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Game of Thrones (the most pirated show of last year) comes out in March. Still not for sale at any price unless you have a cable package AND one of their author

Game of Thrones (the most pirated show of last year) comes out in March. Still not for sale at any price unless you have a cable package AND one of their authorised ISPs (plus $18+tax/month). Maybe companies like HBO should update their business practices to something roughly compatible with 2013, instead of trying to legal threat everyone into submission. If they sold it on iTunes, YouTube, or Hulu+ they'd convert tons of pirates into paying customers. People want to give HBO their money but HBO literally won't take it...

reustle 14y ago
I feel the problem is they'd like to but their contracts with the cable companies prevent them from doing so.
- joonix 14y ago
  And the cable contracts provide basically guaranteed revenue as opposed to the risk of trying out online publishing. Execs want to cover their asses, not risk them. The potential payoff of going fully online is probably not high enough to justify risking their entire revenue base. HBO is just a publisher, their expertise is sifting through and finding great creative talent to produce great shows. There's not a big difference between cable TV and internet, they share the same last mile, even. It just takes a long time for incumbents to adapt to change.
api 14y ago
The game is protecting cable TV from total disruption by the Internet. Cable is the big cash cow. That's also why there's such a powerful, almost jihad-like effort to keep sports off the net. A lot of sports fans have cable to watch the game.
- NoPiece 14y ago
  Right, and it is not just the cable companies that are fighting the disruption. Television networks are now getting a major chunk of their income from cable companies by increasing the carry and retransmission fees. This revenue source has become much more important as ad revenue has declined. So a healthy cable company business is in their interest of the big media companies as well. http://www.fiercecable.com/story/news-corp-reports-100-increase-retransmission-consent-fees/2012-02-09 http://www.fiercecable.com/story/news-corp-reports-100-incre...
- digitalengineer 14y ago
  Sports is the only thing right now that does not fear piracy. After all, there isn't much value in a day-old game. It needs to be a live broadcast. Torrents, newsgroups are always "yesterday news" to real sports fans.
dangrossman 14y ago
HBO knows it's 2013. It's built a Netflix competitor. They have the whole tech stack for subscription internet streaming running and proven. They're signing 10-year content deals with exclusivity agreements that simultaneously give them a future catalog to rival Netflix while locking Netflix out of acquiring the same top-quality content. HBO has all its ducks in a row, it's playing the long game. All they're waiting for is the tipping point in consumption habits. Today, most of their subscribers are paying $17+/month via bundling with cable TV, and every major cable provider in the country is heavily advertising them for free. The moment they can go independent and accept subscribers without going through a cable company is the moment the trickle of people dropping cable TV in favor of internet media turns into a tide. It's not today. If they split from cable today, they'd lose free advertising to hundreds of millions of people a year, and they'd likely earn far less per month from each subscriber they pick up.
- twmb 14y ago
  I'm wondering if partnering with Netflix and taking the potential flak from TV would be worth it. I don't see the reason for HBO to have HBO Go other than the tie in with TV companies. Would it be more profitable to pair up with Netflix or to sell their shows drm free easily online? I know I'd pay for that service in a heartbeat, and I wonder how many people who own cable (I don't) would switch to paying for the few channels they actually want. However, I don't want to buy cable for one or two channels / shows, so they lose out from all money I'd willingly give them. I don't want them to cancel an amazing show because of the perceived lack of profit (Spartacus) if they could in fact double their profit from people who would buy their shows directly.
  - rogerbinns 14y ago
    Estimates are that Game of Thrones costs $6 million per episode http://www.contactmusic.com/news/game-of-thrones-costs-6-million-per-episode_1333082 http://www.contactmusic.com/news/game-of-thrones-costs-6-mil... and Netlix's House of Cards is around $4 million per episode. That puts things at the same order of magnitude. Here is a good article about the economics behind it for Netflix and HBO: http://www.theatlanticwire.com/technology/2013/02/economics-netflixs-100-million-new-show/61692/ http://www.theatlanticwire.com/technology/2013/02/economics-... I'm hoping the idea of exclusives goes away - as long as the producer gets paid, who cares how the actual video was delivered (cable, iTunes, Amazon, Netflix, Vudu, DVD etc). Unfortunately in the battle for market share it is worth some of those video deliverers to pay more to lock out competitors, but it doesn't benefit the consumers.
