The leagues and/or teams are too greedy is more like it. You used to be able to watch sports on broadcast (antenna) TV, for free. Then cable channels started

The leagues and/or teams are too greedy is more like it. You used to be able to watch sports on broadcast (antenna) TV, for free. Then cable channels started bidding up sports contracts, to motivate subscriptions. Then, more recently, streaming services have gotten in on the game. To try to cater to all of them, the leagues (and teams, depending on the sport) have decided to slice and dice the rights, so that some games end up on one platform, and others on another. Not for nothing, but at some point this has to stop. My suspicion is that the leagues will launch their own streaming platforms, and allow people to buy either subscriptions to their team, or to the full season, perhaps with postseason packages as well. It's what likely SHOULD happen if you want to avoid alienating the fanbases, though in my experience, sports fans seem to be very much in the "thank you mistress, may I have another?" camp. The idea of being expected to subscribe to 4+ services just to watch all of your team's games is absurd, especially when they're services that you're otherwise not interested in. Of course people are pirating things.