This is amazing considering how many people claim no content providers will supply content for IOS devices because of Apple's fee structure.
Priceless, but lacking context. There's no App Store on Apple TV right now, so App store rules don't apply and getting these things on Apple TV are clearly in Apples best interest. It will be more telling once Apple adds an app store to Apple TV.
Yeah Apple is probably letting them on there for free... I am sure that is what it is.
Terrific news. I hope they eventually open the AppleTV up to apps.
It's a fun snipe, but it doesn't evaluate facts. The costs for this product have already been paid, so this content now holds an extremely large profit margin. They can give 30% up to Apple and still keep the lion's share. It is a perfect arrangement. It is completely irrelevant to conflicts which may exist in the agency model or other models in which profits are too tight to give up 30% of the product cost.
So you are saying this is GREAT for content producers and only bad for resellers / middlemen.. That is good because we don't care about them.. If the content providers can make huge money delivering content directly to Apple it is a big win.
I completely understand this business reason. However, they just don't get it.
For example, in my NHL market - even if the game is not sold-out, it's still shown on TV on DirecTV, Dish Network, Time Warner Cable, Verizon FIOS, and sometimes TSN or NBC. There is no 'exclusivity' here.
AppleTV should just be another outlet for the NHL, like all the above outlets. The NHL should take my money and pay the NHL team the same Time Warner is. But the business practice of 'bundling of services' seems to be the only reason this still exists. Someday, it'll change, it'll just take more time.
All those places are an outlet for a single tv channel. They don't all pay their own rights fee. They all carry the local channel which pays right fees to the local team to carry their game. If people are getting the games from elsewhere then the value to the television network is less, and they will want to pay less for the rights fees. At this point the leagues and teams are not confident enough that the significantly reduced right fees they would get offset what the networks/channels will pay for the games. All the contracts with the tv channels and networks give them exclusivity agreements for airing the broadcast in the local area.
Here in Dallas channel 21 and Fox Sports Southwest share the Mavericks broadcast. They, combined, have the rights to air all of the local mavericks games, except for those that are part of the game of the week contracts with TNT etc... If people in Dallas could just get the Mavericks on AppleTv, then they would not be watching it on channel 21, for example, so channel 21 would want to pay less money for the rights.
At some point it will tip to be worthwhile and you will have direct abilities, but with the fragmentation of the tv world over the past 20 years, sports are worth more than ever. While audiences for everything else have shrunk, sports audiences have stayed the same which has turned them into monsters for ratings, which means they get top dollars from tv networks and local channels.
The tv networks and local channels pay too much money right now, so they are not going to allow for any local competition.
As others have touched on, though, I believe you can watch any of the baseball games like 90 minutes after they air , regardless of blackout rules.. So that could be worthwhile to some people. Personally I don't watch any sports events live anyways, I dvr them so I can fast forward them and watch them much more quickly...
TV!
