Non-Spectrum options for watching the Blues

[AjaxManifesto]

Still no FSMW.

 

[ort]

I’m bumping this thread. It’s now 2022, is there a better way? If I don’t want cable tv, how do I legally watch the blues? How is ESPN+? Do they show every game? Is that the new streaming partner of the NHL? They really don’t do a good job of making this information clear online. Does it include the playoffs? Can you start watching games after the start time?

 

[Blueston]

I’m bumping this thread. It’s now 2022, is there a better way? If I don’t want cable tv, how do I legally watch the blues? How is ESPN+? Do they show every game? Is that the new streaming partner of the NHL? They really don’t do a good job of making this information clear online. Does it include the playoffs? Can you start watching games after the start time?

Where are you located? ESPN+ is great and has virtually all the games, but I think there are local blackouts?

 

[Brian39]

I’m bumping this thread. It’s now 2022, is there a better way? If I don’t want cable tv, how do I legally watch the blues? How is ESPN+? Do they show every game? Is that the new streaming partner of the NHL? They really don’t do a good job of making this information clear online. Does it include the playoffs? Can you start watching games after the start time?

ESPN+ provides almost exactly the same service that used to be called NHL.TV (which used to be called NHL Gamecenter). They show all out-of-market games. Any games airing on TNT or NHL Network will be blacked out. If you live in the St. Louis broadcast area, then Blues games airing on Bally Sports Midwest will be blacked out on ESPN+. If you live outside the Blues broadcast area, then you will see all of the games that are airing on Bally Sports.

ESPN+ is awesome for an out of town Blues fan. It is also awesome if you are a psycho like me who likes to watch multiple games from around the league every week. It is also awesome if you are a fan of college sports (they air an incredible amount of NCAA games from just about every sport).

It isn't good if you live in St. Louis and are simply looking for a way to stream Blues games and nothing else. Their player is very good at recognizing VPNs, so trying to trick it into thinking you aren't in St. Louis is difficult.

I'm not sure whether Bally Sports is on Sling, YouTube TV, Hulu Live, etc. I haven't used those services and haven't had a need to look into them.

Last year, a valid Spectrum Internet account could be used to log in to the Bally Sports app and watch Blues games. This was probably a tech mistake and not a planned perk of having Spectrum Internet, so it could get changed at any time. I wouldn't switch internet providers over it, but if you have Spectrum Internet already you should try using it to stream Bally Sports for a Cards game and see if it still works.

 

[Spear]

Looks like Bally Sports is getting into the streaming business...

Bally Sports Plus Just Launched, Here's Everything You Need to Know: Pricing, Devices, Simultaneous Streams, Teams, Blackouts, & More

 

[WeWentBlues]

Going to give Bally Sports+ a try. All of last season, I was paying for YoutubeTV because wife didnt want to switch and DirectTV Now for an additional $80/month just to watch Blues games. $20/month sounds like a bargain for Bally Sports+.

I also tried the VPN route with ESPN+ which had worked in years prior but not so much in 2021.

EDIT: Bally Sports+ not available in my area. Boo

 

[Brian39]

Going to give Bally Sports+ a try. All of last season, I was paying for YoutubeTV because wife didnt want to switch and DirectTV Now for an additional $80/month just to watch Blues games. $20/month sounds like a bargain for Bally Sports+.

I also tried the VPN route with ESPN+ which had worked in years prior but not so much in 2021.

EDIT: Bally Sports+ not available in my area. Boo

Allegedly it will be available nationwide before the start of the NHL season. They don't have the rights to a lot of MLB teams (including the Cardinals) so I think they are trying to avoid people signing up in St. Louis now, being unable to get the Cardinals and assuming that they won't get the Blues either.

 

[ort]

I am in St. Louis and was hoping to use a VPN. I want to do everything on the up-n-up and don't want to get this locked. I don't know what the rules are for posting about VPNs on here.

All I want is a legal easy option and the powers that be seem to want to do everything possible to make things hard for their customers.

If I do Bally Streaming and ESPN+ will I be able to get all the games? Even playoffs?

I'll pay $20 bucks a month to watch the Blues. I'll happily pay it.

 

[ort]

Anyone know if Bally Sports Plus let you time shift? Can I start watching a game an hour after it starts?

