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Amazon Wants To Include Live Sports as Part of Prime Membership (geekwire.com)
An anonymous reader writes: Amazon's next Prime membership benefit could be the ability to stream live sports. The Wall Street Journal reported Monday that Amazon is in talks with leagues like the NFL, NBA, MLB, and a handful of others about live game rights. The fact that Amazon wants to stream live sports isn't a new development. But the Journal did have a noteworthy tidbit: Amazon could offer a "premium, exclusive sports package" to those who pay for a $99 per year, or $8.99 per month, Prime membership. Amazon is exploring streaming rights to multiple sports at a variety of levels. The Journal reported that Amazon wanted to exclusively license NBA's League Pass streaming product; it is also reaching out to traditional broadcasters like Univision and ESPN about the content they own but don't end up airing on TV.Amazon was also recently exploring deals with Indian Premier League, a cricket match league. In a recent interview with David Remnick of The New Yorker, Reed Hastings said that one of the most difficult decisions for him has been to not do live sports. He said Netflix doesn't want to move away from movies and TV shows, and only focus on improving the quality of the shows and user experience.
This is the last difficult part of being a cord cutter (if one cares about this kind of content). One can get just about any other set of content from streaming if it's available at all (there are always holes, mind you). I don't envy the rights negotiations, as they are a mess, but it would solve a major problem in the lineup of content.
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Please don't. Live sport are extremely expensive and just push up the price for us that don't give a monkeys.
Seriously? Given how your bill for any TV service provider includes programming charges for live sports (and I don't mean the sports fee), it seems rather obtuse to say Amazon shouldn't do it. The final obstacle for cutting the cord is live sports. Once that falls, there become very little reason to keep TV.
I thought the convention was to use brown for this type of story.
(shrugs) Their site, their rules.
When they rose the price of Prime from £49 to £79 and bundled in Prime Video I wasn't all that happy and until Grand Tour was released I had yet in the years since that increase to find a program I wanted to watch on there. I'd check, see if it was on Amazon or Netflix before often purchasing it on Google Play.
But 90% of the time that a show is actually on there it's not included. I wanted to watch Stargate SG1 the other day and they're charging £2.50 per episode, no offer to buy by the season (and the US price is listed as $1.99 but I bet that doesn't include VAT)
A separate site of what's available as part of the subscription would be good, tying it in with Amazon's full site doesn't help.
Yes, this is a good deal for sports fans if and only of the sports premium is optional.
I agree with OP and say Amazon needs to go one step further. The original thing about Prime was the 2 day shipping. That's all I am really interested in... not their tv shit, streaming shit, sports shit, and probably soon-to-be tax preparation service or whatever they come up with next
Prime needs to be split into two tiers... one for the free shipping, at a reduced cost, and a premium tier with all the other add-on shit.
Meh. MotoGP has offered a season streaming subscription for years.
If Dakar did the same, I'd be set.
As a sports fan, I would be OK with Amazon offering live sports, as long as it doesn't require non-sports fans to subsidize my enjoyment. But that's a little bit like me saying because I don't like the Gilmore Girls and Two Broke Girls, I shouldn't have to subsidize the people that watch those programs.
But Amazon streaming video, including live sporting events, has one big issue to iron out, and that's Google. Right now, I pay to be able to watch giant men give each other brain damage on my home television and on my Android devices. Unfortunately, because Google and Amazon are having a pissing contest about putting Amazon video streaming apps on my Android devices, the only way for me to watch Amazon Prime video on my Android devices is to do a side-chain installation of something called "Amazon Underground" which wants access to my contacts and SMS messages and even the photos on my phone. When I try to turn those permissions off, Amazon Underground doesn't work and I can't watch Prime video.
I understand that by using Android and Google I'm making myself part of the product that Google is selling. I don't want to do the same with Amazon, since I'm actually paying them money for Amazon Prime.
You are welcome on my lawn.
So then what? Prime becomes $150/mo? We're back to cable again.. Live sports are expensive. Since I don't watch it I don't want to pay.
I doubt that's going to happen. The 2-day shipping is a loss-leader to get you introduced (and hopefully hooked) on the rest of Amazon's ecosystem.
-- Sent from a computer.
If you want to offer a service on the INTERnet you'd better make sure it's also INTERnational
Price will have to go in some areas local rsn's have high costs. /mo just for 1 team and in all the other area RSN's and it's about $8-$15 /mo
Sports net LA is $4.50-$5.00
CSN Chicago is about $3-$5 /mo and if the cubs start there own RSN they may want $2-$4 /mo.
