NBC Sports Philly Local Streaming Now Availabe

[zambonir]

I figured this is bigger than just a note in Sports Media, though it has long been discussed there.

NBC Sports Philadelphia will finally stream Phillies, 76ers, and Flyers games on...

[andyb]

That is a pretty steep price especially since one needs Peacock too. Was thinking this would be more in the $15-$20 range..

I think MLB is going to find out that $20 a month is a point where subscriptions will drop precipitously. We'll see much more next season as MLB looks pretty certain to package all the Diamond rights to ESPN or Amazon channels type access.

Also, Peacock really needs to add a start from beginning feature for sporting events. They are one of the few that do not have that yet. Was trying to watch a football game on a plane a few months ago and had to click on the game and close my eyes to then click back to the beginning of the game without knowing the score.

[zambonir]

It's pretty much market price, though if you only care about the Phillies or even just one other team, not as appealing.

In Los Angeles, Spectrum offers a streaming-only plan for Dodgers games for $29.99 a month, the same prices NESN charges to stream Boston Red Sox and Boston Bruins games. YES charges $24.99 a month for New York fans to stream Yankees and Nets games.

NBC Northern California is $17.95 (but that's for the Sharks, A's and Kings, not the Giants or Warriors).

NBC Boston is $14.99 but that's only for Celtics and Connecticut WNBA; you're paying almost $35 if you want that plus NESN.

Your comment about Peacock just makes me happy to keep paying for YT for now, the Multi-view, the DVR and on-demand and the overall simplicity of having ESPN, Fox, CBS and a few non-sports channels is still worth it. Plus I travel a lot so it's easy to use in hotels or other people's houses. I'd be blacked out for Phillies when travelling otherwise (though I have free MLB.TV).

I'm sure there will be a lower price point once there is integrated national black-out free MLB.TV for all 30 teams but that has to be negotiated by MLB with Comcast in the Phillies' case.

[andyb]

It is not quite market price because Peacock adds $8-$14 a month on top of that. And there is also starting to be research on what price points work and what doesn't. It is true that the Yankees and Dodgers and Red Sox can probably get away with higher prices than Kansas City or Detroit, but that really means they just have more high income people in their market. At some point when the whole cable bundle collapses they will be forced to price more to the market. More people watching their games is a good thing and MLB is really cognizant of that especially with their national packages not doing well outside of the playoffs.

[zambonir]

Yeah, that's true. I've just never paid for Peacock Premium, or not very much (I think for two years I was getting it for $20 a year and now it's free with Instacart +) so that part slipped my mind. And those Yankees and Dodgers fans don't get to watch Peacock shows (or sports). For me Peacock is generally worth it (I have watched several movies plus all the SNL programming lately, and Poker Face is coming back soon, and there's other sports stuff as you know) though I wouldn't have it all the time if I was on a monthly. But that's also what people can do if they don't care about the Sixers or Flyers.

It's basicallly just a little more than MLB.TV if you only have it for baseball season, but you also get all the pre and post-game shows. There are also probably quite a few people who will want it for the network's Eagles coverage (even w/o games), more than the two terrible winter sports teams.

[julio]

Made me laugh. To me, "market price" implies a true market - which implies multiple vendors bidding for customers by competing on price. This is more a case of comparing what monopolists are charging in different "markets" - but taking a different meaning of the word "market" (as in, different areas, different customers, but not anything competitive).

[zambonir]

Well sure. But Comcast pays the Phillies a ton of money to have the exclusive rights to the broadcasts (as do the national networks), and beat out other companies in competitive bidding to do so. And that's part of why the team has the payroll it does. Obviously they have always had a lot of anti-competive behavior, which is more about the fact that they are allowed to be both a cable distributor and a programmer, but we're certainly not going back to those kinds of regulations these days (even less so now).

I will go ahead and call it a fair price, if not a market price. Compared to what it would cost to have cable or a streamer, and also on a per-game basis - even if it's just the Phillies. If you value the other two sports, you're paying about 50 cents a game. If you don't, $1. Or you gotta wait for that baseball only package but that's at least another three years away.

[andyb]

We really won't know if it is a fair or market price until we see how many people subscribe.

There is a reason lots of teams are going to more over the air broadcasts during this transition. And that reason is the number of people willing to pay more than $20 a month for a single local sports channel is pretty limited. Big markets can get away with charging more because of their demographics and size, but the number of people watching local telecasts cumulatively must be shrinking - and that is a big long term problem. This Peacock solution is a short term solution. Guessing in 5 years things will look very different.

[zambonir]

Well, that's where it is kind of a monopoly since the Phillies are tied to Comcast until 2041, and also own 25% of NBC Philly. They didn't have to do this with Peacock, they could have let non-subscribers do it on the existing NBC Sports Philly platforms, but they are a programming asset NBC wants to leverage for its larger goals.

I think "over-the-air" is still a bit of a misdirection though. Most people are still watching those games on cable or a streamer. I'm consistently amazed at how few people I know, young or old, don't have their TVs even set up for it. When the Phillies are on Channel 10 instead of NBC Philly some people get confused.

