[kriro]

It'll get interesting when they make the first play for sports rights. Not because I think it's necessary or anything but that would be a pretty strong signal for the general audience that the paradigm has shifted. I think streaming quality isn't quite there yet but there's plenty of not super premium content they could try.

[CydeWeys]

It turns out that my interest in sports did not exceed my hatred of cable companies. I canceled cable and don't watch nearly as much live sport coverage as I used to. Every so often I'll catch something in a bar or go to a friend's place to watch the Super Bowl, and that's it.

Point being, I don't think live sports is enough for cable to survive on. Once that's all that cable is good for, I think an increasing number of people will simply give up on sports, especially at $100+/month.

[soylentcola]

At least where I live, the cable companies are the only real option for broadband internet access so we're already paying Comcast for something. And once you are paying for internet access, cable TV is typically a lot less than $100/mo. The only reason we still have it is because internet access is $70/mo while internet plus cable (major channels in HD, minor ones in SD), plus HBO (main HBO channel in HD, secondary HBO channels in SD) costs $100/mo with their tuner/dvr rental.

So for a lot of people, they don't need to be worth $100+/month but they do need to be worth $30-ish per month. Whether they are is debatable but if anyone in your house still likes to "flip" channels and watch the latest cable/network TV, it's not always a done deal. If it were up to me, I'd ditch the cable TV because I hardly watch it and would spend less just renting "season passes" to the handful of shows I do.

[soylentcola]

I'm sort of curious as to how well their infrastructure would handle something live as opposed to their current "asynchronous" stuff. It's not that you can't get live streaming sports now but I don't know enough about the actual content delivery system to tell whether they'd have to invest in the tech side as well as the content rights for something like live sports. I agree that it would be a great thing for them to try out with something people want to watch but maybe doesn't have the massive demand in the US (since that's their main base of ops).

Still, I wonder if it would really go over well because even for something less popular, they'd have to buy the broadcast rights and then people without Netflix (and potentially without the bandwidth to even get Netflix) suddenly can't watch their games. It would be like putting pro hockey or football/soccer (in the US) on HBO. Sure, those don't have the demand of NFL football or MLB baseball in the states but they have enough of a fan base who's used to watching on ESPN, etc that it may seem like an unwelcome paywall.

Honestly not really sure what sports would have both enough of a viewer base to be worth the effort and are underrepresented enough that fans would just be glad someone is giving them coverage.

I agree though. If Netflix has outdone cable by beating them to the trend of video-on-demand, they may eventually need to address those areas where cable and broadcast remain the norm. I suppose cable and broadcast could focus more on that live content and leave the rest to streaming companies but eventually the competition will come down to people only wanting to pay for one or the other.