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Facebook and YouTube Are Full of Pirated Video Streams of Live NFL Games (cnbc.com)
Pirated video streams of televised National Football League games are widespread on Facebook and on Google's YouTube service, CNBC has found. From a report: Using technology from these internet giants, thousands of football fans were able to watch long segments of many contests free of charge during the league's Week 13 schedule of games last Thursday and Sunday. Dozens of these video streams, pirated from CBS and NBC broadcasts, featured ads from well-known national brands interspersed with game action. This online activity comes as the league struggles with declining ratings that have been blamed variously on player protests during the national anthem and revelations about former players suffering from a brain disease caused by concussions. Yet this illegal distribution of NFL content may also be crimping the league's viewer numbers.
It's a video of me petting my cat. The fact that the game occupies 99% of the video and the audio is directly fed from the tv is totally not the point.
illegal distribution is not what is affecting numbers. It's how hard it is to watch the games. Outdated policies on which games can be run by the local affiliates, MNF on ESPN, Thursday night football on who-knows-where... and an all access sunday ticket available only through DirectTV for $300. This is a symptom of a larger issue.
If I can watch it via an antennae (w/ Ads of course.. $$ has to come from somewhere) for free then I should be able to stream it on the internet for the same low price. (Consideration given of course for whatever whomever charges to recoup the cost of said streaming) The model of: "Select your cable subscription to stream for free" is BS. I shouldn't need a cable provider at home to have device freedom for my football.
Fix that problem and I'll stop searching for pirate streams on YouTube (and people will be less inclined to want to put them up there)
Of the rapacious cable network no longer allowing me to watch a game broadcast free over the air without a subscription. First I had to watch in SD only, then I had to pay for the HD box, and always with a monthly subscription cost that kept rising. And then to get the stream, I have to login with my cable account (that I don't want, because it's expensive).
Under capitalism man exploits man. Under communism it's the other way around.
So fuck you NFL. A bunch of millionaires and billionaires taking my tax money for their party, and then charging me an arm and leg to watch them celebrate.
I say this in response to the article with all due respect to the athletes ..... SO THE FUCK WHAT .... wanton commercialism has made this "sport" boring as fuck. Pirate it. Athletes should be glad someone is watching them. Why should they care if a group of old white neo-fascists is profiting from their toils? Ticket sales / stadium beer prices alone, in large part, are enough to pay player salaries. Cable companies and the NFL can go fuck themselves.
"This online activity comes as the league struggles with declining ratings that have been blamed variously on player protests during the national anthem and revelations about former players suffering from a brain disease caused by concussions. Yet this illegal distribution of NFL content may also be crimping the league's viewer numbers."
This just shows how out of touch they are. With nothing but common sense to support my claim I suspect their declining viewer numbers have way more to do with people cutting the cord, doing other activities, losing interest, or maybe, just maybe they are so tired of the stupid commercials that occupy more time then the actual game and they've decided they have better things to do. Lets see what happens when ESPN releases their streaming service next year. It will provide a very real estimate on how much people are willing to pay to watch sports and provide almost exact viewing numbers.
I love football. I applaud the players for standing up for what they believe. The refs have been cracking down hard on helmet on helmet contact and I expect we'll see better protective gear and/or a change in rules of the game to reduce injures. No-one wants to see the players get hurt but I don't think people are "not watching" in protest because of that.
Seriously, NFL games are so slow it's like watching icons dry in the microwave.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
I own season tickets to (team) so I get NFL Game Pass, which offers a commercial-free 25-30 "condensed" version of all games. I actually watch 1-2 of these a week and they seem like the only thing I'd pirate if I couldn't get it "for free." Anyone know if anyone is really pirating full recorded games?
People are tired of blatant politicizing of everything and everything. They are tired of the hoops they have to jump through for low quality programming.
In general they are just tired of being so exploited.
My karma was manually wiped by site staff https://slashdot.org/~slshdtisctrldbysjws 18 mod up, 10 mod down = bad karma
I remember as a kid you could watch any NFL game in the country via big dish, with multiple feeds and camera angles. Those were the days.
Then, the NFL monetized the shit out of the sport and want to cry about pirating?? GO FUCK YOURSELVES!!!
The fact that anyone watches a game drag on for four hours or longer is amazing. The NFL should be looking into this as one more way to get this out there if it actually is drawing more people, which I highly doubt. My guess is that people watching on Youtube either enjoy watching it on their computer, or they don't have any other way of viewing it due to their location on the planet.
