I’m surprised that there hasn’t been a sports app you can subscribe to that gives you every ball game that is being broadcast. The cable companies are holding the local sports team hostage against the streamers. I’d pay for a service that gave me everything.
It’s been a mutually beneficial relationship. ESPN also gets like $7 for every cable household, even if they don’t watch ESPN at all.
ESPN would definitely prefer the old cable model if they could still have it. The cable companies aren’t going to give ESPN a carriage fee close to that high if cord cutters can get the full suite of ESPN games OTT from ESPN in a way that leads to a high loss of cable subscribers who watch ESPN.
ESPN could do that if they want, but I think I read once they’d have to charge like $30 per customer just for the ESPN networks to fully replace cable revenue if they left cable altogether assuming every single person who watches ESPN would subscribe (which of course they wouldn’t).
You can get all the sports networks through other streaming sites for the most part (other than ATT Sports), but they are also bundled and really not all that much cheaper than cable.
I really wanted to make the 5 hour drive (for me) but family obligations have me stuck missing another drivable roady. Very cheap resale tickets so I wouldn’t expect a packed house but their stadium is pretty big it rarely sells out.