9 ms·

Sigh... f*ck sports leagues/governing bodies. The reason some honest people pirate streams for sporting events is because they make it so annoying to pay for th

Sigh... f*ck sports leagues/governing bodies. The reason some honest people pirate streams for sporting events is because they make it so annoying to pay for them. Some examples... I live in the US. I briefly took an interest in the EPL. If I wanted to watch all EPL games (or have the option of watching any particular EPL game), I'd have to subscribe to Peacock _and_ Fubo -- and I'm still not sure that gets me all games. I briefly took an interest in the NHL (this was years ago, granted -- things may have changed). If I would have subscribed to their service, the ONLY team whose home games I couldn't watch would have been the TEAM OF THE CITY I LIVE IN (i.e.: "my" team). My two favorite sports, though, are Cycling and F1. I LOVE cycling. To watch every UCI race, I'd have to subscribe to GCN+ (they have the Giro), Peacock (they have the Tour de France and La Vuelta), and Flobikes (they have most of the Classics races). THE ONLY sports governing body that has figured this out (for sports I like, anyway), is F1. I pay F1.com $80 a year and get MORE content than I would if I watched the races on ESPN. I can see EVERY RACE, EVERY QUALIFYING, EVERY PRACTICE. I can even choose WHOSE car I want to see the first person view from. If you want to "stop pirates", make it easy for them to give you money and watch their favorite sport.

