Sports Media

Philsmania 2021-03-08 23:23:29 UTC #141

The Millennials (born 1981-97) are no longer young people, they're young adults with most in their 30's and some of them turning 40 and moving into middle age this year. They're becoming more the present than the future. And yes, they are beginning to spawn the next generational demographic, Generation Alpha (born 2013-present).

andyb 2021-03-08 23:36:40 UTC #142

I probably said Millennials when I was just talking about young viewers in general. I actually hate all the articles that must create generations with a very specific range of years, as if it is not one gradually changing continuum out there.

The answer for sports that want to be viewed by large audiences is to keep more of their product on free TV. Chase fewer short term dollars and get more long term. Heck, it is what Disney is doing with Disney+. They are deciding to lose money now to build the business for later. MLB should pressure its RSNs to get on all these streaming outlets (which would mean charging a bit less). They won't of course.

BostonRoss 2021-03-09 00:18:35 UTC #143

I thought that all the young people were going to become baseball fans as soon as they eliminated the pitches on intentional walks...

andyb 2021-03-09 14:21:00 UTC #144

Though it is probably a fair point that the game is slower now than it was when we grew up so less attractive to the new fan. All made worse by not being able to flip on the TV and watch it for free of course.

We probably will never go back to an era of baseball prominence. Football has the once a week event advantage. That does not mean we can't make baseball a better game while making it easier to watch. Deaden the ball so more balls are put in play. Put in pitch clocks if necessary. Add the DH in both leagues. Robot umps. And require teams to put their games on streaming services that don't cost $100 a month (fine them if their RSNs don't play ball). Make real labor peace (i.e. promoting the game is in everyone's interest long term).

zambonir 2021-03-09 19:26:08 UTC #145

But as we know better than almost any fan base, that's not how it works. Comcast is paying the Phillies to A) be able to sell Comcast products and B) be able to charge other services to carry their channel, and not do business with anyone who won't. The blackout rules are also a product of this. Even after all these years, and despite the legal loophole finally closing, I believe you still can't get NBC Philly on Directv because they never made a deal (I know you can't get NBC NW up here).

Some of these TV deals are in place for a long time. The market reality of streaming has outpaced them, and will probably look completely different by the time the deals are up. Will it even make sense to have local TV deals in 20 years? Obviously the bigger-market teams will try to hold on to that. But for now, I'm not sure it's actually that big a deal if one RSN is on Hulu but not YouTube, and so forth. They are all still relatively small, not all of them are going to survive, and most of them do offer the market's primary RSN on a reasonable tier. One also assumes that what is now a cheap ESPN+ product will eventually turn into a significantly more expensive all-ESPN product. You could still have carriage fees at that point too - but they'd go through your ISP or phone provider rather than your TV provider (not that they aren't often the same company already).

What's ironic is cord-cutters were supposed to save money but I'm not sure that's really the case anymore, it's cheaper to just buy your cable and internet together, and in both cases adding sports tiers or HBO starts to add up. At worst you have to negotiate when a promotional offer expires.

I also don't think Gen Z is the customer base for cord-cutting services. Maybe their parents have switched, maybe not, but of the 18-24 year-olds who actualy live at home I'm sure plenty of them still get cable, or get nothing (but have Netflix, maybe ESPN+ with the Disney bundle). Or just dont' care. Or only watch sports in bars or with friends.

Of course, the most popular sport is also still the one that's on free television all the time (even the MNF games still air over-the-air in local markets). Imagine that!

andyb 2021-03-09 19:42:18 UTC #146

Interesting article on one of the larger pirate operations out there. The more sports raise the price the more people who will either stop watching or resort to illegal (or gray area semi-legal things like VPNs).

The NFL does not have as big a problem because most of their stuff is on free TV for games in home markets.

zambonir 2021-03-09 20:01:23 UTC #147

As a non-home fan that is the very thing I have sometimes used a VPN for, as the Eagles are rarely my regional game.

I don't think the argument here is about expense. While $200 seems very expensive to me for NBA League pass compared to MLB (which has twice as many games in a season) that doesn't justify paying $100 to a pirate instead. Ditto doing that instead of subscribing to Comcast, or a service that carries NBC Sports Philly.

