Are Carrier-Exclusive Sports Deals Good for Fans?

If you have a Verizon Wireless phone and are a hockey fan, good news today — Verizon extended its deal with the NHL and NBC Sports to add live streaming capabilities to its NHL GameCenter Premium app, presumably meaning that you might be able to watch those fisticuffs in real time on your handset.

CORRECTION: Thanks to a friendly note from the folks at the NHL, hockey fans are not tied to one provider for the NHL’s GameCenter Live app, which provides live out-of-market coverage (for $79 for the rest of this season) to a number of different platforms, including Andriod phones, iPhones and iPads. The new Verizon deal with the NHL provides “bonus” coverage not offered in the regular GameCenter program. But fans with other carriers’ devices can still watch live NHL video. We apologize for the reporting error, and have edited the original post to eliminate confusion.

Even though fans can still watch NHL games live using any provider’s device, my greater worry is whether these deals in general are at all good for fans, or if they are short-sighted pacts made by leagues and broadcasters who are choosing some easy-picking rights fees over what’s best for their fan base at large. Though the NHL deal sounds more like a bonus for a Verizon subscriber, other pacts like Verizon’s NFL Mobile deal and Sprint’s NBA pact seem to put the deal before the concern of the fan.

Is that a good long-term strategy for any league? I mean, I understand all about rights deals — and why you have to switch from Fox to ABC to ESPN to NBC to watch different events at different times. But usually you can watch all those on the same TV. On a mobile device it’s different because for most of us the device is tied to the network via a subsidized contract. And few of us can afford another cell phone plan just to watch a certain sport.

The NHL, perhaps, should be praised for moving to a “carrier agnostic” plan this year for its GameCenter app. Let’s hope that practice catches on with other sports. Maybe the deals could simply result in a price discount for customers of a certain carrier; but exclusion of content by contract seems a slippery slope.

Comments

  1. what is weird is that here:
    http://sponsorship.verizonwireless.com/nhl/ Verizon says that’s live games are exclusive to Verizon customers
    whereas here: https://gamecenter.nhl.com/nhlgc/secure/gclsignup you have the impression that live broadcast (provided you pay, which a Verizon Cust doesn’t have to do in addition to the plan)

    I don’t get it if live games are exclusive.

  2. The Verizon deal has NBC network games live, believe that is exclusive to Verizon; subscribers to the GameCenter get out of market games live. Not sure what the crossover is, and it probably depends on the market. But the Verizon thing is clearly a subset of what you get for the full GameCenter sub.

    “Out of market” means games from cities other than your own. So if you are living in Chicago, you can’t get Blackhawks games live on your PC because of local broadcast rights. But if you live in New York you can get Chicago games, etc., or any other games “out of your market.”

    Don’t feel bad if you are confused. We struggle daily with trying to find out what you can and can’t watch on the web. Someday it will all just be available. We’re only at the start of that journey. Thanks for taking the time to follow along and help let us know the pain you are feeling as well.

  3. thanks Paul for your precision
    Originally I’m not a english native speaker so just to be sure: what do you mean by “out of market games”? How different are these games from the ones NBC broadcast? is it something related to a geographical area?

  4. Hey Will see above. I added to previous comment.

  5. great, I see what you mean

    As you seem to be a mobile sport expert, I was also wondering if you had seen any data about how many MB/GB it takes to watch for example a full NHL game on your tablet or mobile?
    I think it’s a key point for Verizon, due their tiered data-plan. For me it seems like to attract customers they promote some content but does it make sense considering their limitations/pricing on their mobile broadband plans?

  6. Ha, Will, thanks for making me an “expert.” I will now increase my consulting fees. 🙂

    Seriously, it’s a great question and it’s one the carriers don’t ever answer clearly for good reason: They want you to buy a high-end phone and use it for lots of video, but as you are guessing using it in that fashion can eat through your monthly data plan pretty quickly. We tried finding a number for Verizon’s NFL Mobile app and the best we could get to was somewhere between 85 MB and 400 MB per hour of viewing.

    http://www.mobilesportsreport.com/2011/09/watching-nfl-on-verizon-phones-how-much-data-is-needed/

    A lot of this depends on the device and the quality you are attempting to watch it in; high quality uses up more data so adjust accordingly.

    The best advice is, if you want to watch live video on a tablet or phone, find a friendly Wi-Fi signal and connect that way — it’s usually more stable and faster and certainly usually cheaper than a cell signal.

Trackbacks

  1. […] they only had the option of AT&T’s U-Verse app, which comes with a basic fee. There are also carrier specific sports deals […]

  2. […] they only had the option of ATT’s U-Verse app, which comes with a basic fee. There are also carrier specific sports deals […]

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