OT: ESPN to buy Fox Sports Midwest

[KingBran]

Blues / Cards need their own station. I know I know that big TV deal the Cards just signed and all that. But it would be nice if they had their own channel.

 

[Brian39]

I'm optimistic about this. There is tons of smoke around the rumor that Disney wants to introduce a one-stop-shop streaming service for sports. It has been reported that the major goal of this acquisition was to obtain regional broadcast rights for hockey and baseball and this makes Disney the majority owner of BAM (the company who runs NHL.TV and MLB.TV). ANyone who complains about blackouts through NHL.TV should be cautiously optimistic about this. A company is interested in offering a major sports streaming service and now owns over half the regional contracts that are the source of blackouts.

Now, it remains to be seen what the final product looks like, but there is a possibility that Disney/ESPN will begin to offer the paid streaming service that people have been asking for. Even if blackouts still exist, I'd rather purchase one service from ESPN for Cardinals, Blues, college football and some NFL than pay for 3 separate streaming services.

 

[Majorityof1]

I'm optimistic about this. There is tons of smoke around the rumor that Disney wants to introduce a one-stop-shop streaming service for sports. It has been reported that the major goal of this acquisition was to obtain regional broadcast rights for hockey and baseball and this makes Disney the majority owner of BAM (the company who runs NHL.TV and MLB.TV). ANyone who complains about blackouts through NHL.TV should be cautiously optimistic about this. A company is interested in offering a major sports streaming service and now owns over half the regional contracts that are the source of blackouts.

Now, it remains to be seen what the final product looks like, but there is a possibility that Disney/ESPN will begin to offer the paid streaming service that people have been asking for. Even if blackouts still exist, I'd rather purchase one service from ESPN for Cardinals, Blues, college football and some NFL than pay for 3 separate streaming services.

What about people who only like hockey, or baseball or football? For someone who wants all 3, having them under one roof could potentially be great. However, I doubt you will be able to get all 3 for the price of 1 now. I personally would be pissed if I had to pay more for baseball. So if MLB.tv costs $110/season, NFL costs $200/season, and NHL costs $140/season. Someone who was spending the full $450/yr would like this. However, the person who was spending only $140 on hockey probably won't be too thrilled. There is no way they will give all 3 of those services for less than the cost of NFL. Disney still has to pay for the rights to air those games. So unless they price fence certain content (like Amazon Prime charging extra for HBO channel or Showtime channel), it could turn a lot of viewers off. If I could watch all NHL games with zero fear of blackouts (except for the odd NBC games), I'd gladly pay the $140. But if my only option was to pay $250 to get that and baseball, I would drop NHL package and just watch Blues games over cable. Add in the movies and TV they want to stream too, there is a high chance of paying for stuff you don't want to pay for. I am very curious how this roles out going forward.