The Future Of Football Viewing
It feels like we are heading for some sort of snap in the next decade. I don’t know where it will be, or what exactly will cause it, but football feels like it is being stretched too far in too many ways, with no end in sight.
When I was a kid football was on 3 standard channels and cable got one. When I was in college, you could pay a few hundred bucks and get every single game on Direct TV. Now football is broadcast over those same basic channels, but also over multiple streaming networks. Amazon games. Netflix. Peacock exclusive playoff games. We have Nickelodeon games. Disney games. Youtube gets Sunday Ticket, but there are limitations to it that Direct TV never had.
Football used to be two days a week, Sunday, with a single MNF game. Then we got Thursday games, which over a decade later are still easy to forget about by accident. But this year we have more Saturday games, MNF double headers, Christmas Eve games, Christmas Day games, a Black Friday game, and now, a fucking THANKSGIVING EVE game. Thanksgiving Eve isn’t a thing! Fuck off!
The London game was a single blip on the schedule at first. This year, we have 9. Australia, Rio, London (3x), Paris, Munich, Madrid, and Mexico City. How long till we get a game in Riyadh? Tokyo? Rome? Tel Aviv?
The season is stretching. We got our 17th game, and the 18th feels inevitable. It doesn’t feel out of the question that we get an 8th playoff seed either. Football is getting away with all of this because of how monumentally popular it is, but the strain has to have a break point somewhere. How many people are going to start peeling off, bit by bit, as actually watching the sport becomes more expensive and cumbersome? The line can’t go up forever.
I was a kid during the golden age of piracy. My dad was a big Napster guy and half his CD rack was burned CDs of stuff he stole before it got shut down. When I was in college the student-led cybersecurity department was actually the leader of the local pirate server, which they secretly wheeled around from location to location to avoid getting caught. It allowed anyone who had access to share with the local school network. Torrents and such were huge.
Then companies finally figured out how to fight it: legal convenience. Piracy has risks and is not very user-friendly to newbies. iTunes, Spotify, Netflix, etc gave us a ton of legal and easy to access media at our fingertips for an affordable fee. If you were a normal person, it was now easy to get what you wanted without the risks. Now that has gone away and I wonder if we are heading into a silver age of piracy.
I could pay all that money to a bunch of different services that are all slowly getting more expensive with spottier quality control, or I could put on a few internet defense systems and go to a single site, click a few links, and get all of those games at acceptable quality, for free. And this is just sports. How many more people are going to do this again for TV shows and movies?
Pirating sports games is not a pleasant experience. I’d wager most of us under the age of 45 have tried it at least once. You gotta take care to put up all your adblockers and run your malware checks, you gotta be careful what you click on, you get small windows and laggy playbacks, lower quality, the streams die all the time, and god forbid you accidentally glance at the chat window, stuffed to the gills with stuff that makes you question humanity’s right to exist. Yet it becomes more and more attractive as sports get strung out, with late-stage capitalism trying to squeeze every dollar out of us instead of giving users quality service.
I love football. I like watching every game I can. Even terrible games hit. But this is getting exhausting. I don’t want to spend 4 nights a week watching football. I don’t want to pay for 6 different services to see my team suck ass on a dozen different broadcasts. Every rope holding the NFL up is getting more and more strain on it, and I’m just wondering if they will pull any of them back in time before one breaks.
Yes, this past season, I basically only watched Sunday games unless there was a *really* compelling reason to check out a game on a different night (e.g. my team was playing…or maybe a marquee match-up with heavy playoff implications). I don’t have it in me to have so many nights of the week be dominated by football, and anyways, the legal way to watch all of them is insanity and the illegal way to watch all of them is not a good experience. So…I just pretend those games aren’t real for the most part.
“…and I’m just wondering if they will pull any of them back in time before one breaks.”
You already know the answer to this question.
I was speaking to a coworker once who followed baseball, and he had made some passing comment revealing he didn’t catch up on that week’s games yet, and I was like, “Wait, you’re a Red Sox fan, your office is covered in Red Sox memorabilia, and you don’t watch every game?”
And then he told me how frequently they play, and I remember just being mortified. I have no interest in a sport that happens so frequently I can’t even realistically watch every game my team plays. I agree, that’s where we’re headed. Bigger rosters, two starting qbs will legit become a thing in a 35 game season. That Kurt Warner / Matt Leinart experiment was just ahead of its time.
Oh Jake Paul’s calling this game?
Well, still better then Pat Jackoffee
The NFL are definitely getting high off their own supply. It’s hard to not feel like an old curmudgeon, and not want it back to AFC on CBS, NFC on Fox, NBC gets Sunday night and ABC (ESPN at worst) gets Monday night. 1-2 international games in preferably nearby countries, and that’s that. All these moves are meant for the NFL to say they have international fans and support, but it’s enshittifying the product to the very people who actually care for the sport.
