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Comment by krschultz | Hacker News Reader

Sports. ESPN + NFL Redzone + TNT + Local channels in HD have no good alternative on the internet. If they did I wouldn't pay for TV.

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Yes! Cable = Sports. If they somehow decouple those two then I'm all Internet.

Do you get ESPN3 through your ISP? It covers most sports both live and recorded, and doesn't require a cable subscription.

Most sports? Hardly. Sure you can, in theory, watch American Football, Rest of the World Football, basketball, and baseball on ESPN3, but if you want to see these sports played by teams that matter then you need regular ESPN or a cable subscription to view them. All the games that matter were removed from the ESPN3 lineup at least a couple of years ago.

ESPN3 access gives you access to all espn channels including regular espn. I use it every day for sports center and baseball.

I'm unable to access ESPN's live feeds without a login provided by my cable company. That login flags what ESPN channels I pay for so, for example, I can't watch ESPN U without paying for an upgraded "sports" package filled with garbage channels.

I do have access to some live and recorded events, but the selection is limited to filler content like college volleyball and minor league soccer. Another plus is the ability to use my neighbor's login without restrictions since our cable provider's flagging system is piss poor. As long as I know somebody paying for cable I can cheat the system.

This is not true. Unless something has changed recently, college football on ESPNU is not shown on ESPN3. This has caused more than one game I cared about to be (legally) unviewable for me.

It shows pretty much all college sports (at least, all of what's broadcasted on cable anyways -- and then some). Sometimes there's a blackout on a game, which is annoying, though....

It's just not that great for professional leagues.

Even if my ISP had a deal for ESPN3 service, I would not use b/c it's a slap in the face to net neutrality.

Are there ISP's streaming ESPN3 without a cable subscription containing ESPN? My local options both require you to subscribe to a TV package.

or split a cable sub with someone and use it to log into live events. everyone wins!

MLB At Bat

NHL Gamecenter

NBA League Pass

NFL Sunday Ticket (currently DirecTV exclusive via contract)

* I am assuming you are American and/or care only about the four major sports in the US. Not sure about futball, rugby, cricket, tennis, cycling, etc

I'm pretty sure those don't include playoff games though and they also block out local games.

NBA League Pass is a horrific abomination. I was debating it, and came across articles that showed that depending on your location and nominated team(s) it could be nearly impossible to get more than 25 games for your favorite team (out of an 82 game season). 30% of the season showed on a "Season Pass" costing approximately $200? No thanks.

Spend $5/mo on unblock-us.com and you can see every "blackout" game...

Check out ballstreams.com

MLB.tv only works for out of market games, and worked amazingly when I was in school across the country, but useless when I moved back, and I got a free subscription to stream NFL Sunday ticket for the season and directv had basically no competency in streaming so it almost never worked.

Honestly, I bought a TV antennae from best buy and a long HDMI cord for my laptop and that's satisfied all of my sports needs through OTA broadcasts and questionable streaming sites.

I, too, use questionable streaming sites (well, just one since it's been reliable for the last year or two), but the picture quality is often worse than standard def, and the sound is apparently funnelled through a tin can.

It's almost bad enough to make me want to pay for cable. Almost.

Unfortunately for me, I live in Canada, where OTA stations do not care about the NBA. And I refuse to buy the League Pass since any games broadcast on cable would be blacked out.

For NHL, I've heard Gamecenter has poor quality feeds. Ironically, there's a one man show who runs a better service - albeit unlicensed - at hockeystreams.com

$20 per month, all games streamed in HD plus your choice of broadcast options (ie- home / away feed on NBC or TSN, etc).

FWIW, Gamecenter has had decent feeds for me; it annoys me that the browser viewer won't play the best quality (it only does 3Kbit, 30fps I think), but the ipad app will play 60fps HD streams. Missing blackout and playoff games is the worst though.

Aaand for the sake of posterity, that's actually 3Mbit. 3Kbit video doesn't really make sense.

I've been a subscriber to NHL Gamecenter for two years. If you're very far from your home team, it can be a good deal.

In California, I can catch most of Detroit's games. In a major hockey market like Toronto, however, Detroit's games are often on TSN2 (think ESPN2), which means they are blacked out. Cable was the only way to see these, even though I would have guessed they were out of market.

As much as I want to believe in these kinds of live sports services, I'm always disappointing in the quality and/or reliability of the feed. Maybe it's my ISP, I don't know. But for me streaming seems to be a second class citizen compared to cable & satellite.

