I'm not a big sports fan but I know several people who are. I don't think there's another industry on earth whose customers are so willing and eager to spend money as fans watching their teams. And there's probably no industry on earth that tries as hard to prevent people from buying their services.
The link between piracy and hypothetical profits has never been hard science, but when it comes to televized/streaming sports, a lot of this pirating seems to happen because people aren't allowed to watch it legally in their area.
Huge swaths of Los Angeles are completely unable to watch Dodgers games on TV because of the way the cable companies have packaged and delivered the content. You know, one of the most valuable sports franchises in the world, makes total sense.
If I'm understanding that right then the games are available to watch legally, it's a problem self-inflicted by the customers who choose not to get the service they're available on. Because it's not their preferred service.
Are you aware that in many areas of Los Angeles, and I'm sure other areas too, you often only have a single choice of cable/phone/internet provider? So no, you couldn't be further off.
Cable companies have monopolies. For a lot of people, they couldn't even choose to pay for the cable operator who owned the station. For a long time only 30% of the market could even get the channel if they wanted to. Now it's only slightly better because theoretically one can stream it on DirecTV's stupid expensive streaming service or get it on one satellite provider but not any of the others.
Yes, the games are available to watch legally, and you have choices. You can choose to watch the game in person (seats are available or they wouldn't have a local blackout), or travel out of the area where you'll be able to watch it on TV.
Right. What's your point? Virtually all media is available for free via consequence-free piracy, but generally at the cost of quality and convenience. I don't see that ever changing. Legitimate venders can provide a better quality product. That's how you sell, you become the preferred service by offering a better version at a price the customer is both willing and able to pay.
Customers don't have a problem, they can always get a form of the media they want if they are willing to pay in price or convenience.
I think it is a problem when markets become profit driven rather than product driven.
By this, I don't mean businesses shouldn't put substantial weight on their profits, but rather that when push comes to shove you have to ask which matters more: profit or product? You will constantly be faced with some choice of sacrificing the quality of the product in favor of higher profits or sacrificing profits in favor of the product.
Certainty we want to maximize both, but this isn't always possible.
I think part of this has come through our runaway problem with shareholders and hyper fixation on the short term. Many shareholders are happy to trade product for profit because they believe they can exit during the market lag. It is statistical arbitrage. They have no interest in the long term value of a company or product, only until the time of exit.
It's worth noting that being too focused on the short term will damage the long term sustainability. Many times you have to put off profits today for profits tomorrow. That's the same problem. But there will be significant pressure against this if people driving don't care about tomorrow.
It never fails to astonish how poorly the larger sports leagues cater to their biggest fans. Local blackouts are treating your most loyal fanbase to the worst service. I shouldn't have to VPN for anything. Sports has a global audience.
Every league should offer something akin to a season ticket "firehose" (all games streamed live with hosted replays) like MLS does on Apple TV or Gallagher rugby on the Rugby Network.
This, I've given up so many times wanting to watch a soccer game and found no way to do it. It is incredibly frustrating. I don't understand how the current system works as it is impossible to figure out how to watch games.
The link between privacy and hypothetical profits has been studied by the European commission (or parliament don't remember rn). The study was hidden and revealed only later when pirate mep Felix read digged in about it
Exactly. I'm in Norway, and here, to watch the English Premier League legally, the price this latest season was over $70 per month. Keeping in mind the fact that most people will maybe watch one game(their team's game) a week, the prices are just getting absurd. There's no way to buy single games, subscribing to games for a single team, etc. To watch the 38 games your team will play last season, the only available option was to buy access to all 760 games. The company holding these rights is struggling financially, layoffs and all. Because their subscription numbers have plummeted
They've already crossed the threshold where this is no longer profitable. The next licencing deal will likely be so expensive, no Norwegian or Scandinavian company could possibly be able to turn a profit from it.
Of course, the CEO of the company has been in the media talking about how IPTV funds criminal networks and such nonsense*, calling for bans, yadda yadda. They're not listening to the market at all. Just using illegal streaming as a scapegoat. And I've decided, as long as this is how it's gonna be, they're not seeing a single dime of my money.
* I find the concept absurd. No matter where we spend our money, some of it ends up with criminals and various other despicable people, who will use it for evil. No one has the ability to prevent this. There's no reasonable expectation in current societal and economic structures for the consumer to somehow keep track of all their money once it leaves their wallet. This is no more the case for IPTV than it is when I buy a burger from some hole in the wall, which unbeknownst to me is a money laundering front. Or when I buy some chocolate and most of the money ends up with some white rich guy and not the children in Africa who harvested the cocoa. The whole argument is so intellectually dishonest and morally pathetic it pisses me off. And I don't even pay for IPTV.
The link between piracy and hypothetical profits has never been hard science, but when it comes to televized/streaming sports, a lot of this pirating seems to happen because people aren't allowed to watch it legally in their area.
This is a self-inflicted problem.