Tennis has moved solely to pay. Boxing has moved solely to streaming (DAZN of the UK primarily). Cycling's grand evens are premium. NASCAR has team complaints about the premium races, and INDYCAR took the anger of the premium races from 2022-24 to new heights with a Fox network deal for all 17 weekends.
The Obamas control Netflix, and have given them exclusive game in MLB and the 2027 and 2031 FIFA Women's World Cup tournaments, sponsored by the Saudi government.
Question is: Is it time to review "Home Box Office, Inc. vs Federal Communications Commission" of 1977? Is antisiphoning a more serious concern now because of the effect where now you effectively have something similar to "if you want to buy these short stories for literature, you must buy an adult X-rated magazine"?
Media experts trace boxing's decline to premium pay television. Premium pay is taking over everything because there are no rules, and they can impose whatever pornographic programming they want. It's a way to get you to buy their smut.
I first saw this a few years ago when the Tour de France bicycle race moved from NBC to (mostly) Peacock. The trend has accelerated and now involves most major sports, especially football and baseball. To get a lot of NFL games you need to have Amazon Prime or some other streaming service. You turn on ESPN and see them playing c*rnhole, some form of tag, or golf with a kind of baseball bat rather than regular golf clubs.
It's not in the public interest to subsidize sports unavailable over-the-air for "free".
I guess my age is giving me away on this one - fantasy football ruined my pleasure of the NFL almost 30 years ago; the last 10 years has removed my interest altogether. Baseball is my favorite - only listen on radio as I will not pay to watch, whether in the stands or on TV - I tried last year and it cost my wife and I $250+ to not see great effort baseball.
The pay for watching (which has been active for a while) and all the gambling ads connected to engaging the consumer to watch has driven me away. That bookends the entitled opinions and virtue signaling that has taken place in sport the last 10 years as well.
Fox aquired 1/3 of Penske Entertainment, who owns Indycar, on July 31, 2025.
I quit watching the MFL back in the mid-80s. I’m not going to start watching it again so I can pay for what used to be free my entire life.
The NFL Network re-airs the streamed game that night around 11 pm central and again at 2 pm the next day.
They can argue that point.
I’m very glad I no longer care about any spectator sports enough to pay for it on tv in whatever form. The Olympics died for me in 2012 and 2014. Last SB I watched was pre covid. I won’t rule out watching completely if it’s say some social gathering but those instances now are very rare. Back some 30 years ago I watched it all and I have lots of memories but that’s it.
Any team that gets public money (or tax abatements, or refunds), should be banned from showing any game ONLY on streaming, it should be on the same public airwaves that gave them all that money.
Let them shift to all the pay channels. They will lose viewership.
I don’t have or want cable TV so i subscribe to the Phillies last year via MLB.tv this year it is Phillies.TV. At $25 a month it is a lot less than comcast or verizon monthly TV. With LG tv i have about 40 movie channels and lots of other content for free. Antennae pulls in about 75 channels. Watching todays preseason game now.
Easy solution. Folks could stop gambling, turn off the games, and go to Church on Sunday.
If I want to watch professional football players, there are plenty of games available on Saturdays from the Big 10 (because they wear shoes, that’s as high as the league schools can count) and the SEC (where they don’t wear shoes but don’t try to count). And there are always a few games from the teams on the Atlantic coast of California and the Texas prairies.
This. Is what people are calling Washington D.C.(Congress) about.