I still have to use MLB.TV and a VPN to watch the Twins in their own market on anything but expensive cable. Bally Sports is the only place that carries them and they priced themselves off of every single streaming TV service. I don't need the VPN to watch anyone BUT the Twins. The MLB.TV and VPN is still cheaper than the cable subscription. And Bally wonders why they're going bankrupt.
I'm with you - a few times early in this season I looked into it, but I have to pay MORE to just buy the NFL and I don't need YouTube TV so I said fuck it, I'm not paying $400 bucks just to watch 3 or 4 out of market games a year.
So basically YouTube is trying the old 'just buy our whole service for less'...but I don't want your whole service and I'm not going to buy it unless I want it.
I just want to watch a few out of market NFL games a year, and neither Google or the NFL will take my money.
I'd gladly pay for an out of market game once in a while. It's stupid business not to take customer's money just because you're trying to wedge your overall business into our lives.
I usually watch one game a weekend, but if I wanted all of them, I would have three options. First, I could go to a sports bar. It's fun, social, and costs whatever I would spend on food and drinks. Option 2 is to give Youtube $400 a year and watch whatever games they want to show me on multiview, because I don't get to pick. Option 3 is I don't give Youtube $400 and I stream whichever games I want to watch for free.
I'm not surprised they have millions of subscribers. A lot of people don't want to go to a bar, and a lot of people don't have the patience for piracy. But the product they are putting out should be better than those options. They should offer features the make it worth $400 a year. Otherwise, they overpaid for the license.
I paid for it and I quadbox the games I want to see and redzone. It's nice not having the low resolution and streams that are not stopping all the time. Bonus is you can rewind or watch all the games when you want to. Totally worth the price.
I bought it, but for a tech company their tech is pretty shit.
On ESPN, if I want to watch 4 games, there are a couple different layout options, and I can pick and add each individual game at my discretion. With YouTubeTV, they have predefined choices of games you can watch. It's not a complete list of combinations, and you don't have layout options (ESPN gives you a one big, 3 small to one side option that's nice). I have two actual TVs where I watch games so the layouts are less of an issue, but I can't put a game on one screen then the other 4 I want to watch on a second screen as background unless I get lucky and it happens to be one of the choices they gave.
I don't watch a second screen during Patriots games. I like having other games in the background during other windows for commercials and down time though. But YouTube's tech blows and isn't close to competitive with ESPN.
I have other financial priorities at the moment so most streaming services are a want and not a need even if I love watching sports. The price is not low enough to buy it because I enjoy it and can justify it. Maybe I'll budget for it next year.
Baseball was the same way but luckily YES network did streaming for baseball and I was able to watch the games at a price I felt was reasonable. Also I only subscribed for the season, well technically not the whole season because the Yankees were killing me. That's part of the deal only streaming 1 team. I couldn't watch any other team so why stay subbed?
I know the feeling, we didn't get past all the burdens until our forties. Now though we are finally making enough money to save and have some luxury items.
$400 is way to high to persuade most from not finding illegal streams, but the broadcast and cable networks required the streaming price be that high to drive people to the local broadcasts.
The broadcast networks use the NFL as a loss leader platform to advertise their other content. It is probably only a matter of time before YouTube inserts additional ads into games to help cover their costs.