Want Access To Every NFL Game? It’ll Cost You, Thanks To Fractured Streaming Deals
from the football-football-everywhere dept
As we’ve covered the era of cord-cutting from traditional cable television packages and the rise of streaming platforms, one of the areas I have focused on is the world of live sports. And in the world of sports, the NFL is king. If you were to look up the most viewed broadcasts on any given year, it’s an exercise similar to Where’s Waldo just to find a broadcast that isn’t an NFL game. And we have covered all kinds of deals the NFL has struck with streaming platforms recently, with a particular emphasis on the plural “platforms”. NFL streaming for sports is so fractured at this point that ESPN recently came out with an app specifically to help the public figure out just where in the hell they have to go to watch a particular game.
But knowing where to see a game doesn’t mean you have access to it. For that, you need to be subscribed to the relevant streaming platform. So what would it cost across all of those platforms if you wanted to have access to every single NFL game this coming season? Well, as it turns out, thousands of dollars.
This season’s streaming-only football viewers are going to need access to seven different streaming platforms, which can cost over $1,700 for the year. Fans who have cable instead will need nine different streaming platforms or channels, which can run $2,500 or more for the year.
Because there are now more bidders for NFL games’ rights, the prices the league was able to negotiate went up. The NFL now makes roughly $10 billion a year from TV deals, up from about $3 billion in 2010.
Wondering about the breakdown of these costs and how MarketWatch got its figures? Well, its post has a helpful dual cheat sheet for you. Here is what it takes for cord-cutters:
And here is what it takes if you have a cable subscription, which actually costs you more.
Now, how many people out there actually want to be able to watch every, or any, single NFL game they choose throughout an entire season? Very few, I am sure. But one constant over the past several years has been a game I wanted to watch, either my local Bears or just another good game out there, being unavailable to me because I’m missing one platform or another. This is first world problem stuff to be sure, but it’s useful to compare what the costs would be streaming another sport.
Let’s take baseball. I’m a Cubs fan (and a Bud man). Having access to every single baseball game this past MLB season is actually my current reality. I have that access. And, in comparison to the NFL’s requirement to subscribe to seven platforms for nearly $2k a year, for the MLB season I only need three subscriptions. I am an MLB.TV subscriber, which gets me every out of market game. That’s $150 for the year. Then I have to subscribe to Marquee to get the in market Cubs games. That’s $120 for the year. Finally, because the White Sox were on a regional sports network last year, I have to add in my YouTube.tv subscription, which comes to $875 per year. That’s 3 platforms at $1,146/year up against 7 platforms at $1,758/year. I would argue even now that MLB’s blackout rules and RSN deals already make it too complicated for people to find the game they want to watch, but it’s less than half the accounts and only two-thirds the cost of what it takes to get the same experience for the NFL. And that’s before I even mention that the NFL season consists of 272 games versus an MLB season’s 2,430 games. It’s also notable that a simple VPN service would obviate the need for the YouTube.tv subscription entirely.
And even after all of that, you have to take into account the multiple disputes in the streaming space that have put people’s ability to watch these NFL games at risk.
In August, a judge blocked the launch of Venu Sports, a joint streaming venture from Disney Warner and Fox, for the entertainment companies attempting to “exercise near-monopolistic control” over the industry.
The judge sided with rival steamer FuboTV and issued a preliminary injunction that blocked the $42.99 a month bundle, sending FuboTV’s skyrocketing. Shares of FuboTV are up nearly 38% over the last month.
But that’s not the only sports TV spat in the news. ESPN’s and Disney’s other sports channels have been dark on DirecTV since Sunday night after the two sides were unable to reach an agreement on carriage fees.
As of now, the NFL is making gobs of money and viewership still has the league as its king. But at some point, all of this fracturing and rising costs are going to have an effect. Most people just aren’t going to subscribe to that many streaming services in any circumstance, let alone purely to be able to watch NFL games. And if they suddenly can’t watch their local team, the fandom will get pissed off about that, which isn’t good for business.
