Comment by bloopletech | Hacker News Reader

Comment by bloopletech | Hacker News Reader

As a non-US non-sports fan, can someone explain the context for this? I have no real clue what this fight is about.

As far as I can tell, this fight seems to be between two ways to watch a sports game:

1. on over-the-air broadcast, which is free to receive. 2. cable television, which is not free to receive.

Apparently Aereo makes (1) easier, which presumably means more people will choose (1) instead of (2).

What I don't understand: * If I could watch the sports game for free, why would I ever choose to pay for it instead? * If they (I think in this fight 'they' refers to the NFL and MLB) don't want me to watch the sports game for free, then why do they allow/provide free broadcasts in the first place?

From what I can tell, the whole sports game watching market looks even more ludicrous than the arbitrary restrictions online TV/ebook market (the number of books in the kindle store that are available - then suddenly disappear when I log into my Australian amazon account - presumably publishers/authors love losing money).

To answer your questions about the context: over-the-air broadcasts generally only include the games for that particular region of the country. (Here's this week's map: http://506sports.com/nfl.php?yr=2013&wk=11 )

Having regional broadcasts allows the sports leagues to essentially sell the games twice: once for the local network and once for the cable network (though I'm sure the actual licencing is more complex than that). Access to all of the games is a selling point for cable, particularly when your favorite team hails from a different region than the one you are currently living in (which is fairly common in the US, particularly since team attachment is often based on where someone grew up or which college they went to).

This setup makes sense for the leagues, since it was based on the limits of the original technology. Aereo removes the technical limits, and is threatening to remove the legal limits.

> What I don't understand: * If I could watch the sports game for free, why would I ever choose to pay for it instead? * If they (I think in this fight 'they' refers to the NFL and MLB) don't want me to watch the sports game for free, then why do they allow/provide free broadcasts in the first place?

Because they currently have a way to monetize it: retransmission fees. If, however, Aereo becomes popular, the broadcasters claim this monetization model will be undermined; their response will be to stop doing over-the-air transmissions and instead directly license with premium content companies, such as ESPN.

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