As a sports fan I don't see how this is a good deal. Right now I can watch all of ESPN's content that isn't air on TV with the ESPN app. If Amazon buys the streaming rights I will have to pay an extra fee to Amazon to watch it. I also will have to keep paying ESPN indirectly through my cable company because Amazon isn't trying to buy the rights to the better games that are aired on TV. So to keep seeing everything I watch now I will end up paying both companies.
As a sports fan I don't see how this is a good deal. Right now I can watch all of ESPN's content that isn't air on TV with the ESPN app. If Amazon buys the streaming rights I will have to pay an extra fee to Amazon to watch it. I also will have to keep paying ESPN indirectly through my cable company because Amazon isn't trying to buy the rights to the better games that are aired on TV. So to keep seeing everything I watch now I will end up paying both companies.
In order to watch sports on the ESPN app you have to have service with a provider. So nothing would change theoretically. I know that the ESPN app asks me to login to my provider periodically.
"A plan fiendishly clever in its intricacies"- Homer Simpson
And for me that sort of thing isn't going to work since I do not feel a need to purchase their other services.
Part of the reason why we don't have pay-TV is that I do not want to pay a fairly large amount of money for something that I don't have interest in watching. I have even less interest in paying for something like this that also serves ads. Doesn't really matter what it is either.
As I see it there are two extremes in television distribution that establish a gradient. First is the free-to-the-viewer model. This is broadcast TV. The viewer has no choice but to receive ads, but the viewer doesn't pay for content outside of watching ads and pays for nothing short purchase of one's own receiving equipment. The advertiser is the entity that pays for the service in effect. The second is the viewer-paid-ad-free model. The viewer's subscription fee pays for the content delivery and the content and there are no ads.
The gradient lies in between these two positions. Inexpensive pay-TV like conventional cable or satellite requires the viewer to pay for the medium and requires the viewer to put up with ads. In turn the networks sell ads and negotiate with the medium (the "cable company") to have the network available to the viewer. More expensive pay-TV like premium cable or satellite requires the viewer to pay for the medium and to pay for individual networks on top of the base rate.
The problem is when networks like ESPN end up negotiating with the cable companies to where all subscribers pay for this premium network (and I call it that based on the per-subscriber fee required of all viewing households) even though a lot of people don't want to watch the network at all. I don't want to pay $5 - $10 per month because my cable TV company has a bad deal with ESPN where they have to pay for ESPN on my behalf whether or not I want to watch it. Throw on top of that the ads ESPN sells and airs and it's frankly insulting.
If Amazon tries to force Prime into an all-or-nothing proposition like the cable and satellite companies have then I have no reason to bother giving them my money. After all, if I want an all-or-nothing scenario where I'm actively paying for content that I don't want I can get that treatment from existing players. The only way I would consider Prime is if I can choose what I subscribe to. Amazon might have arrangements to the networks funded by the wholly-ad-supported-model like current conventional cable, but I don't have to fork over cash for those. If I don't want ESPN I don't want to pay for it anyway.
I suppose it shows how much a house of cards networks like ESPN are, if they don't have the compulsory model for subscription payments from people that have no interest then they probably wouldn't manage to stay in business.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
No, it's a good deal for sports fans if everybody else helps pay for it.
As a sports fan who chooses not to get screwed over by the cable or satellite TV companies, I don't have access to the ESPN app. Paying a couple bucks a month extra to Amazon for live sports would be well worth it to me vs paying for a cable subscription.
"Frequently wrong, never in doubt."
Well, if I'm going to be paying for sports as part of my annual membership, I will reconsider subscribing to Amazon Prime. I have no interest in subsidizing such things for others, and no interest in wasting a moment of my time on that nonsense. The whole point of cutting the cord is being able to get what you want, without paying for what you don't. I see no compelling reason to dump one bundle on cable, just to get saddled with another from Amazon.
Sports and Disney are the reason for the major price hikes in traditional TV service. If they can provide the sports without causing price hikes in prime membership, or make it a separate package to add on so those who don't want this content aren't helping to subsidize it, id say go for it. Otherwise adding sports is just going to put amazon into the same position that caused people to become cord cutters to begin with.
I don't want a year or a month of MLB. I want to buy by the game. Charge me a buck or two for a single ball game. No monthly or annual fee (above the Amazon Prime fee), and let me just watch what I want, when I want, and pay for just that. Hell, I'll throw in an extra buck per game if you fill the "ad space" time with a single Amazon ad and then run sports highlights during the teevee timeouts.
Support a few technologists in Washington.
