Four Brewers games in the first half of 2023 airing exclusively on Apple TV ($)

[KeithStone53151]

https://www.cnbc.com/2023/03/22/apple-to-require-subscription-to-watch-friday-night-baseball-this-year.html

There are 4 brewers games in the first half of 2023 airing exclusively on apple TV, and these now require a $7/month subscription to watch. I wonder how long until youtube tv follows suit with their exclusive broadcasts. Peacock and ESPN as well. A large chunk of baseball's viewership is older people who don't want to deal with having 5 apps with 5 monthly subscription fees to watch every brewer game. If these companies have any success, the number of other providers that try to get their foot in the door with a small package of games will only grow. This is a problem...

[TURBO]

Nice job, way to turn off MLB viewers by making it expensive and difficult to tune in.

To be honest, this sucks.

[MrTPlush]

The NFL does this and yet, the world has not yet imploded. They do it for premium marquee match-ups for night games. 

4/162 games the entire year. .024% of all games.  I am betting 99.999% of baseball fans watch less than 158 regular season games a year. Heck, I bet most fans watches less than 25% of games.

[sveumrules]

Pretty sure they broadcast a couple games exclusively on AppleTV last year too.

[wiguy94]

13 minutes ago, sveumrules said:

Pretty sure they broadcast a couple games exclusively on AppleTV last year too.

They did but last year you just needed an Apple ID to watch. This year you need to purchase the Apple+ subscription to have access to the game. Put more games behind an additional paywall.

[KeithStone53151]

27 minutes ago, MrTPlush said:

The NFL does this and yet, the world has not yet imploded. They do it for premium marquee match-ups for night games. 

4/162 games the entire year. .024% of all games.  I am betting 99.999% of baseball fans watch less than 158 regular season games a year. Heck, I bet most fans watches less than 25% of games.

Worth noting, it's 4 for the first half. So roughly 4/81. I get it's still a small number but it's slightly more than you're noting.

This certainly could be the 0.001 you are referring to. My father in law watches every game, he tapes games on cable when he can't watch live and watches later. He's obviously older, getting him to even figure out how to navigate to the game on apple tv will take some doing...much less explaining he's gotta pay for it. And one subscription service...yes it's $7. But when it's $7/month for maybe 4-5 services that have some games, it's a bit obnoxious. And that seems the trajectory. And people like my father in law are probably their core viewers. Alienating them with these hoops to simply watch a game is not smart. Apple TV money now can't be worth long term decline of the sport.

[TURBO]

1 hour ago, MrTPlush said:

The NFL does this and yet, the world has not yet imploded. They do it for premium marquee match-ups for night games. 

4/162 games the entire year. .024% of all games.  I am betting 99.999% of baseball fans watch less than 158 regular season games a year. Heck, I bet most fans watches less than 25% of games.

4 games the first half of the season, right?  So maybe 8 for the season?

Either way, it will probably just become more and more, and again, the more difficult they make it to tune in, the more people will just stop watching.

I have cable, I will not be streaming games on any other pay services, cable costs enough as it is.  A nickle here, a dime there, it all adds up.

[brewmann04]

Sorry  I am a brewers fan living in NY I purchased the baseball package and refuse to pay for anything more 

[brewcrewdue80]

6 hours ago, KeithStone53151 said:

Worth noting, it's 4 for the first half. So roughly 4/81. I get it's still a small number but it's slightly more than you're noting.

This certainly could be the 0.001 you are referring to. My father in law watches every game, he tapes games on cable when he can't watch live and watches later. He's obviously older, getting him to even figure out how to navigate to the game on apple tv will take some doing...much less explaining he's gotta pay for it. And one subscription service...yes it's $7. But when it's $7/month for maybe 4-5 services that have some games, it's a bit obnoxious. And that seems the trajectory. And people like my father in law are probably their core viewers. Alienating them with these hoops to simply watch a game is not smart. Apple TV money now can't be worth long term decline of the sport.

So in a 7month season you're talking paying $49+ for the privilege of 8games. And it probably sees a jump in price to $15 before the season ends in that recurring bill sneak the added cost.  Just like my previous cable bills. 49-69-79-109-119 to stopped that service permanently.