waterlesscloud 14y ago
Funny, I've been able to purchase and stream seasons 1 and 2 via Amazon. http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00BHASVQC http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00BHASVQC Looks like HBO was able to take my money just fine.
- GuiA 14y ago
  OP is talking about season 3, how it'll inevitably get pirated, and how there's no alternative.
  - waterlesscloud 14y ago
    Sure there's an alternative. Wait a few months until it's available for purchase. Works fine for me.
    - smtddr 14y ago
      Unacceptable. If my friends/family are watching some awesome show like say, LOST, I'm not waiting for TV companies/netflix/whoever to get their act together. The moment people around me want to discuss the show is the moment I want it and not a second later. I will pirate it if need be. I won't "wait a few months". I'm not here trying to justify piracy either; think whatever you want of me - I'm not waiting, that's all I'm saying. You want me to pay for it? You better be ready to give it to me the same time people around me are talking about it. And it needs to be in a friendly format. Netflix/HULU/whatever or downloadable files for my cyanogenmod KindleFire.
      - city41 14y ago
        Unacceptable? It's a tv show. I think some perspective is needed. It's also a tv show that HBO owns the full rights to and is free to do with it as they please.
        smtddr 14y ago
        Sure, they can do what they want. But I thought we were sorta discussing piracy. Again, I'm not trying to justify myself. I'm just going to pirate it, end of story. What prevents me from doing that is if they make it available for download or stream before piratebay does. I'm not arguing any point here, I'm just providing one data-point. There are people like me who want to have fun discussing shows with his friends/family while they're watching it. Not 6+ months later.
erichocean 14y ago
Still not for sale at any price It's at Costco for $33.
- CamperBob2 14y ago
  Sigh. Yes, I can buy last season's shows at Costco. So?
  - jasonlotito 14y ago
    That changes the OP's argument. "Still not for sale at any price..." which is 100% false. The problem is, you want it now... because, well, you are entitled to it when and how you want it. The only issue is you aren't willing to pay the price. So, instead of availability, this because one of pricing. You feel the product costs too much, and you want the lower price to come sooner. Another problem is you are looking at GoT as the product. It's not. It's a feature of the entire product: HBO.
    - watmough 14y ago
      I wait for the DVDs. I'm not a believer in piracy. My issue is that if I could subscribe to just HBO, I would. It's the other 200 channels of DishTV's slops that I don't want coming into my house.
      - jasonlotito 14y ago
        That's the price you pay though. You don't think it's worth it. The price for HBO is not the monthly price you pay to the cable provider for HBO.
biot 14y ago
How is HBO "trying to legal threat everyone into submission"? I've purchased seasons 1 and 2 of Game of Thrones on Bluray. I don't have cable yet HBO managed to take my money just fine. I bet those seasons are still heavily pirated despite being available for purchase, just as people pirate movies, TV shows, and music that has been available for legal purchase for years or decades. People just want to get shit without paying for it.
- james4k 14y ago
  Well, you'll have to watch the next season 9 months or so after everyone else does.
  - danielweber 14y ago
    He's right up there with Nelson Mandela.
zacharycohn 14y ago
It's more complicated than sticking to outdated business practices. It's a classic innovator's dilemma. People pay to subscribe to HBO (tv). If people could get a lot of that content by subscribing online, for cheaper, then lots of people will switch over. Which means HBO disrupts it's own cashcow moneymaker with something that makes less money.
- AnthonyMouse 14y ago
  So who says it has to be "cheaper"? Charge the same amount for the streaming service as they get from the cable companies. The problem is not HBO, the problem is Comcast. If HBO offered all their premium content a la carte over the internet for competitive prices, HBO would be fine. They would make even more money than they do now -- except that the cable companies would collectively go berserk and retaliate, the fear of which is what stops them. If the DoJ had any interest in not looking like a collection of apathetic former RIAA lawyers there would be an antitrust probe into this sort of thing by now.
  - zacharycohn 14y ago
    Could HBO really justify charging 4x or 5x or 10x what Netflix charges with a fraction of the catalog? No. People would ridicule them.
    - AnthonyMouse 14y ago
