I think live sports is the last bit of programming that prevents a lot people from getting rid of cable completely.
On the other hand, sports, football in particular, are one of the biggest selling points of HDTV and the high resolution picture it provides.
If the future of watching football consists of the same buffering, crappy framerates and resolution, and all around frustration of using Youtube as it exists today, this experiment will end halfway through Sunday of Week 1.
I'm curious about your last paragraph. Certainly on-demand video is subject to buffering, but the rest of that doesn't seem to be my experience at all. We watch both Netflix and Youtube content at home on multiple clients (e.g. browesr, phones, the now-ancient Netflix app on the TiVo HD...) and while obviously we've seen the occasional network failure I don't think any of them seem to be service-specific.
Basically, watching "premium" 720p+ content on Youtube provides virtually indistinguishable quality and reliability. Is that really not your experience?
It's just a Comcast line at home. But my point wasn't that video streaming works perfectly, just that I don't see a notable difference in reliability between Youtube and Netflix. They both work about the same, which is to say "well enough for me".
> On the other hand, sports, football in particular, are one of the biggest selling points of HDTV and the high resolution picture it provides.
Many consumers are not particularly aware of video quality beyond what advertising tells them. So long as the screen is big and they think it is HD (either because the settop box that they plugged in wrong says "HD" on it, or because marketing has told them that 720p is the bees knees, or whatever), then they are pretty happy.
Buffering is something that everyone notices immediately though. That would make or break this.
Heck, last year I paid Comcast for the NHL package and it had crappy framerates and very noticeable compression artifacts. I suspect someone at Comcast was trying to save some bandwidth. Other HD channels look fine.
Which is a long way of saying, I don't think streaming video content via a cable modem is all that different from watching content via a cable box.
The good thing about sports is you can generally go to a bar or something and watch 'the game', on the plus side they have beer and food and other people to watch it with.
You can't go to the bar (at least around here) for the sole purpose of watching the latest episode of 'Breaking Bad'.
I have an MLB.tv subscription, and watch on my computer, iPad and TV (through the PS3 app). I have never had "buffering, crappy framerates and resolution, and all around frustration".
Arguably baseball television coverage has an entirely different pace to it, and I would suspect that football has a lot more complex camera-work, including multiple cut aways per play.
Based on my understanding of how most video compression works, I bet it effects the bandwidth requirements.
Disclaimer: I worked at Netflix until the end of July 2013 but I have no inside knowledge relating to anything to do with NFL Sunday Ticket.
As many have said here, Netflix has absolutely no experience in live-streaming, which, despite the apparent similarity, is entirely different than streaming cached content. To my knowledge, the idea of doing anything live hasn't been on the company's radar. As recently as early February when we launched House of Cards, the company wasn't even set up to allow for a real-time, coordinated launch of a title on the service.
Unless something like this was being run as a top-secret, skunkworks-style effort (which I seriously doubt) the service architecture isn't at all prepare to handle live-content and there's little reason to believe that Netflix has any interest in dipping its toe into the live sports world.
Has Netflix done live video on anything approaching this scale? I don't doubt that they have the capabilities to put a live streaming infrastructure together for something like this, but DTV's out starting next year and there's a lot of work to get done in that time. That would be a lot of risk.
None of that is live streaming. Netflix can only do that via cached videos at ISPs and other tricks.
Live steaming is a whole new ballgame and something Netflix has never tried. YouTube has live streamed many events such as Google IO and Presidential debates.
It would be interesting to see if Netflix's architecture is even capable of supporting NFL Sunday Ticket.
I would certainly pay either company to get Live streams of NFL games (with no blackouts, I hate those with a passion). I can't justify the cost of buying Cable/DTV + the $30-50 a month for the sports package but would happily pay that ~30/month during the season. NFL doesn't offer live streaming inside of the US for some daft reasons (OK, its because they get a ton from cable/DTV regardless of whether someone actually watched or not...)
You can do it this year for $100 for the whole season. Just buy the Madden 25th Anniversary Edition on Amazon. [1]
Before you read the fine print and conclude that it's only available to people who can't get DirecTV, please see this clarification [2] from Anthony Stevenson (Madden's director of marketing).
If the clarification turns out to be false, Amazon will be getting a return from me and a strongly worded complaint. :-)
I had not heard of this, thank you. I imagine there will be a number of used one's on ebay after people pull the passcode out of the box, which is what I am thinking about doing.
Postseason typically shows all games on TV. This setup will allow us to watch any game regardless of where you live (and what your cable provider allows you to watch).
> I would certainly pay either company to get Live streams of NFL games (with no blackouts, I hate those with a passion).
Blackouts exist to limit the extent that remote viewing substitutes for live attendance, as a means to support the live ticket prices. The alternative to blackouts is to accept that remote viewing is a substitute for live attendance, and to make the prices for remote viewing higher and those for live attendance lower.
