating. It's not possible to watch F1 online via F1TV in Germany - you must watch it via Sky who have purchased the exclusive streaming rights up to 2024, which is €20/month or so (and means you only have the German commentators, AFAIK). At least Sky don't force you to pay for a cable (or satellite) package - it is possible to pay just for a basic sports streaming package.

I always wonder if that is a good decision for the sport in the long run. There is no way I'd subscribe to cable and ESPN to watch F1. That means I'd stop following the sport and the probability of me again spending > $1,500 on tickets goes to zero.

I hope that whoever the executives are over at the MLB who decided that blacking out games on streaming services was a good idea, are well into their 60s and 70s and will be dying or retiring soon.

I lived a ten minute walk from the Cubs' stadium and really wanted to watch every game. I moved to Chicago the year before they won the world series and got to experience all the build up, so was extremely excited to follow them.

But even though I had a MLB.tv subscription, from T-Mobile, it was completely useless the entire time I lived in Chicago. The Cubs' games were on an over the air network, WGN, for decades, so I had to spend money for a one time expense of an antennae to be privileged to watch some games and the added inconvenience of switching away from my streaming box.

Soon after they won the world series, they moved to a cable only network Marquee. I would have been forced to pay for cable to get the same shitty experience of watching only some games. I ended up only ever watching games I was physically at or when a game aligned with the exact time I happened to be at a bar with it on in the background.

Blackout rules feel like a completely untenable situation if baseball wants anyone under 45 to get in to the sport.

You're completely right, and as a baseball fan myself I deeply sympathize, but it's not so much MLB that is the problem (today) but the patchwork of cable-based Regional Sports Networks (RSNs) that have contracts for exclusive broadcast rights from MLB that were inked years ago. In a lot of cases teams even have ownership stakes in their own RSN. So now all the local broadcast rights (and $$$) belong to these RSNs instead of MLB themselves. And most/all of them broadcast exclusively on cable and offer limited-to-no streaming options.

There's been some hinting from MLB that they know blackouts are painful for fans, but without being able to alter/cancel the RSN contracts they're up shit creek, legally speaking.

What's interesting right now is that Diamond Sports Group (Bally Sports) just recently declared bankruptcy and they own/operate the RSNs for almost half of MLB teams. They are behind on their rights payments and MLB is trying to forcibly get broadcast rights back so they can presumably stream on mlb.tv. If that happens it could give MLB some power and put the issue more front and center. Maybe. Here's hoping.

And I don't mean to white knight MLB here, they made this bed for themselves by making exclusive deals with RSNs in the past. But now it's not as easy as MLB just ending blackouts by decree. Not without a lot of lawsuits.

But someday it has to happen. For the good of the game and fanbase. Please be soon.

Seems like Marquee has some relationship to Bally and Sinclair so hopefully the bankruptcy helps. But it is absolutely disgusting to me that the network was created just to make it harder to watch Cubs' games so they could make more money after decades of them being free to watch. It wasn't some old regional network deal, the network was created in 2020 when cord cutting was well underway.

Oof that's dumb as hell I didn't realize it was such a recent deal

>Blackout rules feel like a completely untenable situation if baseball wants anyone under 45 to get in to the sport.

It's crazy thinking about baseball growing up. It was just on TV. Or it was on the Radio. Or it was in the newspaper. Either way, it was everywhere you looked during baseball season. These days its a different world. People don't subscribe to the newspaper and see the big win on the front page anymore. They don't listen to AM radio swing by swing while they drive, cut grass, watch their kids, operate the cash register at work, doing whatever with the game on. It was so amazingly unavoidably accessible.

These days its totally locked down. You can't fire up any TV you encounter and get to the game in a few presses of a remote anymore. You can't be sure you'd see the game when you'd go out in bars, much less overhear anyone's AM radio. Executives forgot why baseball became America's pasttime: because it was in your god damn face all the time! It's like making friends, you tend to make friends with the people life happens to have you spend more time with, like your classmates or coworkers you spend the bulk of the day with. Baseball is really in a death spiral with the direction of the current mlb office IMO. And that is to say nothing about the actual state of the game of baseball (various hardly punished cheating scandals, favoritism in officiating, juiced balls, etc).

