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Blackout Forces Fred Wilson to Pirate The Knicks. What Would Congress Think?

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Re: Blackout Forces Fred Wilson to Pirate The Knicks. What Would Congress Think?

#61

Post by nekojima »

GigabyteCoin wrote: post #49
jrockway wrote: post #23

The NBA is a great example of how individual consumers are not their customer. You want to pay money to watch NBA games, but you can't. The owners want money through ticket sales, so if you live in the "home market", you don't get to watch the game on TV. But, the owners also want money from TV deals. But they don't want your $20 to watch the game on TV, they want ABC's $3 billion (or whatever) for the right to charg…

Canadian here. I paid NBA.com for their "broadband/league pass" package once. Never again. Literally 50% of the games during the first and only week that I tried it were blacked out. I called them up and they refunded me immediately, they knew it was a crap deal. Now I have resorted to using sites like chanfeed.com and myp2p.pe - the quality lags a bit, but I can get any and every game, for free, all on one screen. N…

You aren't alone, at least myself and three other Canadians I know have bought that or a similar package in the last two years and received refunds after finding out how useless the packages were.

We travel a lot for business and would like to watch games whenever we can, either live or tape-delayed. The restrictions, not just at home in Ontario, but elsewhere have meant the packages are close to useless. A horrible way to drive away fans looking to spend on what could be a quality product. The damn strike/lock-out hasn't help either.

I know the volume may not currently be there for it to be hugely profitable, but if the leagues keep playing wack-a-mole with the p2p feeds, the volume and habit may never develop for there to be a new alternative distribution model for what could be a very profitable distribution channel for the sports leagues.

Re: Blackout Forces Fred Wilson to Pirate The Knicks. What Would Congress Think?

#62

Post by anigbrowl »

jrockway wrote: post #23

The NBA is a great example of how individual consumers are not their customer. You want to pay money to watch NBA games, but you can't. The owners want money through ticket sales, so if you live in the "home market", you don't get to watch the game on TV. But, the owners also want money from TV deals. But they don't want your $20 to watch the game on TV, they want ABC's $3 billion (or whatever) for the right to charg…

and they all want a huge cut for doing absolutely nothing

That's silly. Acquisition and broadcast systems do not run themselves. I think the whole sports business model is exploitative and stupid, but hyperbole like the above doesn't help. Market segmentation is a time-honored business practice, but I get the sense that if the FTC forced the teams/broadcasters to adopt an open-access content model then people would be howling about government interference with private enterprise.

Re: Blackout Forces Fred Wilson to Pirate The Knicks. What Would Congress Think?

#63

Post by freehunter »

MatthewPhillips wrote: post #26
MichaelGG wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't pirating to get things for free just a special case of X condition not being met (where X = (price = $0))?

Absolutely, but usually in that case the person doesn't have the sense of entitlement that I see from piraters who claim "i wanted to receive the content by carrier pigeon but because the option wasn't available I was forced to pirate".

That's quite the hyperbole there. Not sure it's completely warranted. I've never heard anyone seriously making outrageous claims about what they'd like, it's mainly "I want to watch one show/channel without being forced to pay for 199 channels I'll never watch."

That's pretty reasonable, I'd say. I subscribed to MLB.tv this spring and cancelled after one month because my market was blacked out the entire time. The technology is there, it works, and people are willing to pay for it. $9/mo for just baseball is a better deal for both me and the MLB than $50/mo for 200 channels I'd never watch through a reseller.

I used to pirate music. I'd usually only listen to an album a few times, then put it on the shelf to listen to more new music. Buying a song didn't make sense in that regard. Then the Zune Pass came along, $10/mo for unlimited music, virtually no restrictions. I could listen to a song once or twice, shelve it, and grab another. I got my Zune in 2009, and that was the last time I ever pirated a song. Now if only the rest of the entertainment industry could catch up.

Re: Blackout Forces Fred Wilson to Pirate The Knicks. What Would Congress Think?

#64

Post by anigbrowl »

mikeryan wrote: post #13
marknutter wrote: post #6

As a non-cable subscriber and a big NBA fan, I find blackouts unbelievably frustrating. There is simply no legal way to watch some live NBA games unless you pay for cable. I'm constantly having to route my NBA broadband league pass through a proxy to watch my home team, and the only workaround for nationally televised games is to pirate them from sites like sportlemon.tv. It's a classic case of frustrating customer e…

I understand that a fair amount of revenue for the NBA is probably coming from the deals it made with TNT, EPSN, and Fox, but a viewer is a viewer, whether they're watching from the net or through traditional venues - why do they care, so long as their advertisers are getting enough eyeballs? Not "some" all of NBA's TV Revenues come from selling the rights to networks. The networks sell the ads, and they're the ones…

Correct. All the major sports organizations work this way, and it makes sense from a standpoint of comparative advantage. Of course, it's horribly monopolistic and anti-consumer, but on the other hand consumers could also start patronizing other sports leagues instead...except they don't want to.