And a significant portion of the younger/future Phillies fan base have probably never watched a full baseball game on a television screen at home in their adult life.

[dcsman]

So, I can't read the article as I'm not a subscriber. Does this mean that I can live anywhere (say Cleveland) and so long as I have Peacock and this service that I could watch most of the Phillies games and with the Phillies announcers? If so, I'm a fan.

[schillingfan]

No. You can’t. It’s only for in-market, i.e. places blacked out by MLB for the baseball package. I’m blacked out, but I can get NBC Philly sports through You-Tube TV. If you are in Cleveland, you can get the MLB package. I subscribe to Peacock for Olympic sports, like ice- skating as they stream all the major events. They also get some good movies, like the aoscar winner this year, Anorq.

[zambonir]

if you live outside of Philadelphia's viewing area you can already get MLB.TV which already costs less than this would.

(Though, footnote, it looks like MLB.TV no longer offers the slightly cheaper out-of-market one-team package now that it also has in-market one-team packages. I never did that when I was living elsewhere, it was only like $20 less so why not have the other 28 teams outside my area too).

[bkox]

I live in a stupid area of Illinois where I get blacked out of watching the Philles on MLBtv whenever they play the Cubs, WhiteSox AND the Cardinals. So I lose 15-19 games a year.. thats 10% of the season. I would pay the extra if I could watch all the televised games with Phillies announcers.

[andyb]

I think "over-the-air" is still a bit of a misdirection though. Most people are still watching those games on cable or a streamer. I'm consistently amazed at how few people I know, young or old, don't have their TVs even set up for it. When the Phillies are on Channel 10 instead of NBC Philly some people get confused.

The reason over the air is important is the continued decline of cable and live streaming services. It is why the NBA chose NBC over Warner in their latest TV rights. NBC offered over the air plus streaming. Warner only offered TNT plus streaming. Being available in the most households matters. Streaming is the choice now over cable when people need to pay a premium for events, but balancing that out with the most households is still important.

And there is no rule saying over the air games cannot be streamed also. While NBC is tied into USA for some Premier League soccer, that is a vestige of older negotiations that stresses multiple platforms. All the over the air NBA games will be on Peacock though and there are no USA games. This is the new reality. Broadcast for expanded reach. Streaming to for exclusivity (and long term money making).

[zambonir]

Yeah, that is really the biggest thing MLB needs to fix, and it really shouldn't have to wait for the new national contracts to do it. The TV contracts aren't set up for it, but in those Venn diagram type regions they could have MLB.TV subscribers just pick one team that wouldn't be available to them as their home team (or at the very least, one city). I assume you also couldn't necessarily have all three of those teams' channels in your cable or streaming package, which is why the blackout rules originally existed, to make you subscribe.

Expecting to be able to see the road team's announcers (or have your choice) is a somewhat newer development. But today's fan bases are nationalized and kids don't always pick their local team (sometimes it's a favorite player or favorite uniform or team that wins the World Series during their formative years) so a national black-out free streaming package reflects that too.

As I think Andy posted the other day 13 Phillies games are set for national broadcasts so those won't be in the local Peacock streaming (or MLB.TV in some cases, I think Fox usually is but ESPN isn't).

[bkox]

As I think Andy posted the other day 13 Phillies games are set for national broadcasts so those won't be in the local Peacock streaming (or MLB.TV in some cases, I think Fox usually is but ESPN isn't).

yeah which means I lost about 20% of the MLB sub. If I was paying for it I might be perturbed lol.

[andyb]

As I think Andy posted the other day 13 Phillies games are set for national broadcasts so those won't be in the local Peacock streaming (or MLB.TV in some cases, I think Fox usually is but ESPN isn't).

Maybe we need to move this back to the Sports media thread, but I have found that the MLB.TV app often includes the national games. Not the exclusive Sunday night game, but most of the Fox and FS1 and TBS games are not exclusive. So MLB.tv includes those feeds even if the network is doing 2 or 3 regional games. It can be a little weird because sometimes the network (say Fox) will kick it back to HQ for some sort of score update and the MLB.TV feed just stays with the game feed but with no announcers. The Apple games are exclusive. Not as sure about the Roku games which are so cheap that I imagine they are not.

[zambonir]

I think the Roku games are exclusive, but they are also free for anyone (you don't even need a log in if you just go to the URL. For app or TV you do). Apple you need to pay. And yeah Fox is typically on MLB.TV whether regional or national. ESPN isn't.

But it has always been thus, whether on MLB TV or local television. It's only the more recent era of Apple, Peacock, Roku (or Facebook, or Amazon for football) where a national deal becomes more annoying since it's not simply a matter of turning on a channel you already have.

[andyb]

Looks like you can go direct from MLB.TV also for the Phillies. Obviously you don't get basketball and hockey, but one does not need Peacock either.

Athletics, Philadelphia Phillies, and San Francisco Giants adding new in-market...

[zambonir]

Oh that's cool. Were I ditching YT I would still do the Peacock, both for some of their programming and the Flyers, but that's fantastic for people who only want baseball. I wonder if the local-only will also let you choose to overlay the radio like you can on regular MLB.TV (depending on your device/system).