[ghaff]

>Though, the conventional wisdom seems to be that live sports programming can't exist on it's own, and that 'regular TV' can't exist without live sports.

It feels that way. On the one hand, it seems like you have to be something of a super-fan to subscribe to one or more of the sport/league-specific sites/apps. On the other hand, local sports availability or even just sports as TV on in background seems like a pretty significant sweetener for a lot of people who might not pay for TV just for the occasional late night talk show, local news broadcast, or reality show.

Sports isn't enough for me to pay for cable any longer. But, if I did, watching a game now and then would probably be what would push me over the line to pay up.

[ssharp]

Sports is now getting into the territory music did in the early 2000's and movies did before streaming hit big -- where it's become significantly easier and convenient to just pirate than to do it legally.

It's much easier to just find pirated live game streams than it is to figure out the cobweb of television rights, which service actually shows local sports, if you're "in" or "out" of market, etc.

I'm sure the economics are still strongly in favor of the TV licensing deals but this has to turn at some point, I'd think, where leagues can go direct-to-consumer across all markets or they just sign deals with streaming companies directly, which Amazon is already doing with the NFL.