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Comment by aninteger | Hacker News Reader

I wonder if a pay per view model might work out.. For example to watch a certain game you pay 99c. If you want to watch live you pay a premium $1.99. Possibly special games (Superbowl, world series, nba playoffs) go to $2.99 a game.

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Obviously selling TV shows and movies by the drink does work as (part of) a business model. However, I would posit that a lot of people watch sports games pretty casually. They catch a bit of the baseball game while they're eating dinner or whatever. Some sports certainly work PPV (boxing being the clear historical example). I'm guessing football might do OK as well. But you'd really cut back on the audience which would mean a lot fewer ad dollars too.

It'd be really interesting to see what the network sports programming gets per viewer from the advertisers (I think they aren't capturing any cable money). Maybe that information is available, I don't know where to look (I guess the Superbowl numbers are pretty public and would establish a ceiling). Those numbers should more or less show what it costs to put together the programming and would make it easier to reason about how many viewers they need at a certain PPV price.

I had an NBA League Pass subscription last year, and it was absolutely fantastic and WAY better than the cable offerings (even if I paid for every single extra).

However, it's too expensive for me (I had it as a gift).

I'd love to pay $5/mo or something and get live motorsports racing, preferably most with commentary, and a slick archive of previous broadcasts. And it has to work on Linux without Flash.

And I want a pony.

Doesn't sound unreasonable at all. The tech is here, and cheap.

What's missing is a startup with deep pockets to start buying contracts.

Pay per view might work, but there is zero chance it would cost $1.99. Right now ESPN is effectively subsidized by cable bundles, so if that all collapses expect sports to get a lot more expensive before they get cheaper.

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