I think, again, it really comes back to the nationalization of sports, and revenue. Teams still squeeze as lot of value out of local, but it probably shouldn't be that way in the long run. That's the other difference between the NFL and other leagues too. Zero local TV rights.

The bloat and confusion is not limited to sports, and the attempts by Roku/Apple/Smart TVs to integrate everything only seems to make it worse not better.

andyb 2021-03-09 20:08:37 UTC #148

MLB backed down on one of Bud Selig's smartest moves a few years ago by giving teams control of their local streaming rights. When the Internet was in its infancy, the MLB rights were all part of a national pooled contract. MLB backed away because streaming made the local contracts less valuable, but if they had just held firm we could have avoided much of this mess. Revenue from streaming would be shared equally. MLB could also offer MLB.TV as an alternative to streaming services and cable.

I would never use one of those pirate services but VPNs are legal. Lack of availability is just going to push more people to try it. And it seems not having access to local games is increasing by 5%-10% a year through cord-cutting and new options losing access.

MLB needs to solve this problem or their sport will become way too elitist in its access. They don't want to become the NHL or MLS but that is the path they are on. The NFL seems to find a way to protect all local rights and add streaming rights nationally to provide a value added approach. It helps by controlling the regular season and playoff rights nationally, but there are lessons to be learned for MLB.

andyb 2021-03-10 19:27:49 UTC #149

ESPN gets half of the national NHL package. Bonus if you have ESPN+ is that it looks like the entire NHL.tv package might be on there for the base price (which will surely increase if true). Now if they only did this for MLB, that $6 a month for ESPN+ would be well spent. We do get an MLB game of the day on ESPN+ but that is it.

zambonir 2021-03-10 19:35:59 UTC #150

Looks like they will be using Hulu too.

But yeah I don't know if NHL.TV will be included in the base ESPN+ package, I suspect it will be an add-on for a similar price as before, just using the interface.

(Ok, I guess you might be right. Wonder how that really ends up working, will NHL.TV/Gamecenter cease to exist? I guess in theory if someone wanted NHL.TV but not the Disney bundle they could save a little money, but not much, and they'd lose all the national games by not having Hulu or ESPN+).

andyb 2021-03-10 19:40:46 UTC #151

Hulu just integrated ESPN+ today. Looks pretty good so one does not need the ESPN+ app. Downside is that they don't seem to have a way to "favorite" your teams and it also does not integrate the ESPN or ESPN2 games like the app does. In the app you enter your cable provider (or YTTV for me) to do that. There is no incentive for Hulu to do that since they have their Hulu Live option. ESPN+ is really hard to FF through commercials, so the Hulu app should be better for that (for those of us that start games 30 minutes late so we don't have to watch commercials).

andyb 2021-03-10 19:52:15 UTC #152

The NHL release leans more into the NHL.tv package costing extra for ESPN+ customers. "Out of market streaming package available only as part of ESPN+ subscription"). It would not be called a package if it were something extra. The 75 games on ESPN+ and Hulu is actually less than on ESPN+ now, though it sounds like they will be higher quality ESPN productions.

zambonir 2021-03-10 20:49:39 UTC #153

the NHL's out-of-market streaming package, with more than 1,000 games (formerly on NHL.TV), will now be available for fans to stream only as part of an ESPN+ subscription.

Seems like the main thing is it it is going to be a significantly smaller package, which is why they can just include it (plus ESPN is essentially subsidizing the cost since it will bring people to the bundle).

There's 2542 games in the season. Subtract your local team's 81 games, subtract 75 games on ESPN+/Hulu, subtract 25 national ESPN games, that still leaves a whole lot of games for NBC (or, potentially, another bidder or bidder) to offer across TV and streaming. NBC is ditching the sports channel but could still use USA (and is also the partner on NHL Network) and Peacock.

andyb 2021-03-10 22:23:08 UTC #154

It does look like this is replacing NHL.tv (which was only $69.99 anyway). ESPN is paying $400 million a year for half the national package (over the previous NBC $200 million deal) so it is likely those ESPN+ streaming rights are a big piece of this. I imagine NBC (or Fox) will still get the other package and might even have more regular season games than ESPN's 25, but that package will be more in the $200-$300 million range making the whole thing $600-$700 million a year.