programmarchy 3y ago
Yep, NHL blackouts are idiotic. Hard to imagine they are selling more arena tickets that way.
- oplav 3y ago
  NHL blackouts (at least today’s NHL blackouts) are not for getting fans into arena seats. They exist because local cable broadcasts own the exclusive rights to broadcast games in local markets.
  - TulliusCicero 3y ago
    And who sold them those exclusive rights? This is entirely the fault of the leagues in question. They set up a shitty service, no surprise that many people will pirate rather than paying for a service that only partially meets their needs.
    - oplav 3y ago
      The leagues did. I was never disputing that fact. There's a common misconception that blackouts are in place to protect attendance, but that is (typically) not the case. The Chicago Blackhawks did that for a while (under ownership of Bill Wirtz who explicitly thought that showing local games would hurt attendance) but when Rocky Wirtz took over the team in 2007, he reversed that policy. Blackouts exist to protect local media rights, which you correctly pointed out were sold to them by the league/teams. You'll see though that many local sports networks are in financial trouble, and leagues are looking for ways to reacquire the rights to stream directly to fans. https://www.espn.com/mlb/story/_/id/35668388/rob-manfred-mlb-ready-diamond-sports-group-pay-teams https://www.espn.com/mlb/story/_/id/35668388/rob-manfred-mlb...
  - hydrok9 3y ago
    What gets me is, if I'm in Central Canada, and I want to watch a Montreal game on Sportsnet East, it's blacked out for me! I get that it's a direct feed, but what is the point of offering me the channel if I can't use ot.
ceocoder 3y ago
I’m with you, including the F1 part, and I’m glad that Liberty Media hasn’t hiked up the prices in the US so far. Even with the $80/year, I still end up watching some races on ESPN because Sky’s broadcast rights won’t allow F1TV to show the interviews with pit wall, Ted/Karun and other small things… still miles better than all other sports.
flangola7 3y ago
As I slowly grow crotchety and old I've really become fed up with the giant corps. I've taught dozens of both older and younger folk how to use a VPN and a torrent client. I've had one parent accuse me of teaching their teenager how to steal. I told them you're damn right, your kid is a sharp young woman and she is learning from the best. Media companies like to claim that each act of piracy costs them huge sums of money. That isn't true, but I wish it was.
rad_gruchalski 3y ago
> THE ONLY sports governing body that has figured this out (for sports I like, anyway), is F1. No. The only ones who figured it out is the NFL. F1 shafted Germany after youg Schuhmacher came into F1 and German Sky bought exclusive rights. The NFL? Intl Game Pass €190 per season live streams, instant repeats no adverts, various show, dedicated tv apps, no limit on number of devices, high def.
- probablynish 3y ago
  I think this is country specific. F1's service in the US is great, but the NFL international game pass isn't available to people who live in the US, it's not as easy to watch domestically.
  - rad_gruchalski 3y ago
    F1TV in Germany was great, too. Until they shafted Germany because someone put money on the table. That’s what I mean.
- emacdona 3y ago
  Ah, sorry then :-( F1 is great in the US. I can't speak to NFL -- I don't watch it. However, I suspect it may be a better deal in Europe (where they are trying to get new fans) than in the US (where it's one of, if not "the", most popular sports). This is similar to GCN+ for cycling. In the US, it doesn't get you much -- but from what I understand, in some (most?) European countries, GCN+ gets you most (if not all) UCI cycling evnets.
  - MrGilbert 3y ago
    I think the same applies for F1 in the US. F1 is still quite popular in Germany, although they pulled the trigger on that when RTL (German TV station) quit broadcasting F1 races in Free TV after 30 years in 2020, simply because it was too expensive. As GP stated, Sky Germany took over, and they are charging 30€ per month. It's eye-watering to see that the F1 Pro subscription costs just under 10€, but is of course not available in Germany. Last year, it was possible to register via VPN and sneak your way into the subscription. Not sure if it's possible this year, as I didn't renew it.
duskwuff 3y ago
> If you want to "stop pirates", make it easy for them to give you money and watch their favorite sport. I don't disagree, but that isn't something Mux is in a position to do. They just provide video streaming infrastructure -- they're in no position to demand that various sports broadcast rightsholders change their policies.
- emacdona 3y ago
  That's fair. My main objection is labeling _everyone_ as "pirates". Technically, yes, they are pirating the steam. But some of those people are also PAYING to watch plenty of games in whatever sport they are "pirating" streams for. Calling these people "pirates" fails to acknowledge that they are also "paying customers" who are frustrated with how complicated it has become to pay for the product they want to watch.
  - derefr 3y ago
    The people that Mux are applying the word “pirate” to here are the people doing the streaming, not the people watching the streams. The people doing the streaming aren’t only “making paid content free to access”; they’re also putting up ads on these sites, making a profit off of IP they didn’t create. It’s analogous to bootlegging: buying a fake Gucci bag is not unethical; but producing one is.
    - kmeisthax 3y ago
      More importantly, for-money streaming pirates are terrible customers Mux doesn't want to do business with. The kinds of pirates we're thinking about from a decade ago weren't trying to make a quick buck, so they were using things like BitTorrent that had everyone sharing bandwidth.
      - duskwuff 3y ago
        > More importantly, for-money streaming pirates are terrible customers Mux doesn't want to do business with. Yep. Their entire business is illegal, so breaking a few more laws by signing up for CDN service with a stolen credit card is no big deal.
lmpdev 3y ago
"Your pain point is their business model"
TheAceOfHearts 3y ago
There's a common polycule meme where every new member pays for a different digital media subscription service and it's shared between everyone. If you get together with a few friends it's possible to split the costs of all these services. If you're sufficiently tech savvy, each person can run a VPN from their home so it doesn't look suspicious from the streaming service's end. Here's a video showing how to do this with Netflix [0]. I remember growing up it would be really common for people to split the cost of a PPV fight and VHS recordings would be passed around. It seems pretty similar. Community-based media sharing is great. I wish it was possible for me to lend all of my Steam games when I'm not using them. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9CunwUs08og https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9CunwUs08og
- pdntspa 3y ago
  > Community-based media sharing is great. I wish it was possible for me to lend all of my Steam games when I'm not using them. You can do that, actually. It has some pretty big caveats, but if you are not actively playing anything on Steam then your library can be lent out to others... all you have to do is sign into their computer using your Steam credentials.
  - taneq 3y ago
    You can also just share your library with another account.
    - waveBidder 3y ago
      done this, the whole account gets locked iirc, and not just specific games
      - TechBro8615 3y ago
        Wait, Steam offers you a "share library" feature but then locks your account when you use it?!
        3y ago
vkou 3y ago
> If I would have subscribed to their service, the ONLY team whose home games I couldn't watch would have been the TEAM OF THE CITY I LIVE IN (i.e.: "my" team). They don't want to cannibalize in-person attendance where fans pay for $300 tickets and $20 pints of beer.
monksy 3y ago
> I briefly took an interest in the NHL (this was years ago, granted -- things may have changed). If I would have subscribed to their service, the ONLY team whose home games I couldn't watch would have been the TEAM OF THE CITY I LIVE IN (i.e.: "my" team). This is why I won't give the NHL or MLB any money for their video services.
esharte 3y ago
If you lived in the UK, supported Tottenham and wanted to watch all their games in the 2021/22 season you had to: Subscribe to Sky Sports (around £50-60 a month) for the Premier League games. Subscribe to BT Sports (30 a month) for the Saturday early kick off Premier League games and the Europa Conference League games. Subscribe to Amazon Prime for the 3 random weeks when they are showing the Premier League games instead of Sky. Subscribe to Premier Sports (£12 a month) to see a Europa Conference League 2 legged qualifier. And even then you couldn't see all the games legally in the UK because of the 3pm Saturday black out. You are forced to find a stream from another country where they are broadcasting the game. Then when you are subscriped you get wall to wall gambling adverts during half time. For every other product you subscribe to, it is to avoid ads, but not television.
- dean2432 3y ago
  wait, uk still have the 3pm Saturday black out?
- emacdona 3y ago
  Infuriating. I was pissed because I couldn't easily watch "all games in a given league". You only want to watch your team, and you STILL have to pay for four services to get "most" of the games.
- peruvian 3y ago
  There are cheaper ways to hurt yourself than trying to watch Spurs.
  - cjbprime 3y ago
    Me: While this is amusing, come on, they're sixth in the Premier League, this is not in any way what a masochistic relationship with a sports team looks like. Also me, Googling: > Tottenham Hotspur's performance against Newcastle United on Sunday was so poor that the club is going to refund those that came out and showed support for the team.
    - 3y ago
whoisstan 3y ago
100% agree. I watch Bundesliga, with sky Germany over VPN you could watch all games 2/3 years ago, not some of them are on DAZN which also charges. ChampionsLeague used to be sky as well, not its prime. Not to mention English, Spanish and Italian league. I watch 4-5h soccer a week throughout the league based in time and interest. Without pirating I would have to pay several hundreds of dollars. Ridiculous.
