It was only a few weeks ago that we were discussing how, thanks to how fractured streaming has become, watching NFL games is becoming more and more an expensive and complicated process. It’s gotten so bad that ESPN has released an app designed specifically just to help viewers find where to watch the NFL game they’re interested in. But finding it alone doesn’t mean you can watch it, what with the labyrinthian landscape of different cable and streaming providers the NFL has negotiated to show its games. The point is not only that this is getting far too expensive for fans, but that there is a mental transactional cost associated with all of this as well.
With Soccer, back when I followed more closely, to get all the matches for my team I used a vpn to watch an Egyptian sports channel as they had all the matches in (for the time) hd with an English language commentary, to get the same in the uk I’d have had to have spent £40+ a month and I’d still not have been able to watch the matches that aren’t televised in the uk, but this Egyptian channel had every single game. Doesn’t exactly encourage paying for the service when the paid service is more hassle and worse than the pirate one by miles.