Facebook and YouTube Are Full of Pirated Video Streams of Live NFL Games (cnbc.com) 231
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.
No (Score:2)
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.
Facts with long-leap conclusions (Score:5, Insightful)
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 Outdated policies on which games can be run by the local affiliates, MNF on ESPN, Thursday night football on who-knows-where...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.
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sports are meant to be played, not watched. Go play a sport with the time you invest in watching
Good luck with that if you have any of several disabilities, or if there isn't an amateur league for your sport near where you live.
Oscar (Score:2)
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.
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I of course, don't agree with sports as sports are yet another means of glorifying competition as a good thing. Cooperation is good, so watching a player be part of a team that can work together to accomplish something greater... that is truly a great thing.
Competit
Re:Facts with long-leap conclusions (Score:5, Insightful)
This is exactly why I watch less football. I can't find an option that will let me stream whatever live games I want. There are all kinds of packages I *could* buy, but they don't want to sell me what I actually want. If you go to the NFL's site you can see hey, watch all 256 games! But they're not live. OK fine, here's some live games but the one you want to watch isn't available because it's "out of market", whatever the fuck that's supposed to mean to me. Or here, every game live, for only 4 times as much as you want to pay and part of an entire cable TV package. I don't know why they don't understand that the old model of licensing specific games to specific networks is now costing them money if they are giving out exclusive deals so the games can only be shown in that one place. So, in my house, if Kodi is up for the job then we find a stream, and it not then I don't watch or just listen to the radio. Once they figure out that it might be a good idea to sell me what I want to buy then I'm happy to spend the money. Otherwise if I really, really need to watch that game I'll just go out to somewhere showing it. Either way, the NFL is leaving my money on the table.
Re:Facts with long-leap conclusions (Score:5, Interesting)
This is exactly why I watch less football. I can't find an option that will let me stream whatever live games I want. There are all kinds of packages I *could* buy, but they don't want to sell me what I actually want.
This! I used to be able to subscribe to audio of games on nfl.com for ~$25-$30 a season. Living "out of market", I can't listen on the radio while doing whatever else consumes a Sunday afternoon. I used to be able to hand over some $$ to the nfl and listen to my team's radio guys over the internet.
But, they stopped that service. Now, if you want the radio, you have to pay $100 or more for a package of recorded TV broadcasts. I have no interest in watching the game later, it's live sports. So, they don't get my $30 anymore because they more than tripled the price and added in something completely worthless to me in exchange.
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Yep, same with me. I don't care at all about any NFL games except for my local team. Currently, within my family, only my parents still subscribe to cable. So, every few weeks, we all gather there to watch the Sunday game and enjoy dinner afterwards. Otherwise, I just listen to the radio at home. I was able to watch ONE game this season because Amazon Prime Video streamed Thursday night games.
If the NFL sold per-season streaming for specific teams (or heaven forbid, even games on demand) for a reasonab
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The NFL is hell-bent on their business model of regional lock-in to try to fill the stands. They have this crazy rationale of "if they can't see it at their local pub, they'll cough up the $$ for the tickets instead". They could fill 10,000 seats for $25 a ticket or sell 50,000 streams for $5, either way they are $250k richer. They'd lose concessions and memorabilia, but the latter could be bought online. They may even sell more since the fans saved some money by streaming.
You can't tell me that the NFL onl
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They could fill 10,000 seats for $25 a ticket or sell 50,000 streams for $5, either way they are $250k richer.
You are missing an important economic element here, unfortunately, because the NFL is not a single entity and the "they" in your statement above is different in the two cases you suggest. The money that the NFL makes from TV or streaming rights is split equally among all teams. (Hello, Buffalo Bills business model!) The money made from ticket sales is kept by the home team (split with the visiting team) and not distributed among the league's teams equally.
So if you have a popular/successful team that spends
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Yeah I probably can, but I can just listen to the local sports station for free if all I want is audio.
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When I want a burger, and I'm willing to pay $10 for it, I'm not going to go out and see a burger that's included if you buy 10 pounds of anchovies for $50 and act like that's what I want.
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Soccer is too disorganized, it's like watching a net full of fish after they've been dumped onto a ship's deck.
Man up? A soccer player on the line of an American football team would fare as well as a pedestrian in a car accident.
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Could it be, a general decline in the interest of watching sports in general?
Being that we now live in a world of multiple forms of entertainment, and a huge archive of recorded shows on our beck and call via streaming. Perhaps sports just isn't as interesting.
Back in the days where it was common to not have cable, Sports took up 1/5 or greater of the watchable TV when it was on.
But watching sports now one of thousand options you can pick to do.