- IG_Semmelweiss 3y ago
  Without pirating I don't even know if I could watch my 1 hr game per week. Now im literally paying pirates. Its a pittance and its much better service.
NikolaNovak 3y ago
Surprisingly world rally championship is also amazing with this. A very affordable subscription to wrc+ gets you live coverage, summarized coverage, highlights, specials, historical reviews, as much content as you'd want really!
- emacdona 3y ago
  I was actually considering becoming a WRC fan... especially after I was watching some YouTube highlights and saw that Cyril Abiteboul is a team principal! Where do I subscribe? And... you promise that it's similar to F1 -- where I pay one company one price and get all the content?? :-)
  - emacdona 3y ago
    BTW, that sums up my ask for sports leagues/governing bodies: Let me pay ONE company ONE price and get ALL the content. Pick the price! I don't care. If I like the sport enough, I'll pay it. If I don't, then I'll find another sport. Just don't make me spend hours wading through online articles trying to answer questions like "How many streaming subscriptions do I need in the US to watch all UCI events?" (I did this, it was painful).
- AlecSchueler 3y ago
  Wish the Super Formula offering was comparable!
nl 3y ago
> To watch every UCI race This is a good example of the situation in many sports. The UCI is a governing body, not an event organiser or promoter. Basically anyone can put on race, and they are responsible for making money out of it. So event promoters make their own deals with broadcasters.
- emacdona 3y ago
  Thanks for pointing that out -- I guess I should have realized that (maybe I did at one point). At the very least, then, I wish the UCI would make it EASY to figure out what services I needed to subscribe to in my country to watch which races. Just a page on their website with a big table would be great. Figuring out that I need to subscribe to GCN+, Peacock, and Flobikes in the US was no small feat (and it changes from year to year!).
  - nl 3y ago
    Well the UCI is like a mini version of the International Olympic Committee - borderline corrupt, pretty ineffective at anything and barely useful so not astonishing they don't do that. I suspect the promoters try to keep away from the UCI as much as possible. There have been a few attempts by the pro-teams to improve the situation via Velon[1][2] - apparently you can get live race data from them - but nothing that has really solved the problem. [1] https://www.velon.cc/ https://www.velon.cc/ [2] https://www.dcrainmaker.com/2018/01/velon-live-tracking-system.html https://www.dcrainmaker.com/2018/01/velon-live-tracking-syst...
lawgimenez 3y ago
As someone who's in Asia who loves to watch baseball, it is so hard to subscribe to live stream. I have no choice but to resort to illegal streams. MLB.tv outside the US will cost me $24.99 per month. What the fuck. The only option I have right now is Apple TV+ which has Friday Nights Baseball live, thank you Apple.
- nobody9999 3y ago
  >As someone who's in Asia who loves to watch baseball, it is so hard to subscribe to live stream. That's not just a problem outside the US. In order for me to watch my local team's games (well, 130 out of 162), I must have a cable TV subscription (minimum package that includes the specific channel ~$100/month) -- even to watch the games on the channel's streaming platform. MLB.tv is worse than useless, as those with local broadcast rights require MLB.tv (as well as other channels) to black out games that they carry. I'd happily pay MLB.tv (or anyone else) to watch my local team's games $24.95/month. But I can't even do that!
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- elijaht 3y ago
  I don't get this complaint- there is no difficulty in watching the games. IIRC no game would be blacked out for you (besides the handful of national TV games?). You might disagree with the price, but streaming baseball outside of the US is quite simple.
importantbrian 3y ago
F1 has this absolutely nailed. I fear that if it gets popular enough in the US ESPN will buy exclusive rights and then you'll have to have a cable package in order to watch it.
- ajmurmann 3y ago
  I always wonder if that is a good decision for the sport in the long run. There is no way I'd subscribe to cable and ESPN to watch F1. That means I'd stop following the sport and the probability of me again spending > $1,500 on tickets goes to zero.
- prmoustache 3y ago
  It was easy for them to nail it and un unfair comparison to soccer or cycling. In F1 there is only one serie/league. And that doesn't give you access to all 4 wheel motorsport, let alone openwheel ones. An F1 subscription doesn't give you access to formula E, formula nippon, national formula 3 championships, or the different motorsport series accross the world. Nor does it give you access to rallying. MotoGP did the same and I used to watch all their races. Now since I want to watch cycling anyway I only pay for eurosport which allows me to watch most races as well as superbike, moto and car endurance, as well as some rallying and formula E. But there is no way I will pay separarely for MotoGP and F1. In that case they just lost a viewer for good. Also, for 1 F1 grand prix there are 20 to 50 soccer play or cycling races. The thing is cycling races and tv rights aren't managed by the governing body, but by different orgs. On one hand this is annoying to us because ASO, RCA and Flanders Classics (the 3 majors organizers) can sell rights to different channels. On the other hand a monopoly wouldn't necessarily better for the sports, the riders and the smaller races. If there had to be a monopoly, I would wish its shareholders would be the racers themselves but that won't ever happen.
- ipsi 3y ago
  It actually hasn't, which is really frustrating. It's not possible to watch F1 online via F1TV in Germany - you must watch it via Sky who have purchased the exclusive streaming rights up to 2024, which is €20/month or so (and means you only have the German commentators, AFAIK). At least Sky don't force you to pay for a cable (or satellite) package - it is possible to pay just for a basic sports streaming package.
downWidOutaFite 3y ago
Considering I just paid $74 to Youtbe TV just so I could watch one month of NBA playoffs, I'm sure $80 per year would get you laughed out of the room. They know exactly what they're doing and exactly how much pain they can inflict on the fans to extract the maximum amount of money. Though I do think that kind of short-term MBA thinking causes long-term damage to their brand and product, but they don't know how to calculate that in their quarterly earnings reports. In my mind the Olympics is an example of where the long-term damage is really starting to accumulate, I know several people that used to be big Olympics fans 10 years ago that couldn't be bothered last time around because of how painful NBC makes it.
syradar 3y ago
This is one reason why I watch esports. The game makers see it as advertisement for their game so they pay for the leagues and shows. I can watch all of it on YouTube or Twitch for free.
walrus01 3y ago
> I LOVE cycling. To watch every UCI race, I'd have to subscribe to GCN+ (they have the Giro), Peacock (they have the Tour de France and La Vuelta), and Flobikes (they have most of the Classics races). If you were okay with not watching it live, people were torrenting each day's stage of the tour de France in 2004. There is a pretty big overlap between tech industry people and enthusiastic road cyclists. Now there's whole communities of people sharing the euro broadcasts of just about everything race for worldwide people to watch.
- cheeze 3y ago
  Shout out to my boy Tiz
dclowd9901 3y ago
Positively nailed it. Why can’t I just watch gt racing? Who can I just give my money to to watch all the GT and SCCA racing I want? Nobody has it and whoever owns it has made it balls out the hardest thing in the world to watch.
FredPret 3y ago
I wish every sport had an f1.com style offering. I’d gladly pay several sports some money, but no. They insist on the old way
RollAHardSix 3y ago
Exactly this. I am a rabid women's soccer fan. I study and follow the draft like a professional coach, watch as many matches as I can, drive three hours to NWSL matches when I can, try and catch overseas games when possible, and I am continuously frustrated by the broken state of sports streaming. The NWSL shows up on ParamountPlus, unlesss its on CBS, unless its on CBSSN, unless its on Twitch on like three different Twitch channels - it is maddening as a hardcore fan and in no way leads to a casual fan having an easy time to watch. I am heartbroken too at the amount of historical matches that will be lost because they simply aren't available. NWSL, FA WSL, International Friendlies or International Cups. It will all be lost over time as streaming partnerships change. The key to making better players is a better soccer culture and that means the key is to have them watch the game, love the game. I have had seasons where I have almost quit as a fan because how frustratingly disorganized it all is. I know partnerships are important, but these leagues need to start pushing for their own streaming infrastructure or unified streaming partner or they will see the sport tip into irrelevance with the general public.
- werid 3y ago
  Yes, americans gets screwed over with the CBSSN matches, as it requires a cable account. To top it off, the replays of CBSSN matches take up to 48 hours to appear, while CBS matches up to 24 hours, and P+ much shorter. The twitch deal ended last season, but americans only had to deal with one twitch channel, which aired the twitch exclusive matches. The other twitch channels were exclusively for international viewers, and they had to have multiple channels due to matches being on at the same time. With the twitch deal over, international viewers can watch on NWSL's own website again, like we did years ago, before the ESPN and later twitch deals. When it comes to international sports, the whole "where to watch" is so painful, especially women's sport, as it's covered less, and most broadcast deals are in the local country, and very rarely international coverage at all. The brits have done a great job with FA Player, but also in selling the international rights to broadcast companies. Their lawyers though... the rights contracts are so shitty. To take England/FA WSL as an example, Viaplay bought the rights, and they air the matches that receive proper tv production in England (2-3 matches per round), but they also force FA to geoblock the other matches, so we can't watch them live on FA Player, only on demand 24 hours later. They even geoblock short clips on twitter. Utterly bizarre, as these international broadcasters aren't posting similar clips.
