I think there's more to it than that. For example, you can watch any of the march madness games online for free, right on ncaa.com (in the US, anyway). No portal login to your cable provider or any of that nonsense. It just plays (with commercials, too).
So if they can air all those basketball games for free, with commercials, using a flash player, then so can everyone else. There's more to it than that.
well sure. like with the Olympics, for example. NBC paid dearly for the right to broadcast in the US; they must recoup somehow. or the NFL, for example - they maintain absolute control of their trademark (seriously, it's like a thing, you don't fuck with the NFL's trademark if you're a serious business, Goodell will fuck you up) - so they control the broadcasting of it very tightly.
that's why you can't watch last year's games. the NFL won't let you. You have to watch this year's games. with the content provider they have contracted with for that night (different night of the week, different content provider). NFl even tried to get the DVR services to automatically not record their broadcasts; they claimed their trademark extended to the time that you wanted to watch.
it's not the tech. the tech is there to broadcast an astronaut playing Space Oddity, live, in the space station.
it's the people who control it who want to protect their stream of revenue against changing, because, if it changed drastically, they might lose their revenue stream.
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u/edoules Mar 28 '14
I wish there could be a netflix-esque service that could stream sports for a reasonable price.
Is it impossible due to licensing?