Not a cool time we living in these days the cost to watch a few hours of television each day.

 

[Underachiever]

And not all games are created equal. I would say Friday evenings are more likely to be a game I’d devote an evening to watch, as opposed to a weekday day game or a night game when I might check in, but not watch every pitch.

[owbc]

I say bring on the future. Let us pay for only what we want. If AppleTV has enough content to justify the price then I’ll pay for it. If not, I won’t. 

[Jake McKibbin]

12 hours ago, MrTPlush said:

The NFL does this and yet, the world has not yet imploded. They do it for premium marquee match-ups for night games. 

4/162 games the entire year. .024% of all games.  I am betting 99.999% of baseball fans watch less than 158 regular season games a year. Heck, I bet most fans watches less than 25% of games.

If it happens to one of the games I can watch at a reasonable hour from Ireland, I'd be pissed. but it is what it is. Over here  we're used to too many pies for sports broadcasting, and needing multiple services to se them all

 

Premier league football (I refuse to call it s*****) - BT Sports, Sky sports, and no broadcast of any game at 3pm Saturday

Rugby - Premier sports, BBC (Free), Sky Sports, BT Sports

 

It's a ballache but they sell games as packages now,

[Brock Beauchamp]

I just don’t see the big deal about this. 30 years ago, most/many games weren’t even televised. Not being able to watch every game on a single service was a short-lived phenomena that had its own drawbacks, which is part of the reason why Bally is failing right now.

Consider subscribing to Apple TV for a month or two. It has some truly outstanding content, like Ted Lasso (one of the best shows of the past decade), Severance, and Mythic Quest. 

[Brock Beauchamp]

3 hours ago, Jake McKibbin said:

Premier league football (I refuse to call it s*****) - BT Sports, Sky sports, and no broadcast of any game at 3pm Saturday

Hey now, I know you're Irish so this probably aligns with your general worldview anyway but don't blame us for soccer, the English called it that first. Blame the English!

[Jake McKibbin]

1 hour ago, Brock Beauchamp said:

Hey now, I know you're Irish so this probably aligns with your general worldview anyway but don't blame us for soccer, the English called it that first. Blame the English!

Actually created by Oxbridge students, which is baffling as Oxford is as far from a "football" crowd as you could get!

Fair point, though I'll stick take issue with calling a sport football when you barely kick the thing

[KeithStone53151]

3 hours ago, Brock Beauchamp said:

I just don’t see the big deal about this. 30 years ago, most/many games weren’t even televised. Not being able to watch every game on a single service was a short-lived phenomena that had its own drawbacks, which is part of the reason why Bally is failing right now.

Consider subscribing to Apple TV for a month or two. It has some truly outstanding content, like Ted Lasso (one of the best shows of the past decade), Severance, and Mythic Quest. 

A lot of the defense of apple TV seems to assume it's just this cluster of games with apple TV. There are also games exclusively on ESPN, Peacock, and Youtube TV...so far......for a game that ratings are declining and viewers are generally losing interest, making your fan base pay for currently 4 streaming services to watch all the games is not good for viewership. And give it time, I'm sure paramount plus, TNT, amazon, etc will get involved on baseball sooner than later.

It also comes off really dirty to me that Apple is doing this with games, this reeks of a business model of trying to get elderly people to subscribe to watch a game and forget to unsubscribe(or not be able to figure out how)...and keep paying $7/month in perpetuity.

[Brock Beauchamp]

4 minutes ago, KeithStone53151 said:

A lot of the defense of apple TV seems to assume it's just this cluster of games with apple TV. There are also games exclusively on ESPN, Peacock, and Youtube TV...so far......for a game that ratings are declining and viewers are generally losing interest, making your fan base pay for currently 4 streaming services to watch all the games is not good for viewership. And give it time, I'm sure paramount plus, TNT, amazon, etc will get involved on baseball sooner than later.

It also comes off really dirty to me that Apple is doing this with games, this reeks of a business model of trying to get elderly people to subscribe to watch a game and forget to unsubscribe(or not be able to figure out how)...and keep paying $7/month in perpetuity.