JenrHywy 3y ago
>THE ONLY sports governing body that has figured this out (for sports I like, anyway), is F1. Unless you live in Australia, where F1TV gives you live timing and not much else. Foxtel seem to have F1 locked up here - the cheapest option I have is Kayo (an affiliated streaming service) for $25/mth.
Larrikin 3y ago
I hope that whoever the executives are over at the MLB who decided that blacking out games on streaming services was a good idea, are well into their 60s and 70s and will be dying or retiring soon. I lived a ten minute walk from the Cubs' stadium and really wanted to watch every game. I moved to Chicago the year before they won the world series and got to experience all the build up, so was extremely excited to follow them. But even though I had a MLB.tv subscription, from T-Mobile, it was completely useless the entire time I lived in Chicago. The Cubs' games were on an over the air network, WGN, for decades, so I had to spend money for a one time expense of an antennae to be privileged to watch some games and the added inconvenience of switching away from my streaming box. Soon after they won the world series, they moved to a cable only network Marquee. I would have been forced to pay for cable to get the same shitty experience of watching only some games. I ended up only ever watching games I was physically at or when a game aligned with the exact time I happened to be at a bar with it on in the background. Blackout rules feel like a completely untenable situation if baseball wants anyone under 45 to get in to the sport.
- ptmcc 3y ago
  You're completely right, and as a baseball fan myself I deeply sympathize, but it's not so much MLB that is the problem (today) but the patchwork of cable-based Regional Sports Networks (RSNs) that have contracts for exclusive broadcast rights from MLB that were inked years ago. In a lot of cases teams even have ownership stakes in their own RSN. So now all the local broadcast rights (and $$$) belong to these RSNs instead of MLB themselves. And most/all of them broadcast exclusively on cable and offer limited-to-no streaming options. There's been some hinting from MLB that they know blackouts are painful for fans, but without being able to alter/cancel the RSN contracts they're up shit creek, legally speaking. What's interesting right now is that Diamond Sports Group (Bally Sports) just recently declared bankruptcy and they own/operate the RSNs for almost half of MLB teams. They are behind on their rights payments and MLB is trying to forcibly get broadcast rights back so they can presumably stream on mlb.tv. If that happens it could give MLB some power and put the issue more front and center. Maybe. Here's hoping. And I don't mean to white knight MLB here, they made this bed for themselves by making exclusive deals with RSNs in the past. But now it's not as easy as MLB just ending blackouts by decree. Not without a lot of lawsuits. But someday it has to happen. For the good of the game and fanbase. Please be soon.
ablation 3y ago
I feel for you. Here, GCN+ (or GCN+ Eurosport as it’s officially branded as a partnership being both owned by Warner Bros. Discovery along with BT Sport) has literally everything - from all the grand tours, to classics and even the most insignificant 1.2 and 2.2 ranked events. And all for a fair price. I didn’t even consider that in other territories the rights might be snapped up piecemeal style. That’s a shame.
- tokai 3y ago
  At least its simple to watch region locked content with a vpn on GCN+.
  - cheeze 3y ago
    Yep. Cycling is the easiest thing I watch because I have a browser with a VPN extension. Any requests that go to GCN go through UK :)
acjacobson 3y ago
Completely agree on F1 - it's super easy and I get more than I could ever consume. Between highlight episodes, multiple commentary tracks, live data, and race archives including seasons 10 years ago they've done a great job. I don't even question buying again each year.
- AlecSchueler 3y ago
  Just wish the old seasons included qualifying and practice sessions. That's the only thing I still have look for from other sources. Absolutely love that you can turn commentary off, though, even on old races. I used to have a very rube golberg esque solution playing the same stream through two players, bouncing them to mono and playing with the polarity to remove the comms feed.
TRiG_Ireland 3y ago
World Chase Tag has solved this by broadcasting exclusively on ESPN after a slight delay, and then uploading the matches to their own website and to YouTube for free after a slightly longer delay. But they're still in the position of growing their audience, so the free content (and full back catalogue on YouTube) is important. That marketing position might change in time.
_a_a_a_ 3y ago
Here's a take on this with pictures https://www.theoatmeal.com/comics/game_of_thrones https://www.theoatmeal.com/comics/game_of_thrones
NiagaraThistle 3y ago
Yeah I 100% agree. While I DON'T pirate anything, I DO pay for a sh!t ton of services to watch soccer and Cycling. Furthermore, I follow Scottish Soccer, specifically the Glasgow Rangers. So I pay 1. the club for their RangersTV, 2. Paramount+ for their half-ass SPL 'channel' (which btw doesn't show more than 2 games per weak, and rarely even Premier level teams), subscribe (free) to a small Scottish-only-football channel on YouTUbe (PLZ) for news. On top of that I watch Serie A, Paramount+ has better coverage of this. But then you want to watch UEFA Europa and Champions leagues. It gets very confusing and very costly. I don't get why the individual leagues don't get smart and have their own streaming services rather than relying on legacy broadcasting services. As for Cycling, I am in the same boat with GCN & Peacock. DIdn't know about flobikes so thanks for giving me something else to purchase :)
- smcl 3y ago
  Can I ask how you end up caring about Scottish league? It's quite rare for there to be any interest in it outside Scotland or Ireland, and rarer still for someone like that to support a team other than Celtic. As an aside, I am both delighted by Aberdeen's win over Rangers this weekend and nervous that our next game will be against Rangers @ Ibrox. I imagine they'll be pretty fired up judging by how many still-angry Gers fans I've seen trolling Aberdeen FB groups :D Btw you might like the r/ScottishFootball subreddit. I’m not really a Redditor but its a pretty fun place with some good banter
prmoustache 3y ago
On the other hand, what kind of life do you have if you need to watch every single event/games of at least 4 different sports/league? I mean I like different sports but I mostly stick to the one I love the most (cycling) and even then I skip most of it and only watch the events that count the most for me (spring classics, a bit of the grand tour in the background especially while working, world champs and MTB world cups). And given the choice to go for a bicycle ride or watch a cycling race, I will always go for the former and do the later only when I am tired, my partner or kids aren't at home or busy doing something else and I feel like lying for a bit on the couch after my own ride. I don't mind the occasionnal motogp, world rallycross, or rally coverage but I have accepted I can't both follow everything and live a decent and happy familial and social life. Only exception being Paris-Roubaix which is probably one of the only classic that is worth watching from km 0. But even then I didn't watched live this year. I avoided getting spoiled by living mostly offline appart from professionnal stuff for 3 days before dedicating the time to watch it. It is the same for social medias in fact. Most of them are trying to make you feel bad if you don't see all their content. I deleted my twitter, fb, instagram accounts a while ago and although I keep a bit of presence in mastodon I have accepted the fact that I will just connect to it a few times a week and miss tons of informations/content/jokes. Is my life worse for it? Well, not really.
c0nsumer 3y ago
Yep -- watching cycling stuff is insanely hard. And I can't help but believe this is one of the reasons competitive amateur cycling is dying as well. People like to do what they watch the pros do, but when it's so hard... I don't watch much cycling stuff, but sometimes I want to sit down and watch a CX race, or maybe one of the MTB races, or the TdF highlights or something... But there's just no one platform for it.
alistairSH 3y ago
Agree 100%. I'm a cycling fan and I refuse to subscribe to 4+ services to pick up the major races. I want the classics and big one-day races, the 3 grand tours, UCI XCO and DH, and all the world champ events. As best I can tell... The classics and spring season are spread across Flo, GCN+, and Peacock. Giro is GCN+. le Tour is Peacock. Road worlds is Flo. Vuelta is Peacock. And the UCI mountain bike stuff is (mostly) on GCN+ (used to be Redbull, maybe) I'd happily spend $300/year or so to get it all in one place. Instead, I end up watching highlights on Youtube. I don't torrent because I have an iPad, so I can't (without jumping through hoops) - but I'm tempted to grab a cheap PC just to torrent cycling.
martindbp 3y ago
For anyone who is low to mildly interested in sports, this is pushing them to consume zero sports. I wonder if they're not shooting themselves in the foot long term.
pfannkuchen 3y ago
I actually feel this should maybe be regulated. Sportsball** seems to manipulate humans at an instinctive level to a degree that most other media doesn’t, stirring up an artificial form of tribalism or patriotism. To then charge a huge amount of money and make people basically do a dance to get the product is gross. Especially when it is so popular among groups with not so much disposable income to throw at it, and when tax dollars are often used to fund sports infrastructure (at least in the US). **I.e. spectator-focused sports leagues, not leagues regular people actually play in, those don’t have this issue.

