Is The NFL Keeping Cable/Satellite Companies In The TV Business?

http://www.macdougherty.com/macblog/2010/12/is-the-nfl-keeping-cable-companies-in-the-cable-tv-business.html

by tmckd • 16 years ago

37 31 16 years ago

I think one aspect of this is that every NFL game is on a national network. Most NBA, MLB, and NHL games are on local stations.

I think the NFL has the tendency to sign big exclusivity contracts, given that the only way to watch out of market games is through DirecTV.

adestefan2• 16 years ago

I wonder how many DirectTV subscribes would jump ship if they lost Sunday Ticket.

vsprabhakara12• 16 years ago

DirectTV has a strategy of using sports as an acquisition/retention tool, and paying handsomely for it. They also have exclusive NCAA Tournament content - like being able to watch 4 games at once on your TV. Sunday Ticket is the biggest driver here, though, for sure.

agraddy• 16 years ago

I think this is an accurate assessment based on my own observations. My brother (in his twenties) just told me the other day that the only reason he wants cable is for Monday night football.

The one factor that cable companies can rely on is that they have positioned themselves to be the primary ISP for a good portion of the US population. It will be interesting to watch how/if these companies pivot in the next few years.

mikeryan• 16 years ago

Key point here.

You can't actually stream any other major pro sport in your local market you only get out of market games (ie no Giants baseball in the Giants territory - and the territory extends north to oregon and about 300 miles south of SF)

Here's the funny thing - you generally don't need cable to watch your local NFL team. You can actually usually get your local NFL team using an over the air HD antenna and if you get a decent signal you can get pretty good HD. This is because most NFL games air on local broadcast affiliates which still transmit an OTA signal. Most of the other sports games are on local cable nets.

So really NFL is actually the only sport where you can get a local game feed without cable. So to answer the article's premise - no.

lotusleaf1987• 16 years ago

But what about blackouts? When the team stadium sales are below x% they aren't allowed to broadcast the game at all, in order to theoretically drive more ticket sales.

vsprabhakara12• 16 years ago

True, but blackouts are relatively rare in the NFL, unless its 2009 and you're the Raiders. In fact, the Chargers were about 1,000 tickets away from a blackout earlier this year, and posted this on their Twitter account, and quickly sold enough tickets.

marknutter• 16 years ago

Yeah, but a lot of people want to watch the Monday and Thursday night games.

protomyth• 16 years ago

For a lot of people, HD antenna will give you a better picture (less compression) than cable.

jonknee• 16 years ago

The main reason I subscribe to cable is for sports. Football is infrequent enough that I can go to a bar, but if I went to a bar for every baseball game I'd be poor and drunk all the time. MLB.tv is great if your favorite team isn't your local team. If you like the home team you have to go through hoops (alternate billing address, proxy) and always live in fear that you'll be cut off.

forgotAgain2• 16 years ago

I think it's the reverse at this point: The cable companies are keeping the NFL off of the internet. The NFL makes so much money off of broadcast / cable TV that I don't see how they could make it up with internet fees.

forgotAgain2• 16 years ago

So why the downvotes?

adestefan2• 16 years ago

There is the model that takes cable fees and applies them to online content. This is how espn3.com works and is getting even more interesting now that you can stream that content to an Xbox 360.

philderksen• 16 years ago

I haven't had cable or satellite for 4 years, so this rings true for me. I go to bars or friends' houses to watch MNF, or I just skip more of them these days. Other than that, there's no way to get the current episodes of Dexter online without subscribing to Showtime.

Funny thing is...I'd pay for both MNF and Dexter a la cart on iTunes/Amazon if it we're available. As it stands, neither networks get any of my money. But the local bars do :)

sachinag• 16 years ago

But the bars pay commercial rates for cable, which are thousands of dollars a month. Trust me, the NFL is peachy keen with your purchase behavior.

hugh32• 16 years ago

I don't know why everybody is so keen to encourage others to give up cable TV.

Sure, I don't have cable TV, and I get most of my video-watching via the internet. Where do I get my internet access from? Why, Comcast, the only provider of high-speed internet in my area.

