Watching Live sports has been a problem and it’s getting worse! 10 years ago, it was easy to access live sports. All you needed to do was own a cable package on your TV and then a sports event would be broadcasted on a channel such as CBS, NBC, ESPN, ABC, etc. Yet, you could only watch teams around your area or big games in sports such as the Super Bowl or a playoff game. In today’s world however, you can hardly find a sports game on TV. The only way to access all games is to pay for a subscription to a streaming service on top of paying for cable.
This year the NFL decided to try something new and show a playoff football game only on Peacock. Now, Peacock is cheaper than Apple TV and other streaming services but you still have to pay a fee. With the NFL’s experiment on putting a game online, it went horribly wrong. Many fans including me complained and the NFL reached an all-time low as the Chiefs Dolphins game only brought in 23 million viewers which is the 4th least amount of viewers for a playoff game since 2003. Also, why would you experiment with the defending Super Bowl champions and possibly the greatest team in the NFL, the Kansas City Chiefs? Did they do it to make people want to pay for it more because the team was better? Truthfully, if that was their plan, then it was a really bad one because it brought in only 5 million viewers more than the average viewership of a regular season NFL game which is 18 million. And, many people were the most excited for the Cheifs Dolphins game more than any other Wild Card weekend game until they found out they had to pay to watch it.x Sports marketing is going downhill and it needs to be fixed immediately before it is too late and they lose lots of their fans and even money.
The one that makes me mad the most though is when Caitlin Clark broke the record for most points in women’s college basketball history and that was only available on Hulu and Peacock. Women’s basketball is really trying to make a push and get more viewers in College and the WMBA and instead of putting one of the most interesting things available for everyone who enjoys sports, you put it on a very expensive streaming service.
See, I would not mind streaming services if you did not have to pay for them and cable but you have to pay for both. If we are going to move on from cable then move on. We don’t need to show games on both only show them on platforms or cable. Paying just for cable is ok, but having to pay for both can get very expensive and all the famous sports organizations should pick either one or the other.
It’s upsetting that watching sports games will cost you tons of money. However, the problem is easily fixable and I just don’t understand what these major sports leagues are doing. In the process, live sports are losing =loads of money due to fewer people watching games. Either keep sports games on cable TV or put them all on streaming platforms that everyone can afford.