I had an MLB.tv subscription for many years, paying like $140 a year. In the UK, so nothing was blacked out... great... except last year find out they sold post-season rights to BT Sport so nothing in the post-season was available live AT ALL on MLB.tv in the UK. Forget it, did not renew this year.

As someone who's in Asia who loves to watch baseball, it is so hard to subscribe to live stream. I have no choice but to resort to illegal streams. MLB.tv outside the US will cost me $24.99 per month. What the fuck. The only option I have right now is Apple TV+ which has Friday Nights Baseball live, thank you Apple.

>As someone who's in Asia who loves to watch baseball, it is so hard to subscribe to live stream.

That's not just a problem outside the US. In order for me to watch my local team's games (well, 130 out of 162), I must have a cable TV subscription (minimum package that includes the specific channel ~$100/month) -- even to watch the games on the channel's streaming platform.

MLB.tv is worse than useless, as those with local broadcast rights require MLB.tv (as well as other channels) to black out games that they carry.

I'd happily pay MLB.tv (or anyone else) to watch my local team's games $24.95/month. But I can't even do that!

I don't get this complaint- there is no difficulty in watching the games. IIRC no game would be blacked out for you (besides the handful of national TV games?). You might disagree with the price, but streaming baseball outside of the US is quite simple.

Considering I just paid $74 to Youtbe TV just so I could watch one month of NBA playoffs, I'm sure $80 per year would get you laughed out of the room. They know exactly what they're doing and exactly how much pain they can inflict on the fans to extract the maximum amount of money. Though I do think that kind of short-term MBA thinking causes long-term damage to their brand and product, but they don't know how to calculate that in their quarterly earnings reports. In my mind the Olympics is an example of where the long-term damage is really starting to accumulate, I know several people that used to be big Olympics fans 10 years ago that couldn't be bothered last time around because of how painful NBC makes it.

100% agree. I watch Bundesliga, with sky Germany over VPN you could watch all games 2/3 years ago, not some of them are on DAZN which also charges. ChampionsLeague used to be sky as well, not its prime. Not to mention English, Spanish and Italian league. I watch 4-5h soccer a week throughout the league based in time and interest. Without pirating I would have to pay several hundreds of dollars. Ridiculous.

Without pirating I don't even know if I could watch my 1 hr game per week.

Now im literally paying pirates. Its a pittance and its much better service.

Here's a take on this with pictures

https://www.theoatmeal.com/comics/game_of_thrones

> If I would have subscribed to their service, the ONLY team whose home games I couldn't watch would have been the TEAM OF THE CITY I LIVE IN (i.e.: "my" team).

They don't want to cannibalize in-person attendance where fans pay for $300 tickets and $20 pints of beer.

This is one reason why I watch esports. The game makers see it as advertisement for their game so they pay for the leagues and shows.

I can watch all of it on YouTube or Twitch for free.

Surprisingly world rally championship is also amazing with this. A very affordable subscription to wrc+ gets you live coverage, summarized coverage, highlights, specials, historical reviews, as much content as you'd want really!

I was actually considering becoming a WRC fan... especially after I was watching some YouTube highlights and saw that Cyril Abiteboul is a team principal! Where do I subscribe? And... you promise that it's similar to F1 -- where I pay one company one price and get all the content?? :-)

BTW, that sums up my ask for sports leagues/governing bodies:

Let me pay ONE company ONE price and get ALL the content.

Pick the price! I don't care. If I like the sport enough, I'll pay it. If I don't, then I'll find another sport.

Just don't make me spend hours wading through online articles trying to answer questions like "How many streaming subscriptions do I need in the US to watch all UCI events?" (I did this, it was painful).

Wish the Super Formula offering was comparable!

> THE ONLY sports governing body that has figured this out (for sports I like, anyway), is F1.

No. The only ones who figured it out is the NFL. F1 shafted Germany after youg Schuhmacher came into F1 and German Sky bought exclusive rights.

The NFL? Intl Game Pass €190 per season live streams, instant repeats no adverts, various show, dedicated tv apps, no limit on number of devices, high def.

