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The problem is that “to watch sports” bit. Apart from pirating, the only way to watch, say, NFL Football, your local baseball team and say Division 1 College F

• Klonoar 3y ago
  This is why I’m grateful for how Formula 1 has kept the F1TV app option. The day they finally rip that away is the day I possibly stop following. …as much…
• starkparker 3y ago
  Take a league like MLS, for instance. Their Apple TV deal is worth about $250M/year. To hit that revenue number on, say, a hypothetical $90/year ($10/month for 9 months) standalone league pass subscription, they'd need about 2.8M subscribers. And that doesn't figure in the distribution costs of either rolling their own live sports streaming service or more likely whitelabeling one. Most MLS matches broadcast on cable have fewer than 400k viewers. Many have fewer than 125k. It's hard to imagine that 3M people would consistently fork over $10/month for that. Providers will almost always pay more for some degree of exclusivity (and more stably — the MLS deal is for 10 years) than consumers will bear on their own. It's ultimately a marketing expense for providers banking on subscriber growth, something consumers aren't willing to shoulder directly for a standalone league service. Where streaming passes have worked are on the team level for those with global brands, where they can provide exclusive content to diehard fans. But again they tend to be expensive marketing arms and not the team's primary revenue stream, which is still league TV/media contracts.