Roger Goodell has said he does not believe there is an oversaturation point for the game.
I’ve hit mine. I’ll watch the Vikings (I’m in the Twin Cities, so all the games are on local broadcast) and if all of my weekend housework is done, I’ll watch some or all of the Sunday nighter.
I still go to one or two games a year.
I’ve cut down, and stopped playing fantasy sports, and I think I’m better off for it.
I watch the Falcon’s, I will turn the Sunday night game on usually but only as background noise, Monday night is hit and miss, Thursdays come on if I remember. Contrast that to a decade ago when I consumed all football, now I don’t even bother trying to watch the full Sunday slate. Even College has oversaturated the landscape for me (and the big games start too late on east coast). I know part of this is my living a normal well-adjusted life with family, but I am not the only one in my social circle who feels\acts this way.
Good one Dave. I agree, unfrotunately it’ll be a long time before things change for the better. The comic takes place in 2029. Even if things get bad enough then that a decent amount of people stop watching games, it’ll be a decade before it’s enough the NFL cares and another decade before they fix it.
Luckily the NFL has been good about giving local TV the games of local teams even when they are on streaming, however I know that screws fans living outside of the area. The NFL should setup the contracts to split everything. For example CBS and Amazon can get the AFC games while Fox & Netflix get NFL.
I miss the days of a consistent schedule. The Packers this year have games guaranteed 5 days of the week (Sun, Mon, Wed, Thurs, Fri) and essentially has a coin flip on whether or not week 18 will hit a 6th day of the week with Saturday. One of the games is the day before Thanksgiving and then another is Christmas… I am finding myself looking more into skipping games and attempting to record since I would rather spend meaningful time with my family instead. Which then I have to media blackout myself so I can enjoy it when I have a moment at night, which is almost nigh impossible in the age we live in.
The modern piracy is just subdividing all your subscriptions around a family that lives nowhere near each other.
Sunday Ticket getting turned to mush is such a let down. If I’m YoutubeTV I’d be pretty mad that all the streamed games are suddenly on a competitor’s service with more added every year. Would not be surprised if we have a Veterans Day Salute To Service Game Exclusive to Roku in two years time.
Buffering and stream delay are all that’s keeping pirated streams from being the hands-down best viewing experience, and some official broadcasts are falling below that standard now.
Also, Redzone has fuckin’ ads now.
That said, NFL+ is $15/mo for redzone (plus all rpimetime games on mobile), which is cheaper than it ever was on cable. Also TNF is free on Twitch. Get a TV antenna for $30 and get all your local games for free (that’s your team’s games, one more every week on CBS or Fox, and SNF). And use your computer for your TV (an old one will do fine) to bypass smart TV BS.
TLDR, it’s cheaper in many ways to watch NFL right now, but it’s a lot more complicated and who knows how long it’ll last.
I feel like in some ways, it’s already oversaturated. The offseason used to be a nice break to think about other things, now the draft is a multi-day event, and the schedule release is dragged out longer than Lebron’s Decision. I don’t care about either of those, and too many people I know want to talk about nothing but those the day after. I’ve already given up on most weeknight games (other than Thanksgiving) because of kids’ sports and activities and stuff.
Sundays are the only time I can sit down for a couple hours and watch a game, but even then, the games feel like they have gotten longer with more commercial breaks and having advertising and sponsorships crammed into everything (“This commercial break sponsored by Progressive Insurance” and “Now, from the Ikea Furniture sports desk, here’s the Pepsi halftime show sponsored by Home Depot” and “The Chevrolet Kickoff from the K9 Advantage flea and tick collar kicking tee”)
I’m also turned off by all the fantasy stats and betting stuff everywhere. I just want to shut off my brain and watch some big dudes in spandex bump into each other.
I sometimes feel better about some of the modern piracy sites than I do about a number of the streaming platforms out there. For a time, I was against personally using piracy because I wanted to support the things I liked. Unfortunately, everything is getting more expensive and more ad-ridden, so if I’m gonna get junk no matter what, I might as well not pay for it. I’ve also found some ways to hide those awful chats so I can focus on what used to be the important part, the actual game itself.
Sometimes I really hate the timeline that I find myself in. I want to go back to the one where there was a cornucopia on my underwear’s brand logo. I’d like to hope that Junior Seau is busy coaching somewhere in that timeline.
The fact that the term “late stage capitalism” turned 100 years old last year should really make one question it’s usefulness as a concept.