In the USA, there is no way to simply pay the NFL or even any other entity to stream every single game.

American football, ice hockey, baseball, basketball all have “black out” games and other bullshit, plus many times require a secondary subscription to a “TV” subscription, where you then have to hunt down which media provider is streaming the game.

I would rather save my time and just not watch sports. Only US soccer is decent because you can simply pay Apple and guarantee watch all the games.

> I would rather save my time and just not watch sports. Only US soccer is decent because you can simply pay Apple and guarantee watch all the games.

This is exactly where I am. I grew up playing sports and I do enjoy watching them, but I never had TV growing up (thus never got "hooked"), and having to play the blackout game absolutely infuriates me.... so, I just don't watch.

Not opposed to paying by any means. In fact this post has informed me of F1 (in USA) and Apple TV+ (MLS) having no blackouts, so I actually just purchased F1 [0] (already had Apple TV+).

So I know I'm only a single person but F1 earned a purchase from me because of no blackouts.

___

[0] https://i.imgur.com/zs45cZp.png

Ah, sorry then :-(

F1 is great in the US. I can't speak to NFL -- I don't watch it. However, I suspect it may be a better deal in Europe (where they are trying to get new fans) than in the US (where it's one of, if not "the", most popular sports).

This is similar to GCN+ for cycling. In the US, it doesn't get you much -- but from what I understand, in some (most?) European countries, GCN+ gets you most (if not all) UCI cycling evnets.

I think the same applies for F1 in the US. F1 is still quite popular in Germany, although they pulled the trigger on that when RTL (German TV station) quit broadcasting F1 races in Free TV after 30 years in 2020, simply because it was too expensive. As GP stated, Sky Germany took over, and they are charging 30€ per month. It's eye-watering to see that the F1 Pro subscription costs just under 10€, but is of course not available in Germany. Last year, it was possible to register via VPN and sneak your way into the subscription. Not sure if it's possible this year, as I didn't renew it.

FWIW GamePass in the US is cheaper, but godawful software that will, for example, force you to clear your cache and log back in every time you want to watch another game. Every year it gets a fresh new look, removes a couple features, and adds bugs. It's the worst software I've ever used.

Does GamePass in the US stream games live?

Because GamePass outside of the US does (in addition to the on-demand and condensed games and "all 22" stuff that the US GamePass gets). It's kind of like NFL Sunday Ticket but delivered by akamai instead of satellite.

No live games :/

I think this is country specific. F1's service in the US is great, but the NFL international game pass isn't available to people who live in the US, it's not as easy to watch domestically.

F1TV in Germany was great, too. Until they shafted Germany because someone put money on the table. That’s what I mean.

Yep, NHL blackouts are idiotic. Hard to imagine they are selling more arena tickets that way.

NHL blackouts (at least today’s NHL blackouts) are not for getting fans into arena seats. They exist because local cable broadcasts own the exclusive rights to broadcast games in local markets.

And who sold them those exclusive rights?

This is entirely the fault of the leagues in question. They set up a shitty service, no surprise that many people will pirate rather than paying for a service that only partially meets their needs.

The leagues did. I was never disputing that fact.

There's a common misconception that blackouts are in place to protect attendance, but that is (typically) not the case. The Chicago Blackhawks did that for a while (under ownership of Bill Wirtz who explicitly thought that showing local games would hurt attendance) but when Rocky Wirtz took over the team in 2007, he reversed that policy.

Blackouts exist to protect local media rights, which you correctly pointed out were sold to them by the league/teams.

You'll see though that many local sports networks are in financial trouble, and leagues are looking for ways to reacquire the rights to stream directly to fans.

https://www.espn.com/mlb/story/_/id/35668388/rob-manfred-mlb...

What gets me is, if I'm in Central Canada, and I want to watch a Montreal game on Sportsnet East, it's blacked out for me! I get that it's a direct feed, but what is the point of offering me the channel if I can't use ot.

> I briefly took an interest in the NHL (this was years ago, granted -- things may have changed). If I would have subscribed to their service, the ONLY team whose home games I couldn't watch would have been the TEAM OF THE CITY I LIVE IN (i.e.: "my" team).

