I’m absolutely willing to admit when I’m wrong, folks. I had my doubts that even Google would be able to pull off something like NFL Sunday Ticket. But at least up until this point, it’s gone off without a hitch. But, there’s a dark side to success. It’s true that NFL Sunday Ticket has worked, but what happens when an organization without Google’s money and resources tries it?
It’s a very valid question.
For the last 30 years, sports in this country have been propped up by an increasing number of “regional sports networks.” You know these channels. They’re the ones that carry your local teams — for example MSG and YES in New York. That system worked for a long time, until the mid-2010s when the companies that owned them got greedy. Time Warner Cable (now known as Spectrum) had an exclusive right to air LA Dodgers games. The amount of money they asked was so far out of line that pay-TV companies balked. And once we all took a look at those fees, we realized the whole system was skewed.
What followed was several years of watching the whole thing begin to crumble. That’s where we are now. Companies like Bally Sports and Fox Sports are moving quickly to get out of that business. Some cities are taking control of the broadcast end of things, and some teams are doing it for themselves. It’s going to take a while before things really shake out.
Where it’s all really going
It’s pretty easy to imagine that at least some of these companies are going to abandon traditional broadcasting and move completely to streaming. There’s this perception that everyone wants streaming, and I guess that’s true. It’s certainly cheaper to do streaming-only, but it’s not necessarily easier. It takes a really robust content delivery network or things will collapse quickly. It’s pretty clear that Google’s big enough and strong enough to handle a big surge in traffic, but what about the company that ends up handling Minnesota Twins games?
I’m a little concerned that it’s going to make it very hard for these companies to deliver the sports programming that people want. And remember that the big apps like MLB.TV rely on these smaller providers in order to supply that programming. So if the small companies fail, the big companies aren’t going to be far behind. if that happens, there’s a good chance that we’ll all have trouble watching the sports we want.
The bigger problem: cost
Right now, most people with pay-TV will get charged about $3 per sports network per month, give or take. That’s a tough one if you’re in a big city with three sports networks. But it’s also pretty small potatoes. At least, it seems like it when you compare it with what you pay for streaming apps like Netflix. What happens when a company like NESN (whose stock and trade is Red Sox games) decides to go streaming-only? How much will they charge each customer? I could see it getting to the point where you pay $15 a month just to watch the sports that used to be included in your cable package.
There’s one thing that ties this all together, and it’s the comparison between greed and value. For years, companies like Netflix didn’t have to worry about greed. People saw the value of them, and you got a good value for the price. The money kept rolling in. And then… it didn’t. If we’ve seen anything this year it’s that even the most popular streaming app can claim poverty and try to raise rates by 25% or more. What’s worse, we’re seeing apps like Max which are simultaneously raising prices and cutting the amount of content that’s there.
They want to tell us it’s because they’re losing money. I don’t buy that. I think it’s all an accounting trick. I think realistically these companies are actually making money but it’s in their best interest to say they aren’t. That way they can charge more.
Will this all happen with streaming sports too?
If history is any indication, streaming sports will start out cheap and get ridiculously expensive. Then people will try to find ways around that, and it will all turn into a mess.
And really, all I want to do is watch baseball. I don’t want to get into a weird grudge match with a big company? I also don’t want them to blame the local internet provider if they aren’t able to serve their customers. When I think of the many ways in which this cal all fall apart, it really begins to concern me.
What about you? Do you think I’m just being overly dramatic? Or do I have a point there?