As for the merger, I hate it because I actually think DirecTV is a pretty good product - even though the price is a bit high. I don't think a merger will do anything but reduce the quality of service, increase the price or both!

"Maybe it's my ISP, I don't know. But for me streaming seems to be a second class citizen compared to cable & satellite."

Don't worry - once your ISP is able to charge each streaming service more money, they might be able to budget to upgrade to slightly faster service a few years later.

You have to understand that Cable and Sports is a mutual lovefest. So all of these online alternatives are designed to be incremental revenue streams and specifically designed not to cannibalize the main revenue stream. They're mostly targeted at people who may away from their home market and so can't watch their favorite team on local cable.

Well depends, http://www.verizonwireless.com/wcms/consumer/products/video....

So if you use Verizon wireless you can stream from your tablet all you want. I think other ISP are doing the same too.

Why else do you think the WWE Network is such a huge deal. It's the first huge step for sports entertainment.

Cable = Sports is why I am not watching ANY sports other than little snippets I can grab on youtube or mlb.com. Seriously. Have not watched a full game (definitely not MLB, NFL, NBA) of anything in a LONG time.

And none in family (yes little kids too) are watching much sports on TV either. Definitely not enough to grow up to be a fan of a particular pro sports league or a team, other than soccer via AYSO.

IMHO pro sports commissioners should start thinking about how less and less young kids are exposed to sports via TV (because not much to watch on non-cable TV) and what that means for potentially smaller fan base in the future. Just my 2 little cents...

What's funny is I would sign up for MLB.com in an instant if I could watch the local game but they block that so I'm out.

This was my frustration also. It surprises me that they haven't worked out an arrangement to either make that feature an upgrade or worked out a way to make financial arrangements with (I'm guessing) the people who have broadcast rights for a market.

I don't have cable anymore, but watch most of the games with a buddies Comcast log in on my iPad.

Which is the most infuriating part... I have NBA League Pass, live in a separate TV market (same state) from my preferred team, but still a large percentage of games are blacked out.

If someone (Apple/ Amazon/ startupX) figures out how to get great live sports content on demand to consumers, they will have an amazing company.

Get a VPN or use a DNS "hack" ...

My one regret with cutting the cord was that I gave up my precious Red Wings. NHL.com has a yearly subscription to watch the games online, but paying for that meant that I would have paid just as much for cutting the cord, as I did for having cable.

Really? Isn't it only like $100 for the entire year?

last time I checked it was $165. not a significant sum, but enough to mostly cancel out what we were paying for cable

I highly doubt you were paying $14/mo for cable TV.

I can't believe you're making your children suffer as part of your ideological war against cable companies. Think of the children and pick up that phone and dial 1 - 800 - GETTWCCABLE now!

Lol,

I don't "pay for TV", literally don't owe a TV, but surprise, surprise, someone charge me for it.

Young people don't care about sports either. eSports like they have on Twitch.tv are more and more popular.

A $35 leaf antenna from amazon gets you all the local HD channels for free.

Your first statement is absolutely ridiculous. Do you have data to back this up? I'm not in some "~esportz~" community - but I'm not in a sports community either, and you know what happens to my facebook when an athletic game is on? 20-30yo people talking about it in a massive flood. I have, as far as I know, never seen any of my friends (general Austinites of various walks of life) mention esports.

If you're referring to the 12-15yo crew; they don't pay cable bills anyway.

If 20-30 year olds aren't paying for television, is it because they don't want to or that they can't afford it? Narrow the criteria to people under-40 who own a house and I'd expect a much larger subscription rate.

The 20-30 group that is familiar and accustomed to streaming services, or even the basic Netflix delivery service (circa 1997) is not even remotely similar to the generation of kids born in the 70s. And the same goes with the 70s to the 50s. Who still has landlines? Those over the age of 45. (OLD graph but good info; http://ww3.hdnux.com/photos/07/74/73/2084546/7/628x471.jpg) They've spent most of their lives with land line phones being the most common means of long distance communication. It was considered essential. Cable is not considered essential to this up and coming generation (millenials) even more so than it was considered not essential to my generation.

Why are you assuming that you need to be 40 and a homeowner to be able to afford $35/mo cable? I'm 29 and have never once in my life paid for cable. I'm an engineer and own. I use Plex with Rokus and Chromecast. Prior to these devices I used Netflix mostly, they started streaming in 2007 but from 1997 to 2007 they still had a fairly decent delivery service.