This is why I won't give the NHL or MLB any money for their video services.

> To watch every UCI race

This is a good example of the situation in many sports. The UCI is a governing body, not an event organiser or promoter. Basically anyone can put on race, and they are responsible for making money out of it. So event promoters make their own deals with broadcasters.

Thanks for pointing that out -- I guess I should have realized that (maybe I did at one point). At the very least, then, I wish the UCI would make it EASY to figure out what services I needed to subscribe to in my country to watch which races. Just a page on their website with a big table would be great.

Figuring out that I need to subscribe to GCN+, Peacock, and Flobikes in the US was no small feat (and it changes from year to year!).

Well the UCI is like a mini version of the International Olympic Committee - borderline corrupt, pretty ineffective at anything and barely useful so not astonishing they don't do that.

I suspect the promoters try to keep away from the UCI as much as possible.

There have been a few attempts by the pro-teams to improve the situation via Velon[1][2] - apparently you can get live race data from them - but nothing that has really solved the problem.

[1] https://www.velon.cc/

[2] https://www.dcrainmaker.com/2018/01/velon-live-tracking-syst...

Agree 100%. I'm a cycling fan and I refuse to subscribe to 4+ services to pick up the major races. I want the classics and big one-day races, the 3 grand tours, UCI XCO and DH, and all the world champ events.

As best I can tell... The classics and spring season are spread across Flo, GCN+, and Peacock.

Giro is GCN+.

le Tour is Peacock.

Road worlds is Flo.

Vuelta is Peacock.

And the UCI mountain bike stuff is (mostly) on GCN+ (used to be Redbull, maybe)

I'd happily spend $300/year or so to get it all in one place. Instead, I end up watching highlights on Youtube. I don't torrent because I have an iPad, so I can't (without jumping through hoops) - but I'm tempted to grab a cheap PC just to torrent cycling.

Positively nailed it. Why can’t I just watch gt racing? Who can I just give my money to to watch all the GT and SCCA racing I want? Nobody has it and whoever owns it has made it balls out the hardest thing in the world to watch.

> I LOVE cycling. To watch every UCI race, I'd have to subscribe to GCN+ (they have the Giro), Peacock (they have the Tour de France and La Vuelta), and Flobikes (they have most of the Classics races).

If you were okay with not watching it live, people were torrenting each day's stage of the tour de France in 2004. There is a pretty big overlap between tech industry people and enthusiastic road cyclists.

Now there's whole communities of people sharing the euro broadcasts of just about everything race for worldwide people to watch.

Shout out to my boy Tiz

On the other hand, what kind of life do you have if you need to watch every single event/games of at least 4 different sports/league?

I mean I like different sports but I mostly stick to the one I love the most (cycling) and even then I skip most of it and only watch the events that count the most for me (spring classics, a bit of the grand tour in the background especially while working, world champs and MTB world cups). And given the choice to go for a bicycle ride or watch a cycling race, I will always go for the former and do the later only when I am tired, my partner or kids aren't at home or busy doing something else and I feel like lying for a bit on the couch after my own ride. I don't mind the occasionnal motogp, world rallycross, or rally coverage but I have accepted I can't both follow everything and live a decent and happy familial and social life.

Only exception being Paris-Roubaix which is probably one of the only classic that is worth watching from km 0. But even then I didn't watched live this year. I avoided getting spoiled by living mostly offline appart from professionnal stuff for 3 days before dedicating the time to watch it.

It is the same for social medias in fact. Most of them are trying to make you feel bad if you don't see all their content. I deleted my twitter, fb, instagram accounts a while ago and although I keep a bit of presence in mastodon I have accepted the fact that I will just connect to it a few times a week and miss tons of informations/content/jokes. Is my life worse for it? Well, not really.

"Your pain point is their business model"

Yep -- watching cycling stuff is insanely hard. And I can't help but believe this is one of the reasons competitive amateur cycling is dying as well. People like to do what they watch the pros do, but when it's so hard...

I don't watch much cycling stuff, but sometimes I want to sit down and watch a CX race, or maybe one of the MTB races, or the TdF highlights or something... But there's just no one platform for it.

