I was really hoping the tech giants would be able to transform live TV as opposed to offer the same experience for (now) the same price.
Online distribution licenses were underpriced and differently packaged for a while because producers didn't know what revenue to anticipate or which horse would be the best to bet on. But as the industry matured, stuff evened out again and it's mostly back to normal.
Many conveniences of the new technology are nice, though.
I can't imaging having to train every new employee on how to use the streaming-only custom set up you'd end up with without using a cable box, which, well, everyone probably already kind of knows how to operate ... at least for now.
It does make me wonder how long until the new employees won't have a clue how to use a cable box due to never having used one ever.
Mobiles are for a single individual. Landlines are to a single location.
If I ring X corp, I don't really care if I speak to Bob or Barbara, I often don't know if I want to speak to Bob or Barbara.
In the same way I'll email enquiries@xcorp.com not bob@xcorp.com
Apart from pirating, the only way to watch, say, NFL Football, your local baseball team and say Division 1 College Football games is gonna be with one of those $70/mo+ packages.
I would love to just pay directly for the sports/leagues I care about, but that’s just not an option.
The day they finally rip that away is the day I possibly stop following.
…as much…
To hit that revenue number on, say, a hypothetical $90/year ($10/month for 9 months) standalone league pass subscription, they'd need about 2.8M subscribers. And that doesn't figure in the distribution costs of either rolling their own live sports streaming service or more likely whitelabeling one.
Most MLS matches broadcast on cable have fewer than 400k viewers. Many have fewer than 125k. It's hard to imagine that 3M people would consistently fork over $10/month for that.
Providers will almost always pay more for some degree of exclusivity (and more stably — the MLS deal is for 10 years) than consumers will bear on their own. It's ultimately a marketing expense for providers banking on subscriber growth, something consumers aren't willing to shoulder directly for a standalone league service.
Where streaming passes have worked are on the team level for those with global brands, where they can provide exclusive content to diehard fans. But again they tend to be expensive marketing arms and not the team's primary revenue stream, which is still league TV/media contracts.
I pay for a frankly stupid amount of sports streaming services though. I wish there was a way I could watch everything I want without paying for FuboTV, DAZN, TSN+, and probably others I'm forgetting.
I keep a Netflix subscription running for my parents, get the free few months of Apple TV every year or so from buying a new device, and beyond that I just watch more and more YouTube in my free time and go to the cinema maybe twice a year.
Sure, YouTube doesn't really have any blockbuster/high-budget/studio-level content, but there's simply so much and so many niches that it keeps me entertained just as well as anything else, so I subscribe to YT premium and that's it.
"Disney, Netflix and Warner Bros. Discovery have recently said the ad-supported versions of their streaming platforms generate more money per user than their ad-free counterparts, as the advertising revenue more than offsets the lower subscription cost." -- https://www.wsj.com/business/media/netflix-price-increase-ac...
Anyone willing to create content at extremely low cost has flourished under the YouTube paradigm.
That idea won't stand up to close scrutiny. Especially the 'Anyone' part. YouTube undoubtedly enriches itself on their efforts. If most 'Anyone's have 'fluorished' at all it's because of their viewers; most of the 'channel' owners that I've watched regularly for years rely on Patreon for support.
I very much doubt that refusing ad-blockers will change any of that.
Fortunately I pay 1/3 the YTTV cost by sharing with a friend so the cost isn't too bad. But it's too much content for my needs, and I don't prefer sharing access.