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Absolutely correct.
I am a Patriots fan living in DC. Every Sunday, I find the best feed on Reddit to watch the game.
By contrast, I watch Red Sox games on MLB.tv. Cost about $100 for the full season in HD and no commercials. Gladly paid it and watched maybe 75% of games last season.
In the NFL, all but 8 markets have sub-par teams. No one really wants to watch their team lose every Sunday, they want to see the games people will be talking about next week. Or at least be able to check in on them. Market exclus
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By contrast, I watch Red Sox games on MLB.tv. Cost about $100 for the full season in HD and no commercials. Gladly paid it and watched maybe 75% of games last season.
Which only works because you don't live where your team plays. I looked into the baseball package when I cut cable, and the answer was I could watch any game I wanted live, but not the local team, which was the only team I actually wanted to watch. I found that frustrating and just gave up on the sport rather than spend money on subpar options.
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Yes, definitely, local team restrictions are a bit of a pain. It impacts people following non-local teams too, you can't see your team when they play each other.
Of course, there are ways around that. You could watch it on a TV, but I just connect to a VPN. Does not impact the quality.
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Free TV (Score:5, Insightful)
If I can watch it via an antennae (w/ Ads of course.. $$ has to come from somewhere) for free then I should be able to stream it on the internet for the same low price. (Consideration given of course for whatever whomever charges to recoup the cost of said streaming) The model of: "Select your cable subscription to stream for free" is BS. I shouldn't need a cable provider at home to have device freedom for my football.
Fix that problem and I'll stop searching for pirate streams on YouTube (and people will be less inclined to want to put them up there)
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If I can watch it via an antennae (w/ Ads of course.. $$ 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)
Yeah OTA I typically get a 1080 image, great sound - it seems to me that the main fan complaint may be from blackout areas, or unavailable (cable). I agree, fix the availability problem & pricing, and piracy becomes irrelevant: Why worry about something that doesn't affect your bottom line?
At the moment that's your opinion (Score:2)
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
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Re:Free TV (Score:5, Insightful)
But the fact remains, "Any reproduction of this broadcast in whole or in part without the expressed written consent of the NFL is strictly prohibited". So no, you shouldn't be able to stream it in that way.
If it's an actual broadcast, they lose all expectation to stop distribution once they put it out there. It's the equivalent of shouting from a mountain top (and in many cases it is literally that) and expecting all those who hear you to not repeat what you said. Even if copyright law is on their side, common sense says "fuck you".
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If it's an actual broadcast, they lose all expectation to stop distribution once they put it out there. It's the equivalent of shouting from a mountain top (and in many cases it is literally that) and expecting all those who hear you to not repeat what you said. Even if copyright law is on their side, common sense says "fuck you".
Nice try, but it's not legally like that at all. 3 years ago a company named Aereo tried a similar tactic to argue that their TV service, which didn't involve them paying licensing fees for the channels they offered, was basically what you are claiming and the Supreme Court had a very different idea. When the law says "It's illegal to do that" and you think "common sense" says otherwise, the law can still come after you and you will lose your argument.
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"Legally", no. Factually, yes. You can't broadcast something and expect to control it.
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Cool. So it's okay if I listen in on your cellphone calls. You're broadcasting, after all. You can't expect to control it.
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Yes. Which is a big reason for the switch from GSM, which broadcast voice in the clear and could be picked up by any mediocre ham radio operator, to encrypted channels.
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Yes. Which is a big reason for the switch from GSM,
GSM is digital, encrypted. You mean AMPS.
Being received in the clear was not a big reason for digital, it was that you can pack more users into the same space with digital than analog. The first digital systems in the US were not GSM, they were CDMA. GSM was the world standard, and eventually migrated here.
The idiotic change to the Communications Act that made it illegal to sell or manufacture certain radios with certain cellphone frequency bands was driven by the use of AMPS and "in the clear" cell tr
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Well, it depends. I like the concept of Aero. But you're right in that the argument is distribution.
My attitude--which is not necessarily the attitude of the law--is that once I get the signal, I can do whatever I want with it, for my own personal use. That last part is the rub. If I want to set up a streaming server so that I can watch the Rams' game on my phone, it's not a problem. It becomes a problem when I tell everyone else that they can watch the Rams' game because it's no longer for my own pers
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Great. Another moron that thinks a car is the same as creative work. You get extra moron bonus points because this is something that was HANDED OUT FOR FREE to begin with.
If I GIVE AWAY my car to the public, then I will not be shocked if people actually use it.
This is like you getting butt hurt after you give your car to charity.
