News Article: There are no local streaming options for the 2021 Hurricanes season

[MustardStew]

$20 per month

For the record, ESPN+, which includes Center Ice is $100 per year. Bally is insane for charging this. Hope they crash and burn hard.

Aside from a few throwaway channels, the DirecTV Stream package that gets you the RSNs (Bally South and SE) costs $20 more ($90) per month than the Essentials/Entertainment package

 

[raynman]

$20 per month

For the record, ESPN+, which includes Center Ice is $100 per year. Bally is insane for charging this. Hope they crash and burn hard.

Nearly all of the games on ESPN+ were blacked out for me, even with a VPN. I found somewhere else that’s free and reliable, didn’t even bother switching back during the playoffs. If ESPN+ wasn’t available in a reasonable package with Hulu and Disney I probably would’ve cancelled my subscription.

 

[Big Daddy Cane]

That doesn’t seem so bad. If you have a single interest in the product, it’s much cheaper than cable. NESN in Boston is charging $29.99 for its DTC offering.

Sports leagues have been getting fat via the end consumer. It’s just gotten lost in the cable bundle. It’s fascinating to see that exposed here. Sinclair spent $1.82 bil on local rights in 2021. Is a break even point feasible < $15?

Sinclair on hook for $1.82 billion in rights fees for Bally Sports regional sports networks

Sinclair Broadcasting knew what it was getting into when it purchased the 21 regional sports networks from Disney in 2019. But they weren’t quite prepared for the pandemic that followed, which exacerbated a lot of the issues that made these networks so unpalatable to their previous owner. In...

awfulannouncing.com

 

[Primetime8]

Nearly all of the games on ESPN+ were blacked out for me, even with a VPN. I found somewhere else that’s free and reliable, didn’t even bother switching back during the playoffs. If ESPN+ wasn’t available in a reasonable package with Hulu and Disney I probably would’ve cancelled my subscription.

What location were you using for your VPN? I use Atlanta never have a problem

 

[Anton Dubinchuk]

20 a month has to be a joke right? Like in this age of things instantly available for free if you know where to look why would anyone pay that much more than, say, Netflix for like a hundredth of the content?

Well… Netflix is now $20/mo too… but your point stands.

 

[Anton Dubinchuk]

I guess my thing would be hours watched. I pay $20/mo for Netflix, $13 for Hulu, etc., and during the season Bally would blow them all out of the water as far as minutes watched is concerned, regardless of how much “more” content Netflix and etc. offers me.

Now, I’m lucky in that I live in Atlanta so I can just watch everything on ESPN+ and be done, but on thinking about it a little longer it’s not a completely insane price point.

 

[raynman]

What location were you using for your VPN? I use Atlanta never have a problem

All over the place. I’m going to try again next season and see if it was user error, I imagine there’s a good chance it was haha. Going that route requires me to load the game on my laptop and send it to a chromecast whereas with the streaming site I go to I can just turn on my Xbox and use the browser.

 

[Daeavorn]

Well well well, lookie what we have here.

MLB, NBA and NHL may buy biggest owner of regional sports TV networks: sources

The leagues are expected to soon begin talks with Diamond Sports, which operates 21 Bally regional sports networks, sources said.

nypost.com

All I can say is

Jabbalaugh.gif

 

[Svechhammer]

Well well well, lookie what we have here.

MLB, NBA and NHL may buy biggest owner of regional sports TV networks: sources

The leagues are expected to soon begin talks with Diamond Sports, which operates 21 Bally regional sports networks, sources said.

nypost.com

All I can say is

Jabbalaugh.gif

tl;dr version:

Diamond Sports, the Sinclair division that owns Bally Sports, will go bankrupt in the next 3-6 months unless they are bailed out. They are desperate and are currently working with MLB, NBA, and NHL to sell regional broadcast rights back to the leagues themselves for use in the future, most likely to be absorbed in their own services.

But yeah, Bally is circling the drain. Its a failed experiment and it will go under before the end of the season. Some teams get 30% of their annual revenue from their regional broadcasting rights, which could really f*** up the cap long term.

 

[Daeavorn]

tl;dr version:

Diamond Sports, the Sinclair division that owns Bally Sports, will go bankrupt in the next 3-6 months unless they are bailed out. They are desperate and are currently working with MLB, NBA, and NHL to sell regional broadcast rights back to the leagues themselves for use in the future, most likely to be absorbed in their own services.