programmarchy 3y ago

Yep, NHL blackouts are idiotic. Hard to imagine they are selling more arena tickets that way.

oplav 3y ago
NHL blackouts (at least today’s NHL blackouts) are not for getting fans into arena seats. They exist because local cable broadcasts own the exclusive rights to broadcast games in local markets.
- TulliusCicero 3y ago
  And who sold them those exclusive rights? This is entirely the fault of the leagues in question. They set up a shitty service, no surprise that many people will pirate rather than paying for a service that only partially meets their needs.
  - oplav 3y ago
    The leagues did. I was never disputing that fact. There's a common misconception that blackouts are in place to protect attendance, but that is (typically) not the case. The Chicago Blackhawks did that for a while (under ownership of Bill Wirtz who explicitly thought that showing local games would hurt attendance) but when Rocky Wirtz took over the team in 2007, he reversed that policy. Blackouts exist to protect local media rights, which you correctly pointed out were sold to them by the league/teams. You'll see though that many local sports networks are in financial trouble, and leagues are looking for ways to reacquire the rights to stream directly to fans. https://www.espn.com/mlb/story/_/id/35668388/rob-manfred-mlb-ready-diamond-sports-group-pay-teams https://www.espn.com/mlb/story/_/id/35668388/rob-manfred-mlb...
- hydrok9 3y ago
  What gets me is, if I'm in Central Canada, and I want to watch a Montreal game on Sportsnet East, it's blacked out for me! I get that it's a direct feed, but what is the point of offering me the channel if I can't use ot.

ceocoder 3y ago

I’m with you, including the F1 part, and I’m glad that Liberty Media hasn’t hiked up the prices in the US so far. Even with the $80/year, I still end up watching some races on ESPN because Sky’s broadcast rights won’t allow F1TV to show the interviews with pit wall, Ted/Karun and other small things… still miles better than all other sports.

flangola7 3y ago

As I slowly grow crotchety and old I've really become fed up with the giant corps. I've taught dozens of both older and younger folk how to use a VPN and a torrent client. I've had one parent accuse me of teaching their teenager how to steal. I told them you're damn right, your kid is a sharp young woman and she is learning from the best. Media companies like to claim that each act of piracy costs them huge sums of money. That isn't true, but I wish it was.

rad_gruchalski 3y ago

> THE ONLY sports governing body that has figured this out (for sports I like, anyway), is F1. No. The only ones who figured it out is the NFL. F1 shafted Germany after youg Schuhmacher came into F1 and German Sky bought exclusive rights. The NFL? Intl Game Pass €190 per season live streams, instant repeats no adverts, various show, dedicated tv apps, no limit on number of devices, high def.

probablynish 3y ago
I think this is country specific. F1's service in the US is great, but the NFL international game pass isn't available to people who live in the US, it's not as easy to watch domestically.
- rad_gruchalski 3y ago
  F1TV in Germany was great, too. Until they shafted Germany because someone put money on the table. That’s what I mean.
emacdona 3y ago
Ah, sorry then :-( F1 is great in the US. I can't speak to NFL -- I don't watch it. However, I suspect it may be a better deal in Europe (where they are trying to get new fans) than in the US (where it's one of, if not "the", most popular sports). This is similar to GCN+ for cycling. In the US, it doesn't get you much -- but from what I understand, in some (most?) European countries, GCN+ gets you most (if not all) UCI cycling evnets.
- MrGilbert 3y ago
  I think the same applies for F1 in the US. F1 is still quite popular in Germany, although they pulled the trigger on that when RTL (German TV station) quit broadcasting F1 races in Free TV after 30 years in 2020, simply because it was too expensive. As GP stated, Sky Germany took over, and they are charging 30€ per month. It's eye-watering to see that the F1 Pro subscription costs just under 10€, but is of course not available in Germany. Last year, it was possible to register via VPN and sneak your way into the subscription. Not sure if it's possible this year, as I didn't renew it.

duskwuff 3y ago

> If you want to "stop pirates", make it easy for them to give you money and watch their favorite sport. I don't disagree, but that isn't something Mux is in a position to do. They just provide video streaming infrastructure -- they're in no position to demand that various sports broadcast rightsholders change their policies.

emacdona 3y ago
That's fair. My main objection is labeling _everyone_ as "pirates". Technically, yes, they are pirating the steam. But some of those people are also PAYING to watch plenty of games in whatever sport they are "pirating" streams for. Calling these people "pirates" fails to acknowledge that they are also "paying customers" who are frustrated with how complicated it has become to pay for the product they want to watch.
- derefr 3y ago
  The people that Mux are applying the word “pirate” to here are the people doing the streaming, not the people watching the streams. The people doing the streaming aren’t only “making paid content free to access”; they’re also putting up ads on these sites, making a profit off of IP they didn’t create. It’s analogous to bootlegging: buying a fake Gucci bag is not unethical; but producing one is.
  - kmeisthax 3y ago
    More importantly, for-money streaming pirates are terrible customers Mux doesn't want to do business with. The kinds of pirates we're thinking about from a decade ago weren't trying to make a quick buck, so they were using things like BitTorrent that had everyone sharing bandwidth.
    - duskwuff 3y ago
      > More importantly, for-money streaming pirates are terrible customers Mux doesn't want to do business with. Yep. Their entire business is illegal, so breaking a few more laws by signing up for CDN service with a stolen credit card is no big deal.

lmpdev 3y ago

"Your pain point is their business model"