I'd like to know how they expect to pay for licensing all of this sports content without severely impacting the price. Currently if you want to watch hockey online, your only option is NHL Center Ice. It costs $220 for the season ($18 per month), and you don't get playoff or locally broadcast (including cable) games. To add something like a major pro sport onto the pricing that people expect from Amazon Prime, the league owners would have to drastically change the way they do things. Not to mention that there are existing licensing deals in place which would make it impossible for Amazon to secure rights to pro sports within the next 5 years.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
Whatever. I use Prime for the free 30 day periods every time they offer it to me and promptly cancel before they start charging. The rest of the time I just do free account and free shipping on everything. My life isn't so disorganised that I can't order things ahead of time and wait the *gasp* 7-10 days for it to arrive. I'm old enough to remember when mail order took 6-8 WEEKS.
Kids these days are just entitled and impatient (but I want it NAAAAAOOOOOWWW!). That's why they have so many developmental issues.
HGTV has its own streaming service
The link "Sign In to Your Provider" at the top of this page makes me think HGTV streaming is yet another "TV Everywhere" that requires authenticating a subscription to a package on a traditional multichannel pay television (that is, cable or satellite) provider that includes HGTV. The FAQ backs this up.
As a sports fan who chooses not to get screwed over by the cable or satellite TV companies, I don't have access to the ESPN app. Paying a couple bucks a month extra to Amazon for live sports would be well worth it to me vs paying for a cable subscription.
It will probably be like current streaming packages. Those games that people like ESPN has exclusive rights to will be blacked out.
This already happens if you have NBA League Pass. Those games that ESPN or TNT has exclusive rights to are blacked out even from video streaming on the official NBA app with the highest level of package. The NBA app lets you stream audio from one of the local radio stations broadcasting the game in return.
So you'll still never be able to see your team play the Cavs, Lakers, or $OTHERPOPULARTEAM/anticipated game unless you have ESPN or TNT or whatever other station streaming or no.
Same thing with MLB's streaming packages, I can't remember if they offer an audio stream when video is blacked out.
Including this in a package on Prime is great, but only for 75% of games. For the rest you still need access to ESPN/TNT/TSN in some way.
Yes and you have to pay expensive, recurring fees to have access to that ESPN content.
Personally, I am a true sports fan, such that I own equipment and go play them with friends instead of sitting around watching other people play.
Personally, I am a true sports fan, such that I own equipment and go play them with friends instead of sitting around watching other people play.
That's how I play too.
Too bad fucker, Amazon says that everyone must pay for sports, even though most of you will never watch them. That way a few of us who will get what seems like a good price subsidized by the rest of you and Amazon gets to promote Prime as having another "feature". And the National Felons League and the rest of the steroid abusers get more money.
Of course, they could just say that it is included "free" in the price of Prime and not raise the price of Prime today (raise it later or take something else away). But since you know that lots of money if flowing to the sports leagues and that money has to come from somewhere and that ultimately it is the Prime subscribers, you likely are not stupid enough to believe that this is "free". Prime will pay for sports thus Prime members will pay for sports, just admit it.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
No, it's a good deal for sports fans if everybody else helps pay for it.
Agreed. While I suppose anything's possible, I cannot imagine that Amazon could keep the price of a Prime membership at $99 and ADD live sports (unless it gutted existing stuff included in Prime). Sports channels usually cost more than any other service in existing cable packages -- ESPN alone now charges about $7 per month from cable companies from subscribers. (Note that the MEDIAN fee per channel is about 15 cents.) And ESPN has huge ad revenue too. Is Prime going to make widespread use of ads too?
I know that the sports licensing folks are probably eager to reach cord-cutters, but I can't imagine they're going to settle for a fraction of what ESPN pulls in now... which means either Amazon's Prime cost goes way up to subsidize the sports package, or Amazon begins to offer a separate "Prime + Sports" package that costs more... perhaps double (or more) the current Prime cost.
So a computer literate audience... and the want to sell them sports?
I'm guessing this is to appeal to, what? Brogrammers?
So then what? Prime becomes $150/mo?
To me, it sounds like this would be some kind of add-on to Amazon Prime. But I can't say for sure.
Dark Reflection
That's only if you're trying to watch ESPN/2/NEWS/Classic. If you're watching ESPN3, you can watch that for free. That's where Ultimate Frisbee, Kabbadi, Cricket, Rugby, Independent league baseball, etc are shown.
The dinosaurs in charge of Major League Baseball will almost certainly insist on only allowing streaming access to games outside of your local market - basically the same thing as they enforce with their MLB.tv product.
