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NFL 'Game Pass' With On-Demand Game Broadcasts Coming to Apple TV

The reason people cord-cut is because they are unhappy with the cable system. Sure I can't watch everything I used to when I had cable, but it's a price I'm willing to pay to see more and more broadcasters change their ideology. There's no need to offer an alternative viewing option for broadcast sports when they know you're going to sign up for their cable packages anyway.
 
A few random thoughts:

1) Fantasy football is a horrible "game" which has very little to do with actual football. Too many "football fans" have the fantasy football mentality nowadays, and I have no respect for them.

2) It's nice to see that the NFL is taking baby steps towards giving people what they want. Sad that they're still not there yet. Sadder still that what people want has already been available for quite some time, so there's no technical issue here. The NFL GamePass that has been offered for several years to people outside of the USA offers everything mentioned here *PLUS* live games. Side note: Even if you live in the US, there's ways you can subscribe to the international version.

3) I'm a little unclear as to what's "new" here. I *think* it can be summed up as follows: a) They're now going to offer NFL GameRewind as a native app on the Apple TV, and b) they're dropping the "NFL GameRewind" name and are consolidating on the "NFL GamePass" name, even though this version of the offering won't offer live games. Did I miss anything?

4) Any self-respecting NFL fan who hasn't tried NFL GameRewind/GamePass should absolutely do so. It's awesome. I wish they'd add more older seasons. How awesome would it be if we could watch any NFL game that was ever played?

BTW, I don't think this article mentioned price. For a lot of you complainers, you're going to complain even more when you see the price.
 
hipnetic said:
A few random thoughts:


BTW, I don't think this article mentioned price. For a lot of you complainers, you're going to complain even more when you see the price.
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You aren't kidding.

Being in Canada I can get the international version with live games but the price is insane. I only used it because I used someone's account they got for free with Sunday Ticket. Quality is great but if I had to pay for it, I dunno.

MLB.TV is a reasonable price, NHL Game Center is reasonable (only outside of Canada ironically, we get a jacked up price now that a national Cable Company got both the TV and online streaming rights for Canada last year), but NFL Gamepass is more than double the price of either of those. It is perhaps the premier NA sports league but hard to justify that price when I can at least get some of those games free OTA with an antenna.
 
skinned66 said:
The NHL should be taking notes. What a POS GameCenter steams are.
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For the last three years the NHL has had a good 60fps stream, at least on ATV or XBMC/Kodi with plugin, but only certain devices got the 5400 kbps stream, while others were stuck with a 3000kbps 30fps stream. If you were on ATV though, it should have been good.

Neulion is the company that actually does the streaming for Gamepass, Gamecenter and NBA League Pass, and all are excellent and use the same tech, though I do find Gamepass had the better overlays, it was also PC only (or app).

MLB has their own in-house team for MLB.TV that does streaming (they actually helped HBO get NOW off the ground) and are also quite good.
 
Oh I was excited until I read the actual info. Folks, NFL2go.com for $25.00/year gives you all games live and access to game library on demand for the entire year. I subscribed last year thinking it was too good to be true. But with my fast ISP, I get HD games now. NO more looking for streams.
 
Blame Apple for enabling this garbage move by the NFL. If company leaders had the slightest bit of sense, they would not allow the NFL to use their platform without including live out of market games.

Anyone to purchases this useless app is part of the problem, by the way.
 
macduke said:
Do people really care that much about teams that aren't their home team? I guess people who move, but still, they would be in the minority.
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You must not get out much.

You do know the USA is a fairly large country, right?

States without NFL teams:
Oregon
Idaho
Montana
Wyoming
Nevada
Utah
New Mexico
Oklahoma
Nebraska
North Dakota
South Dakota
Iowa
Arkansas
Mississippi
Alabama
Kentucky
West Virginia
One of the Carolinas
Vermont
New Hampshire
Rhode Island
Maine

Now of course some of the areas in some of those states could be part of other "markets", especially New England where the states are small - but you *also* have people who have moved.

Anecdotally of course: In my immediate friends and family I can count over 20 people who are fans of teams out-of-market. I was a fan of my team for nearly 30 years before I made it to my first home game, and have never lived in-market.

Without live games this thing is stupid.
 
I wonder if we'll be able to watch our local teams on the local stations that will hopefully be coming out on Apple TV later this year. Like my Buccaneers on the local Fox station...
 
Same old BS from NFL. If the games aren't live, forget about it! Subscribing for a delayed showing is ridiculous. Absolutely disappointing but certainly not surprising for this greedy money hungry organization. When it's live, I, and many others, will subscribe!
 
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furi0usbee said:
Folks, NFL2go.com for $25.00/year gives you all games live and access to game library on demand for the entire year.
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Before you get too many people excited, you should point out that the website you mentioned is not a legitimately sanctioned thing.
 
bbeagle said:
Fantasy Sports are a HUGE market.

Each NFL game can be reduced to 30 minutes. Say you watched 2 games that week live, you can watch every other game for the week in just 7 hours. This is a huge market for people who want to rule their fantasy leagues by watching every player in every play and not just read numbers in the paper.
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I guess, but for me and my friends in the fantasy league I run the RedZone channel is more than enough.
 
JoeyEatWorld said:
I always find sports streaming through the Apple TV app just plain sucks. I have MLB TV and NHL Gamecenter and when I launch the apps for a baseball or hockey game it is constantly messing up, even if I have an amazing internet connection. I have tried it as well for NBA with the same results. I mostly launch the app from my phone or iPad, then use Air Play. It is much better that way.

Sports streaming really needs a boost in some ways. Especially going live. There are times when my stream for a hockey game gets almost 2-3 minutes of "on the clock" game time down from the real event, and I end up getting a notice on my phone of a score before I see it. It is mostly with Apple TV, and can be incredibly frustrating. But then again, my Apple TV and most of my friend's Apple TV's have the same issue.
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I stream MLB games and MLS games on my AppleTV2 all the time with none of the issues you mention.
 
What a cruel, cruel joke this is. I refuse to install DirectTV, bundled with 500 channels of crap I will never watch.

Someday, before I'm dead, I really hope that I will be able to stream live sports unfettered. But I'm getting pretty old already.
 
Arndroid said:
Lol I haven't watched a sporting event live in ten years and I watch a lot of sports.
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Really? I find i can't ignore people talking about the games, etc if I don't watch live. I can occasionally do a media black out if i have to time shift a game, but that's the exception for me.
 
AppleScruff1 said:
How much is Sunday Ticket? Do you pay monthly or for the season?
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Officially I think Sunday Ticket for TV viewing only is $250, but usually if you call up and threaten to cancel they will throw a few credits in to effectively reduce the price. Seems to be very account dependent. I've heard of people getting it for $99 while others were told to pound sand.

Then there is Sunday Ticket Max for $354 which includes TV + 1 computer/tablet/phone viewing plus Red Zone, Fantasy Game something or other, on demand express highlights after the game, picture in picture.

You can pay either in 6 equal installments or at the beginning of the season. No discount for paying all at once. Once the season starts you cannot cancel until the end of the season, so you can't pick and choose what week you want to watch.

For the regular one team fan the basic package comes out to about $15.50 per game assuming none of their team's games are on free TV. Obviously it's effectively more if their team has Sunday, Monday, or Thursday night games or is featured as the "national" Sunday day game.

Kind of a rip off when you consider NBA with 82 games or MLB with 162 games is $200 for the TV package. (It's much less if you just want online/mobile device viewing, which isn't available for NFL). But NFL is the most popular sports league in the U.S. by far so they can get away with it.
 
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