 

[Em etah Eh]

Anyone know if Bally Sports Plus let you time shift? Can I start watching a game an hour after it starts?

I don't think anybody knows how Bally sports plus works because it just got released. I pay for spectrum internet so I've bundled tv specifically to watch blues and cardinals (when I feel like it). Bally+ will definitely be worth it for me since i mainly care about blues, but it's kind of annoying that it won't work for the cardinals so I'd still have to go back to spectrum if I wanted to watch local baseball. I'm ready to drop full on cable whenever a decent option becomes available.

I'm guessing the new "football" team will also have most games on Ballys?

 

[Majorityof1]

Anyone know if Bally Sports Plus let you time shift? Can I start watching a game an hour after it starts?

If its anything like using their streaming app with a cable subscription, then you technically can but its finicky. You can start the stream from the beginning, as long as the stream is still airing. If you fast forward commercials and such to catch up to live before the game ends or soon after, you should be good. If the game ends while you are still streaming, its 50/50 whether you can finish the stream in my experience. Sometimes it crashes and the stream no longer is available to get back in.

If you try to start the stream after the game, it disappears for awhile which is why you have trouble if you are watching it. A replay appears a few hours later/next morning but it has content cut to fit it under 2 hours (and they aren't always smart about what they cut). That stream sticks around for a few days (possibly forever, I haven't checked longer than a few days after the game).

This is based on having a subscription through Comcast, and logging into the Bally app on my Smart TV with my Comcast ID. It may be different.

Also, if you have not used the Bally app, fast forwarding SUCKS on certain platforms. If I run it on my Toshiba with Fire TV OS, it takes forever to fast forward. I have to press the button to move forward 8 seconds, with a pause between each push, so I can't just bang it 10 times fast to FF 1:20. Its FF-pause-FF-pause-FF, ad nauseum. Streaming through my Xbox on my LG, fast forward works fine.

TLDR - You can, but either fast forward through commercials to end at the same time as stream, or wait until they post the replay a few hours after the stream ends.

 

[tfriede2]

Last year, a valid Spectrum Internet account could be used to log in to the Bally Sports app and watch Blues games. This was probably a tech mistake and not a planned perk of having Spectrum Internet, so it could get changed at any time. I wouldn't switch internet providers over it, but if you have Spectrum Internet already you should try using it to stream Bally Sports for a Cards game and see if it still works.

I watched Blues games last year this way - Spectrum seems to have cleaned up this error; I can’t watch Bally anymore just with Spectrum Internet.

 

[Brian39]

If I do Bally Streaming and ESPN+ will I be able to get all the games? Even playoffs?

There are a handful of games on TNT that you wouldn't get. TNT gets about half of the playoff games, which is when you would really miss out.

Unless you want to watch a bunch of non-Blues content, I wouldn't get ESPN+ if you get the Bally Streaming service. Bally is going to get you around 70 Blues games and ESPN+ will only cover you for a handful of those 10-15 games Bally doesn't air. Bally airs the first round of the playoffs as well.

If the Blues are the only thing you care about, just do the Bally Sports service for $20 a month in the regular season. Either miss a couple national broadcasts a month, find an excuse to invite yourself over to a cable-clinging friend's house for them, go to the game if it is at home, and/or use those nights as an excuse to hit up your local bar and grill. For the playoffs, subscribe to a streaming service like sling that has ESPN and TNT so you can catch all of those games. Cancel at the end of playoffs.

 

[PocketNines]

ESPN+ just jacked their pricing 43% from $7 to $10 monthly and I dropped it without even slightly worrying about continuing to see every game. NHL66 is more than fine to catch every Blues game.

 

[Brian39]

ESPN+ just jacked their pricing 43% from $7 to $10 monthly and I dropped it without even slightly worrying about continuing to see every game. NHL66 is more than fine to catch every Blues game.

That was just a matter of time with all of the stuff they have added in the last couple years. It started at $5 a month back when it was pretty much all niche sports, podcast streams and access to more written articles. Once they expanded into streaming major sports it became clear that the $5.99 (and then $6.99) price point was just to grow the user base before a big price hike. $10 a month is still cheaper than NHL.TV used to be and the $100 annual plan is $20 less than that.

