Sports - that's the ticket. Comcast remains relevant for two reasons in my mind - they provide high-speed Internet in a quasi-monopolistic fashion, and local sports broadcasting. (I live in Philly, the stranglehold on sports here is palpable.)
That said, even sports apps are starting to show up on Apple TV and the like - it's just that right now, sports are attached to cable deals, much like HBO Go is attached to cable networks.
I feel like the "a la carte" unbundling discussion is almost moot. It was an important idea before, paying for just the channels you want. But now each channel can have it's own streaming app, and I can pay for and stream them whenever.
So now I guess it's just a matter of time before someone offers bundled groups of on-demand app access. Netflix + NFL Network + ABC/CBS + HBO Go... And toss in Comedy Central for good measure. Add in a $99 Apple TV, and who needs Comcast and Time Warner?
Oh right. They own the Internet access. I'd really like some net neutrality soon, please.
We're already seeing the beginnings of one possible solution to the "sports on TV" problem: e-sports and video game streaming. Right now there are several hundred thousand viewers on Twitch.tv, unless their viewer numbers are extremely inflated. Video game streams overwhelmingly tend to be free (with subscriptions to remove ads, unlock the highest video quality, or access previous video on demand). Many tournaments have top notch video productions, and are probably produced on a shoestring budget compared to national sports television productions.
There's no technical reason why non-electronic sports couldn't also be streamed like this.
The big national sports would incur a drop in revenue if they switched to that now. But that will change, and is probably already changing fast. If at some point sports became the only thing on traditional TV that most care about, I suspect they would be less likely to spend anywhere near as much money for the hundreds of bundled channels they value at zero.
Why? How much revenue do the teams and leagues get from TV per-viewer now? Why couldn't they get more by cutting out the middlemen (cable companies and TV networks) and just get subscription fees directly from viewers, and ad revenue directly from advertisers?
In aggregate, billions. It would be impossible to calculate per-viewer. [0] The thing is, at present they are paid by every cable subscriber, not just the ones who actually watch the channel. So by switching to the model you suggest, there are two options, charge the user directly what they were currently charging the cable company and lose hundreds of millions in revenue because only a portion of your current viewers will pay you or more likely they will raise the price significantly.
The other thing is it would mean they would have to build a billing and customer service infrastructure. At present they only really have a handful of customers [1] - the cable companies - so it's really easy for them to deal with that side of things. When you have 300 million subscribers, one of the biggest problems will be billing and customer service, so prices would further increase because of that.
I would love to see sport leagues do this. But things need to change somewhat before there will be any major incentive for it to happen.
[0]: Every league, team, sport is different, probably with different contracts with every cable company. The average wouldn't be useful at all because you would have more extreme data points than you would average data points.
[1]: Sure, some networks have online streaming options, but the kind of customer who has no problem paying the extra few hundred dollars a year for access are not the ones that will require the major customer support.
> Why? How much revenue do the teams and leagues get from TV per-viewer now?
An ungodly amount. TV deals are everything to (at least American) pro sports. Smart athletes structure their deals to end the same time as the TV deals knowing that it will increase their potential salaries when the new deals are signed.
> and just get subscription fees directly from viewers and ad revenue directly from advertisers?
Because running a TV (or non-TV) network that has the reach and success of the big 4 networks is very fucking hard. You don't cut out the middle-man until you can replace what they give you.
The NFL's US TV deals, when put together, are for 7 billion a year. The ads themselves are not all managed at the highest level: There are national ads, regional ads, local ads... A big part of what a TV network does is manage the ads themselves.
While a large majority of the fans have broadband, they don't necessarily have something connected to the TV that will output the NFL streaming apps to their living room. There's also no proof that advertisers would pay the same rates for ads than they do for over the air TV.
Handing out the rights to TV stations also has all kinds of other advantages. You don't have to pay the TV stations to advertise the games. There is all kinds of content in said stations that could also be considered advertising: A team will be covered more in the channel that also carries the games than in one that does not. If you have an NFL app as the way to show the games, now you are the one paying the TV stations so that they cover your stuff. The NFL might get a bigger share of the pie, but other people are a whole lot less interested in helping the NFL grow its fan base. And yeah, the moment you start offering all games online bypassing live broadcasts, without at least a modicum of an attempt of blacking out regular TV broadcasts, the networks will balk at you, so if a pro sports league wants to move to online, they have to either only show content that the local TV stations do not want, or go all in, because the TV networks are not going to be happy competing with the league directly with the same content.
Good luck keeping an attempted switch secret too: To move broadcasts inhouse, a league would either have to purchase new equipment and crews, from the engineers at the stadium to the commentators, or to downright poach them, neither of which is easy to do.
So even if it's theoretically possible they'd make more money online, the risks and the political costs of doing such things are tough. We've seen how a player strike harms a sport's financials. A failed move online would be just as big, if not worse, and completely self inflicted.
What bothers me is that we'll likely never see an API for all this content. TV software is spectacularly awful. Netflix is merely mediocre, which makes it feel like pure awesome compared to the piss-poor UIs that TV users are familiar with.
of course, content wins so the interface is bottom priority. But without an API, there is no way for a 3rd party to provide a better layer over the content.
If I were a channel, this would be something I would really want to look into -- imagine different software services or internet services directly licensing/subscribing your content instead of you feeding Comcast.
An open API so that pretty much anyone could subscribe to X channels and mash them together in an app or program to do whatever they wanted. Truly a la carte, like downloading books and being able to pick your eReader or library software.
For better or worse, the "someone" who will offer the bundle will likely be Comcast and Time Warner Cable. Their entire business model is based on bundling content to provide it at lower cost than an a la carte.
It's unlikely things will change for them just because they move away from a cable box to apps. In essence that is what they are already doing. Even today you need a cable subscription to access at least a third of the content on Apple TV.
The problem with that argument is young people spend so much time online. So, it often ends up as a 90$ / month bill for 4-5 hours a week of entertainment. What's really missing IMO is leveraging the huge backlog of entertainment where Netflix only scratches the surface. Cable was great when there where few options for cheap mindless entertainment, but what people want in entertainment not just the NFL or the latest gossip.
So, I suspect long term we are going to see a push for more 'timeless' entertainment. You might only get 100k viewers this year, but if your still pulling 50+k viewers in 20 years that's a lot of revenue over time. Make a great cooking show and it's still worth watching even if it's 20 years old, a travel log of eating establishments ages poorly.
That said, even sports apps are starting to show up on Apple TV and the like - it's just that right now, sports are attached to cable deals, much like HBO Go is attached to cable networks.
I feel like the "a la carte" unbundling discussion is almost moot. It was an important idea before, paying for just the channels you want. But now each channel can have it's own streaming app, and I can pay for and stream them whenever.
So now I guess it's just a matter of time before someone offers bundled groups of on-demand app access. Netflix + NFL Network + ABC/CBS + HBO Go... And toss in Comedy Central for good measure. Add in a $99 Apple TV, and who needs Comcast and Time Warner?
Oh right. They own the Internet access. I'd really like some net neutrality soon, please.