> Blackouts exist to limit the extent that remote viewing substitutes for live attendance
Y'all are confusing your words. "Blackouts" you describe are local TV broadcast blackouts if they don't sell out the stadium. "Blackouts" the GP describes are the blackouts on Sunday ticket because you are supposed to watch them locally.
Opinions: The former is good, it forces attendance. The latter is not, as it puts prevents regions that otherwise can't watch the games locally from being able to watch them at all (due to poor blackout zoning). MLB.TV is about to enter a lawsuit about this very thing, and though they'll likely win, it is a huge problem.
Couple that with the ESPN's and others having a hatred for cord-cutters and you have an area ripe for disruption, even though the sports leagues themselves can hold it down w/ their anti-trust exemptions and unfair practices. But that won't last forever once the Googles and Netflixes have the capital to force the leagues' hands.
> "Blackouts" you describe are local TV broadcast blackouts if they don't sell out the stadium.
That's one set of blackouts to limit the extent that remote viewing substitutes for live attendance, but...
> "Blackouts" the GP describes are the blackouts on Sunday ticket because you are supposed to watch them locally.
...that's also a set of blackouts to limit the extent that remote viewing substitutes for live attendance (in part). (It prevents Sunday Ticket from providing an end-run around the other kind of blackout.)
It also serves another similar purpose, to protect the local TV contract revenue in the same way that local TV blackouts protect stadium revenue.
I subscribed to MLB.tv for one month so I could watch my Detroit Tigers last year. Every game was blacked out, since I live in Michigan. I could only watch, for example, the Kansas City feed, with Kansas City announcers and Kansas City-focused commentary. I don't get antenna reception in my apartment for whatever reason, so I have no alternative.
My alternative was to visit a local bar for games I needed to see, and just not watch anything else.
Lucky you don't live in Iowa. The Cubs, White Sox, Brewers, Twins, Cardinals, and Royals are all blacked out. That can be up to 40% of the entire schedule on many nights.
There's no pro team with several hundred miles of me. I know why blackouts exist, and they make sense to a degree in larger cities/areas near a team. However, if we're going to be honest, they have no problems selling tickets to games people actually want to go to. Assuming I had a more flexible work schedule, I would try to go to a few Steelers games (Which would, basically, force me to fly there...I wouldn't relish the drive).
I don't even care about not getting all the games for every team, let me pick a set of teams (say 3-6) and get all their games live. Hell, I'll even take a pick of two teams for live streaming. I already subscribe to NFL network's streaming service for game replays, but there are some games -- like for the teams I support -- that I want live.
I've never understood this mentality. If a company (in this case the NFL) doesn't want me to be their customer then I simply won't be. For example, I like watching the Sabres (hockey for the uninitiated), but only a couple games a season are available to me. Therefore, I have stopped watching the games and they don't receive any of my money in the form of merchandising or ad revenue because one fewer set of eyes are watching their ads.
The basic logic is simple: the league makes vastly more revenue per viewer from people in the stadium (ticket sales, concessions, etc.) then from people watching remotely (TV, streaming, etc.), so it can afford to lose lots of TV, streaming, etc. viewers if doing so avoids losing a small number (or a small share of the revenues from) in-stadium audience.
> If a company (in this case the NFL) doesn't want me to be their customer then I simply won't be.
Sacrificing low-revenue customers to preserve revenue from high-revenue customers isn't exactly a novel business model.
That's what NBA League Pass offered last year. You pick a couple of teams and you get their games. I happily paid for it and will do so again this season.
The NFL has driven me crazy with not adopting a similar model. I can't get DTV at my home (condo), I don't care about the local teams, and paying for the whole league wasn't available on my local provider. They had a PS3 streaming option last season but I read it didn't work reliably so I didn't bother. Like you, I'd happily pay to follow a few teams teams + Red Zone. Luckily, as someone above posted, there's a great deal for $99 this season to purchase Madden and get Sunday Ticket included. I jumped all over that!
NFL offers a fantastic service, similar to the one you want, called gamepass. There is a catch (of course!), you just need to be in an international market.
Its been a few years since I moved to the US so my memory is probably a little spotty but I seem to recall all games, live, HD with the ability to replay on demand (like gamerewind). You could also have the feed use the audio from teams radio network instead of the TV commentary. Man, I really miss that feature!
> NFL offers a fantastic service, similar to the one you want, called gamepass. There is a catch (of course!), you just need to be in an international market.
I know, on top of that when I spent time in Switzerland I found out they get all the NFL games for free, live on TV. I've never understood why.
I think this is a false dichotomy. Individuals pay hundreds of dollars to get the season or half-season package up-front. Given a four-month season (playoff games are broadcast over regular networks), $20/month isn't even close to what DirectTV charges. On a monthly basis, the figure would be closer to $60-$70 so I'm not sure where the author gets his proposed figures from.
