Is The NFL Keeping Cable/Satellite Companies In The TV Business?

Key point here.<p>You can't actually stream any other major pro sport <i>in your local market</i> you only get out of market games (ie no Giants baseball in the Giants territory - and the territory extends north to oregon and about 300 miles south of SF)<p>Here's the funny thing - you generally don't need cable to watch your local NFL team. You can actually usually get your local NFL team using an over the air HD antenna and if you get a decent signal you can get pretty good HD. This is because most NFL games air on local broadcast affiliates which still transmit an OTA signal. Most of the other sports games are on local cable nets.<p>So really NFL is actually the only sport where you can get a local game feed without cable. So to answer the article's premise - no.

The main reason I subscribe to cable is for sports. Football is infrequent enough that I can go to a bar, but if I went to a bar for every baseball game I'd be poor and drunk all the time. MLB.tv is great if your favorite team isn't your local team. If you like the home team you have to go through hoops (alternate billing address, proxy) and always live in fear that you'll be cut off.

I think it's the reverse at this point: The cable companies are keeping the NFL off of the internet. The NFL makes so much money off of broadcast / cable TV that I don't see how they could make it up with internet fees.

Like others have said, sports is the only thing that keeps me buying cable, but this whole "cable is dying" argument neglects one main point: the TV viewing experience is still way better than online video. Try flipping through 100 streaming videos as quickly as you can flip through 100 TV channels. Until IPTV or whatever you want to call it can perform as well as cable, and it can't yet, I don't see cable dying.<p>Mark Cuban had a good piece on this subject a year ago, still rings true:<p><a href="http://www.dmwmedia.com/news/2009/03/25/mrk-cuban:-cable-tv-winning-battle-against-internet-delivered-tv" rel="nofollow">http://www.dmwmedia.com/news/2009/03/25/mrk-cuban:-cable-tv-...</a>

I buy a digital cable package with HD just for the football season. We only turn it on for football games. ~300 channels and an extra $80 or so over my cable modem costs for 2-3 games per week. We cancel post-Super Bowl every year and restart for preseason.

I don't know why everybody is so keen to encourage others to give up cable TV.<p>Sure, I don't have cable TV, and I get most of my video-watching via the internet. Where do I get my internet access from? Why, Comcast, the only provider of high-speed internet in my area.<p>If everybody starts getting all their TV through the internet, what will Comcast do? They'll start charging everybody a lot more for internet access in order to make up the lost revenue. For the moment, though, I'm flying under the radar, getting my internet <i>and</i> all the video I can watch for less than the cost of basic cable TV. I'd like to keep it that way. Therefore, sssshhh!

I think this is an accurate assessment based on my own observations. My brother (in his twenties) just told me the other day that the only reason he wants cable is for Monday night football.<p>The one factor that cable companies can rely on is that they have positioned themselves to be the primary ISP for a good portion of the US population. It will be interesting to watch how/if these companies pivot in the next few years.

I haven't had cable or satellite for 4 years, so this rings true for me. I go to bars or friends' houses to watch MNF, or I just skip more of them these days. Other than that, there's no way to get the current episodes of Dexter online without subscribing to Showtime.<p>Funny thing is...I'd pay for both MNF and Dexter a la cart on iTunes/Amazon if it we're available. As it stands, neither networks get any of my money. But the local bars do :)

I think one aspect of this is that every NFL game is on a national network. Most NBA, MLB, and NHL games are on local stations.<p>I think the NFL has the tendency to sign big exclusivity contracts, given that the only way to watch out of market games is through DirecTV.

I was recently thinking of switching from Time Warner Cable ($95/month) for Xbox 360 with ESPN3, Roku, and OTA. However, TWC only offers ESPN3 to customers who have internet and cable tv.

ESPN and NFL network are the <i>only</i> reason I still pay for cable. I'd cancel tonight if i could stream both (willing to pay significantly for both as well)

did the author of this article actually take a moment to google for NFL Streaming? The game hasn't started yet but I have it open in a browser and watched many games this way before. Horrible article.

I don't know about that but it sure is keeping my local bar in business.