I'll probably bail on my annual ESPN+ subscription and switch to the Disney+, Hulu, and ESPN+ bundle. That weirdly isn't seeing much of a price bump even though each individual service is seeing a pretty hefty bump. The current bundle is staying the same price ($13.99 a month) but ads are coming to Disney+. Hulu is my partner's most-used streaming service and my 'free Hulu with your Spotify" plan is expiring. Going with that bundle is cheaper than just getting annual ESPN+ and Hulu subscriptions, so that's probably my plan. But again, I'm a psycho that uses ESPN+ multiple times per week even though I live in-market for the Blues.

No judgment from me about hitting the high seas though. I think I spent about 5 years doing that back when NHL.TV couldn't manage to provide a stable stream and I decided to stop paying for sub-piracy quality service.

 

[PocketNines]

That was just a matter of time with all of the stuff they have added in the last couple years. It started at $5 a month back when it was pretty much all niche sports, podcast streams and access to more written articles. Once they expanded into streaming major sports it became clear that the $5.99 (and then $6.99) price point was just to grow the user base before a big price hike. $10 a month is still cheaper than NHL.TV used to be and the $100 annual plan is $20 less than that.

I'll probably bail on my annual ESPN+ subscription and switch to the Disney+, Hulu, and ESPN+ bundle. That weirdly isn't seeing much of a price bump even though each individual service is seeing a pretty hefty bump. The current bundle is staying the same price ($13.99 a month) but ads are coming to Disney+. Hulu is my partner's most-used streaming service and my 'free Hulu with your Spotify" plan is expiring. going with that bundle is cheaper than just getting annual ESPN+ and Hulu subscriptions, so that's probably my plan. But again, I'm a psycho that uses ESPN+ multiple times per week even though I live in-market for the Blues.

No judgment from me about hitting the high seas though. I think I spent about 5 years doing that back when NHL.TV couldn't manage to provide a stable stream and I decided to stop paying for sub-piracy quality service.

All of this is true, and the college hockey I will miss seeing the annual Dartmouth-Princeton tennis ball game which is my baby. We pay for Criterion (an absolute must for serious film fans), HBO, Hulu and we share a friend's Netflix.

One of the issues ESPN+ has it was frequently a completely unworkable disaster last year, at least a dozen times not having games available (all throughout January), including in the playoffs. I was paying for ESPN+ and still watching NHL66; the notion they are going to jack it up before they provide the full actual service is just a no go.

 

[oPlaiD]

ESPN+ just jacked their pricing 43% from $7 to $10 monthly and I dropped it without even slightly worrying about continuing to see every game. NHL66 is more than fine to catch every Blues game.

Is it thought?

MLB66 is struggling to carry MLB games this season since they're apparently putting more effort into stopping piracy. Most of these sports streaming platforms have upped their game countering VPNs and other not necessarily legal methods of game watching. I'd have to believe the NHL will follow suit.

I have Spectrum internet and last year I was somehow able to watch sports games by logging in with that account even though I didn't have cable, but they seem to have fixed that loophole too.

If Bally Sports+ had the Cardinals I'd buy it, but at this point, the MLB wins. I want to watch some baseball, I'm willing to pay money to watch some baseball, but they don't want me to watch baseball so they win.

I'm hoping the NHL doesn't follow suit. It's just so incredibly frustrating as a mid 30s adult who is willing to pay for my local games streamed that it just isn't an option. I'd have to imagine the younger you get from me the levels of frustration with this stuff increases by orders of magnitude. Or maybe it doesn't, because kids don't care as much about sports they can't reliably watch on any service they regularly use.

 

[PocketNines]

Taking my money while not even carrying the first period of a playoff game was the final straw for me with ESPN+. That is totally unacceptable.

 

[ort]

Surely they’ll figure this out soon. It all feels very consumer hostile. Hopefully the NHL stops signing these stupid deals with networks and just cuts out the middle man. Just give us the product. I think lots of people would pay good money for an easy legal convenient way to watch every game.

I think I’m going to wait for the season to start and try out bally sports for a month or two before cutting the cord. I’ll do both espn plus and Bally sports streaming and if a game isn’t on either service for whatever dumb reason I’ll just use an illegal stream.