I feel for you. Here, GCN+ (or GCN+ Eurosport as it’s officially branded as a partnership being both owned by Warner Bros. Discovery along with BT Sport) has literally everything - from all the grand tours, to classics and even the most insignificant 1.2 and 2.2 ranked events. And all for a fair price. I didn’t even consider that in other territories the rights might be snapped up piecemeal style. That’s a shame.

At least its simple to watch region locked content with a vpn on GCN+.

Yep. Cycling is the easiest thing I watch because I have a browser with a VPN extension. Any requests that go to GCN go through UK :)

I’m with you, including the F1 part, and I’m glad that Liberty Media hasn’t hiked up the prices in the US so far. Even with the $80/year, I still end up watching some races on ESPN because Sky’s broadcast rights won’t allow F1TV to show the interviews with pit wall, Ted/Karun and other small things… still miles better than all other sports.

Yeah I 100% agree. While I DON'T pirate anything, I DO pay for a sh!t ton of services to watch soccer and Cycling. Furthermore, I follow Scottish Soccer, specifically the Glasgow Rangers. So I pay 1. the club for their RangersTV, 2. Paramount+ for their half-ass SPL 'channel' (which btw doesn't show more than 2 games per weak, and rarely even Premier level teams), subscribe (free) to a small Scottish-only-football channel on YouTUbe (PLZ) for news.

On top of that I watch Serie A, Paramount+ has better coverage of this. But then you want to watch UEFA Europa and Champions leagues.

It gets very confusing and very costly.

I don't get why the individual leagues don't get smart and have their own streaming services rather than relying on legacy broadcasting services.

As for Cycling, I am in the same boat with GCN & Peacock. DIdn't know about flobikes so thanks for giving me something else to purchase :)

Can I ask how you end up caring about Scottish league? It's quite rare for there to be any interest in it outside Scotland or Ireland, and rarer still for someone like that to support a team other than Celtic.

As an aside, I am both delighted by Aberdeen's win over Rangers this weekend and nervous that our next game will be against Rangers @ Ibrox. I imagine they'll be pretty fired up judging by how many still-angry Gers fans I've seen trolling Aberdeen FB groups :D

Btw you might like the r/ScottishFootball subreddit. I’m not really a Redditor but its a pretty fun place with some good banter

>THE ONLY sports governing body that has figured this out (for sports I like, anyway), is F1.

Unless you live in Australia, where F1TV gives you live timing and not much else. Foxtel seem to have F1 locked up here - the cheapest option I have is Kayo (an affiliated streaming service) for $25/mth.

I actually feel this should maybe be regulated. Sportsball** seems to manipulate humans at an instinctive level to a degree that most other media doesn’t, stirring up an artificial form of tribalism or patriotism. To then charge a huge amount of money and make people basically do a dance to get the product is gross. Especially when it is so popular among groups with not so much disposable income to throw at it, and when tax dollars are often used to fund sports infrastructure (at least in the US).

**I.e. spectator-focused sports leagues, not leagues regular people actually play in, those don’t have this issue.

For anyone who is low to mildly interested in sports, this is pushing them to consume zero sports. I wonder if they're not shooting themselves in the foot long term.

World Chase Tag has solved this by broadcasting exclusively on ESPN after a slight delay, and then uploading the matches to their own website and to YouTube for free after a slightly longer delay. But they're still in the position of growing their audience, so the free content (and full back catalogue on YouTube) is important. That marketing position might change in time.

Completely agree on F1 - it's super easy and I get more than I could ever consume. Between highlight episodes, multiple commentary tracks, live data, and race archives including seasons 10 years ago they've done a great job. I don't even question buying again each year.

Just wish the old seasons included qualifying and practice sessions. That's the only thing I still have look for from other sources.

Absolutely love that you can turn commentary off, though, even on old races. I used to have a very rube golberg esque solution playing the same stream through two players, bouncing them to mono and playing with the polarity to remove the comms feed.

I wish every sport had an f1.com style offering. I’d gladly pay several sports some money, but no. They insist on the old way

Reply on news.ycombinator.com