I'm not sure how long it will be before we get all the sports I care about (pro and college football and basketball, and mlb baseball) streaming HD live at reasonable subscription prices, but I can't wait.
It seems like you could do a combination of subscription Hulu Plus, Netflix, and the eventual streaming sports options, and still come up well below what cable charges for HD digital service.
Maybe the "Al a Carte Cable" model that many consumers want will come in the form of some online service, or at least the threat of such a service forces the cable companies to rethink their strategies.
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.
I think this is one of the most overlooked considerations as we all transition to the cloud. What if we all buy in completely to these services but then, one day, Netflix, Hulu, et al (or the content owners) decide to remove a few shows/movies from their catalog?
At least with downloaded (DRM-free) media, I will always be able to play the files I paid for. No such guarantees with cloud services.
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!
Ditto. I have NBA League Pass Broadband as well and I have to use a proxy just to watch freaking Timberwolves games. TIMBERWOLVES GAMES, I mean come on! So I've had to come up with a mish-mash of atdhe, sporttorrent, NBA League Pass, and going to bars. I get the feeling the NBA doesn't want me watching their games..
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.
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.
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!).
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.
Doubt that when this goes live it will be accesible from the UK, so don't get your hopes up. Someone needs to disrupt the video streaming space license-wise...
Sadly, I think you're right, although all of the MLS online video content that already exists is available to me, so I typically get my fix from there or from Reddit.
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.
I'm pretty sure they aren't making as much money as they want, though. If they make some deal out of Youtube, it would be win-win. Plus, another win for users (as long as it's free or cost at a decent price).
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.
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!
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?
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.
I'm not. The NFL schedule is very different from the other major American sports and is incredibly lucrative for all parties currently. No need to rock the boat from their perspective.
NBC actually does broadcast Sunday Night Football on its site for free, at surprisingly decent quality. I do wonder what allows NBC to do that but prevents other broadcasts from being made available, though.
the NFL screwed themselves with their contract with DirecTV (NFL Network & Sunday ticket) they effectively handed over all broadcast rights to (out of market/streaming) DirecTV (aside from NBC's Sunday Night Football broadcast)
NFL games are streamed via a free DirecTV app. But you need the $400+ Sunday Ticket package from them...
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.
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.
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.
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.