Dude, you’re so right… A few years back I bought Game Pass through an european account, and used VPN to europe to be able to go around the blackouts. But even that was so inconvenient, only being able to watch on my laptop and not on my TV (no VPN app on my TV at the time). I gave up. I will gladly pay the NFL up to 500 USD every year to be able to watch every single game without restrictions. But if they will not take my money, I’ll just watch fewer games or outright pirate them.
If your laptop has an hdmi port you can mirror it to the tv. Close the chat window, go full screen, it works great.
I mean yes I did do that, but it is the convenience you know? If I have to VPN to europe, get and use an european credit card, not use my Roku TV but instead drag out an HDMI cable. If I have to go to such lengths to give them my money, it is clear they don’t want it.
I feel hesitant to make a political reference given this is four days before the next president (if we have one) is sworn in.
Thank god for some honesty about how fucking dogshit pirate streams actually are. Like, yes, they’re free, and they’re being hosted in places that can’t easily be targeted for takedowns, so you’re not going to get a good product regardless, but teenagers on Reddit who’ve never watched an official broadcast in their damn lives act like these streams are crystal clear 4K with no buffering and no drops, and that is simply not the case even on the biggest platforms. If that’s your experience you’re simply lying. They’re horrible, and what the poor quality combined with the convoluted nature of watching games officially results in is me simply not watching anything but my team each week.
Sometimes I really hate the timeline that I find myself in. I want to go back to the one where there was a cornucopia on my underwear’s brand logo. I’d like to hope that Junior Seau is busy coaching somewhere in that timeline.
8 teams would kill any drive to get the 1 seed and the extra bye week.
NFL peaked with the 16 game season, 6 playoff team format. At this rate the only way to combat the expansions is to add 4-8 more teams but that’ll result in a watered down product in spite of profits.
The NBA play in tournament style may work but you still lose the drive to get the #1 seed beyond home field
The oversaturation of TV time coupled with the gouging on ticket prices wont be the death of the product, they’re already looking past this generation of football fans to the next one, to whom this wont be unusual, it will be the normal. Its what they’ll grow up with. And whilst I hate that, I recognise a pattern when I see it (NBA / MLB / EPL etc).
It will be worse when its a season that you know your team is going to suck but you’ve got to endure even more terrible games. Though I doubt Jets and Browns fans will notice.
Could we add more teams to feed the extra games? We could move to a more soccer based team system where we have relegation. Maybe t
Forget the difficulty in watching. They are heading towards the breaking point of the players, both physically and mentally. A 53-man roster is barely deep enough as it is to cover regular-season attrition. The strain of playing more games, playing international games, playing on different days of the week (so you can’t establish a routine), all while everyone’s pushing the limits of the human frame to get bigger, stronger, faster – it’s too much. The playoffs will suffer in quality and even more than now the winner will be determined by who’s healthiest, not who plays best. We’re already seeing NBA-style “load management” creep in in the form of multi-player rotations at positions. Expanding roster limits will help but at a certain point the talent pool just isn’t deep enough. The NFL holds one of the most lucrative sports monopolies in the world and they’re going to destroy it because they’re STILL greedy for more.
Maybe the NFL will kill the golden goose, the way Boxing did when pay for view started fragmenting audiences.
Take away the easy to find and free stuff that attracts new fans and the sport will slowly fade away from public consciousness.
I already watch much less football than I have in years past. I don’t even bother with RedZone anymore. I used to get together with friends basically every Sunday for football. Now I watch Patriots games and maybe Sunday Night Football and that’s about it.
I got a cheap chrome book so I don’t have to worry about malware, use an HDMI cable to mirror it to my tv, close the chat window, and go full screen. It generally works pretty well as there are 4 or 5 sites that have pretty decent quality and consistency, with all the games and red zone. I sometimes have to restart the stream once in a while.
It is mildly inconvenient sometimes but it beats paying for NFL network (we mostly watch red zone if our team isn’t playing) and all the others.
They will NEVER do it but most fans would love a Sunday Ticket where you only pay for your team’s games.
Ditto college football.
I realized that the reasons they won’t are many but the main one is if they did that, the cable and streaming packages would die.
For example, I have YoutubeTV solely to watch college football and the NFL (via Sunday Ticket and local). If I could just buy a stand alone package of my teams games then I’d cut that package immediately and so would millions of other people.
I’ve been living out of my home team’s market for almost 13 years and every year the hoops I have had to jump through to watch/listen to them get more and more egregious. I miss the days when I could simply go to the team website and click the radio broadcast button, but eventually that button started getting harder and harder to find until one day it was behind a paywall. It’s been piracy ever since, and I don’t plan on looking back.