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Yes, I will absolutely take the appearance of that car and photograph or draw it. This includes the LPN, which is a concept that makes me uncomfortable, but the fact is that I publicly broadcast that number when I go out, and I fucking stand by the facts of reality, I don't try to warp laws around them.
Publicly broadcasted imaginary property
Privately possessed deprivable property
Don't fucking conflate the two.
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Taking it is not the right analogy.
Proper Obligatory Car Analogy: If you park your car in public, should I be able to take a picture through the window and then share it on social media?
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Reality has now come to the point when that statement is surpassed and NFL has to accept reality and find other paths to ensure their income.
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Consumers should be able to demand whatever they want and the market should adjust the price to an optimal cost, assuming no monopolies *cough*NFL*cough*.
The source being a monopoly or not makes no difference. If a provider does not want to sell you his product in the form you demand it in, he cannot be forced to do so. The fact that there are two providers who decide not to sell you their product in the form you demand doesn't change anything. It's their product, they get do decide how it is sold.
There was some comment upthread comparing being able to stream a game based on a cable subscription and streaming based on ability to receive the broadcast OTA. T
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Why shouldn't I be allowed to watch the way I want, because they say so?
Yes, they don't authorize streaming feeds, for example, so you don't get to watch a streaming feed just because you say so.
OK, fine, if you've read this far you owe me money. Because I say so.
Sorry, your analogy fails. I am reading this in the same medium that you posted it, so you have granted rights to read without cost. That is why the NFL cannot say that you must pay to watch the OTA broadcast as a private user. They've already authorized that.
Now, if someone were to think of gathering all the /. posts into a book, your analogy might hold. There is, in fact, precedent f
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I think that way of thinking is on the way out. There is going to come a time, and that time is relatively soon, when the way that content gets consumed is irrelevant, where content is not going to be directly tied to a specific distribution medium. The NFL is stuck in an old business model, and it shows. They can either fight it tooth and nail and try to sell ESPN the rights for one game a week at ridiculous prices, but if that's a game I really want to watch I'm not going to purchase some giant TV pack
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There are still blackouts in the NFL? Haven't heard or seen of one in years. Oh, maybe you should read up on the current black out rules before blabbering like a fool - they are suspended [wikipedia.org].
Perhaps you are thinking of one of those lesser, boring sports where 2/3 of the stadium is empty daily.
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Not for the NHL, I recently spent 100 to get the NHL unlimited season pass and guess what, even trying to follow their rules, being a good little coporate citizen, results in at least 1/3 of the games I want to watch being blacked out. So why should I follow the rules?
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As poor as t
NHL Center Ice policy seems better in USA (Score:2)
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No. When you steam it, people in the home city may watch your stream rather than pay money to attend the game. You're taking money directly away from the team you're trying to watch.
But again, this is why piracy exists. You are trying to dictate how people buy your product. Just sell the product and let the people decide. People go to the game because they enjoy the experience. People stay home and watch the game because they enjoy that experience. There is some overlap of people who might stay home because it is cheaper but, again, that should be their choice. Some people enjoy going to the game, some people enjoy watching it at home, and some people enjoy a mix. I live in a co
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As a practical matter: The NFL blackout for *broadcast only was on when the stadium was not sold out.
My local team hasn't missed a sell out since like 1986.. SO broadcast is never blacked out locally BUT streaming is. Heck I'm a season ticket holder which, for the first time, they gifted us NFL Red Zone and NFL Network memberships **EXCEPT: I can't watch my own team play because it is always blacked out even when they are away... that's just plain stupid.. and the NFL can't claim I'm doing this for free as
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When you steam it, people in the home city may watch your stream rather than pay money to attend the game
That's like saying "We should stop pornography because then people will stop bothering to have sex and the human race will die out."
If you're into it and it's feasible and, you actually do the thing. If it's not feasible, you watch a video of it.
THERE IS VERY LITTLE COMPETITION BETWEEN THE TWO THINGS.
The people who make those arguments are idiots who have way too much political power, but I guess it's good they waste it on trivialities like fighting a losing battle to prevent people from seeing a
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Natural result (Score:3)
Yet as a taxpayer, I pay for the stadiums (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
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slow blink... (Score:2)
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Start league in California or another state that has (correctly) ruled that non compete agreements are illegal.
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If you write the words outside of a HOA's control, don't be surprised if it takes a really, really long time for electricity to be restored the next time there's an outage. Or that heating oil delivery doesn't happen. Or you can't find anyone who'll take your money to plow your driveway after it snows. Or that you have fewer and fewer friends, and that those people who will speak to you are rude.