I don't buy the excuse that people aren't showing up or watching, due to protests at the very beginning of the game anyhow. If people cared about football, they watch it. What happened was the minute the ritual was broken of going to games and watching them, there was never any real interest in going back.
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Sometimes, that's life.
"featured ads from well-known national brands interspersed with game action"
So what is the problem? The deal is, they provide the football and in exchange we watch the ads. If we watch the ads on youtube, what's the problem exactly?
You could either get a cable subscription, then a sports package on top of this, then hope and pray that they sell enough tickets of your favorite team so they will actually broadcast the game, then put up with 1 minute ads interrupting every 30-45 seconds of the game...
Or you could find out that many nations all over the globe also have networks that buy the NFL rights, usually HEAPS cheaper than in the US because football just isn't so popular in those countries, offer the game on a live stream, and you get a VPN from the country just in case it's limited to national IP addresses...
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
I understand that either you have an extreme lack of interest in the NFL, or this was an attempt at humor, or maybe you're butthurt over the protests (either for or against them), but at least attempt to be somewhat correct. Tens of millions of people. Hardly insignificant, especially considering companies are actually spending MORE money on advertising this year.
Maybe, just maybe, the problem ISN'T the fact that there are so many "pirate" videos, but maybe a LOGISTICS problem.
People pirate due to THREE _main_ reasons:
* Accessibility -- if you can't even "buy" the product going without is not an option for some people
* Convenience -- no bullshit ads
* Price -- Free means money can be spent on other things -- such as internet access.
Treating the symptom, piracy, is never going to solve the initial problem of shitty supply and demand logistics.
I think you meant, "Moore victims are coming forward."
You are welcome on my lawn.
They found out why I didn't renew my NFL Game Pass.... oh well, it was fun while it lasted :(
Wishful thinking on my part. No personal interest in sports whatsoever, and I have a wife who, when there's any game on that features a prolate sphereoid, will only leave the couch if there's a sports bar where she can watch the game over my shoulder.
No interest plus or minus in the protests, except for an admittedly unbalanced hope that it destroys the industry. But that's just me.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
watch their games live. The excitement's gone if you know the outcome. Now if these are live streams they've got a point. Getting to see football on TV can be crazy expensive. Packages start at $120/mo in my area and go up from there.
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why do you think they're bots?
if if didn't we would have litigated physics until they were to our liking and antigrav , ftl travel would have been written into existence. we wuld just make it illegal to for death to occur, we would all live forever. running out of room? we'll just litigate tardis rooms that are bigger in then out into exhistence.. no no my friends. i'm afraid reality will always the higher authority to legality. laws are wishes made en masse. nothing more
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Yeah it's not like you're going to win a world championship in the 400 meter relay and run track in the 2012 Summer Olympics if you don't even have any legs.
I feel sorry for the millions of NFL and MLB fans, who are all so severely disabled they can't go throw a catch a ball themselves.
H... O... O, NFL.
There is a reason the NFL is an 11-figure overly saturated empire. Don't give me potential low ratings rant; that's just propaganda for the gazillion of networks you already partner with to fake-whine about how you aren't getting viewership. How the F do any of us know just how that is reallycalculated anyway? Not to mention, just like there is so much to 'feed our eyes' with lately, has the NFL not done that, as well? It's not just Sunday and Monday. It's Sunday, Monday, Thursday, Saturday, double-header here and there not-just-on-thanksgiving, NFL network 24x7. I like American football and NFL and it's so over saturated and there-every-second, anyone is going to get sick or go numb to it over time with brand pollution.
This falls in line with the same shit MPAA and RIAA do for the movie and music industry --- now we're to blame social media giants for all this revenue-we-never-had-but-could-have-had shit. That would be like all of us whining to our mom, dad or caretaker 40 years later in life about that lost revenue in sympathetic loose change for the one lemonade stand they wouldn't let you stand up on the street corner when you were younger --- just so you can have a reason to blame someone for the potentially lost earnings in your nothing saving account you have today, plus all the potential interest. Give me a break.
Funny how NBC entity sourced and authored the article, considering NBC exclusively broadcasts Sunday Night Football (and sometimes co-airs TNF) religiously.
It's the freaking saturation of football on TV:
And that's for us folks who don't have cable TV subscriptions and access to N channels of ESPN football shows.
I'm guessing that their problem is that the public is getting pretty darned sick and tired of football on TV.