I don't know, it just doesn't really bother me. I went into streaming with eyes wide open. I always assumed this is how the world would end up and I still think it's better than the cable model of paying for a bunch of channels and things I do not want with no way to easily unsubscribe when I wasn't using it.

My standard MO with most streaming services is to buy a month and then immediately cancel. That way if I'm not using it, I'm not paying for it. It beats the hell out of paying $110/mo for cable when I literally only watch baseball.

[MrTPlush]

14 minutes ago, KeithStone53151 said:

A lot of the defense of apple TV seems to assume it's just this cluster of games with apple TV. There are also games exclusively on ESPN, Peacock, and Youtube TV...so far......for a game that ratings are declining and viewers are generally losing interest, making your fan base pay for currently 4 streaming services to watch all the games is not good for viewership. And give it time, I'm sure paramount plus, TNT, amazon, etc will get involved on baseball sooner than later.

It also comes off really dirty to me that Apple is doing this with games, this reeks of a business model of trying to get elderly people to subscribe to watch a game and forget to unsubscribe(or not be able to figure out how)...and keep paying $7/month in perpetuity.

Okay, who doesn't have ESPN though? If you don't have ESPN then you weren't watching games in the first place. Also, haven't the Youtube games been on Youtube, not just Youtube TV? Those have been completely free for anyone with internet access. Maybe I am wrong, that is definitely how they started though. 

Either way, at least they picked the absolute worst four games possible on the entire schedule for Friday nights. I mean, Royals/Reds/Pirates? 

 

 

[KeithStone53151]

10 minutes ago, MrTPlush said:

Okay, who doesn't have ESPN though? If you don't have ESPN then you weren't watching games in the first place. Also, haven't the Youtube games been on Youtube, not just Youtube TV? Those have been completely free for anyone with internet access. Maybe I am wrong, that is definitely how they started though. 

Either way, at least they picked the absolute worst four games possible on the entire schedule for Friday nights. I mean, Royals/Reds/Pirates? 

 

 

Youtube games are free...for now. If this apple thing is successful, that might change. The current situation for this year is a bit annoying for non-tech savvy people but its workable. It gets more and more annoying though if youtube charges and if other streaming options get involved. I feel like 3-5 years from now you might need to pay for 5-6 services to get all the games.

And to Brock's point, it's one thing for you and I to deal with the streaming stuff. I'm such a frugal person, during the world cup qualifiers I kept creating a new email address just to sign up for paramount plus free trial and then cancelled immediately after the game because I didn't want to pay. Even aside from that, signing up for a streaming service and cancelling is like breathing for me...super easy. I'm a bit more sensitive to elderly people having to deal with that stuff than you seem to be. And the demographic that watches baseball leans towards the elderly quite a bit.

[Brock Beauchamp]

15 minutes ago, KeithStone53151 said:

Youtube games are free...for now. If this apple thing is successful, that might change. The current situation for this year is a bit annoying for non-tech savvy people but its workable. It gets more and more annoying though if youtube charges and if other streaming options get involved. I feel like 3-5 years from now you might need to pay for 5-6 services to get all the games.

And to Brock's point, it's one thing for you and I to deal with the streaming stuff. I'm such a frugal person, during the world cup qualifiers I kept creating a new email address just to sign up for paramount plus free trial and then cancelled immediately after the game because I didn't want to pay. Even aside from that, signing up for a streaming service and cancelling is like breathing for me...super easy. I'm a bit more sensitive to elderly people having to deal with that stuff than you seem to be. And the demographic that watches baseball leans towards the elderly quite a bit.

I get your point about toggling streaming services. It's a byproduct of the generational divide in media consumption we're currently seeing. Even though I'm in my mid-40s, as a tech person I tend to consume products in a style younger than my age. And I hated cable for years and years. I couldn't wait to get out from under that model because I simply don't watch shows/movies on a schedule and only cared about sports. I was throwing a bunch of money out the window every month and it only got worse in the winter when there was no baseball to watch and my cable box stayed off for weeks at a time.

And it's going to be a bumpy ride for awhile. What is the actual future of channels like Fox News and CNN? Does anyone under 50 care even a little bit about cable news? If anything, I think younger people have come to detest those channels and, kinda like baseball, they have to continually buy into older generations more aggressively, further alienating younger generations.

