The future of sports broadcasting?
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Streaming games on Peacock and Apple TV and of course ESPN+ is starting to be normalized. Since signing up for ESPN+ to watch the KU-Miss St game earlier this fall I’ve found little to watch on the channel that interests me, but to cancel now is to sign up soon again for hoops. The cost? More money (about doubled from 5 bucks years ago to about 10 now) for less games is the maddening part of it all.
Today the BIG (which most of you know I pay attention to) announced their basketball broadcast schedule. 31 games are to be streamed on Peacock. Now these are not Minnesota-Norfolk St type games which most people would tolerate but 6 purdue games, 5 MSU, MU, UW games and get this, they’re league games. And most of the games they’re getting are premiere league games. So some of their showcase games will be seen not by casual fans who might happen on the channel and linger for a while. Less exposure, fans, particularly older fans especially will not tune in simply out of it’s too overwhelming. Others will say, like I will it’s too many subscriptions to manage.
Many BIG fans are upset about it. Most of us pay cable/dish or through some sort of ROCKU thing to get the BIG network, and other channels. Now they want us to pay MORE. Big 12 will follow suit I’d guess some day. More screwing over of fans.
NFL playoffs coming to streaming services near you THIS SEASON! It’s the wave of the future they say, and well, I guess I watch too much sports anyways so I guess I’ll watch less, but I really don’t want to watch less of the teams I love to watch.
Here’s a link with the list of games only available on peacock https://nbcsportsgrouppressbox.com/2023/10/03/peacock-is-exclusive-home-of-30-big-ten-mens-basketball-games-for-2023-24-season/
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Yup, it’s all ridiculously silly.
But if you want one show to watch on Peacock, make it Mr. Mercedes.
Brendan Gleeson is awesome.
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I’d rather pay the $5/10 a month for ESPN+ than $100+ for cable. - actually I believe it’s $15 but includes Hulu and Disney+, I rarely watch live tv outside of KU basketball and KC Chiefs football, so it’s good from me and my kiddos. Streaming saves me $1000 a year - could actually fund a trip to see KU basketball live with that much in savings if it weren’t already blown on inflation.
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It’s certainly trending that way. We trailblazed it with the Big-12 on ESPN + so we know the pain.
I do have a solution for free. Labtop, HDMI cord and TV or phone and mirror to TV. There are tons of free sites that stream every game.
I was going to sign up for the 9.99 extra for Redzone for NFL on my tv package until I realized you can find it for free with a click of a few buttons on the interwebs. Let me know if you would like the free options.
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@BeddieKU23 Ethically? Meaning not violating any contracts?
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@dylans The simplicity of turning on the TV to watch something is what I’m going to miss. I like my expensive cable because 1, I do have the money to pay for it, and 2, it has given me nearly every KU/Wisconsin game in both sports for the last 2o years. I can only imagine the frustration of elderly people who want to watch their teams and being told, log into Peacock, Amazon Prime, ESPN+ or whatever and now figure out how to stream it onto your TV.
The 2nd issue, if it was just one thing to subscribe to, like ESPN+ then ok, I guess, but multiple sites to manage, remember when to cancel/renew, etc is just one complication of life I don’t need or want.
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Incidentally, ESPN broadcasting 4 baseball games per day yesterday, today and possibly tomorrow. Someone monitored ESPN yesterday from 8-2 and there were 3 brief mentions in all that time about baseball. ESPN hates baseball, they’re annoyed by it and the inept commissioner of baseball just blindly lets ESPN bury the sport further and further into irrelevancy.
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@wissox It’s not as hard as you make it. There are even apps to manage it - I prefer the wifey app - I say honey please cancel the ESPN subscription and its done lol
Also I find older folks watch way more tv than middle age people. I really hope the idiot box isn’t the main attraction of my retirement. Ugg Kids and their iPads will make sure cable is a thing of the past. Mine don’t watch anything live, why would you? - suffer thru commercials, watch something that takes more than 5 minutes, listen to someone talk about anything other than Minecraft?
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Yea, TVs are now just computer monitors. Simple as that.
Turn on TV, scroll to entertainment vehicle of your choice, press a button.
It’s different, but everybody knows how to do that now, even old people. some old people. maybe not my mom. i tried to get her set up up on YTTV, and that didn’t go well!
