Fans should start speaking with their wallets and put an end to this. It is getting ridiculous to watch sports these days, especially local sports. No longer are they on free OTA channels. Then they moved to Fox Sports SW, which wasn't too bad. Now they are on Bally Sports, which is atrocious. And only available through them directly or on DirecTV Stream.
Stop purchasing all these new streaming apps and allowing these enterprises to gouge us at every turn. Stop watching slowly. They will feel the hit as time goes on. But ratings are at an all time high for the NFL so they are going to go all out while they can.
Until cable, satellite and streaming pricing reaches a cost breakeven point for a significant percentage (perhaps 15%-25%?) of subscribers across the board, nothing, literally, will halt or reverse sports programming from being carried outside of over-the-air broadcasts. The industries have tens of millions of current subscribers. An untapped subscriber pool, numbering in the millions, is a viable source of new customers every year.
There are many Directv customers like me, who ditched their Sunday Ticket, after subscription costs exceeded what they wanted to pay. That same thing is and will happen with Google, Amazon and even new players in the pay-for-games arena like Peacock, Those defections cannot offset the new subscriber gains. Take Peacock again. The streamer gained
five million subscribers in the last quarter of 2022 but only two million signed up during the first quarter of this year.
The
waiting-for-people-to-stop-subscribing wish is just a wish. Millions will continue signing up to watch games. Millions will continue paying too much money for too much programming. The only realistic way the NFL pay-per-view machine breaks down is for tens of millions of present and future customers to be dissuaded by a massive publicity campaign (grassroots, social media, whatever) that will convince them to stop paying. It is the only scenario where Jiminy Cricket's wish gets granted.