It's an interesting world we live in and a lot of things are going to change. The somewhat premature death of Bally Sports has accelerated some really tough decisions baseball should have been addressing years ago. Like a lot of traditional media, baseball has a real age problem on its hands.

Speaking of YouTube, don't expect them to change their model. Their entire model is an advertising ecosystem, kind of like a modern interpretation of old network television. Their goal is to convince you to access their app/channel out of habit, which is how they make their money.

[MrTPlush]

26 minutes ago, KeithStone53151 said:

And the demographic that watches baseball leans towards the elderly quite a bit.

Shouldn't they try and cater a bit to the younger generations so there are actually fans 10 years from now? 80 year old Harold who pays $300 for cable and only knows how to work three buttons on a remote is not what we need to focus on long term. People that don't have smart TVs or think streaming services are too complicated are a dying breed that will be left behind. I don't know the exact cutoff, but at some age you start going below it and you won't find a single person with cable. 

Now, as far as games starting to cover multiple streaming services with exclusive games...that is a delicate balance. You may need multiple streaming services to watch every single game, but as I said before, no one even does that. Now September it may be a little annoying if a game in the last few weeks gets stuck on this and we are actually in a tight race. Because those aren't just one of a 162 games at that point. 

[TURBO]

There are a lot of people who tune into just about every single game during the season.  I know a lot of them, and we aren't just talking about 80 year olds.  Several people I worked with, in their 20's and 30's tune into al most every game.  I know guys in their 40's and 50's who tune into every game.  Does everyone who tunes in watch all 9 innings, probably not, but thinking there is no one who tunes into almost every game is just not true.

 

[MrTPlush]

18 minutes ago, TURBO said:

There are a lot of people who tune into just about every single game during the season.  I know a lot of them, and we aren't just talking about 80 year olds.  Several people I worked with, in their 20's and 30's tune into al most every game.  I know guys in their 40's and 50's who tune into every game.  Does everyone who tunes in watch all 9 innings, probably not, but thinking there is no one who tunes into almost every game is just not true.

 

Okay, so not every game? That is the point.

Even missing one game every other week would be over a dozen games you aren't watching every year. Missing a single game every week would amount to nearly 30 games you are not watching.

 

[MVP2110]

1 hour ago, MrTPlush said:

Okay, so not every game? That is the point.

Even missing one game every other week would be over a dozen games you aren't watching every year. Missing a single game every week would amount to nearly 30 games you are not watching.

 

I usually only watch a few games a week when my life schedule allows me to, but it is certainly annoying that when I can sit down and watch a game if I'm not able to. I pay for cable to be able to watch Bucks, Brewers, Badgers on BTN, etc. I also watch a lot of TV shows and subscribe to 5 separate streaming services. Friday nights are one of the best nights to just sit back and watch a game so it'll certainly be annoying come June when 3 separate Friday games are on Apple, I'll probably suck it up and subscribe for a month to be able to watch but no other sport makes it this difficult to watch just a regular season game

[MrTPlush]

17 minutes ago, MVP2110 said:

I usually only watch a few games a week when my life schedule allows me to, but it is certainly annoying that when I can sit down and watch a game if I'm not able to. I pay for cable to be able to watch Bucks, Brewers, Badgers on BTN, etc. I also watch a lot of TV shows and subscribe to 5 separate streaming services. Friday nights are one of the best nights to just sit back and watch a game so it'll certainly be annoying come June when 3 separate Friday games are on Apple, I'll probably suck it up and subscribe for a month to be able to watch but no other sport makes it this difficult to watch just a regular season game

6% of the Packers schedule was on Amazon. Another 6% was on NFL Network. So 12% of the Packers schedule was on channels/streaming service many people do not have. Of course, a single NFL game in a schedule is huge and each game has huge implications. So simply shrugging your shoulders and not watching that game is not as easy as missing out on 3% of the Brewers schedule in rather meaningless June games.

You aren't going to lose an ounce of sleep missing these four games by not getting Apple TV, the same cannot be said for a Packers fan not watching the Giants or Titans game last year. 

 

This is annoying, but hardly something problematic for watching the sport or having interest in it.