Whether we have crossed that threshold yet we do not know. But the first time someone you know can’t find the game they want to watch, I promise that you’ll hear about it.
Filed Under: cable, cord cutting, streaming
Companies: nfl
Comments on “Want Access To Every NFL Game? It’ll Cost You, Thanks To Fractured Streaming Deals”
lolsox
Imagine local White Sox fans paying $875 for the privilege of watching this year’s team. Good god.
Friday Night Baseball
Shouldn’t your MLB figure include Apple TV+ to account for Friday Night Baseball games? I think that’s something like $10 more per month, or $100 more per year billed annually.
Re: not just that
It’s not a great comparison – the NFL example is the cost to watch all the games, while the MLB version seems to be just the cost to watch the Cubs.
MLB isn’t as fractured yet but there are games on ESPN, Apple TV+, Fox, FS1, and Roku, on top of the typical RSN broadcasts. Some of those will be included in a typical cable subscription, but I don’t keep track of which streaming bundle includes which channels.
Re:
As I understand it, FNB games are still included in MLB.tv’s subscription, perhaps except when it’s your in market team. If I’m wrong and that number should be included, so be it, but it doesn’t really move the needle on the main thrust of the post.
ABC, CBS, FOX, and NBC can be free for a cord cutter
If you’re properly cutting the cord, you install an antenna and get these networks for free.
I got a full year of peacock for $20 in a deal before the Olympics. (The Olympics on Peacock were better than I expected and I may get it again before the next Olympics)
I pay for Amazon Prime because of the ease of shopping with it, so the games on Amazon aren’t costing me anything extra.
ESPN didn’t release an App. They provided a service on their website. It’s useful, but one more thing that works better if you log in and give them more data. https://www.espn.com/where-to-watch
I was just as upset at the announcer lineup changes last year as the place to find the games.
Excellent article; here's a few more points
First, it’s not just the money: it’s the time. It takes time to figure all this out, and even once you’ve done that, it can change out from under you with no notice. It takes time to set it up, and if anything goes wrong, then your chances of getting on the phone with an intelligent, literate, educated person who speaks intelligible American English and listens carefully to you, then can actually solve your problem…are pretty much zero. (I spent 2 hours and 17 minutes on the phone with 4 different Comcast people two days ago and NONE of them came close to clearing this bar, even as low as it’s set.)
Second, many of these services only work with certain hardware running certain operating systems and certain application software (e.g. browsers). The entire concept of the web is platform independence — everything is supposed to work the same way everywhere — and these services are miserably, pathetically bad at it.
Third, all of these services are forthcoming whenever they want to market something, but nearly silent when they make important changes to TOS or billing or anything else. So once again, you have to invest your time playing detective to figure out if you’re about to be charged more for less, because they sure won’t tell you.
Fourth, to your point, not everyone wants to (or can) watch every game. And – as far as I know – there’s no way to pay for less and get less, that is, there’s no way to buy a package that delivers 100 NFL games of my choice. And as a rough guess that’s about how many I watch each season. No, in order to get 100 NFL games of my choice I have to buy them all…at enormous cost.
My VPN subscription costs about $40 year and while pirate streams are sometimes flakey and sometimes just don’t work, at least I’m getting what I pay for, I have no expectations that it’ll work or that I’ll get any support, and I don’t have to waste my time sitting on hold with idiots. And they work with every browser on every operating system on every hardware platform I’ve tried – vastly superior to the commercial streaming services.
Re:
Like I said, a lot of the pirates are effected by the ABC/ESPN dispute since the feeds, at least from US channels, come via DirecTV stream.
Also, the the pirate IPTV sites are getting a lot of more users as states impose age verification on porn sites as one site alone, has about 4500 porn channels out of about 175000 channels overall. They have around 70 million customers worldwide and up to 1 million at one time watching TV from them.
The IPTV sites that are not in the United States are not subject to those laws as long they do not have any server presence in the United States.
Sites operating in places like Somalia do not have to comply with any American laws.