CUR ALLOC 20195.....5804M
I have a good friend who is a Center Ice subscriber because his team's TV partner isn't carried by his cable provider. He's told me that some small number of his team's home games are theoretically blacked out on Center Ice but in every case he can switch to the visiting team's feed of the exact same game and watch it without restrictions. Seems like these very restrictive rules may just be for Canada. I know that you guys have your own TV deals that don't have anything at all to do with what we have in the USA.
our Supreme Court already rules on this. There was a company streaming live OTA tv, one antennae per user. Even offered to limit the service to local residence. They got shut down when they lost their case. If you'd like that right you're gonna need a new law.
Now, as for the odds of getting said law, good luck. I've said this several times: a lot of people in America are hurting. They're worried about food and shelter. They're scared. They're also easily manipulated as folks full of fear tend to be. If you want nice things like free OTA broadcasts online and net neutrality you have to take care of them. Otherwise they're gonna go to the polls and put folks in office that give your issues a pass.
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Last year I signed up with sling (internet tv company) and payed the extra money to get the nfl network thinking I could watching all the games scheduled on that channel. When game day rolled around, tried to watch the game and was met with a black screen saying "This game is blacked out on nfl network from sling tv". What the hell am I paying for I thought? I cancelled my account because it was suddenly less useful. This year I signed up for Direct TV Now and then found out that NBC is blocked in my city when I tried to watch a game being broadcast on NBC. So I called to file a complaint and try to cancel, the customer support person I spoke with recommend I change my billing address to another city to avoid this black out and because I pre-paid, there's no refunds.
I'm done paying for the NFL, pirate tv here I come!
Maybe it's because:
1) Nobody knows what a catch is anymore. It seems like every single catch or non-catch is analyzed to death. Catching the football is a fundamental part of the game. Someone needs to figure out what constitutes a catch and be done with it.
2) Nobody seems to know what a fair tackle is. In the Steelers-Bengals game on Monday George Iloka gets a one game suspension for flattening Antonio Brown in the end zone. It was a hard hit but he was trying to prevent a touchdown. Rob Gronkowski goes all WWE on a guy with a flying elbow drop to the back of the head when the play was already over and the player was on the ground. Both of them get a one game suspension. In one case it's a football play, in the other case it's a bonehead intent to injure play. It seems to me that Gronk should have got a 2 game suspension and Iloka maybe a fine, it anything. Again, tackling is a fundamental part of the game. Somebody needs to figure out what is fair and what is not.
3) Will someone just go ahead and sign Colin Kapernick? You might not agree with his politics or the whole kneeling thing but he's probably as good as at least half the starting quarterbacks playing right now. The longer this blackballing of Kapernick drags out the worse it looks for the NFL. Sign him. If he can't play then cut him but enough of the blackballing.
Suck, I don't live in the home market for my team. And if the home market gets to watch their team at home. The punishment is that if the first and second games are on the same network. Game 2 is blacked out!!!!
What the FRAK!!!
I used to care, even had NFL ticket on direct TV for a few years. But they blacked out games also.
Frak!! the bunch of American hating million and billionaires. They dislike their customers, I have moved on.
If the adds are included in the streams, is it really piracy, or just increasing the advertisers reach at no charge to them ?
You live and learn, or you don't learn much.
If the only things he had done were constantly embarrassing himself and golfing, you wouldn't have gotten a -1 mod. It's the damage that he's doing to our country that upsets people.
I think this should have gotten a +5 Funny!
Maybe "10's of millions", but a declining "10's of millions"--never a good thing when you're trying to make money. When the talk is all about protests and not "who's winning/losing", you hurt your product. Personally, I'd rather them just play football--when watching a game I'd rather not mix politics in it. The whole point is to escape from the non-stop protests about just about everything. You can wait and protest/not protest after the game. This goes for things I may support. Since they won't, I've got better things to do.
are all subjects I have zero interest in watching?
mfwright@batnet.com
Here are some stats. That decline is too sharp to be caused by people cutting the chord out of a general desire rather than a specific desire to stop supporting the NFL.
A large part of the problem is that the NFL has punished players for doing something as simple as wearing non-regulation additions to their uniforms to honor the lives of the police that were gunned down defending the BLM protesters in Texas. Chew on that one for a minute; if this is about freedom of speech, why would the NFL fine the heck out of players who wanted to honor officers who gave their lives to protect freedom of speech?
And that is why so many people see it as purely a left wing and racist issue aimed at spitting on the flag. The NFL has kicked players' asses over speech that was family friendly and community-affirming, but chooses to take a stand here?
College football
A non issue since fewer and fewer could give a shit about anything NFL.
Between stupid business models designed to maximize profits at the expense of the fans and the whole turning it into a political statement for some, the NFL could die tomorrow and I doubt anyone would even shed a tear.
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