Sports are pretty much the only TV I watch anymore (for the most part) and I stopped paying for cable as soon as I graduated from college (it was included in my rent payment at my apartment down there, otherwise I'd have done it sooner). There are other means to watching sports -- Sunday night NFL games are on NBC.com, for instance. Every college sport is broadcasted on ESPN3, so you can just get a couple of people together to buy a cheap subscription and use that to watch ESPN3. The only ones I miss (or, alternatively, use sketchy streaming sites for) are midday NFL games.

Young people don't care about sports? Wow.

I'll speak for the late 20's Crowd (although I just turned 30..) No one in my age group, that I know, watches sports at home. If they do, they go to the bar to do it.

ESports are MUCH more interesting for at-home watching.

I'm just curious if the downvote is because I'm 30 or because I spoke against sports?

It's probably because you're 30 and watch esports. I didn't downvote you, though. Most of the people I know who own houses stay home to watch games but that's mostly due to the fact that they've had to move out of the urban areas to purchase.

It is probably not something you can extrapolate on but I know a couple of people who watch ESPN SportsCenter every single morning (as far as I know).

The downvotes are unwarranted, but my guess is: it seems like you're claiming that no one in your cohort watches sports based on your anectdata. A claim which is likely out of touch with reality. I upvoted to hopefully even out your score.

I upvoted you, but I'm guessing people are objecting to your attempting to "be a spokesperson for the late twenties crowd", when I think your case is exceptional. I'm mid-almost-late twenties and I've never heard of "watching e-sports" or twitch.com until this thread. I've seen speedruns of half-life on youtube and such, but I had no idea people actually seemingly stream live video game competitions. I have a wide circle of friends in their twenties and thirties, and I've never heard of e-sports.

I agree though, that live sports are mostly watched at bars by friends in my age range. I only have DirecTV because it's "free" (included in hoa fees), but I still almost never watch "live" tv. I just watch DVRed shows instead of on Hulu now. Sports, especially NFL, are still huge as I can see by my facebook feed during big games or the draft.

Heck, I didn't know what a touch down was a few years ago, but sports are so popular among mainstream (ie: non techies) I had to learn enough to pretend to be interested to fit in socially, and eventually I started actually enjoying watching and following the local teams. I suspect there may be a bit of an echo chamber in some communities that don't care about sports, but I'd wager the among the majority they are still very popular.

I downvoted you not for the opinion (which I do happen to disagree with) but because you're making the mistake of taking your own anecdote and assuming it implies everyone is like you.

Among me and my friends, nobody likes rap music, ice hockey or nightclubs, doesn't those 3 things aren't incredibly popular among many people.

Your anecdote is not representative of the whole. You have certain interests and your friends share them. The NFL (not to mention the other major sports) is huge with young people. Much larger than your e-"sports".

Consider this - does any individual esports team make anywhere near what Lebron James, individually makes, including his salary and all his various sponsorships?

Its easy to sit in your SV bubble and claim such a thing but live sports is huge. ESPN alone is considered to be the most expensive sports channel [1]. Lets be real, how many American children are aiming to be the next Lebron James vs Fatil1ty (how many young people know who Fat1lity is?)

Esports might be more interesting for you and your friends, but lets make sure that we aren't projecting our preferences on 300 million Americans.

[1]http://www.npr.org/2013/08/07/209820647/the-history-and-futu...

A lot of people your age will eventually have children or will no longer find going to the bar regularly that enjoyable.

If you look at how much money major sports franchise owners are spending on improving the in-game experience for fans, and listen to their thoughts on doing so, it's pretty clear that they are fighting hard to get people to actually come to games rather than watching them on TV.

NFL Football is the most popular sports league in the US and quite frankly, I find the product to be almost unwatchable live compared to television. I think basketball and hockey are much more enjoyable in person, but that's also expensive and more time consuming than seeing them on TV, and both leagues play around 80 games a season, I believe.

A useless data point, but I'm 32 and never heard of eSports until this thread.

Lastly, consider this: Twitch is selling for $1 Billion dollars. The average value of a single(of 32) NFL team is more than that and television networks are paying the NFL several billion each year to broadcast games.

The people who say "get an antenna" must have never seen a mountain or high-rise building before. Television signals require line of sight and if you're unlucky enough to have a sizable obstruction between you and the transmission tower then you're out of luck.

Reasonable line-of-sight. Radio waves _will_ bend around modest-sized obstacles, though remote or mountainous regions are clearly disadvantaged.

That said: most large population centers tend not to be remote and/or mountainous.

I'm embarrassed for people that post about spectator sports on social media.

Apparently I'm not?

I know, right? People wanting to talk about a common subject among their friends via social media!! And those people talking about the weather in the elevator! Simpletons.

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