Anyone who follows sports knows that the cost to attend live sporting events has exploded in recent years, making it more economical for some fans to stay home and watch the games. But now, watching at home is getting more difficult, and more expensive, thanks to sports leagues spreading their games out over a glut of streaming services. The NFL has moved its Christmas Day games to Netflix, joining Thursday Night Football on Amazon Prime, plus two playoff games will be exclusively on streaming services, one on Peacock and the other on Prime. Major League Baseball has Friday night games on Apple TV+ and Sunday games on Peacock, and NASCAR recently announced some of its biggest races next year will air exclusively on Amazon Prime.
What all of this means is the average sports fan now has to have multiple streaming services just to see all of their team's games. And this comes at a time when the prices of those streaming services are going up, as they look to pay for the exorbitant rights fees. It's almost enough to make you appreciate good old cable. "In the past decade, cutting the cord became very trendy...'get rid of cable' was the mantra," says Chris Gordy, SportsTalk 790 host. "All we've done now is just turned everything a la carte, and you can pick and choose what you get, but you're going to miss out on something if you have one service and not the others."
Ultimately, this will force sports fans to decide how much the games are really worth to them. "You're gonna have to have a ton of subscriptions, or maybe just take a nice walk over to your local watering hole where they'll be carrying everything...although you might run up a big bar tab doing it," says Gordy.
"Coming from a household where we subscribe to everything, we pay a fortune for all the services," he continues. "But this is the reality of cutting the cord and moving away from cable."
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