There was very little Pittsburgh sports action and news in the past week (Arthur Smith being hired as the Steelers’ offensive coordinator aside), so I want to focus on a larger issue within the world of sports–the paywall.
The dictionary defines a paywall as a system that prevents Internet users from accessing certain content without a paid subscription. This is a topic with which sports fans are doubtlessly familiar. Thursday Night Football is exclusively broadcast on Amazon’s streaming service–Prime Video–for anyone who lives outside of the markets for the competing teams. The majority of Premier League soccer matches are broadcast solely on Peacock, NBC’s streaming service. Major League Soccer is almost always shown on Apple TV+ only, and there are certain Major League Baseball games that are displayed only on this platform.
I do not mind the idea of subscribing to streaming services on its face. I am glad that ESPN+ exists, as it allows me to watch out-of-market hockey games and thus torture myself by watching the Penguins for 2.5 hours multiple times per week. NFL Sunday Ticket makes it possible for me to watch Steelers’ games that are not nationally- or locally-televised. Streaming services also allow you to watch sporting events at dinner, at work, in class, and other places where you probably should not (but who cares, etiquette is dead anyways). Streaming services have allowed for remarkable watchability in countless scenarios one encounters in their everyday life.
The problem is the sporting events that are exclusively broadcast on streaming platforms (as I alluded to, earlier, with Thursday Night Football and many soccer matches, among others). There are a few issues that I feel are paramount, and they will be addressed below.
How Many Streaming Platforms do you Need?
The first problem is that there are so many streaming services–which all cost money–that it is very difficult to subscribe to all of them. Here is a non-comprehensive list of sporting events/leagues and their associated platforms.
- NFL: NFL Sunday Ticket, NFL+, the occasional broadcast on Peacock, TNF on Prime Video
- NHL: ESPN+, the occasional broadcast on Hulu
- Premier League Soccer: Peacock
- La Liga Soccer: ESPN+
- Bundesliga Soccer: ESPN+
- MLB: MLB.tv, the occasional broadcast on Apple TV+
- MLS: Apple TV+
- NBA: NBA League Pass
The above list contains nine (!!!) distinct programs to which one must subscribe to watch those eight leagues (bear in mind that this is not comprehensive). How do leagues expect to amass fans when they have to pay an arm and a leg to watch games? Unfortunately, they do not care. They do not care that you may enjoy other sports besides theirs. They do not care that subscription services are not sustainable for everyone. The only thing that these greedy executives pay attention to is their bottom-line, the gross amount of money that they are able to accumulate through the institution of a paywall. It is quite sickening to analyze how much money each month someone must spend if they are a fan of the aforementioned leagues.
The Time Between Live Action and Streaming
The second issue is a bit more nuanced than finance, but still very much important. There is a significant amount of time that elapses between when a play happens in real life and when it appears on the television, and that delay is even more pronounced with streaming services. Anecdotal evidence suggests that the streaming of a game displays the same play anywhere between 30 and 90 seconds after it is shown on cable. Bear in mind that this 30-90 second range is in addition to the 10-ish second delay between live action and a television broadcast.
By the time you finished watching Kenny Pickett complete a pass against the Tennessee Titans on Thursday Night Football earlier in the season, two additional plays had elapsed for those present at the game. Hell, even sports apps like Bleacher Report and the ESPN App record play results before they show up on your laptop “live”. Let us hypothesize that you have a friend at the game and you enjoy discussing football with him. There is a very good chance that he will spoil the outcome of a play simply based on the length of time that elapses between him seeing it and you seeing it. To me, it damages the product, as it almost feels like those who are watching the stream are living in the past.
Additionally, there is the betting aspect. The NFL broadcasts countless advertisements for FanDuel, DraftKings, BetMGM, Caesar’s, and other sports books. Because of this, you would think that the league would want the sport to be gambling-friendly. The necessity for streaming services is completely counterintuitive to this. If you are watching a game that is a minute behind what is actually occurring in real time, how can you accurately bet on anything that occurs during the game (this is called “live betting”)? The sports books are ahead of cable broadcasts, as well, but not to the degree that they are vis-à-vis streams. Furthermore, sports books often have the down, yardage, score, and line of scrimmage listed in a very visible place, so anyone that is streaming who opens FanDuel will know where the ball will be two plays after what flashes across their screen.
Now, as I said earlier, I have no qualms with streaming services for sports–I think that they are a remarkable invention for people that want to watch out-of-market games or spectate away from their televisions. However, it is ridiculous to require so many subscriptions, as well as to expect fans to be content with watching games on an eternal delay, increasing the potential for someone to spoil plays. I did not even get into the quality of certain streaming platforms–that could be an entire entry in itself. Peacock and Prime Video are horrendous platforms–the graphics are poor and they lag constantly. If you are going to charge an exorbitant amount of money for your product, at least make it somewhat decent. Have the integrity to make your scam look good.
Have a good week.