Hacker News Reader

Comment by sp332 | Hacker News Reader

The NFL's policies on footage are an interesting example of information control. People in the audience can clearly see all the players on the field, but people watching at home are not allowed to. And even though the NFL has put tons of money into excellent cameras and awesome post-processing effects, they still hadn't released the most informative camera views!

View on HN

It's a user experience question - the tv is optimized for fans interested in watching the game action, not analyzing all the strategy.

It's not just live TV though. They take footage from a lot of angles during the game, and make it available to other networks for post-game analysis, etc. But they haven't made the All-22 footage available at all. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3275698

The NFL Matchup show on ESPN uses the All-22 footage. Granted it's only on for 30 minutes and is at 7:30 AM on Sundays, but it's a great show.

I was commenting specifically on the 3 hour "live game experience" shown on CBS, FOX, etc. I'm not sure most of the market wants the type of analysis that would be required to give coverage to the 22-Man views. They just want to watch the game, not think about strategy.

However, there are certainly people (myself included), who would gladly pay the small fee here to better understand the strategy behind the game.

This probably won't change what's shown live at all. This is just about what's available on the NFL "Replay" website.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com