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Lord_oftheTrons t1_ja30ze5 wrote

Can we please get some option that doesn't require my use of a VPN to watch the games without a cable subscription. I just want to hand some group money just for the Pens games. Not a bunch of other crap or Pirates games, just Pens games. Right now my ESPN+ subscription and a VPN is the only way to watch games only broadcast on AT&T Sportsnet.

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Derpadoooo t1_ja35hcz wrote

I have the same opinion. I would gladly pay a subscription to watch all Pens and Pirates games, but local blackouts and other nonsense make it extremely untenable. I'm not getting an expensive full cable package just to casually watch local sports.

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Lord_oftheTrons t1_ja36km2 wrote

Hockey is crazy now, I have YouTube TV so I can get the TNT/ABC games, but don't have NHL Network games or AT&T games. So with YTTV and my VPN I can now watch all but the NHL Network games due to blackouts. I've spent money on the VPN and firesticks on all the TVs to enable this workaround and I'd rather just give the money to someone and just be able to watch the games.

It is so anti-consumer and they don't seem to care. Until it impacts them financially that will be what we have to deal with. Bring back KBL and I will give them $100 a season for every game.

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Financial-Pie2221 t1_ja5ekwx wrote

Look at what Apple TV did with the MLS. That is the future. Especially because T-Mobile gave it to customers for free and even if you had to pay it’s around $60. The NHL used to have their own version of MLB.TV, but then they sold the rights to ESPN+. MLB.TV could be the gold standard with they would fight to remove blackouts. Especially since cable tv is dying.

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Lord_oftheTrons t1_ja5gesr wrote

Yeah ESPN+ is great if they figure out the blackout games. I have it included with my Verizon plan.

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alexp8771 t1_ja62hs2 wrote

Yeah I have basically stopped watching sports entirely because I don’t want to put up with this bullshit. I wasn’t going to pay money for ESPN+ and still have blackouts.

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Chris19862 t1_ja441t5 wrote

That's why I quit cable....couldnt rationalize the 100+ a month just to watch a few sports games....I would pay 10-15 a month to just stream these events. But it seems companies would rather go bankrupt than offer these options

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ScratchMoore t1_ja46081 wrote

THANK YOU

I would happily and easily give the NHL $150 every year for a subscription to NHL.com or NHL.tv or whatever for the ability to watch the Pens.

But noooooo. I have to get Fubo. I mean, come on. It’s 2023. Take my fucking money.

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SendAstronomy t1_ja57yz8 wrote

I can only guess that the NHL doesn't want you to watch the games to explain why they make it nearly impossible to do so easily.

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Wide-Concert-7820 t1_ja80cdf wrote

Right? It takes a complicated process map to figure out:

A) where the game you want is B) how to change your vpn to get it.

Maybe this IS working. I just had a thought of going to 10 games a year with my son and screw watching the rest. The math checks.

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SendAstronomy t1_ja86ftv wrote

Yeah, I gotta jump through VPN hoops to get access, I'm not paying them shit.

For the most part I might go to 1 game a season and watch a handful at a bar or a friend's house. This is down from going to a dozen games and watching nearly every single other one on TV 10 years ago.

The NHL simply hassled me out of being a fan.

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Bulkmodulus t1_ja51yu2 wrote

ATT Sportsnet is streaming on FuboTV, but it's nearly as much as cable.

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selitos t1_ja58e01 wrote

And it's an awful interface. Just miserable to use. Way too expensive and awful navigation and playback options.

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Lord_oftheTrons t1_ja5ckob wrote

Agreed. I don't want something bundled. I want to hand the Penguins or someone a pile of money and I want every game on all my devices.

I spent probably $150-200 getting firesticks and the VPN (VPN app wouldn't work on Roku or Android TV) and I would have rather gave that money to the Pens or their broadcast partner. Cut out the middleman.

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pghgamecock t1_ja3yrw0 wrote

>Can we please get some option that doesn't require my use of a VPN to watch the games without a cable subscription. I just want to hand some group money just for the Pens games.

The only way you'd be able to do that would be to pay way more than you'd want to pay.

Cable subscribers subsidize the relatively low cost of streaming-only services like mlb.tv.

A streaming only option would be so expensive that it would just be cheaper to have cable anyway. Because as it stands, half of cable subscribers are paying the regional sports network fee but not actually watching those channels. If you take away the regional sports networks from cable, you'd have a lot smaller customer base. Taking the networks off of cable won't result in some option that's better than what you can get now.

It's not like there isn't a way to watch these games. If you want to have access to all the games, you need to get cable.

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Lord_oftheTrons t1_ja42qbi wrote

I'm not saying it needs to leave cable. It can stay there. Give me an option for $100 to give AT&T Sportsnet all that money for just Pens broadcasts without cable. Surely there is some reasonable amount that would equate to the cut they would get of my cable bill that would make sense. At this point locking people into cable isn't a winning business strategy and offering alternative ways to take my money make more sense. They are just losing out on revenue streams and we aren't going back to the way cable worked in the 90s.

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mr_pgh t1_ja7pxvn wrote

Easier said than done. NHL does make the majority of its money from ticket sales. But teams typically rake in the benefits of RSNs; Penguins probably make ~$25mil off RSNs.

It's easy to say you want a streaming service (I do too!), but that has a huge impact on cable companies. A streaming service would likely cost 5x the cable equivalent. RSNs are typically the most expensive network for a cable company behind ESPN. Typically, they cost somewhere around $4-8 per month. Would you pay $20-40 a month for just NHL?

NHL probably has about $750mil worth of National Broadcast contracts in the US and Canda (Rogers, ESPN+). These ultimately get priority over RSNs.

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