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Comment by remarkEon | Hacker News Reader

I would love to go back in time and tell my grandfather in the 1980s, who despite his age was pretty enamored with technology, that all of this newfangled stuff would actually make it more difficult for him to watch sports. You get cool and sleek looking "set top" devices, but oh sorry there's a labyrinth of "streaming" subscriptions you have to navigate to figure out how to watch your games. At some point, this kind of thing isn't helpful. I can steelman an argument that Apple and MLS doing this on a 10-year timeline at least gives us some consistency for where to go to watch MLS games (I'm not an MLS fan, I don't know how you'd watch it today), but more and more I give up on trying to figure out how to watch a NHL or MLB game without setting up some VPN to get around the blackout restrictions, and just pull out an old radio and listen on AM. I figure eventually that will go away too.

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> more and more I give up on trying to figure out how to watch a NHL or MLB game without setting up some VPN to get around the blackout restrictions

The point of this deal is that there are no blackout restrictions. Every game is on the service, regardless of where you are worldwide. If you want to watch MLS games, you subscribe to this Apple service, and whether you are in the parking lot outside the stadium or in Indonesia, the game is on it.

None of your complaints have to do with technology. No one is stopping NFL/NBA/MLB/NHL/MLS/US Tennis/etc from adding a button on their website or app that lets you pay and watch a game.

The thing stopping you from watching it easily is those organizations preferring to outsource broadcasting and ad sales to other media sellers who demand exclusivity terms that make it harder for you to watch.

I agree. Each entity pulling its material so it can launch it on its own platform (recent example: Paramount Plus), is ridiculous. 10 different streaming services, a good £80+ a month. Each with its own app that has a different look & feel and navigation.

May as well just go back to the 1 provider model (cable/sat). At least you’ve only got 1 EPG etc to deal with.

I’ll add that this fragmentation also encourages piracy.

There’s a great business opportunity for a startup of they can strike deals with all streaming services & offer a single view/epg/site that presents all of the services you’re subscribed to in a single consistent way.

It definitely encourages piracy. IPTV is booming, at least among European sports fans.

> May as well just go back to the 1 provider model (cable/sat). At least you’ve only got 1 EPG etc to deal with.

It is like that on the TV app for apple devices. You search what you want, you get the option to pay or subscribe, and you watch. The only hangup is when other content providers, like Netflix or sports organizations, choose not to allow Apple to search their content.

I was pretty young, but from what I remember of the 80s, other than Monday Night Football and playoffs, it was not possible to watch anything but local games at all, and many of the local games required add-on cable packages. Also, MLS didn't yet exist, so it wasn't possible to watch any MLS games at all.

The blackout restrictions suck where they apply, but at the same time, as a person who doesn't live in his hometown, without satellite or streaming packages, I wouldn't be able to watch the teams I care about at all except when they visit the teams that play where I live.

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