Watching sports is harder and more expensive than ever

There have never been more ways to consume content — and it’s never been more annoying to be a sports fan. Now we could be reaching the breaking point where the frustration of trying to watch sports is passing the desire to actually enjoy them. A new report shows that several NBA teams have had massive drops in viewership year-over-year.

In the case of the Chicago Bulls a major reason for this was moving to a new TV network which is exceedingly difficult for people to watch. It just adds to the annoyance that blocks fans from consuming their favorite teams.

Fractured media rights and convoluted deals have created a landscape where it’s damn near impossible to watch your favorite teams in an easy way. Seemingly every time you want to watch a team it’s about navigating the various gates keeping you from watching, and ever-present frustration of needing to Google just to find out which network something is on.

The NFL Playoffs were the biggest, most pervasive example of this — particularly during Wild Card Weekend. If you want to watch everything the league had on offer you’d need no fewer than five different streaming services AND a traditional antenna if you weren’t signed up to a larger TV bundle.

CBS, Amazon Prime, NBC, Fox, ESPN — it’s a far cry from the halcyon days of knowing “NFC is on Fox, and AFC is on CBS,” with the only added knowledge needing to be who had Thursday, Sunday, and Monday Night Football each week.

The SBNation.com got together to discuss our own personal pain points in the areas we live, and how difficult it’s become to watch sports.

James Dator — North Carolina

The fact that the NFL is the easiest sport for me to watch regularly and there are five different services speaks to how terrible things are down here. Both the Carolina Hurricanes and Charlotte Hornets are locked behind Spectrum-exclusive carriage deals with traditional cable, meaning there’s no way for me to legally watch these teams play unless it’s a rare occasion where they have a nationally broadcast game.

What makes this so wild is that while I’m paying roughly $100 a month for all streaming services I’m looking for, my brother-in-law can watch EVERY game that I can’t on a shady Amazon Fire Stick he bought online with a $19-a-month illegal streaming service out of an undisclosed Eastern European country.

I don’t judge anyone for how they consume their media. Live your best life. I just prefer to watch legally whenever possible. Why the Hornets and Hurricanes, both of whom are desperately trying to increase their media reach, have signed deals so constrictive that there’s almost no way to watch legally is beyond me. Sure, I could sign up for a cable deal — but even the cheapest cable option doesn’t get me the sports package I need to watch my teams, and the only economical way would be to downgrade my internet and take it in a bundle.

The whole process is just annoying.

Mark Schofield — Maryland

I’m a Boston sports fan living in Maryland.

Go ahead and boo I’ve seen what makes you cheer.

Professionally speaking, I actually have it pretty good. We can start with Formula 1. While streaming services for other leagues may fall short of what the fans are looking for, F1TV might just be the best platform for watching a league there is. The upgraded version, F1TV Pro, gives fans access to every F1 event — including practice sessions, qualifying sessions, and races — and coverage of the support series, such as F2, F3, and F1 Academy. There are also exclusive pre- and post-race shows, the ability to watch onboard from all 20 drivers, and more. It is absolutely worth every penny and makes covering a sport like F1 doable.

The NFL side of things is where it gets a bit … trickier. With the increased segmentation of the sport, the ability to watch every game has become tougher. The NFL Sunday Ticket package is no longer enough if you want to see every game, as you need to add streaming services such as Netflix and Amazon Prime Video. When we did the math on this ahead of the 2024 NFL season, things quickly added up.

Sure, there is other content that you can work through on these streaming platforms when you are not watching the NFL, but the cost is a factor for many.

But that is the professional side of things. When I just want to be a fan? That’s when the costs increase dramatically.

As noted above I’m a Boston sports fan living in Maryland. That means unless I just rely on nationally televised games, I’ll need a package to see my teams in action. Patriots games? NFL Sunday Ticket. Celtics games? NBA League Pass. Red Sox games? MLB.tv. Bruins games? ESPN+. Granted, these are absolutely first-world problems to have, and being out-of-market almost makes things easier for me than some of my colleagues. I do not have to deal with regional sports networks or local cable companies to see my teams play.

I just need to justify the cost to do so.

Ricky O’Donnell — Illinois

Being a Chicago sports fan is harder than ever right now, and not just because all of our teams range from “bad in a normal way” to “historically pathetic.” As controlling owner of the NBA’s Bulls and MLB’s White Sox, Jerry Reinsdorf sacked Chicago’s long-time regional sports network at the start of the season to begin his own local channel. The idea of putting the games over the air for free was a nice gesture, but hardly anyone I know can actually get the games to work.