      Have you seen the Netflix streaming catalog? It's terrible. People would pay substantially more than that just for current episodes of the HBO original series, to say nothing of the movies -- which they already do pay for the cable package. Why do you suspect they wouldn't do the same over the internet if the choice was available? Once again, they would likely pay even more, because they could then more easily cancel their entire cable subscription while paying HBO more than HBO is currently receiving today from the cable companies and come out ahead. The primary problem is that HBO would have to transition their subscribers to their internet service all at once or they would lose subscriptions. There are still plenty of HBO subscribers watching on analog TVs with no internet attached to them, and HBO can't take steps to make itself independent from the cable companies without causing them to retaliate by depriving it of all that subscription revenue.
chimi 14y ago
This is a tired argument born out of ignorance. You have no provided no evidence that the pirates would pay for it if they could, nor have you provided any evidence that HBO would make more money selling Game of Thrones to individuals than selling their network to the cable companies as an exclusive option for consuming their content.
- rohern 14y ago
  I am going to assume that you are an older person who has no real experience with "piracy" because the tone of your comment suggests a misconception about how it works. "Pirates" absolutely will pay. They pay to get the content as soon as it comes out and in high-definition. There are large and influential companies that have come to recognize the piracy is the result of failures of distribution, not pricing. The prime example would be Valve, which since it made Steam its primary distribution channel, had paid very little attention to piracy (compare to EA). The CEO, Gabe Newell, has discussed this publicly, and you can find him discussing it on YouTube. His example, which is particular to the gaming industry, but applies also to feature films, is that it is not reasonable to think that individuals who can afford $40/month internet connections and $2000 gaming rigs are pirating games because of money. They pirate games because they cannot get them legally conveniently and readily. This is particularly true in countries where English is not spoken. It takes months for a game to be released in Russia in Russian after the game is released in the United States. If a gamer can get a version in Russian faster via piracy, he's going to do it. The same rule holds for feature films, where again, release dates are not universal. As to your second point, if you cannot see the common sense in the idea that the millions of American and foreign young people who do subscribe to cable or to HBO but who enjoy Game of Thrones want to be able to watch it online in high def the same way that they watch every other show, I think you're just trying to argue for the sake of it. Even if only 10% of these people paid to watch it on HBO/iTunes/Amazon, that is money that HBO is not getting now. Being able to pay a few bucks to watch the episode the same night that it is released in high-definition is well worth it. To take just one demographic, college students living in dorms do not have cable subscriptions. They all watch the show by streaming from sites that violate copyright or via file-sharing. Perhaps you do not know this, but it is trivial to watch shows online. You can stream video from dozens of sites, with more of these appearing every month. These sites upload new episodes with hours of their original airing. That being said, Netflix has millions of subscribers, including very many young people who know how to watch shows like this. Young people also spend lots of money renting movies and television shows on iTunes that they could find for free online with a little effort. People pay for a high quality stream without the annoyance of pop-up ads and banners, and they like fast downloads and ease of use. Here's Gabe talking about piracy, so don't take my word for it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pLC_zZ5fqFk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pLC_zZ5fqFk
shmerl 14y ago
When they'll start selling their videos without any DRM and in timely manner (and not months after the release) - then you can say they are actually competing with pirates. Until then - they aren't even trying to compete.
beedogs 14y ago
HBO programs are one of the main things I pirate. Their distribution channels are the modern equivalent of the horse-and-buggy. I'm not about to wait a year to watch shows here in Australia that aired ages ago in the US. Get with the fucking times, HBO.
agotterer 14y ago
It actually just came on DVD a few days ago (Feb 19th). http://www.amazon.com/Game-Thrones-Complete-Blu-ray-Digital/dp/B0060MYM7O/ http://www.amazon.com/Game-Thrones-Complete-Blu-ray-Digital/...
guelo 14y ago
Or HBO could follow the business model it thinks it's most profitable. You're not entitled to watch Game of Thrones.