American law no jurisdiction in Somalia.
Re:
Get caught once and it’s expensive.
The local TV with most audience here in Brazil bought the rights to the Olympics offering over 50 real time feeds of every single sport going on (most without commentary if Brazil wasn’t competing) for about 5 USD (25-30 BRL, a pretty decent amount by our living standards). Along with the other content offered it’s now by far the best streaming offering available even for sports. And I expect it to last because they are very influential and strong here. Their interface is not stellar but I can live with that.
It’s not hard to offer decent, cheap services.
I’ve gone from wanting them all to wanting none.
There’s some ridiculous claims here.
All local NFL games are on OTA TV – so you can buy an antenna and immediately cut $876 from the bill. If you only want to watch your local team the cost is very very small and potentially $0!
I don’t know why you need to subscribe to Netflix, ESPN+ or Peacock for an entire year to watch one game the whole season.
Re:
Not everyone lives within range of broadcast TV towers — or, if within range, on terrain that provides reasonable signal strength.
For example, I’m not all that far away from the tower for an NBC affiliate with a medium-power transmitter. BUT they don’t broadcast symmetrically in all directions (the pattern is roughly an oval aligned with population density) AND there’s a high ridge between the transmitter and here. So – skipping a lengthy explanation of antenna theory and electromagnetic field theory – even with an amplified antenna, we receive a usable signal only about 50% of the time.
Also, not everyone wants to follow their local team: they may be a fan of a completely different one.
And forget about the pirate IPTV sites if you want to watch Monday Night Football.
The “aggregator” that serves a lot of them is pulling their feeds from DirecTV, so when Disney/ABC pulled their content from DirecTV, it went dark on the pirate sites as well.
You get the exact same message on the pirate sites as you would if you had DirecTV, saying that their contract with Disney/ABC has expired.
So forget the pirate IPTV services if you are a DirecTV Customer. You are just SOL for the 49ers-Jets game on Monday.
To watch Jeopardy now I gotta watch it from KYUR in Anchorage, which the two services I have both carry. It is not ABC owned so not effected by the blackout on DirecTV
If you only want to watch replays then you can watch all of the NFL games on NFL+. You only need to be subscribed to the network broadcasting the game if you want to watch it live.
NFL Redzone is 14.95 a month and shows every scoring drive, which is more than enough for most. Sunday ticket is 1pm Sunday ticket and not worth it. Local teams are shown on local affiliates as a rule and some of the streaming games are also broadcast free on Twitch.
How much does it cost to get better sports commentators/coverage of the games? Seems the play by play description of the game style of sports casting has been replaced with rambling anecdotal story time.
Watching a game, sometimes I wonder what is going on because the announcer is off on another story. Some are worse than others, I have turned down the tv audio in favor of radio.
it was bound to happen
12 years ago I dumped cable and switched to Netflix. Way cheaper, no ads back then, and I didn’t have to subsidize sports I never watched.
Since then Netflix quality has fallen off a cliff so I just rotate among the many competitors that Netflix’s existence inspired.
That means the sports viewers have to pay the whole cost of sports with no subsidy from the 50% or more of people who don’t care about sports.
If sports fans don’t like this, then they need to boycott sports entirely. Believe me, the price will come down in a hurry. There’s no reason why it needs to cost an exorbitant price to film a bunch of grown men chasing a little ball around a field. It’s not like they’re creating CGI dragons.
Sports should be far cheaper than glitzy Hollywood entertainments yet it ends up being far more expensive on streaming, what gives? Customers that allow themselves to be reamed, that’s what.
Re:
If you’re not a sports fan, you don’t understand what it means to them. Sports fandom is like a religion, our outlet for our desire for intertribal warfare and xenophobia. Sports fans are like junkies that will jump through whatever hoops are necessary to get their fix, so leagues, networks, and other stakeholders can do whatever they want to them and they’ll say “Thank you, may I have another?” They have no leverage to make sports work better for them because to stop following sports is unthinkable to them.