Re: Blackout Forces Fred Wilson to Pirate The Knicks. What Would Congress Think?

#67

Post by MatthewPhillips »

freehunter wrote: post #63
MatthewPhillips wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Absolutely, but usually in that case the person doesn't have the sense of entitlement that I see from piraters who claim "i wanted to receive the content by carrier pigeon but because the option wasn't available I was forced to pirate".

That's quite the hyperbole there. Not sure it's completely warranted. I've never heard anyone seriously making outrageous claims about what they'd like, it's mainly "I want to watch one show/channel without being forced to pay for 199 channels I'll never watch." That's pretty reasonable, I'd say. I subscribed to MLB.tv this spring and cancelled after one month because my market was blacked out the entire time. The te…

> $9/mo for just baseball is a better deal for both me and the MLB than $50/mo for 200 channels I'd never watch through a reseller.

It's obviously not a better deal for the MLB or they wouldn't be blacking out the games. If you're going to make the claim that a company is not acting in its own financial self-interest please show your math. I think people here are drastically underestimating the cost to a sports league breaking cable contracts to better serve high-maintenance customers.

Re: Blackout Forces Fred Wilson to Pirate The Knicks. What Would Congress Think?

#68

Post by mmorey »

marknutter wrote: post #6

As a non-cable subscriber and a big NBA fan, I find blackouts unbelievably frustrating. There is simply no legal way to watch some live NBA games unless you pay for cable. I'm constantly having to route my NBA broadband league pass through a proxy to watch my home team, and the only workaround for nationally televised games is to pirate them from sites like sportlemon.tv. It's a classic case of frustrating customer e…

The best solution I have found is to use a non-US (UK, France, whatever) VPN service and sign up for the NBA International League Pass Broadband (http://ilp.nba.com/).

The International Pass has no blackouts and you can watch the All Star game, playoffs, and Finals. The US Broadband League Pass does not give you access to playoffs or the finals.

Re: Blackout Forces Fred Wilson to Pirate The Knicks. What Would Congress Think?

#69

Post by freehunter »

MatthewPhillips wrote: post #67
freehunter wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's quite the hyperbole there. Not sure it's completely warranted. I've never heard anyone seriously making outrageous claims about what they'd like, it's mainly "I want to watch one show/channel without being forced to pay for 199 channels I'll never watch." That's pretty reasonable, I'd say. I subscribed to MLB.tv this spring and cancelled after one month because my market was blacked out the entire time. The te…

> $9/mo for just baseball is a better deal for both me and the MLB than $50/mo for 200 channels I'd never watch through a reseller. It's obviously not a better deal for the MLB or they wouldn't be blacking out the games. If you're going to make the claim that a company is not acting in its own financial self-interest please show your math. I think people here are drastically underestimating the cost to a sports leagu…

If they show me the game on MLB.tv - $9/mo basically for the foreseeable future.

If they make me subscribe to cable - $0/mo forever. How much does the MLB make per cable subscriber is the question I cannot answer.

Re: Blackout Forces Fred Wilson to Pirate The Knicks. What Would Congress Think?

#70

Post by mbreese »

jrockway wrote: post #23

The NBA is a great example of how individual consumers are not their customer. You want to pay money to watch NBA games, but you can't. The owners want money through ticket sales, so if you live in the "home market", you don't get to watch the game on TV. But, the owners also want money from TV deals. But they don't want your $20 to watch the game on TV, they want ABC's $3 billion (or whatever) for the right to charg…

In the middle, of course, there are the middlemen, and they all want a huge cut for doing absolutely nothing.

Yes, because all of that cable and fiber that was run around the city so that you could watch "some dudes passing a ball around" while you are sitting at home didn't cost anything. Or the cameras that record it, or the directors that choose the best angles, or the commentators, etc...

This is a big game a chicken between MSG and Time Warner, and unfortunately the viewer is just an indirect participant. It happens all the time. It's not about middlemen... this is about content producers vs. content distributors. Earlier this year, there was a spat between Fox and DirecTV that got signed just before the deadline. Hell, there was/is a problem with the Indianapolis NBC affiliate and the local cable company.

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