TheAceOfHearts 3y ago

There's a common polycule meme where every new member pays for a different digital media subscription service and it's shared between everyone. If you get together with a few friends it's possible to split the costs of all these services. If you're sufficiently tech savvy, each person can run a VPN from their home so it doesn't look suspicious from the streaming service's end. Here's a video showing how to do this with Netflix [0]. I remember growing up it would be really common for people to split the cost of a PPV fight and VHS recordings would be passed around. It seems pretty similar. Community-based media sharing is great. I wish it was possible for me to lend all of my Steam games when I'm not using them. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9CunwUs08og https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9CunwUs08og

pdntspa 3y ago
> Community-based media sharing is great. I wish it was possible for me to lend all of my Steam games when I'm not using them. You can do that, actually. It has some pretty big caveats, but if you are not actively playing anything on Steam then your library can be lent out to others... all you have to do is sign into their computer using your Steam credentials.
- taneq 3y ago
  You can also just share your library with another account.
  - waveBidder 3y ago
    done this, the whole account gets locked iirc, and not just specific games
    - TechBro8615 3y ago
      Wait, Steam offers you a "share library" feature but then locks your account when you use it?!
      - 3y ago

vkou 3y ago

> If I would have subscribed to their service, the ONLY team whose home games I couldn't watch would have been the TEAM OF THE CITY I LIVE IN (i.e.: "my" team). They don't want to cannibalize in-person attendance where fans pay for $300 tickets and $20 pints of beer.

monksy 3y ago

> I briefly took an interest in the NHL (this was years ago, granted -- things may have changed). If I would have subscribed to their service, the ONLY team whose home games I couldn't watch would have been the TEAM OF THE CITY I LIVE IN (i.e.: "my" team). This is why I won't give the NHL or MLB any money for their video services.

esharte 3y ago

If you lived in the UK, supported Tottenham and wanted to watch all their games in the 2021/22 season you had to: Subscribe to Sky Sports (around £50-60 a month) for the Premier League games. Subscribe to BT Sports (30 a month) for the Saturday early kick off Premier League games and the Europa Conference League games. Subscribe to Amazon Prime for the 3 random weeks when they are showing the Premier League games instead of Sky. Subscribe to Premier Sports (£12 a month) to see a Europa Conference League 2 legged qualifier. And even then you couldn't see all the games legally in the UK because of the 3pm Saturday black out. You are forced to find a stream from another country where they are broadcasting the game. Then when you are subscriped you get wall to wall gambling adverts during half time. For every other product you subscribe to, it is to avoid ads, but not television.

dean2432 3y ago
wait, uk still have the 3pm Saturday black out?
emacdona 3y ago
Infuriating. I was pissed because I couldn't easily watch "all games in a given league". You only want to watch your team, and you STILL have to pay for four services to get "most" of the games.
peruvian 3y ago
There are cheaper ways to hurt yourself than trying to watch Spurs.
- cjbprime 3y ago
  Me: While this is amusing, come on, they're sixth in the Premier League, this is not in any way what a masochistic relationship with a sports team looks like. Also me, Googling: > Tottenham Hotspur's performance against Newcastle United on Sunday was so poor that the club is going to refund those that came out and showed support for the team.
  - 3y ago

whoisstan 3y ago

100% agree. I watch Bundesliga, with sky Germany over VPN you could watch all games 2/3 years ago, not some of them are on DAZN which also charges. ChampionsLeague used to be sky as well, not its prime. Not to mention English, Spanish and Italian league. I watch 4-5h soccer a week throughout the league based in time and interest. Without pirating I would have to pay several hundreds of dollars. Ridiculous.

IG_Semmelweiss 3y ago
Without pirating I don't even know if I could watch my 1 hr game per week. Now im literally paying pirates. Its a pittance and its much better service.

NikolaNovak 3y ago

Surprisingly world rally championship is also amazing with this. A very affordable subscription to wrc+ gets you live coverage, summarized coverage, highlights, specials, historical reviews, as much content as you'd want really!

emacdona 3y ago
I was actually considering becoming a WRC fan... especially after I was watching some YouTube highlights and saw that Cyril Abiteboul is a team principal! Where do I subscribe? And... you promise that it's similar to F1 -- where I pay one company one price and get all the content?? :-)
- emacdona 3y ago
  BTW, that sums up my ask for sports leagues/governing bodies: Let me pay ONE company ONE price and get ALL the content. Pick the price! I don't care. If I like the sport enough, I'll pay it. If I don't, then I'll find another sport. Just don't make me spend hours wading through online articles trying to answer questions like "How many streaming subscriptions do I need in the US to watch all UCI events?" (I did this, it was painful).
AlecSchueler 3y ago
Wish the Super Formula offering was comparable!

nl 3y ago

> To watch every UCI race This is a good example of the situation in many sports. The UCI is a governing body, not an event organiser or promoter. Basically anyone can put on race, and they are responsible for making money out of it. So event promoters make their own deals with broadcasters.

emacdona 3y ago
Thanks for pointing that out -- I guess I should have realized that (maybe I did at one point). At the very least, then, I wish the UCI would make it EASY to figure out what services I needed to subscribe to in my country to watch which races. Just a page on their website with a big table would be great. Figuring out that I need to subscribe to GCN+, Peacock, and Flobikes in the US was no small feat (and it changes from year to year!).
- nl 3y ago
  Well the UCI is like a mini version of the International Olympic Committee - borderline corrupt, pretty ineffective at anything and barely useful so not astonishing they don't do that. I suspect the promoters try to keep away from the UCI as much as possible. There have been a few attempts by the pro-teams to improve the situation via Velon[1][2] - apparently you can get live race data from them - but nothing that has really solved the problem. [1] https://www.velon.cc/ https://www.velon.cc/ [2] https://www.dcrainmaker.com/2018/01/velon-live-tracking-system.html https://www.dcrainmaker.com/2018/01/velon-live-tracking-syst...

lawgimenez 3y ago

As someone who's in Asia who loves to watch baseball, it is so hard to subscribe to live stream. I have no choice but to resort to illegal streams. MLB.tv outside the US will cost me $24.99 per month. What the fuck. The only option I have right now is Apple TV+ which has Friday Nights Baseball live, thank you Apple.

nobody9999 3y ago
>As someone who's in Asia who loves to watch baseball, it is so hard to subscribe to live stream. That's not just a problem outside the US. In order for me to watch my local team's games (well, 130 out of 162), I must have a cable TV subscription (minimum package that includes the specific channel ~$100/month) -- even to watch the games on the channel's streaming platform. MLB.tv is worse than useless, as those with local broadcast rights require MLB.tv (as well as other channels) to black out games that they carry. I'd happily pay MLB.tv (or anyone else) to watch my local team's games $24.95/month. But I can't even do that!
deleted 3y ago
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elijaht 3y ago
I don't get this complaint- there is no difficulty in watching the games. IIRC no game would be blacked out for you (besides the handful of national TV games?). You might disagree with the price, but streaming baseball outside of the US is quite simple.

importantbrian 3y ago

F1 has this absolutely nailed. I fear that if it gets popular enough in the US ESPN will buy exclusive rights and then you'll have to have a cable package in order to watch it.

