Just thinking about a news I just read about Steve Ballmer rejecting the Clippers tv deal and turning into a stream service What are the chance of that news turning to the rockets, astros and texans just thinking outside the box Steve Ballmer has turned down a $60 million-per-year offer for local television rights and instead plans to start his own streaming network. Ballmer would be the first owner of a major United States' sports team to deliver games to consumers via a Web-based service. The Los Angeles Clippers are currently aired to approximately five million Los Angeles-area homes through Fox Sports' Prime Ticket. Prime Ticket currently pays the team a rights fee of $25 million a year — and offered a 140 percent increase, to $60 million. “Steve Ballmer has not renewed his deal with Fox,” said one source close to the situation. “He’s looking at a [digital] subscription channel.”
This is where I can actually chime in to be a source for cfnet. Ballmer is doing this as a prototype streaming network for the whole league. All my contacts are saying this is one of the reasons he bought in at such a high rate. He is being given first shot at proving a streaming system for the entire league, and he gets to all the profits for other owners subscribing to his network. Dude's not an idiot. He ain't turning down $60m per year just to be charitable.
What? streaming video, on demand services? With the power of Ballmer behind it? Yes, he'll be taking on some big players. But he will be blacked out for all shows aired by the national NBA TV Contracts. He ain't competing with that. Just local.
A movement can be start at Clutchfans as a personal opinion i would love to see this streaming as a all Houston channel. Just putting my words and know what other fans think of this :grin:
I think it's not going to work - all those people who just have a TV and cable box aren't going to be able to watch the game on their big screen TV but rather have to watch it on a computer? I don't think that will work out too well unless you have some local broadcast to supplement it.
Also, to be clear, and BimaThug can confirm, the BRI calculation within the CBA grants all owners a share of all broadcast rights. Let's use the Knicks as an example. NY Knicks do not get more money just because they have higher TV revenue from being a major media city. However, Cablevision owns the Knicks, so they "pay" the NBA rights to air the Knicks games , but obviously they make a profit from that business of doing TV, and and they get back their portion of the BRI, since they own the Knicks. That is what Ballmer is doing.
Dumb move... No way the league would allow a direct competitor to their league pass as somebody mentioned. How does Balmer expect to get away with this?
Presumably they will be streaming non-national games to local fans i.e. the games that league pass blacks out. That and as mentioned before the NBA is probably headed in this direction, slowly but surely.
This may work for the (say) 50 and under crowd, but I imagine in LA there is a large demographic that is past that age and would not be all too happy about having to learn how to access a streaming service. Not to mention all the kids of those people that have to drop everything and go help mom/dad set it up. This is no longer always the case. With Apple TV, Amazon Fire and Google Chromecast and Roku there are any number of ways to get streaming service to the TV. Also the fact that "millennials" want everything on the go, on their big faced smart phones.
Streaming is popular because most millennials are cord cutters. I don't know too many friends, college aged right now that have a cable service. On the other hand EVERYONE has internet. On the other hand I would gladly pay per mo to watch only the Rockets and be able to stream them in Austin. I'm hoping this takes off.
Sports is the main reason people even still have cable so they can watch games in high quality and live. Do you really want to stream something that can lag out, buffer, be in less quality, and be slightly behind live cable? Horrible idea.
