The NFL’s New Streaming Offering… Kind Of Sucks Thanks To Legacy Broadcasting Rights
from the hike! dept
I’ve spilled many words on these pages talking about the outsized importance live sports has on the adoption of streaming as a primary entertainment platform compared with traditional cable. While cord-cutting is very much a thing, the vine that terrestrial cable is clinging to keeping it all from falling over the cliff remains live sports. Major sporting leagues in America have typically woven a complicated web of broadcasting rights, whether with local broadcast stations, cable channels, or even with some teams that own their own channels. That complicated web is what keeps blackout rules for MLB.TV in place, as well as what keeps the implementation of true streaming of everything impossible.
Still, even with some problems that exist, MLB.TV remains the gold standard for sports streaming. Especially when compared to what the NFL is doing. Here, not only do the legacy broadcasting rights get in the way, but so too does the fragmented streaming rights the league is working up. Thursday Night Football will stream exclusively on Amazon Prime. The implosion of the AT&T and DirecTV merger put NFL Sunday Ticket in play for all kinds of tech giants. And now the NFL has launched a new streaming service to replace NFL Game Pass, called NFL+. The good news is that the new service is cheaper than the old one. The bad news is that it’s still such a limited, complicated mess due to legacy rights deals that it gets headlines such as Ars Technica’s: NFL+ Is Here, But It’s Probably Not What You’re Looking For.
NFL+ replaces NFL Game Pass, which offered more utility but was $99.99 annually. NFL+ costs $4.99 monthly or $39.99 per year. TechCrunch reports that NFL Game Pass subscribers will be automatically moved to NFL+. The new service “offers access to live out-of-market preseason games, live local and primetime regular season and postseason games (phone and tablet only), live local and national audio for every game, NFL Network shows on-demand, NFL Films archives and more,” according to the NFL’s press release.
That “phone and tablet only” bit is the problem here. So you can stream games, but not on your smart TV directly. Instead, you have to watch games on your phone or tablet… unless you go the extra step of casting them to your smart TV. Which, if you can, what’s the point of the TV blackout? Why is streaming the game to an Android phone/tablet cool, but streaming to an Android TV naughty?
Well, because the NFL wants to sell you something entirely different to do that.
The “phone and tablet only” note for live local and primetime regular season and postseason games is the big limitation here. It means it’s not a replacement for the regular broadcasts if you want to watch on your TV. To watch those games on your game console, smart TV, or streaming box, you’ll need something totally different: an NFL Sunday Ticket subscription.
This is as good a time as any to remind everyone that monetary concerns aren’t the only aspect of a transaction cost when it comes to how willing someone is to buy a thing. There is a mental transaction that occurs as well, which essentially resolves to the ease and convenience of making the purchase. The NFL sure appears to be making the mental transaction as costly as possible, even as it reduces the monetary cost of that transaction.
Whether I can stream an individual NFL game will depend on what I’m subscribed to, what device I want to watch it on, live or on-demand, which game it is so I know if I have the streaming service for it, from where I want to watch it, what individual blackout rules are for that game, and on and on.
Or the public can go find an illicit streaming service that carries with it none of the costs, monetary or mental. If streaming adoption is what the NFL wants, this sure seems like a horrible way to go about it.
Filed Under: live sports, restrictions, sports, streaming
Companies: nfl
Comments on “The NFL’s New Streaming Offering… Kind Of Sucks Thanks To Legacy Broadcasting Rights”
My parents once told me that when they were growing up in the eighties, there wasn’t much sport on TV, then the UK Government got involved and drew up a list of sporting events that have to be broadcast on ‘free-to-air’ channels. This was with the aim of increasing competition and giving people who couldn’t (or didn’t want to) pay for satellite or cable TV the chance of watching football without having to pay for season tickets in the case of some teams. Maybe the FTC needs to be involved in this on anti-trust grounds.
Everything about the NFL sucks.
