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Comment by theg2 | Hacker News Reader

It feels like the NFL is making every effort possible for me to be unable to watch games these days. They continue to do this, I might just give up on watching live games all together. The legal options are A) pay an expensive cable bill B) go to a bar C) have an antenna and live in a city.

Keep going NFL, eventually you'll piss off enough younger fans where you'll end up like the NHL.

I say this as a diehard football fan.

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This year there was another legal option, not well publicized: $99 for NFL Sunday Ticket. That's every Sunday game live streamed over the internet.

The only problem with Sunday Ticket is the restrictions that are there to protect the broadcast industry: local game blackouts, no Monday Night Football, etc. I say, good riddance to the broadcasters! Go all in on internet broadcasts and get rid of the restrictions. It's not like the major networks are going to actually drop NFL games. Call their bluff.

I thought Sunday Ticket was a DirecTV-only thing?

It is, but DTV has an online streaming version of it. If you bought the anniversary edition of Madden 25 you got access to the streaming (and actual channel if you have DTV) for the season. It's pretty much the only reason I bought Madden -- it was ~$100 for the game + DTV combo.

I thought Sunday Ticket was more like $299.

There was a special deal where if you pre-ordered this year's Madden game for $99 you got NFL Sunday Ticket for "free". Of course, Sunday Ticket is worth more than the Madden game, so it was a ridiculous and silly deal, but no more ridiculous and silly than the rest of the contracts and regulations the NFL has for their game broadcasts.

I bought into that deal and have been hugely disappointed. Half the streams don't load and many other games are blacked out locally so I had to buy a TV antenna to watch them live. Despite my best efforts to follow the rules and watch legally, I still end up on sketchy free sites because they work more reliably.

The blackout restrictions are annoying, but I haven't had any problem with loading the streams that aren't blacked out. My major complaint is the poor quality of the streams; the bitrate is far too low. Hopefully the NFL comes to their senses and takes internet streaming in house soon.

Option D) is to watch all your games on Monday.

Torrents usually show up first thing Monday morning (US time), and are commercial free. So if you can stay off Facebook and refuse to answer your phone or check email (just in case) for long enough to download and watch the game, you don't need any of that hassle.

Or you could move to Europe and pay the NFL a hundred bucks a season for the same thing. (Probably not as good a dollar value as your other options, though, considering moving costs and all.)

ps. Don't tell me who won the Seahawks game!

Is the game at home? Then they won.

Go Hawks.

As someone who rents a VPS in the UK, tell me more about this "move to Europe" thing...

https://gamepass.nfl.com

This is my second year using NFL Game Pass. It’s excellent. And the cost of VPN + Game Pass subscription is less than cable.

Is this supposed to show up as more expensive in the US? In Canada, it's showing up as only $104.

"NFL Game Pass is not available in the United States and Mexico,* but you can still get unlimited access to NFL games:" Game Rewind and Audio Pass, they lock out their biggest fans in the US for live games online legally.

The AFL here in Australia does the same thing, you can watch the games for a decent fee but only if you're not in Australia. There is an iOS app but it has had mixed reviews, and not all games are available on Free to air each week, especially if your team is not the local one.

Suffice to say that these dodgy streaming sites are often the easiest and most convenient way of watching a game.

Is NFL Game Pass still free in The Netherlands? It was last season.

gamepass.nfl.com

Does the Hola unblocker work for the streaming pass? https://hola.org

If you're already going to pirate the game (by torrenting it), there's plenty of free streams available online all over the place so that you can watch it live.

The subreddits at /r/nfl /r/cfb and /r/collegebasketball should all have links to streams if not on the sidebar then in the game threads. Other sports' subreddits probably do as well.

News Corps's COO threatened to take Fox off the air because of Aereo.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-04-08/news-corp-says-it-w...

A lot of broadcast TV business models are about to get (ugh, I'm so sorry; I hate to say this) disrupted.

EDIT: Edited to correct "Fox News" to "Fox" in general.

if the death of Fox is in the cards, I'm for it.

This negotiating maneuver is known as a "bluff."

eventually you'll piss off enough younger fans where you'll end up like the NHL.

What does this imply? Aside from the lockouts, the NHL has secured long-term broadcasting deals in Canada and the US to fulfill the growth that it sees in the North American market. Clearly the NHL isn't anything close to the NFL from a financial standpoint, but implying the NHL is some bottom-feeder, profitless sports league isn't right.

The NHL is a shadow of its former self after losing support during the lockouts.

Stating things without sources/facts doesn't mean much.

Anecdotes aren't data, but where I live in Minnesota, every hockey fan that up until 2 years ago always had season tickets, won't even contemplate buying them again.

These are people that have been buying NHL season tickets for their entire lives in what amounts to "hockey country".

We'll see how it affects certain teams but the NHL does have fallout from the lockout.

Hopefully Aero will push them, through whatever means, to offer their content in a more direct manner (and by more direct, I don't mean the NFL Network). MLB.tv is a good example to go by. Let me pay $10/mo and stream the games anywhere. MLB.tv has limitations (blackouts make the service useless for home games), but it's a heck of a lot better than needing cable.

Even if folks don't end up pissed off, I think even just cutting down on exposure tends to have a similar effect. It's pretty easy to fill the gap left by one TV program with some other TV program. Or any number of non-TV activities, for that matter.

They did have another option this year: Get NFL Sunday Ticket for ~$90 dollars.

It feels like the NFL is making every effort possible for me to be unable to watch games these days.

Good

Maybe it'll put an end to head-injury peddling, rape-festooned garbage pit that is American Football.

http://thinkprogress.org/health/2013/10/14/2777431/maryville...

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-11-13/head-injuries-make-...

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