I would not put much stock in the 1,000 vs 2,000 games. I am guessing it is everything that is not on one of the over the air channels with local blackout rules in place. NBC might still get something like 50 regular season games and 50-100 more on Peacock (+ half the playoffs) but that is likely it. I imagine that retains their Wednesday night exclusive (with some of the games being double headers) on USA instead of NBCSN and a handful of Sunday games on NBC.

Edit - i think you messed up your math on games. 82 times 32 = 2,624 but only 1,312 total with 2 teams. The fine print is saying 1,100+ games on ESPN+ so it sounds about right that 200 will have some other sort of rights attached to them (the 25 on ESPN and 75 on Hulu/ESPN+ for one).

zambonir 2021-03-10 22:39:06 UTC #155

That's the pandemic/shorter season price (also possibly discounted further in-season). It was $144.99 last year (or that might have been the previous season, but it is generally in that ballpark).

What about Canada, I wonder.

zambonir 2021-03-14 20:35:11 UTC #156

I'm already feeling the gap at The Athletic - I believe Gelb has already left Clearwater (not that it's hard to do stuff remotely right now when it already is anyway) but not having a second writer means there are more days without a fresh Phillies story.

Whereas Inquirer.com still having a beat writer for each print paper (Breen and Lauber), plus Brookover feels pretty redundant.

andyb 2021-03-15 17:37:59 UTC #157

Youtube back with 21 MLB games this year. Up a bit from what they did 2 years ago.

andyb 2021-03-16 15:42:33 UTC #158

Some more on the closure of NBCSN. The future looks like the niche channels being absorbed into streaming services completely (think of CBS Sports Network or ESPNU) with attempts to consolidate top properties into a smaller number of over the air networks. Sounds like more of a band aid to me. The question is when something like ESPN becomes a streaming only network. Is it 2 or 5 or 10 years from now? And will it cost $10 or $30 a month?

zambonir 2021-03-16 18:31:50 UTC #159

I also saw the NHL Network is probably done. MLBAM has run it for the past six years (along with the NHL.TV) so in that sense the Disney deal is not entirely new. NBC only owns 15% of it, the league the rest so will probably just fold up. I always liked that I got it w/o paying for an extra tier (because of my particular deal/package) but didn't really watch it that often.

I feel like things are just going to get more expensive, not cheaper. It may turn out the packages and carriage fees and subsidies are not actually a bad thing, even if who is subsidizing whom isn't necessarily fair (never mind the politics part).

This is already true with premium/dramatic television, especially as the networks begin toggling to streaming. If I wanted to watch every show I was truly interested in, including some sports, I would now need Netlix, Hulu/Disney/ESPN+ (both of which I have, but mostly for younger family members who want Disney), Amazon Prime, Apple + and possibly Peacock and Paramount +, plus HBO (now basically free for me) and possibly AMC + (since I could no longer get those shows via my overall provider). As it is I don't get all those things, and also toggle between them for a few months at a time.

Alternatively, if you don't do streaming services you can often buy a single show that you're interested in if it's not a Netflix, Hulu or Prime original, but that's gonna run $20-40 in and of itself (depending on how many episodes)

Even if all of ESPN was only 10 bucks, I'd probably still be shelling out another 10 for Fox Sports and another 10 for local RSN (maybe even two of them). And if it's closer to 20?

andyb 2021-03-16 18:47:57 UTC #160

Things probably do get more expensive. That will just accelerate the cord cutting though. And when that happens at some point there will be critical mass for ESPN to offer all its channels on ESPN+ (or a version of that).

Nobody tries to watch everything any more. I think most have 3 or 4 core services like HBO and Netflix and rotate the smaller ones. The problem now is getting less value from the channel bundle. If sports games are moving from NBCSN to Peacock, I am getting less value from the channel bundle. Prices will go up for a while, but at some point there will be a breaking point and I think we are getting close to that. I have already decided it is not worth $85-$95 (instead of $65) to see my local baseball team. At some point when that $65 becomes $80 and it is minus 4 smaller sports channels I probably decide that sports are not worth it either (or only selectively for a handful of months).