The problem is if you are a big nfl fan you may have to pay for 2 streaming services , the UK government simply said theres certain sporting events that must be avaidable to broadcast TV, bbc or itv, free to view, if UK viewers want to watch Premier league soccer they have to pay for a cable TV or satellite sports channel
The nfl have to balance the need to get paid for cable TV rights plus millions of fans can’t actually get fast broadband in rural areas . They are rumoured to be getting a deal with apple where they’ll get paid a large fee to put some games on the apple TV streaming app
We are still in the early days when it comes to nfl streaming apps
Re:
Actually, TV in the UK isn’t free to view anywhere. Anything shown on Freeview (a misnomer) requires a TV licence to view. The only way you can have a TV without paying the relevant tax is if you have it set up to accept signals from DAB radio and/or DVD/Bluray players and/or games consoles, which is exactly how mine’s set up.
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Love reading article. Its all about Digital marketing !!!
There will be hackers
This is how the general public becomes unqualified hackers.
People will read on their social sites how to install an extension in the browser that offers to spoof the device if and fetch Mobile sites.
People will read of a simple payload the put on a usb stick and plug into their tv to side load mobile apps from android, ChromeOS, webos, etc.
millions of hacked TVs become vectors for malicious actors.
And I’m sure there’s a “think of the children” concern somewhere too!
Wouldn’t be the first time.
We can hope some day congress will reverse mandatory carriage of broadcast on cable/satellite, etc. which would decimate all these agreements about broadcast rights when suddenly users no longer have broadcast by default.
Though the NFL reallY needs to be careful to not go belly up. Both attendance and viewership drops every season. For quite a few years now.
As they make it more difficult to watch, and more people leave standard viewing, they face a population that may just give up.
Sportsball... meh
I like some motor sports, love watching me some rally cross, however that’s about it, how about giving us the option of not having sports in our streaming packages and save some cash? I have never and will never watch the NFL or MLB, so why should I be forced to pay for it?
NFL+ app sucks
This service sucks. I paid several weeks ago.. only was able to use once. Have reloaded on multiple devices, fresh android, fresh no cookies, also fresh on an iOS. Nfl+ service keeps saying i need to sign up. and pay again. Ridiculous. Now i have to chat with a bot. Either way, hoping to find out who to complain to. Whom to send a granola bar to. (the programmers likely are small children that live in a 3rd world country… they could be hungry!)
my .02 to the nfl is:
fix your crappy app, and have someone help me,
or
Cancel and provide a refund.
NFL Streaming
This is a bad move by the Greedy NFL. Had to upgrade years ago to get NFL network and now can’t watch a Thursday night game unless I buy Amazon Prime and new TV.
Hope you regret your decision as I’m done with TNF
Local Brodcasts are a pity for the NFL. Let’s try to change the Monopoly. Contact the NFL commission. This really does suck. Only in America.
Dirty Shame nfl.
How can this Country let their people not watch a Thursday game without subscription. Pity. Sucks.
With DIRECTV I can rewind a play if I miss it- with streaming I cannot. with DIRECTV the picture is perfect- with streaming I get a choppy feed that’s nowhere near as good as the feed and picture on DIRECTV. I hate streaming it’s awful..!!!
NFL plus sucks
NFL advertises that you can watch your team, but really this feature is only available if you pay for their premium NFL plus subscription. Also, they advertise it works well on the NFL app, but really, it doesn’t. If I sign into the APP on my phone, it doesn’t even recognize that I have a subscription. In fact, they try to get me to subscribe again as they prompt you over and over again.
This is the worst IT setup ever. NFL is so cheap on the IT side. Good on the TV side of course, but their IT sucks.
Even with the premium it sucks and can’t watch your games
NFL+ Waste of Money
The garbled language combines the phrases live out-of-market and local market into the same sentence. One might easily conclude that you’ll get access to all games. Later you find out that your favorite team only offers an audio broadcast on NFL+ Buyer Beware. Deceptive marketing. Junk product.
NFL+premium
Had it two weeks and can only listen,no video on games I want to see. Deceptive advertising at its best. Good luck trying to cancel. Can’t get to account page, have to dispute with credit card.