But yeah, Bally is circling the drain. Its a failed experiment and it will go under before the end of the season. Some teams get 30% of their annual revenue from their regional broadcasting rights, which could really f*** up the cap long term.

It basically assures that the NHL will do something and we will not have to suffer through the awful bally broadcast for much longer.

 

[LostInaLostWorld]

I wonder how it affects this:

BALTIMORE – August 17, 2022 – Diamond Sports Group, a subsidiary of Sinclair Broadcast Group, today announced its direct-to-consumer streaming service, Bally Sports+, will officially launch across all 19 Bally Sports regional sports network brands (RSNs) on September 26.Aug 17, 2022

 

[Svechhammer]

I wonder how it affects this:

BALTIMORE – August 17, 2022 – Diamond Sports Group, a subsidiary of Sinclair Broadcast Group, today announced its direct-to-consumer streaming service, Bally Sports+, will officially launch across all 19 Bally Sports regional sports network brands (RSNs) on September 26.Aug 17, 2022

I do not believe it is impacting it, that is still going live, but Diamond Sports is FUBAR. They're out of cash and Sinclair can't bankroll them anymore. WIthout significant financial investment in the very near future, they will declare bankruptcy within 3-6 months and their channels will go dark.

 

[Navin R Slavin]

NHL, get off your collective asses and do the right thing. Give me an option to pay $20/mo. for a high quality Canes stream, wherever I am, no blackouts, no bullshit. The cable era is ending. Get ahead of it.

 

[MinJaBen]

The cable era is ending. Get ahead of it.

LOL. And with the pdf we will not need printers and paper anymore.

I'll read your response when I get back from taking my flying car to Saturn's rings for a family vacation.

 

[Navin R Slavin]

LOL. And with the pdf we will not need printers and paper anymore.

I'll read your response when I get back from taking my flying car to Saturn's rings for a family vacation.

Cable TV subscriptions have declined at around 5% YoY since at least 2017. More people are now streaming customers than cable TV customers.

Sure, IBM mainframes still exist. But as a percentage of the market, they are miniscule.

I said what I said. The Cable TV era is ending. The printer business is actually healthier than Cable TV.

(Actually, what I said was "the cable era is ending", but I meant TV. The actual cables will be needed for some time yet.)

 

[Unsustainable]

Beginning of last season I was able to watch the games on Hulu with the ESPN/Disney package. Then something happened and it was all blacked out.

I tried to use a VPN, and they detected it.

I had other ways to watch, I tried paying for a service to watch. I’m not buying cable or directv. I need to cancel Netflix and other crap we’ve added. Since all we watch anymore is Hulu, Disney and my free HBO Max

 

[raynman]

Cable TV subscriptions have declined at around 5% YoY since at least 2017. More people are now streaming customers than cable TV customers.

Sure, IBM mainframes still exist. But as a percentage of the market, they are miniscule.

I said what I said. The Cable TV era is ending. The printer business is actually healthier than Cable TV.

(Actually, what I said was "the cable era is ending", but I meant TV. The actual cables will be needed for some time yet.)

I pay $80 a month for streaming services. Still cheaper than cable where I’d be able to watch a fraction of the things I can watch now.

 

[Svechhammer]

Cable TV subscriptions have declined at around 5% YoY since at least 2017. More people are now streaming customers than cable TV customers.

Sure, IBM mainframes still exist. But as a percentage of the market, they are miniscule.

I said what I said. The Cable TV era is ending. The printer business is actually healthier than Cable TV.

(Actually, what I said was "the cable era is ending", but I meant TV. The actual cables will be needed for some time yet.)

I wouldn't say that cable TV is ending, but the era of needing a cable box to run your subscription is ending. Very soon everything will be cloud based, with cloud based DVR capabilities that is able to be streamed to all devices. Reason for this is that its cheaper for the cable companies to be able to provide that service without having to supply any hardware, and with companies like aws able to scale out storage and capacity almost on a whim for relatively cheap, it just makes sense for the cable providers to go in that direction. Spectrum and DirecTV already offer those kind of plans, and as more and more get high speed internet, it would not totally surprise me to see them pivot to only offering streaming services in the next 5-10 years, starting in the large markets and then spreading out.