ajmurmann 3y ago
I always wonder if that is a good decision for the sport in the long run. There is no way I'd subscribe to cable and ESPN to watch F1. That means I'd stop following the sport and the probability of me again spending > $1,500 on tickets goes to zero.
prmoustache 3y ago
It was easy for them to nail it and un unfair comparison to soccer or cycling. In F1 there is only one serie/league. And that doesn't give you access to all 4 wheel motorsport, let alone openwheel ones. An F1 subscription doesn't give you access to formula E, formula nippon, national formula 3 championships, or the different motorsport series accross the world. Nor does it give you access to rallying. MotoGP did the same and I used to watch all their races. Now since I want to watch cycling anyway I only pay for eurosport which allows me to watch most races as well as superbike, moto and car endurance, as well as some rallying and formula E. But there is no way I will pay separarely for MotoGP and F1. In that case they just lost a viewer for good. Also, for 1 F1 grand prix there are 20 to 50 soccer play or cycling races. The thing is cycling races and tv rights aren't managed by the governing body, but by different orgs. On one hand this is annoying to us because ASO, RCA and Flanders Classics (the 3 majors organizers) can sell rights to different channels. On the other hand a monopoly wouldn't necessarily better for the sports, the riders and the smaller races. If there had to be a monopoly, I would wish its shareholders would be the racers themselves but that won't ever happen.
ipsi 3y ago
It actually hasn't, which is really frustrating. It's not possible to watch F1 online via F1TV in Germany - you must watch it via Sky who have purchased the exclusive streaming rights up to 2024, which is €20/month or so (and means you only have the German commentators, AFAIK). At least Sky don't force you to pay for a cable (or satellite) package - it is possible to pay just for a basic sports streaming package.

downWidOutaFite 3y ago

Considering I just paid $74 to Youtbe TV just so I could watch one month of NBA playoffs, I'm sure $80 per year would get you laughed out of the room. They know exactly what they're doing and exactly how much pain they can inflict on the fans to extract the maximum amount of money. Though I do think that kind of short-term MBA thinking causes long-term damage to their brand and product, but they don't know how to calculate that in their quarterly earnings reports. In my mind the Olympics is an example of where the long-term damage is really starting to accumulate, I know several people that used to be big Olympics fans 10 years ago that couldn't be bothered last time around because of how painful NBC makes it.

syradar 3y ago

This is one reason why I watch esports. The game makers see it as advertisement for their game so they pay for the leagues and shows. I can watch all of it on YouTube or Twitch for free.

walrus01 3y ago

> I LOVE cycling. To watch every UCI race, I'd have to subscribe to GCN+ (they have the Giro), Peacock (they have the Tour de France and La Vuelta), and Flobikes (they have most of the Classics races). If you were okay with not watching it live, people were torrenting each day's stage of the tour de France in 2004. There is a pretty big overlap between tech industry people and enthusiastic road cyclists. Now there's whole communities of people sharing the euro broadcasts of just about everything race for worldwide people to watch.

cheeze 3y ago
Shout out to my boy Tiz

dclowd9901 3y ago

Positively nailed it. Why can’t I just watch gt racing? Who can I just give my money to to watch all the GT and SCCA racing I want? Nobody has it and whoever owns it has made it balls out the hardest thing in the world to watch.

FredPret 3y ago

I wish every sport had an f1.com style offering. I’d gladly pay several sports some money, but no. They insist on the old way

RollAHardSix 3y ago

Exactly this. I am a rabid women's soccer fan. I study and follow the draft like a professional coach, watch as many matches as I can, drive three hours to NWSL matches when I can, try and catch overseas games when possible, and I am continuously frustrated by the broken state of sports streaming. The NWSL shows up on ParamountPlus, unlesss its on CBS, unless its on CBSSN, unless its on Twitch on like three different Twitch channels - it is maddening as a hardcore fan and in no way leads to a casual fan having an easy time to watch. I am heartbroken too at the amount of historical matches that will be lost because they simply aren't available. NWSL, FA WSL, International Friendlies or International Cups. It will all be lost over time as streaming partnerships change. The key to making better players is a better soccer culture and that means the key is to have them watch the game, love the game. I have had seasons where I have almost quit as a fan because how frustratingly disorganized it all is. I know partnerships are important, but these leagues need to start pushing for their own streaming infrastructure or unified streaming partner or they will see the sport tip into irrelevance with the general public.

werid 3y ago
Yes, americans gets screwed over with the CBSSN matches, as it requires a cable account. To top it off, the replays of CBSSN matches take up to 48 hours to appear, while CBS matches up to 24 hours, and P+ much shorter. The twitch deal ended last season, but americans only had to deal with one twitch channel, which aired the twitch exclusive matches. The other twitch channels were exclusively for international viewers, and they had to have multiple channels due to matches being on at the same time. With the twitch deal over, international viewers can watch on NWSL's own website again, like we did years ago, before the ESPN and later twitch deals. When it comes to international sports, the whole "where to watch" is so painful, especially women's sport, as it's covered less, and most broadcast deals are in the local country, and very rarely international coverage at all. The brits have done a great job with FA Player, but also in selling the international rights to broadcast companies. Their lawyers though... the rights contracts are so shitty. To take England/FA WSL as an example, Viaplay bought the rights, and they air the matches that receive proper tv production in England (2-3 matches per round), but they also force FA to geoblock the other matches, so we can't watch them live on FA Player, only on demand 24 hours later. They even geoblock short clips on twitter. Utterly bizarre, as these international broadcasters aren't posting similar clips.

JenrHywy 3y ago

>THE ONLY sports governing body that has figured this out (for sports I like, anyway), is F1. Unless you live in Australia, where F1TV gives you live timing and not much else. Foxtel seem to have F1 locked up here - the cheapest option I have is Kayo (an affiliated streaming service) for $25/mth.

Larrikin 3y ago

I hope that whoever the executives are over at the MLB who decided that blacking out games on streaming services was a good idea, are well into their 60s and 70s and will be dying or retiring soon. I lived a ten minute walk from the Cubs' stadium and really wanted to watch every game. I moved to Chicago the year before they won the world series and got to experience all the build up, so was extremely excited to follow them. But even though I had a MLB.tv subscription, from T-Mobile, it was completely useless the entire time I lived in Chicago. The Cubs' games were on an over the air network, WGN, for decades, so I had to spend money for a one time expense of an antennae to be privileged to watch some games and the added inconvenience of switching away from my streaming box. Soon after they won the world series, they moved to a cable only network Marquee. I would have been forced to pay for cable to get the same shitty experience of watching only some games. I ended up only ever watching games I was physically at or when a game aligned with the exact time I happened to be at a bar with it on in the background. Blackout rules feel like a completely untenable situation if baseball wants anyone under 45 to get in to the sport.

