Why isn’t there an iTunes-like service where I can go online with my iPhone, find the local radio broadcast for basically any sporting event, and pay $0.99 per game to listen to it? Maybe not for sports like Major League Baseball that already have fairly advanced systems for listening/watching online, but for other sports? Like college basketball and football, say? This should exist!
As things stand now, I can use an app like TuneIn Radio (either through its “RadioTime Sports” feature, or its “Browse Local Radio” feature) to find a handful of games, sometimes. But it’s a total crapshoot, and often the local station that broadcasts the game I want to hear doesn’t stream its game broadcast at all, presumably because of licensing agreements or whatever. That’s stupid! Instead of locking me out, make me pay! Create a centralized system for this sort of thing, make it intuitive and simple, and people will use it. If the price were an iTunes-like $0.99 or $1.29, or hell, probably even $1.99, I — and a lot of other sports fans — would drop that kind of money repeatedly, without really thinking about it. I demand that someone fill this market niche!
Only sports I know of to offer this are MLB, NHL, NBA, and March Madness on demand. I’m with you here. Why? Why can’t I stream an NFL game I want? I’ll pay! It’s the last thing leaving me wanting cable.
Easy, its all about who owns the rights to each broadcast. Radio stations pay for the rights to broadcast games in given markets. In some cases those rights are part of a larger group like MLB who can put together a streaming solution, but that might not be true for the other leagues. You’d have to sit down with each group and get them to sign on to the idea and make the case to them that it will benefit them financially. Remember how hard it was (and still is) to get the music industry on board?
Fortunately we are seeing shifts towards this with things like MLB League Pass and ESPN3 but its still very piecemeal right now. Pro sports its more likely, college sports rights are even more fragmented.
there are sites you can go to online that will have live streaming broadcasts of the great majority of sporting events.
not exactly legal for the streamers – and ICE has relatively recently shut a few of them down. But as far as i’m aware, there’s no law that prevents people from actually WATCHING the games that way.
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