In fact, with how expensive its becoming to stream, I wouldn't be overly shocked if cable streaming ends up cheaper in the long term, with many of the + services included with a cable streaming plan.

 

[tarheelhockey]

LOL. And with the pdf we will not need printers and paper anymore.

Is this sarcasm? In my world, the statement is largely true at face value.

 

[Anton Dubinchuk]

You guys have been banging this drum for awhile now and I've so wanted to join you except that every time I've looked (admittedly briefly) at the numbers it's never that big a savings. I pay $130/mo for cable and internet (cable includes the sports add-on package) which has always seemed fairly reasonable when compared to paying for internet then finding a streaming service. Even if I could save $10/mo, I don't want to mess with my sweet setup in which my combination of having cable and having ESPN+ means I can watch practically anything I want at any point. It feels like a relatively small price to pay for sitting up here on my cloud above everyone else while they squabble about Bally or whatever.

Am I missing something major? I have never put the numbers together in a way that has made cutting the cord seem desirable. Admittedly I haven't tried all that hard.

NHL, get off your collective asses and do the right thing. Give me an option to pay $20/mo. for a high quality Canes stream, wherever I am, no blackouts, no bullshit. The cable era is ending. Get ahead of it.

This I agree with. I happily paid $150/yr for NHL.tv and would happily pay double that amount for a guarantee that I could simply watch every single game with no exceptions.

 

[LostInaLostWorld]

Is this sarcasm? In my world, the statement is largely true at face value.

After 30 years of more paper I think things are turning the corner. My doctors don't have folders they add onto anymore. Oh wow! I can print boarding passes from home - uh, now they are on your phone. My utility bills/bank statements/ are all available online now. E-file income taxes and save the pdf. Etc., etc. It will take a while longer but we are getting less dependent on paper.

 

[Anton Dubinchuk]

Is this sarcasm? In my world, the statement is largely true at face value.

I've come full circle in that the advances in the digitalization of this stuff has caused me to not have a printer at my house. And because I don't go into the office all that much anymore, I can't print my personal stuff at work either.

So... I have to go to UPS or whatever every time I need to print something. Lol.

 

[LostInaLostWorld]

I've come full circle in that the advances in the digitalization of this stuff has caused me to not have a printer at my house. And because I don't go into the office all that much anymore, I can't print my personal stuff at work either.

So... I have to go to UPS or whatever every time I need to print something. Lol.

My printer goes through more ink for cleaning purposes than printing nowadays.

 

[Anton Dubinchuk]

My printer goes through more ink for cleaning purposes than printing nowadays.

That's exactly why I stopped having one. I printed so infrequently that my $50 printers were almost "disposable." One use items.

 

[tarheelhockey]

After 30 years of more paper I think things are turning the corner. My doctors don't have folders they add onto anymore. Oh wow! I can print boarding passes from home - uh, now they are on your phone. My utility bills/bank statements/ are all available online now. E-file income taxes and save the pdf. Etc., etc. It will take a while longer but we are getting less dependent on paper.

I think COVID really pushed the process forward. A lot of older and non-technical people learned to use Zoom, touchless payment systems, and online banking. Even for the folks who were already living a digital lifestyle, the lockdowns killed that last vestige of paper in their lives -- the shut-down libraries moved to digital lending, schools replaced a folder of papers with Google Drive and text announcements, the idea of bringing handouts to a work meeting became obsolete. Even handling paper mail was scary in the early days, before we had a clear handle on how the virus spread. In a lot of subtle and not-so-subtle ways, it all added up to an acceleration toward the post-paper era.

Just today, an exec at work told me his division is planning to eliminate all printing costs in the near future. All printing costs, both internal and external. Sooner or later, there's a tipping point where owning a printer is like owning a fax machine. See below:

I've come full circle in that the advances in the digitalization of this stuff has caused me to not have a printer at my house. And because I don't go into the office all that much anymore, I can't print my personal stuff at work either.

So... I have to go to UPS or whatever every time I need to print something. Lol.

I realized the other day that I'm there. One of my kids' extracurriculars wanted me to print and sign a legal form, and I realized that getting my home printer to work properly would actually cost more time and money than printing at UPS. So I ended up doing it there, which meant showing my kids that process, which means they now conceptualize printing as an unusual occasion worthy of finding a service to do it. Printers are going to be their generation's fax machines.