ptmcc 3y ago
You're completely right, and as a baseball fan myself I deeply sympathize, but it's not so much MLB that is the problem (today) but the patchwork of cable-based Regional Sports Networks (RSNs) that have contracts for exclusive broadcast rights from MLB that were inked years ago. In a lot of cases teams even have ownership stakes in their own RSN. So now all the local broadcast rights (and $$$) belong to these RSNs instead of MLB themselves. And most/all of them broadcast exclusively on cable and offer limited-to-no streaming options. There's been some hinting from MLB that they know blackouts are painful for fans, but without being able to alter/cancel the RSN contracts they're up shit creek, legally speaking. What's interesting right now is that Diamond Sports Group (Bally Sports) just recently declared bankruptcy and they own/operate the RSNs for almost half of MLB teams. They are behind on their rights payments and MLB is trying to forcibly get broadcast rights back so they can presumably stream on mlb.tv. If that happens it could give MLB some power and put the issue more front and center. Maybe. Here's hoping. And I don't mean to white knight MLB here, they made this bed for themselves by making exclusive deals with RSNs in the past. But now it's not as easy as MLB just ending blackouts by decree. Not without a lot of lawsuits. But someday it has to happen. For the good of the game and fanbase. Please be soon.

ablation 3y ago

I feel for you. Here, GCN+ (or GCN+ Eurosport as it’s officially branded as a partnership being both owned by Warner Bros. Discovery along with BT Sport) has literally everything - from all the grand tours, to classics and even the most insignificant 1.2 and 2.2 ranked events. And all for a fair price. I didn’t even consider that in other territories the rights might be snapped up piecemeal style. That’s a shame.

tokai 3y ago
At least its simple to watch region locked content with a vpn on GCN+.
- cheeze 3y ago
  Yep. Cycling is the easiest thing I watch because I have a browser with a VPN extension. Any requests that go to GCN go through UK :)

acjacobson 3y ago

Completely agree on F1 - it's super easy and I get more than I could ever consume. Between highlight episodes, multiple commentary tracks, live data, and race archives including seasons 10 years ago they've done a great job. I don't even question buying again each year.

AlecSchueler 3y ago
Just wish the old seasons included qualifying and practice sessions. That's the only thing I still have look for from other sources. Absolutely love that you can turn commentary off, though, even on old races. I used to have a very rube golberg esque solution playing the same stream through two players, bouncing them to mono and playing with the polarity to remove the comms feed.

TRiG_Ireland 3y ago

World Chase Tag has solved this by broadcasting exclusively on ESPN after a slight delay, and then uploading the matches to their own website and to YouTube for free after a slightly longer delay. But they're still in the position of growing their audience, so the free content (and full back catalogue on YouTube) is important. That marketing position might change in time.

_a_a_a_ 3y ago

Here's a take on this with pictures https://www.theoatmeal.com/comics/game_of_thrones https://www.theoatmeal.com/comics/game_of_thrones

NiagaraThistle 3y ago

Yeah I 100% agree. While I DON'T pirate anything, I DO pay for a sh!t ton of services to watch soccer and Cycling. Furthermore, I follow Scottish Soccer, specifically the Glasgow Rangers. So I pay 1. the club for their RangersTV, 2. Paramount+ for their half-ass SPL 'channel' (which btw doesn't show more than 2 games per weak, and rarely even Premier level teams), subscribe (free) to a small Scottish-only-football channel on YouTUbe (PLZ) for news. On top of that I watch Serie A, Paramount+ has better coverage of this. But then you want to watch UEFA Europa and Champions leagues. It gets very confusing and very costly. I don't get why the individual leagues don't get smart and have their own streaming services rather than relying on legacy broadcasting services. As for Cycling, I am in the same boat with GCN & Peacock. DIdn't know about flobikes so thanks for giving me something else to purchase :)

smcl 3y ago
Can I ask how you end up caring about Scottish league? It's quite rare for there to be any interest in it outside Scotland or Ireland, and rarer still for someone like that to support a team other than Celtic. As an aside, I am both delighted by Aberdeen's win over Rangers this weekend and nervous that our next game will be against Rangers @ Ibrox. I imagine they'll be pretty fired up judging by how many still-angry Gers fans I've seen trolling Aberdeen FB groups :D Btw you might like the r/ScottishFootball subreddit. I’m not really a Redditor but its a pretty fun place with some good banter

prmoustache 3y ago

On the other hand, what kind of life do you have if you need to watch every single event/games of at least 4 different sports/league? I mean I like different sports but I mostly stick to the one I love the most (cycling) and even then I skip most of it and only watch the events that count the most for me (spring classics, a bit of the grand tour in the background especially while working, world champs and MTB world cups). And given the choice to go for a bicycle ride or watch a cycling race, I will always go for the former and do the later only when I am tired, my partner or kids aren't at home or busy doing something else and I feel like lying for a bit on the couch after my own ride. I don't mind the occasionnal motogp, world rallycross, or rally coverage but I have accepted I can't both follow everything and live a decent and happy familial and social life. Only exception being Paris-Roubaix which is probably one of the only classic that is worth watching from km 0. But even then I didn't watched live this year. I avoided getting spoiled by living mostly offline appart from professionnal stuff for 3 days before dedicating the time to watch it. It is the same for social medias in fact. Most of them are trying to make you feel bad if you don't see all their content. I deleted my twitter, fb, instagram accounts a while ago and although I keep a bit of presence in mastodon I have accepted the fact that I will just connect to it a few times a week and miss tons of informations/content/jokes. Is my life worse for it? Well, not really.

c0nsumer 3y ago

Yep -- watching cycling stuff is insanely hard. And I can't help but believe this is one of the reasons competitive amateur cycling is dying as well. People like to do what they watch the pros do, but when it's so hard... I don't watch much cycling stuff, but sometimes I want to sit down and watch a CX race, or maybe one of the MTB races, or the TdF highlights or something... But there's just no one platform for it.

alistairSH 3y ago

Agree 100%. I'm a cycling fan and I refuse to subscribe to 4+ services to pick up the major races. I want the classics and big one-day races, the 3 grand tours, UCI XCO and DH, and all the world champ events. As best I can tell... The classics and spring season are spread across Flo, GCN+, and Peacock. Giro is GCN+. le Tour is Peacock. Road worlds is Flo. Vuelta is Peacock. And the UCI mountain bike stuff is (mostly) on GCN+ (used to be Redbull, maybe) I'd happily spend $300/year or so to get it all in one place. Instead, I end up watching highlights on Youtube. I don't torrent because I have an iPad, so I can't (without jumping through hoops) - but I'm tempted to grab a cheap PC just to torrent cycling.

martindbp 3y ago

For anyone who is low to mildly interested in sports, this is pushing them to consume zero sports. I wonder if they're not shooting themselves in the foot long term.

pfannkuchen 3y ago

I actually feel this should maybe be regulated. Sportsball** seems to manipulate humans at an instinctive level to a degree that most other media doesn’t, stirring up an artificial form of tribalism or patriotism. To then charge a huge amount of money and make people basically do a dance to get the product is gross. Especially when it is so popular among groups with not so much disposable income to throw at it, and when tax dollars are often used to fund sports infrastructure (at least in the US). **I.e. spectator-focused sports leagues, not leagues regular people actually play in, those don’t have this issue.