reustle 14y ago

I feel the problem is they'd like to but their contracts with the cable companies prevent them from doing so.

joonix 14y ago
And the cable contracts provide basically guaranteed revenue as opposed to the risk of trying out online publishing. Execs want to cover their asses, not risk them. The potential payoff of going fully online is probably not high enough to justify risking their entire revenue base. HBO is just a publisher, their expertise is sifting through and finding great creative talent to produce great shows. There's not a big difference between cable TV and internet, they share the same last mile, even. It just takes a long time for incumbents to adapt to change.

api 14y ago

The game is protecting cable TV from total disruption by the Internet. Cable is the big cash cow. That's also why there's such a powerful, almost jihad-like effort to keep sports off the net. A lot of sports fans have cable to watch the game.

NoPiece 14y ago
Right, and it is not just the cable companies that are fighting the disruption. Television networks are now getting a major chunk of their income from cable companies by increasing the carry and retransmission fees. This revenue source has become much more important as ad revenue has declined. So a healthy cable company business is in their interest of the big media companies as well. http://www.fiercecable.com/story/news-corp-reports-100-increase-retransmission-consent-fees/2012-02-09 http://www.fiercecable.com/story/news-corp-reports-100-incre...
digitalengineer 14y ago
Sports is the only thing right now that does not fear piracy. After all, there isn't much value in a day-old game. It needs to be a live broadcast. Torrents, newsgroups are always "yesterday news" to real sports fans.

dangrossman 14y ago

HBO knows it's 2013. It's built a Netflix competitor. They have the whole tech stack for subscription internet streaming running and proven. They're signing 10-year content deals with exclusivity agreements that simultaneously give them a future catalog to rival Netflix while locking Netflix out of acquiring the same top-quality content. HBO has all its ducks in a row, it's playing the long game. All they're waiting for is the tipping point in consumption habits. Today, most of their subscribers are paying $17+/month via bundling with cable TV, and every major cable provider in the country is heavily advertising them for free. The moment they can go independent and accept subscribers without going through a cable company is the moment the trickle of people dropping cable TV in favor of internet media turns into a tide. It's not today. If they split from cable today, they'd lose free advertising to hundreds of millions of people a year, and they'd likely earn far less per month from each subscriber they pick up.

twmb 14y ago
I'm wondering if partnering with Netflix and taking the potential flak from TV would be worth it. I don't see the reason for HBO to have HBO Go other than the tie in with TV companies. Would it be more profitable to pair up with Netflix or to sell their shows drm free easily online? I know I'd pay for that service in a heartbeat, and I wonder how many people who own cable (I don't) would switch to paying for the few channels they actually want. However, I don't want to buy cable for one or two channels / shows, so they lose out from all money I'd willingly give them. I don't want them to cancel an amazing show because of the perceived lack of profit (Spartacus) if they could in fact double their profit from people who would buy their shows directly.
- rogerbinns 14y ago
  Estimates are that Game of Thrones costs $6 million per episode http://www.contactmusic.com/news/game-of-thrones-costs-6-million-per-episode_1333082 http://www.contactmusic.com/news/game-of-thrones-costs-6-mil... and Netlix's House of Cards is around $4 million per episode. That puts things at the same order of magnitude. Here is a good article about the economics behind it for Netflix and HBO: http://www.theatlanticwire.com/technology/2013/02/economics-netflixs-100-million-new-show/61692/ http://www.theatlanticwire.com/technology/2013/02/economics-... I'm hoping the idea of exclusives goes away - as long as the producer gets paid, who cares how the actual video was delivered (cable, iTunes, Amazon, Netflix, Vudu, DVD etc). Unfortunately in the battle for market share it is worth some of those video deliverers to pay more to lock out competitors, but it doesn't benefit the consumers.

waterlesscloud 14y ago

Funny, I've been able to purchase and stream seasons 1 and 2 via Amazon. http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00BHASVQC http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00BHASVQC Looks like HBO was able to take my money just fine.

