
YouTube Says It's in Negotiations to Stream Live NBA, NHL Games - profitbaron
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-02-22/google-s-youtube-says-it-s-negotiating-to-broadcast-live-nba-nhl-games.html
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erichsu
I tried very hard to pay the NBA to stream its games online. I bought NBA
League Pass Broadband two years running and found:

1\. Many games I wanted to see were under local blackout

2\. Many games I wanted to see were blacked out because they were the Tuesday
NBA TV game.

3\. I tried time shift games and found that whenever the game ends, the stream
ends and snaps you to the final score. No matter where you are in the stream.

4\. I found replay was flaky.

For all these reasons, I found myself often watching games on atdhe despite
having paid to watch them. I also found myself really enjoying watching random
TV commercials in Polish or Czech or Arabic, depending on atdhe source. I also
really was impressed with the quality of the Veetle software.

Anyway, issues 3 & 4 could be solved by competent programming. Issues 1 & 2
(blackout) are likely to be with us for a long time due to the idiotic history
of profit divvying in the industry.

I would still love to pay the NBA to watch the games, as long as all the games
are viewable!

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jamesbkel
Could not agree more. I'm glad to pay the NBA to watch the games, but they
make it next to impossible.

From what I understand, MLB is better, but I can't speak from experience...
curious if anyone has any comments...

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kgermino
MLB.tv isn't terrible. Their interface is actually quite nice, except that it
only works properly in Firefox. The blackout restrictions are so-so, all local
market games are blocked, as well as Saturday afternoon (FOX) games and Sunday
Night Baseball (ESPN). Basically its not a bad deal if you don't live in your
team's local market, especially if you are like me and can easily spend an
afternoon watching every NL game.

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johns
Major sports are the last thing keeping me tied to my satellite dish. Once I
can get any game live online, it's gone.

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benzheren
Totally agree. After I cut my cable cord, the only thing I miss is live sports
event. If this deal goes through, Google TV will become more attractive.

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djahng
Same here. Although I do find myself going to bars a lot more now.

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zepolen
Slightly off topic, but I recall reading an article about the time windows 95
was released. Video (not online, just video) was the new tech of the time.

Bill Gates had said back then that he could see a future where we could watch
real time video on the computer via the internet.

The magazine mocked it, with a punchline I think went like 'We already have
that Bill, it's called a television'.

Say what you want about the man, but he was a visionary.

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EnderMB
As a football (soccer) fan from the UK it surprises me that MLS hasn't jumped
down Google's throats looking for a similar online solution for fans. It's a
fantastic league that most Americans don't appreciate because it's perceived
to be of poor-quality, but given a true online presence as good as their
website is would boost its popularity ten-fold.

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TillE
Ability-wise, MLS is on par with the Championship or the 2. Bundesliga (ie,
the better second divisions). It's nowhere near the level of the top European
divisions.

That said, I'm really looking forward to the revival of the New York Cosmos,
and I'd definitely pay to watch live matches online.

I've always thought that this would be a huge boost to non-league clubs as
well - I presume that FC United of Manchester, for example, haven't signed any
TV deals and would be free to broadcast live video that they're already
recording in Gigg Lane, complete with hilarious Manc commentators (unluckeh!).

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EnderMB
The issue with these kind of statements is that leagues are judged on the
ability of their top teams. La Liga, for example, sports the likes of
Barcelona, Valencia, Real Madrid, Athletico Madrid and co, but also contains a
large number of small teams with no hope of continental competition. The
Premier League is different in that it has a large number of strong teams who
can fight for Europa League places. If anything, being compared to the
Championship is a huge compliment, as the Championship is a fiercely
competitive league that produces teams that have done extremely well in the
past few years (Blackpool being the latest example).

MLS will never be rated as good as European leagues because they're never in
direct competition with European teams. However, I truly believe that all MLS
needs is to bleed some youth into the league. If they set up a summer loan
deal with the Premier League academies then great youth players will get their
chances in MLS alongside their heroes, the future stars of the Premier League
will be "seen first" in MLS and maybe some will stick around.

On the subject of non-league teams, they could use all the money they can get.
FCUM have decent backing, but the likes of Redditch United can no longer pay
their team. I'm sure a basic YouTube deal where live matches would give the
fans a great way to give them what little money they may need.

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ohashi
Sadly, I expect 'not available in your country' to pop up an awful lot with
this type of deal.

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muhfuhkuh
Or the first appearance of YouTube "blackouts" for local market games.

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Griever
This is pretty exciting except for the fact that lately Youtube has been
insanely slow loading anything above 320p quality, if not impossible to watch.
They're going to need to step up in terms of speed for this to work correctly.

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kevingailey
This would be superb & a huge win for YouTube as a publishing platform. The
biggest gap in online media is live content. This is especially true for
sports (at their best live) So YouTube locking down the rights to these
streams (hopefully for all games, not select high profile ones) would be a
home run. Hope this comes true! Go Lake Show!

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iamdave
Is anyone else not surprised that the NFL, an industry that can't even get
broadcast television down correctly, and seemingly refuses to go outside of
it's little bubble distributors and programs that cost _entirely_ too much
isn't involved in these negotiations?

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spoondan
The NFL's TV deals are arguably fan unfriendly. But satisfaction probably
isn't high on the NFL's list of success metrics. The deals are successful in
that they're very lucrative.

I don't know if I'd blame the NFL if it thinks there's little value in
addressing the common complaints about its TV coverage.

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daemin
I think live sports are the only thing that could be actually run on broadcast
networks. Since TV series, news, and movies are most easily consumed on demand
(i.e. I watch what I want when I want), but live sports are pretty much one
off events that occur at a fixed time. Hence making it harder to timeshift.

Now that Google/YouTube is getting into the broadcast business, specifically
broadcasting live sport, I have to say that traditional broadcasters are going
to be facing an even faster slide into the abyss.

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ajhit406
I would gladly pay YouTube if their services are even 50% as reliable as
cable.

Please give me a reason not to send money to Comcast or TimeWarner.
Pleaassssseeee.

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zitterbewegung
After seeing a couple of live streams of NHL games on justin.tv and other
streaming sites its good that youtube is stepping up to make this legitimate.
I am sure that you could make a buck putting advertisements on a live stream
of sports. I wonder if this will put a dent into the other live stream video
sites.

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ENOTTY
The big question is how these deals handle blackout situations. I hate it when
NBC, Versus, or NHL Network get a NHL game so it's blacked out in the entire
country.

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rodh257
I enjoyed Youtube's coverage of the Indian Premier League twenty20 cricket
tournament last year. Though the performance was sometimes a bit poor - a
couple of games we were halfway through the match then all of a sudden the
coverage jumped back to 1/4 of the way through for a while but I think it was
their first streaming event so I'm sure they've ironed the kinks out now.

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RiderOfGiraffes
Related: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2252152>

