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by devonrt 5272 days ago
I cut cable, but now I'm going back to it. Not having cable has been expensive. For sports, the only viable alternative has been services like NFL Game Pass and NHL Game Center, both of which clock in at around $250 a season, and that's just for hockey and football (and BOTH services still have blackout games). On top of that I pay for a VPN account to get around geographic restrictions, otherwise both services would be close to useless. Add in a Netflix subscription on top of it and I'm up to about $700 just to watch football, hockey and Netflix; I'm still missing out on every other sport and anything that isn't available on Netflix.

"Cutting the cable" still isn't that viable an option for a lot of people, and traditional broadcasting and media companies are still very much in control of most media consumption.
2 comments
dmix 5272 days ago
I basically stopped following the NBA because there wasn't a pain-free way of watching it.

I bought the online seasons pass last year. It had a clunky video player and half the games I wanted to watch were blacked out.

They also had a scumbag cancellation process where the cancel button, that was buried on the NBA site, mysteriously had a 500 error for over a week and required talking to 3 different people on the phone.

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devonrt 5272 days ago
NHL Game Center is even worse—there is NO online cancellation process and don't let you cancel your subscription partway through the season. I live in Canada an pretty much any game that is aired on TSN or TSN2 is blacked out for me.

Watching sports online could be such a great experience, but most sports leagues seem to have their hands tied by their traditional broadcasting contracts unfortunately.

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dfxm12 5272 days ago
Do you not root for your home team? If you do, you'll be able to get most of your teams' Football games OTA, on FOX, CBS or NBC. You'll just miss out on the odd NFLN or ESPN game. I mean, if you live out of market, you'll have to get a similar package anyway...

Otherwise, can I suggest going to a bar to watch games (if you root for your home team)? I thought I wouldn't be able to live without live sports when I cut my cable, but I was always able to go to a friend's house, a bar or somewhere else to catch a game.

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