GuiA 14y ago
OP is talking about season 3, how it'll inevitably get pirated, and how there's no alternative.
- waterlesscloud 14y ago
  Sure there's an alternative. Wait a few months until it's available for purchase. Works fine for me.
  - smtddr 14y ago
    Unacceptable. If my friends/family are watching some awesome show like say, LOST, I'm not waiting for TV companies/netflix/whoever to get their act together. The moment people around me want to discuss the show is the moment I want it and not a second later. I will pirate it if need be. I won't "wait a few months". I'm not here trying to justify piracy either; think whatever you want of me - I'm not waiting, that's all I'm saying. You want me to pay for it? You better be ready to give it to me the same time people around me are talking about it. And it needs to be in a friendly format. Netflix/HULU/whatever or downloadable files for my cyanogenmod KindleFire.
    - city41 14y ago
      Unacceptable? It's a tv show. I think some perspective is needed. It's also a tv show that HBO owns the full rights to and is free to do with it as they please.
      - smtddr 14y ago
        Sure, they can do what they want. But I thought we were sorta discussing piracy. Again, I'm not trying to justify myself. I'm just going to pirate it, end of story. What prevents me from doing that is if they make it available for download or stream before piratebay does. I'm not arguing any point here, I'm just providing one data-point. There are people like me who want to have fun discussing shows with his friends/family while they're watching it. Not 6+ months later.

erichocean 14y ago

Still not for sale at any price It's at Costco for $33.

CamperBob2 14y ago
Sigh. Yes, I can buy last season's shows at Costco. So?
- jasonlotito 14y ago
  That changes the OP's argument. "Still not for sale at any price..." which is 100% false. The problem is, you want it now... because, well, you are entitled to it when and how you want it. The only issue is you aren't willing to pay the price. So, instead of availability, this because one of pricing. You feel the product costs too much, and you want the lower price to come sooner. Another problem is you are looking at GoT as the product. It's not. It's a feature of the entire product: HBO.
  - watmough 14y ago
    I wait for the DVDs. I'm not a believer in piracy. My issue is that if I could subscribe to just HBO, I would. It's the other 200 channels of DishTV's slops that I don't want coming into my house.
    - jasonlotito 14y ago
      That's the price you pay though. You don't think it's worth it. The price for HBO is not the monthly price you pay to the cable provider for HBO.

biot 14y ago

How is HBO "trying to legal threat everyone into submission"? I've purchased seasons 1 and 2 of Game of Thrones on Bluray. I don't have cable yet HBO managed to take my money just fine. I bet those seasons are still heavily pirated despite being available for purchase, just as people pirate movies, TV shows, and music that has been available for legal purchase for years or decades. People just want to get shit without paying for it.

james4k 14y ago
Well, you'll have to watch the next season 9 months or so after everyone else does.
- danielweber 14y ago
  He's right up there with Nelson Mandela.

zacharycohn 14y ago

It's more complicated than sticking to outdated business practices. It's a classic innovator's dilemma. People pay to subscribe to HBO (tv). If people could get a lot of that content by subscribing online, for cheaper, then lots of people will switch over. Which means HBO disrupts it's own cashcow moneymaker with something that makes less money.

