NBA playoffs on Amazon prime in violation of antitrust laws

The Astros dont stop messing around, SCHN might be out $20 a month from me this summer.

 

I re-cut the cord and it's honestly been better than I expected during the playoffs.

I've always had Amazon prime and a lot of the other games are on NBC/ABC. I also have Peacock with my credit card. So, I just find a stream somewhere when the games happen to be on ESPN.

I think the recent shake up has just brought more professionalism to the broadcasts. The Prime and NBC teams tend to focus more on actual basketball than trying to have hot takes. It got pretty bad in recent years having to deal with the ESPN B-team doing games.

 

I recently cut the cord as well. It was a no-brainer when SCHN started selling digital packages, and then there was a fiber deployment in my neighborhood that I wanted to switch to. There was no reason subscribe to Xfinity anymore. There's nothing on cable that you can't also get from a streaming service.

I know it sucks to have to pay for multiple streaming services to see all the games, but at least there's an option for you to view it at home when before that wasn't the case. And you can cancel during the offseason to save money.

 

While there has always been exclusivity with the 'OG' networks—ABC, NBC, CBS, and Fox—for the geographic areas they serve, over-the-air is still free. The shift away from the norm is when, for example, NBC puts content exclusively on Peacock, or in Prime's case; these avenues are not just exclusive, but exclusive behind a paywall.

The NBA made it worse by not just giving it all to one exclusive distributor; they triple-dipped by giving it to NBC, ESPN, and Prime. It’s not just the paywall—it’s the polygamy of it all.

 

Can you à la carte Space City?

 

There's never going to be a perfect system. I don't really understand bringing the Sports Broadcasting Act into this. If the league is unable to collectively bargain broadcast rights then each team would have to negotiate their separate deals. Those teams are looking for revenue streams as well so they wouldn't put them OTA for free. If you think the NBA games are too fragmented today, that scenario would make it 10x worse.

 

The original local team distributors, who were paying for the rights (to show local games to local cities) like Bally Sports, couldn't afford it anymore. The ad revenue wasn't enough, so replacements had to be found. For the national games: Prime (deeper pockets) and NBC, trying to get back in the game, won the rights from WB/TNT.

Winners are the NBA, players, and owners: they got more NBA revenue. Losers are the distributors who are paying the high license costs of the NBA. The second layer of losers, as indicated by this thread, are the fans. Because now, to enjoy all the regular season and all the playoff games for your respective team, the non-pirates have to pay multiple subscription fees.

--
More often than not, when a new owner pays a premium price tag for a thing, the first thing(s) they do is cut corners and usually raise prices on the customers to get some of the investment back. It’s a tale as old as time.

TKO buys WWE; they paid so much (winner: Vince McMahon) that they're now trying to squeeze the money back wherever they could. Ads everywhere, ads on pay-per-view, in-arena ticket prices go up... etc. Losers: TKO and the fans. As current projections go, it looks like TKO overpaid and is going to take many years to get that money back. Fans are also the losers; they get an inferior product with the ads, higher live event prices, and see their product "bend the knee" to Saudi money.

The new Blazers owner (a rich person, but after buying the Blazers) is already talking about not spending the average head coach salary. Even silly things like eliminating one of their two mascots.


Winners and Losers: fans are usually on the losing side as large amounts of money change hands between rich entities.

 

blind, just this once

 

In all honesty, if the workaround does work so that people can use a British League Pass premium via a VPN from the States, I'm more than happy to sign up for people from here if they want to go in on an account or 2. You get 3 devices in use at the same time for either £208.99/$285.12 a year or £22.99/$31.22 a month, and that gives you every single NBA game from any team, usually with multiple broadcast options and the ability to watch up to 4 games picture in picture/split screen at the same time. If that works out cheaper for people and it's workable I'm happy to facilitate for regular CF members. Pretty sure for 3 people going in (you'd have to trust each other to only use one device each I guess) together that's probably cheaper than most of your options over there if you're having to pay for several streaming subscriptions...

 

Exclusivity in terms of all playoff games being on one network? But also in this case one streaming network which you have to pay additional money for? I don’t know if that’s the case.

 

Yep. I would get league pass, but I live in Oregon. You'd think that would be great for watching the Rockets, but local blackout rules apply to the Warriors, Kings, Trailblazers, and amazingly, the Jazz, even though the only NBA team that comes in over local channels is the Blazers. That's means there is more than a quarter of the Western Conference that I can't watch, which means I would miss almost 20% of Rockets games. I ain't paying for that. If I lived in Kazakhstan, I could pay the fee of a couple goats and watch every Rockets game.

 

Yeah it's crazy tbh. Like I said later in this thread, I'm going to test to see if people can access my British account via VPN early next season (I believe it was @kjayp who had first shout) but if it works I'm happy to subscribe to more accounts from here for longer tenured CF members (so they're less likely to cut out on me, obviously) who want to go in on an account. It's fairly low risk for me, if people don't pay for a month I'll just close that extra account. If they do between 3 people for the 3 devices per account you'd be looking around $10 a month, if someone wanted their own account it's roughly 30. That gives you every single live game, every single game in the archive, and the ability to watch up to 4 games at the same time on the same device. That has to work out cheaper than subscribing over several providers. (Obviously I'm not going to add any extra charge on that, it'd be as simple as paying the actual cost of the account. We can make a gmail address to link to the specific account easy enough)

 

Yeh man - that would be great! With my league pass in vegas, i get about 50% of the games through the app... all total, i think i figured it would take 5 or more services to get all the games (LP, Amazon, ESPN, WC Sports, NBC...)... just crazy... lol

 

Yeah like I said at the time, if we can get it to work you won't need to pay at all for NBA games, I have 2 devices on the premium I already pay for going spare so if the VPN works you'll be good for everything.

 

Fingers crossed that it works! ...and obviously I'd be happy to contribute if we can figure it out!

 

lol. You don’t have a butler or houseboy?