The fundamental problem is that a huge chunk of most team's (and the leagues') profits come from cable tv deals, so MLB insists on pretending that the cable tv market is still thriving. I can only offer one data point, but I decided a couple years ago it wasn't worth paying an extra $65-$70 a month just for the privilege of watching my local baseball team... so we dumped the Comcast plan we were on, and moved to a deal that was basically internet access with local channels (plus HBO for some reason) thrown in for free.
What's especially stupid is that the carriage fee Comcast pays the Seattle Mariners / MLB for the rights to carry their games is about $5 a month. I'd gladly pay that fee, on top of an MLB.tv subscription, to stream my local games in an aboveboard manner - but there's no option for that. If you don't buy the big 80+ channel "premium" cable package, there's no way to watch local games (with MLB's blessing, anyway).
Now what some people do (not anyone I know, of course) is buy MLB.tv, then either watch through some proxy or else use a location faker on their mobile device. That gives problem-free access to their local team's games. It's easy to do - or at least that's what I've read on the internet somewhere. You'd think MLB would want that market... but I suspect they pretend all those MLB.tv subscribers are buying the service just so they can watch some far-away team's games.
#DeleteChrome
As someone who doesn't care about sports, I think this is a great thing personally. I want to see the cable companies increase their "sports fees" for TV, and I really like the idea of Amazon building that into Amazon Prime.
I'm a cord-cutter, so I don't have cable TV, only cable internet. So I really like the idea of the cablecos charging all the TV-watchers for sports, even if they don't watch them. This helps keep my internet service bill low. As long as the TV-watchers are subsidizing the sports fans, there's less likelihood the internet subscribers will have to do the same.
Same goes for Amazon. I don't subscribe to Prime, so if they screw over the Prime subscribers by forcing them to subsidize the sports fans, this will likely help keep prices low for me.
As a cord cutter, yes please.
As a sports fan, EXTRA yes please.
Slight tangent, but one of the problems facing several sports today is ridiculously over-inflated salaries:
-This leads to rule changes to prevent injury: can't have your bazillion dollar player getting hurt.
-And that's gonna pump up owner salaries... can't have "just" a multi-millionaire owner presiding over millionaire players... no no no
-It leads to god awful sponsorship deals by the players: "Eat Papa Johns pizza, I swear it's not garbage," (it is). Gotta keep that lifestyle rolling after you retire
-And there are even worse sponsorship deals by the teams: "Welcome to the Bank of America field in Ford Arena -built ford tough-. Now lets watch the Monster Energy Drink replay highlights sponsored by Samsung."
The list goes on and on, I could be here all day. But if we can allow non-fans to stop paying for sports packages, the ship might right itself. It'll take a while, players are going to have to stop being "the highest paid whatever" every single year, but we actually have a chance of getting back on course with players playing for the love of the game, instead of the pursuit of the money.
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Bah, wake me up when Amazon broadcasts the World Cup with non-US English commentators. Then, I'll be interested.
Agreed. They should make elements of Prime à la carte, they take on stuff I'll probably never use but thisbI know for a fact I'll never touch. Why not take a few bucks off my bill? Or work on the abysmal Prime video catalog?
On the Oregon Cost born and raised, On the beach is where I spent most of my days
It is amazing how many people don't get that they are paying for this. I have to explain it about once a month. No, just because you are watching ESPN through the watch ESPN app on your Apple TV doesn't make it free. I don't care if you didn't have to log in with a userid/password.
The second I can watch my favorite basketball team without having to pay for 200 other channels I don't want. I will tell Direct TV where they can put their satellite.
I cancelled my satellite, because I got tired of subsidizing all of the sports fans. Their movie and TV show catalog is pretty pathetic as is. And more and more, I'm not even getting the two day shipping I was promised. If Amazon goes this route, I'll cancel the first time I see an increase in the membership costs. I was already on the fence as is.
I just did. I enough of us complain to Amazon directly about not wanting to pay for sports, that might help. Ranting here is less effective...
That's only if you're trying to watch ESPN/2/NEWS/Classic. If you're watching ESPN3, you can watch that for free. That's where Ultimate Frisbee, Kabbadi, Cricket, Rugby, Independent league baseball, etc are shown.
Not true. You still have to have a subscription with a video provider or Internet provider who is paying ESPN for access to ESPN3. If you don't have to sign in, that means that your ISP is paying ESPN. ESPN has whitelisted your IP address so you don't need to sign in.
"A plan fiendishly clever in its intricacies"- Homer Simpson
Half the reason I don't have a traditional satellite/cable account is because I don't want my money going to ESPN in particular, or really sports in general.
If people want to watch live sports, they ought to pay for it themselves. It can be a separate package, or a separate product, I already pay enough for sports through taxes.
The right to protest the State is more sacred than the State.