AnthonyMouse 14y ago
So who says it has to be "cheaper"? Charge the same amount for the streaming service as they get from the cable companies. The problem is not HBO, the problem is Comcast. If HBO offered all their premium content a la carte over the internet for competitive prices, HBO would be fine. They would make even more money than they do now -- except that the cable companies would collectively go berserk and retaliate, the fear of which is what stops them. If the DoJ had any interest in not looking like a collection of apathetic former RIAA lawyers there would be an antitrust probe into this sort of thing by now.
- zacharycohn 14y ago
  Could HBO really justify charging 4x or 5x or 10x what Netflix charges with a fraction of the catalog? No. People would ridicule them.
  - AnthonyMouse 14y ago
    Have you seen the Netflix streaming catalog? It's terrible. People would pay substantially more than that just for current episodes of the HBO original series, to say nothing of the movies -- which they already do pay for the cable package. Why do you suspect they wouldn't do the same over the internet if the choice was available? Once again, they would likely pay even more, because they could then more easily cancel their entire cable subscription while paying HBO more than HBO is currently receiving today from the cable companies and come out ahead. The primary problem is that HBO would have to transition their subscribers to their internet service all at once or they would lose subscriptions. There are still plenty of HBO subscribers watching on analog TVs with no internet attached to them, and HBO can't take steps to make itself independent from the cable companies without causing them to retaliate by depriving it of all that subscription revenue.

chimi 14y ago

This is a tired argument born out of ignorance. You have no provided no evidence that the pirates would pay for it if they could, nor have you provided any evidence that HBO would make more money selling Game of Thrones to individuals than selling their network to the cable companies as an exclusive option for consuming their content.

rohern 14y ago
I am going to assume that you are an older person who has no real experience with "piracy" because the tone of your comment suggests a misconception about how it works. "Pirates" absolutely will pay. They pay to get the content as soon as it comes out and in high-definition. There are large and influential companies that have come to recognize the piracy is the result of failures of distribution, not pricing. The prime example would be Valve, which since it made Steam its primary distribution channel, had paid very little attention to piracy (compare to EA). The CEO, Gabe Newell, has discussed this publicly, and you can find him discussing it on YouTube. His example, which is particular to the gaming industry, but applies also to feature films, is that it is not reasonable to think that individuals who can afford $40/month internet connections and $2000 gaming rigs are pirating games because of money. They pirate games because they cannot get them legally conveniently and readily. This is particularly true in countries where English is not spoken. It takes months for a game to be released in Russia in Russian after the game is released in the United States. If a gamer can get a version in Russian faster via piracy, he's going to do it. The same rule holds for feature films, where again, release dates are not universal. As to your second point, if you cannot see the common sense in the idea that the millions of American and foreign young people who do subscribe to cable or to HBO but who enjoy Game of Thrones want to be able to watch it online in high def the same way that they watch every other show, I think you're just trying to argue for the sake of it. Even if only 10% of these people paid to watch it on HBO/iTunes/Amazon, that is money that HBO is not getting now. Being able to pay a few bucks to watch the episode the same night that it is released in high-definition is well worth it. To take just one demographic, college students living in dorms do not have cable subscriptions. They all watch the show by streaming from sites that violate copyright or via file-sharing. Perhaps you do not know this, but it is trivial to watch shows online. You can stream video from dozens of sites, with more of these appearing every month. These sites upload new episodes with hours of their original airing. That being said, Netflix has millions of subscribers, including very many young people who know how to watch shows like this. Young people also spend lots of money renting movies and television shows on iTunes that they could find for free online with a little effort. People pay for a high quality stream without the annoyance of pop-up ads and banners, and they like fast downloads and ease of use. Here's Gabe talking about piracy, so don't take my word for it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pLC_zZ5fqFk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pLC_zZ5fqFk

shmerl 14y ago

When they'll start selling their videos without any DRM and in timely manner (and not months after the release) - then you can say they are actually competing with pirates. Until then - they aren't even trying to compete.

beedogs 14y ago

HBO programs are one of the main things I pirate. Their distribution channels are the modern equivalent of the horse-and-buggy. I'm not about to wait a year to watch shows here in Australia that aired ages ago in the US. Get with the fucking times, HBO.

agotterer 14y ago

It actually just came on DVD a few days ago (Feb 19th). http://www.amazon.com/Game-Thrones-Complete-Blu-ray-Digital/dp/B0060MYM7O/ http://www.amazon.com/Game-Thrones-Complete-Blu-ray-Digital/...

guelo 14y ago

Or HBO could follow the business model it thinks it's most profitable. You're not entitled to watch Game of Thrones.