If everybody starts getting all their TV through the internet, what will Comcast do? They'll start charging everybody a lot more for internet access in order to make up the lost revenue. For the moment, though, I'm flying under the radar, getting my internet and all the video I can watch for less than the cost of basic cable TV. I'd like to keep it that way. Therefore, sssshhh!

carbocation2• 16 years ago

What you're describing sounds suspiciously like an abuse by Comcast of their monopoly, to the consumers' detriment.

nickpinkston• 16 years ago

Ha - I think that's already happening...

waterside81• 16 years ago

Like others have said, sports is the only thing that keeps me buying cable, but this whole "cable is dying" argument neglects one main point: the TV viewing experience is still way better than online video. Try flipping through 100 streaming videos as quickly as you can flip through 100 TV channels. Until IPTV or whatever you want to call it can perform as well as cable, and it can't yet, I don't see cable dying.

Mark Cuban had a good piece on this subject a year ago, still rings true:

http://www.dmwmedia.com/news/2009/03/25/mrk-cuban:-cable-tv-...

hugh32• 16 years ago

Why would I want to flip through a hundred streaming videos? The only reason I'd flip through 100 cable stations is because there's nothing I want to watch on any of 'em... or more frequently there's a couple of things I sort-of want to watch on a couple of them, interrupted with ad breaks so frequent, long, and unpredictable in length that I can't possibly sit through them.

In contrast, Netflix gives me a full HD video of exactly what I want to watch, when I want to watch it, with no ads. It's better even than a DVD, because the DVD forces me to sit through a bunch of copyright warnings, logos for the distributor, and half the time a main menu which wants to show me fifteen seconds of clips from the movie before I can press play.

carbocation2• 16 years ago

http://www.ivi.tv does a pretty good job of this, at consistently high quality.

Caveats: (1) It's only for broadcast channels at this point; (2) it's unclear that what they do is legal, but they believe that it is and appear to be litigating this point.

potatolicious• 16 years ago

It's a demographics issue - all the 20-somethings I know follow shows, almost nobody does the whole "I just want to see what's on" thing anymore. There's a major shift in how people use TVs, and the new user mode supports intentional watching (as opposed to passive surfing).

This is supported by the rise of DVRs, allowing people to choose when they want to view their content without delving into the online realm of Hulu, Netflix, etc.

The problem right now is that none of the major online streamers have really good integration into any TV set. There also does not exist a good discovery system ("you like House? You might also like...") for anyone except Netflix, and they're more of a movie house than a television one.

bbatsell• 16 years ago

> Until IPTV or whatever you want to call it can perform as well as cable, and it can't yet, I don't see cable dying.

As someone who recently moved from Time Warner Cable to U-Verse, U-Verse (which is an entirely multicasted IPTV system) is substantially faster than TWC in terms of channel acquisition speed — it's literally instantaneous. I suspect a lot of that has to do with Time Warner's increasing use of switched digital video rather than encrypted QAM, but that certainly isn't going to change anytime soon.

larsberg• 16 years ago

I buy a digital cable package with HD just for the football season. We only turn it on for football games. ~300 channels and an extra $80 or so over my cable modem costs for 2-3 games per week. We cancel post-Super Bowl every year and restart for preseason.

maukdaddy• 16 years ago

ESPN and NFL network are the only reason I still pay for cable. I'd cancel tonight if i could stream both (willing to pay significantly for both as well)

kgermino• 16 years ago

ESPN recently started letting you watch a simulcast of their cables channels if you (or say your parents) get ESPN from their Time Warner cable service. I don't know that there is any other providers signed on yet but they seem to be working on adding more. It's how I cut the cord.

http://espn.go.com/espnnetworks/index

davidj2• 16 years ago

did the author of this article actually take a moment to google for NFL Streaming? The game hasn't started yet but I have it open in a browser and watched many games this way before. Horrible article.

davidj2• 16 years ago

Go ahead and down vote me for suggesting the author do a simple web search. BTW New England is up 3 to 0.

watty• 16 years ago

I was recently thinking of switching from Time Warner Cable ($95/month) for Xbox 360 with ESPN3, Roku, and OTA. However, TWC only offers ESPN3 to customers who have internet and cable tv.

hristov• 16 years ago

I don't know about that but it sure is keeping my local bar in business.

Is The NFL Keeping Cable/Satellite Companies In The TV Business?

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