Assholes tend to live unhappy lives, and they don't even realize that the reason bad things happen to them is bec
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Wait, what? (Score:5, Interesting)
"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.
Re: Wait, what? (Score:2)
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Unlike boxing, the goal of football is not to damage people. It's incidental, and they are trying to minimize it without damaging the excitement that's inherent to the game. They could, for example, make everyone wear 100 pound hobbles on each foot, or make everyone wear Michelin-Man uniforms, but that would tend to make the game less interesting. Eventually, some sort of optimization will be developed with improved equipment and rules, where players recognize and are paid for the risk, are compensated for
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Nice. It used to be that people would say cord-cutting didn't work with sports entertainment. But now, maybe it's that sports entertainment doesn't work with cord-cutting.
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Your common sense isn't right (Score:2)
Here are some stats [blogspot.com]. 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 o
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You cannot stand up and protest in your office. Why do you think football entertainers -- uh, players -- should be able to do so?
I go to a movie and the actors decide in their first scene to stand up and protest. Do you think the movie producers will stand for that? Do you think the audience should sit for that?
What is the difference???????
Actors do all sorts of stupid things while the camera is not rolling, much like athletes do all sorts of stupid things when the clock is not running. It's a good analogy that works against your point.
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Condensed or normal? (Score:2)
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Wrong (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
They should be happy (Score:2)
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
Re:They should be happy (Score:4, Insightful)
>The fact that anyone watches a game drag on for four hours or longer is amazing.
I went to a football game once, and ever since I have understood why pre-game tailgate parties are so popular.
How anyone other than the players could maintain interest for the whole game while sober is a mystery to me.
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I hear ya.
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Come on, cricket games don't last for hours, they last for days[1]. The players have at least one lunch break. When I was a kid they used to take a day off in the middle.
[1] Except the one-day variety, obviously, which traditionalists sniff at.
Ads? (Score:2)
"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?
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Because everyone in the traditional distribution chain loses their piece of the action. Back in the old days, a couple of big guys in cheap suits with iron pipes would stop by to explain to you from whom you would be buying your services and what you would pay.
These guys know where the advertisers and team owners live. So no matter what the economics of alternate distribution might be, nobody wants a visit where the consequences of backing out of da' deal will be 'splained to them.
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https://www.truthdig.com/artic... [truthdig.com]
Here's why (Score:2)
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 g
First World Problems (Score:2)
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.
Oh, crap... (Score:2)
The football fans I know (Score:2)
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The NFL's problem isn't videos on the Internet (Score:2)
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.
I will continue.... (Score:2)
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 w
Oh I dunno.... (Score:3)
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.
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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.
If Brown was holding the ball in the endzone, it was already a touchdown. I'm watching the replays right now, and it was already a touchdown. Flattening him at that point was simply unsportsmanlike conduct. It's like flattening someone who is already out of bounds, or tackling the kicker after the ball is in the air.
Somebody needs to figure out what is fair and what is not.
They did, and Iloka paid the price for his act.
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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.
Well, one train of thought goes that Kapernick isn't that good of a QB, knew it, was at risk of getting cut, so he started this whole political charade as a self-promotion gambit. Rumor has it he was also on the verge of getting picked up when his girlfriend shot off her mouth with some race-baiting bullshit and his pending offer was shelved. Overall, it looks like teams have decided Kapernick just isn't a good enough player to justify all the drama he comes with. You could call that 'blackballing', I su
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3) Will someone just go ahead and sign Colin Kapernick?
Hot news on the radio news this morning: Kaepernick has an offer -- from that powerhouse of sports called "arena football". I can attest to the fact that he's probably as good as half the arena football qbs.
Also rumored that another on-the-outs football player has the same kind of offer, but his name meant nothing to me so I've already forgotten it.
Will Colin think the bully pulpit of arena football will be sufficient?
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No kidding? Well I guess we're about to see if he can play. Maybe he will surprise everyone and go all Kurt Warner on us and end up back in the NFL via the arena league. That's about as likely as ME getting an NFL contract but you never know.
He's probably so rusty now that his first throw goes into row 10 in the stands but hey, at least he gets to play. Considering that arena gets about zero TV coverage I doubt that soapbox will suffice. But the networks that support his cause will probably show a few clips
The entire NFL and the Broadcast rules (Score:2)
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.
Why is it all this free and pirated videos (Score:2)
Pffff (Score:2)
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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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.
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> Seriously, NFL games are so slow it's like watching icons dry in the microwave.
This is why it's useful to have a local copy. You can skip through much of the tedious nonsense.
Digital pre-recording is about the best thing you can do with a "live" sporting event.
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