If you are a cord-cutter with no cable, having Google own the rights and stream games over the internet would help you if you didn't already have cable, but those that do already get about five games a week over their local networks. So really Google would have to charge a flat fee up-front to stream all games on Sunday Ticket.
But it's important to remember that a large percentage of Sunday Ticket revenue comes from bars that purchase large packages to broadcast it to their patrons. From what I'm told this cost depends on the capacity of the location and can run into the tens of thousands of dollars for a single season. I'm not sure how this would play into Google or Netflix's strategy.
I think very few people pay full price for Sunday Ticket, either via deals like this year's Madden, getting it for free as a new customer, or calling and complaining that you don't get it for free/threatening to leave until they substantially discount it for you.
The math here is all wrong. It's vastly more expensive than this, if you want to provide it a la carte. All cable subscribers are currently subsidizing live sports, whether they want to or not. It's a dinosaur that should die. Sports salaries should be 1/10th of what they currently are.
If the major expense of your business is the salaries of your employees, and your number of employees need to remain relatively unchanged, and your revenue drops in 1/10th, then roughly you will need to higher employees who will accept 1/10th of the wages. Some of your current employees may accept, but you can expect massive turn-over. And arguably lower-quality employees.
In short, I'm being forced to pay for live sports, if I want cable, and I predict that very soon that will change.
I'll bet you any amount that you care to wager that the salaries for NBA/NFL/MLB players don't drop by anything close to 90% at any point in the next 10 years.
> Threatened by Internet streaming services and a fragmenting TV audience, Comcast/NBC, ESPN, Fox Sports, Turner, and CBS have agreed over the last 20 months to spend $72 billion for the TV rights to professional, Olympic, and college sports well into the next decade.
> In some TV markets, Abdoulah said, sports channels account for 60 percent of the overall programming costs in the cable-TV bill because of fees for regional sports networks.
Yes, cable is not a la carte. That doesn't automatically mean that you're subsidizing ESPN. Maybe it's the people that sign up for cable solely to get ESPN that are subsidizing all the other channels.
You are correct that mathematically, I have not proven the direction of total subsidization.
However:
> In some TV markets, Abdoulah said, sports channels account for 60 percent of the overall programming costs in the cable-TV bill because of fees for regional sports networks.
I guarantee that it is not the case that greater than 60 percent of people who sign up for cable do so solely to watch sports. So, in certain markets, it is for sure people like me who subsidize sports programming, not the other way around.
Generally I start from the point of view that gross mis-pricings where there are multiple buyers and sellers involved are pretty rare. So the various TV organizations are probably paying about as much for sports broadcasting rights as their customers are willing to pay for them. Maybe it's off a bit one way or the other but certainly not by a factor of 10 (as you claimed above).
That's basically what I think unless I'm presented with very strong evidence to the contrary.
Remember, cable is merely the carrier. I assert that $0 of what I pay my cable company should go to pay for programming (other than Pay-Per-View), considering that programming already has advertising. If I want to pay for Premium content (like HBO, Sports), then Cable could mediate that. But that's not the relationship we have today, at all.
Cable companies are certainly not just a carrier. They pay all kinds of money in order to put together a package of programming that is popular enough for them to attract a large subscriber base. They do this because that's how they think they can best run their business.
You can assert all you want about how you think the cable company should spend it's money, but you don't get all that much of a say in the matter.
That's a silly answer for a lot of reasons. But more than any it doesn't make much of a difference.
The NFL will spend about 3.8B on salaries next year. The NBA is around 2B. MLB is around 3.2B. Add that up and you get 9B. Spread that evenly among the 7.2 Million teachers in the US and you get: only 1,250 each.
The average high school teacher in the US makes about $44k a year.
A 2.8% raise is nothing to scoff at.
Also, I think you're vastly underestimating, based on all of the support staff necessary to make a sporting facility, man it, broadcast it, and comment on it.
Not to mention how much the team owners take out of it.
Well we were just talking about salaries for the players which is why I only quoted those numbers. I think that most of the sports union contracts stipulate that players get around 50% of gross revenues so you can double things if you want to go that route.
But it's not the huge windfall I think that OP implied. It's not "if we didn't spend so much money on sports we could fix all these problems we have in our education system" money.
If by "should" the author is referring to what would be in the best interests of consumers, then the NFL should forget about exclusive licenses and just sign deals with everyone.
Question for the room: If the government were to mandate FRAND licensing of live sports content, would the benefits to the consumer outweigh the market burden of regulation?
On the other hand, sports, football in particular, are one of the biggest selling points of HDTV and the high resolution picture it provides.
If the future of watching football consists of the same buffering, crappy framerates and resolution, and all around frustration of using Youtube as it exists today, this experiment will end halfway through Sunday of Week 1.