 

[ort]

I do worry about how annoying it might be. The streams from the Bally Sports app are kinda sketchy. Sometimes I remember them working great, but at other times I remember being very frustrated.

The annoying thing about streaming is fast forwarding and rewinding. It usually works great until you touch it and then you’re in a world of pain. I usually start my game an hour or two after they start so I can blast through all the breaks and pauses. I can watch an entire hockey game in like an hour and 15 minutes. It’s great.

Going from a TiVo (which is smooth as butter and perfectly responsive) to streaming feels like moving back in time. It feels like slogging through mud.

 

[ort]

Allegedly it will be available nationwide before the start of the NHL season. They don't have the rights to a lot of MLB teams (including the Cardinals) so I think they are trying to avoid people signing up in St. Louis now, being unable to get the Cardinals and assuming that they won't get the Blues either.

It says they will have the Blues this season. Still no cards though...

 

[Xerloris]

Can you f***ing believe the bullshit of this? Not only do you have to pay to see games but you have to pay multiple times to see all games. Splitting games between espn and tnt is f***ing stupid. Then you have to deal with blackouts to top it all off and they wonder why people choose piracy? WE TRY TO PAY YOU MOTHER f***ERS and you just make it harder to see the f***ing games.

 

[Blueston]

Can you f***ing believe the bullshit of this? Not only do you have to pay to see games but you have to pay multiple times to see all games. Splitting games between espn and tnt is f***ing stupid. Then you have to deal with blackouts to top it all off and they wonder why people choose piracy? WE TRY TO PAY YOU MOTHER f***ERS and you just make it harder to see the f***ing games.

Dude you are tilting at windmills. Every league has multiple tv outlets.

 

[Brian39]

Can you f***ing believe the bullshit of this? Not only do you have to pay to see games but you have to pay multiple times to see all games. Splitting games between espn and tnt is f***ing stupid. Then you have to deal with blackouts to top it all off and they wonder why people choose piracy? WE TRY TO PAY YOU MOTHER f***ERS and you just make it harder to see the f***ing games.

None of the major networks treat piracy as something that isn't understood. The potential revenue lost from people pirating games is significantly outweighed by the revenue brought in from TV deals. They have determined that the current business model of selling exclusive broadcast rights for hundreds of millions of dollars is more profitable than selling streams direct-to-consumer. I think they are overwhelmingly correct.

From the league's perspective, it is not a bug that it costs a lot of money and multiple subscriptions to watch every game. That is a feature. It means more money going to networks, which means that they are willing to pay the league more money for the rights. The NHL makes about $625M a year from ESPN and Turner for their two national US TV deals. They make another $436M a year from Sportsnet for their national deal in Canada. That's $1.05B of revenue before you even start talking about the 32 individual local TV deals. The local TV deals are extremely difficult to find info on, but it is safe to assume that they are very lucrative. Back in 2013, there were already 9 teams with a local TV deal of $20M or more each year. Given the explosion in value of sports broadcast rights, that number has absolutely gone up by a good margin. It is a safe bet that the average value of a local NHL TV deal is north of $20M a year a decade later. That's another $640M+ of revenue by selling broadcast rights. So the NHL is bringing in at least $1.7B of annual revenue by selling their broadcast rights and the thing that drives that value is that the buyer gets exclusive broadcast rights. The NHL can't extract those dollars if they undercut the buyer's product with a cheap all-in-one streaming service.

An all-in-one streaming service would breach all of these contracts and the networks would walk away from all of them. There is simply no way for the sports networks (and the cable companies) to make money off live sports if there is an easy, blackout free alternative that costs noticeably less. Almost all of the value of these contracts is based on the network purchasing the ability to tell fans "pay us or don't watch the game." To make things easy on the fan, the NHL would need to immediately start generating a couple billion dollars of annual revenue off their direct to consumer streaming service.

I don't think the NHL has the fanbase to make up that revenue. NBC Sports was an abject failure and their business model was largely hockey-focused. The US market resoundingly refused to upgrade to a higher cable tier in order to get national NHL broadcasts and viewership was brutal when compared to the numbers the NHL immediately saw upon its return to basic cable. Expecting a mass subscription to a several hundred dollar service to stream the NHL seems unlikely. I think the current TV deals are massively inflated by cable companies and networks clinging to a failing business model. To match these bloated contracts, the NHL probably needs 10M+ North American subscribers to a direct-to-consumer streaming service priced at $200+ per year and I'm not remotely convinced that they could get that. That's more than the US and Canada combined viewership of Stanley Cup Final games that aired on over-the-air network TV.