I’ve tried two different antennas in my near-northwest side apartment and still can’t get Chicago Sports Network to come through on channels 62-2 and 62-3. Don’t ask me why 62-1 comes in crystal clear — as does every other station on my antenna aside from the one Reinsdorf owns. If I want to stream Bulls and White Sox games on their app, it’s going to cost me $30 per month. Per month! That’s a lot of money to watch literally the worst team in baseball history, and the most directionless franchise in the NBA with an undying addition to mediocrity.

All of this is happening while Reinsdorf is trying to shake down the state for a new Sox stadium. By the way, the current Sox stadium is totally fine, and is certainly not the reason the team is historically terrible. Reinsdorf’s reign of terror on Chicago continues as he turns 89 years old this year. Even if Comcast or YouTube TV start carrying his franchises eventually, neither has given fans any reason to watch lately. Hey, at least we have Ben Johnson now.

Jared Mueller — Ohio

On top of all the things mentioned above, sports leagues trying to take advantage of every window, every opportunity to get the best ratings has made it very difficult for me to know (and at times even care) when games are happening. While there can be a myriad of reasons for it (mostly money), Cleveland Cavaliers games have started at 3:30 PM, 6 PM, 7 PM, 7:30 PM, 8 PM and 9 PM in the month of January.

On top of that, when was the last time a game actually tipped off when the broadcast started or anywhere close?

I love basketball but am a “one team” fan but I either need to constantly check the schedule on a day-to-day basis or hope I see something on social media about when a game is going to start. Not to pick on basketball because Major League Baseball is the same way and the NFL has continued to add more and more random days and start times to their schedule as well.

As a no-longer-young fan, the lack of consistency does not allow me to orient my life around the schedules of games I’d like to watch. And, again as a not-so-young fan, my life is too busy to always be available to change what I/we have planned.

Yes, if I cared enough about the games I would put the work in to make sure I knew when each game was played but, with the NBA and MLB, there are too many games for that to happen. Instead, Cavs games should start at 7 PM or 10 PM on weekdays and 3 PM and 6 PM on the weekends. The NFL should be careful to not create the same confusion for their fans.

Jeanna Kelley — Georgia

I’ve been a Braves fan since I was growing up in Ohio in the 1990s, in large part because I could watch the games on TBS. Boy have things changed, because now I live in Georgia, about nine miles as the crow flies from Truist Park, and for the past couple of seasons I’ve been able to watch very few Braves games on TV without breaking the law.

My husband and I cut the cord about two years ago, but even before that, our specific cable package didn’t include Bally Sports, which was the only broadcast spot for the majority of the schedule.

We were lucky enough to get a free subscription to MLB TV through our mobile carrier — only to have the app either crash or black out Braves games because of my geolocation. Great!

MLB viewership is declining and much digital ink has been spilled lamenting the lapse of popularity for America’s pastime. One quick fix? Make it easy for fans to actually watch games without shelling out a bunch of extra money or illegally streaming them.

Bernd Buchmasser — Austria

As you have seen by now, watching US-based sports in the US can be a pain in the buttocks. Let me tell you from personal experience, it’s not much different across the Atlantic.

The biggest hurdle is the time difference. Let’s take the NFL as an example: games that kick off at 1 p.m. ET usually — Did you know daylight savings time starts on a different date in Europe? — begin at 7 p.m. over here. That’s still relatively reasonable. Primetime games are more of a challenge.

Staying up until 5 a.m. to watch the Seahawks beat the Bears 6-3 is therefore, naturally, for the true sickos. Obviously, though, it’s a give and take; for other sports, being in Europe has its perks.

Time difference aside, how do we watch sports in the Old World? There are several services, depending on a) the country you live in, and b) what you want to watch.

For the German-speaking countries — Austria, Switzerland, Germany, Liechtenstein — it looks somewhat like this: for the NFL and MLB as well as most soccer, you have to use DAZN — a British company that provides a lackluster product at an expensive rate; for college football it’s either DAZN or Joyn; for the NBA it’s only Joyn; for cycling it’s Discovery+ (RIP, GCN+); for soccer, it’s either Sky or free TV. Other sports like Formula 1, skiing, and domestic (American) football are on free TV as well, but there are always exceptions over exceptions.

The prices for all those services vary, by the way. The NFL is more expensive than, say, a cycling subscription.

But you’ll have to excuse me now. I need to adjust my sleep schedule because the Super Bowl is right around the corner and will kick off at 12:30 a.m. over here.