The current environment is horribly anti-consumer and I'd love to see legislation prohibiting exclusive broadcast agreements for any league/team that takes a dime of public money (either directly or via tax waiver/benefits). Because unregulated, pro sports broadcasting has every financial incentive to keep on the current path unless/until it crashes. The potential revenue lost from the small minority of people who pirate is nothing compared to the revenue brought in by putting live sports behind several layers of paywall.

 

[Blueston]

None of the major networks treat piracy as something that isn't understood. The potential revenue lost from people pirating games is significantly outweighed by the revenue brought in from TV deals. They have determined that the current business model of selling exclusive broadcast rights for hundreds of millions of dollars is more profitable than selling streams direct-to-consumer. I think they are overwhelmingly correct.

From the league's perspective, it is not a bug that it costs a lot of money and multiple subscriptions to watch every game. That is a feature. It means more money going to networks, which means that they are willing to pay the league more money for the rights. The NHL makes about $625M a year from ESPN and Turner for their two national US TV deals. They make another $436M a year from Sportsnet for their national deal in Canada. That's $1.05B of revenue before you even start talking about the 32 individual local TV deals. The local TV deals are extremely difficult to find info on, but it is safe to assume that they are very lucrative. Back in 2013, there were already 9 teams with a local TV deal of $20M or more each year. Given the explosion in value of sports broadcast rights, that number has absolutely gone up by a good margin. It is a safe bet that the average value of a local NHL TV deal is north of $20M a year a decade later. That's another $640M+ of revenue by selling broadcast rights. So the NHL is bringing in at least $1.7B of annual revenue by selling their broadcast rights and the thing that drives that value is that the buyer gets exclusive broadcast rights. The NHL can't extract those dollars if they undercut the buyer's product with a cheap all-in-one streaming service.

An all-in-one streaming service would breach all of these contracts and the networks would walk away from all of them. There is simply no way for the sports networks (and the cable companies) to make money off live sports if there is an easy, blackout free alternative that costs noticeably less. Almost all of the value of these contracts is based on the network purchasing the ability to tell fans "pay us or don't watch the game." To make things easy on the fan, the NHL would need to immediately start generating a couple billion dollars of annual revenue off their direct to consumer streaming service.

I don't think the NHL has the fanbase to make up that revenue. NBC Sports was an abject failure and their business model was largely hockey-focused. The US market resoundingly refused to upgrade to a higher cable tier in order to get national NHL broadcasts and viewership was brutal when compared to the numbers the NHL immediately saw upon its return to basic cable. Expecting a mass subscription to a several hundred dollar service to stream the NHL seems unlikely. I think the current TV deals are massively inflated by cable companies and networks clinging to a failing business model. To match these bloated contracts, the NHL probably needs 10M+ North American subscribers to a direct-to-consumer streaming service priced at $200+ per year and I'm not remotely convinced that they could get that. That's more than the US and Canada combined viewership of Stanley Cup Final games that aired on over-the-air network TV.

The current environment is horribly anti-consumer and I'd love to see legislation prohibiting exclusive broadcast agreements for any league/team that takes a dime of public money (either directly or via tax waiver/benefits). Because unregulated, pro sports broadcasting has every financial incentive to keep on the current path unless/until it crashes. The potential revenue lost from the small minority of people who pirate is nothing compared to the revenue brought in by putting live sports behind several layers of paywall.

40 years ago most teams didn't broadcast all of their games. 20 or so years ago there were very few games available out of market. Now sitting in Houston I can watch basically any professional sports game if I am willing to pay just a little bit for it. For hockey, I can watch nearly all merely for the price of ESPN+ (which can be bought bundled with HULU and Disney for under $20/month). Not to mention that games are in HD and large TVs are much cheaper than before. This is dramatically better situation than ever before as a fan (whether hockey or basketball or baseball or NFL) and we should celebrate it rather than bemoan it.