On Jan 30, 2012, at 9:25 AM, Jason Green wrote: > Now I'm thinking of relocating to the UK for 2 minutes, too... > > I went through a similar issue with the NBA. I'm a Lakers fan. But I refuse > to pay for cable. I don't want to pay $1500 a year for a bunch of TV > channels that I don't care about. I cut the cord on cable about 5 years ago, > and replaced it with Netflix and Hulu+ - now my total cost each year is under > $150. But - no Lakers games. > > The nice thing is - the NBA has a "League Pass" subscription, where you can > pay (it's about $200) to watch up to 7 of your favorite teams. That seems > reasonable to me (YMMV) as I love watching basketball. So I paid my $200 and > got ready to watch some Lakers! Everything is great, right? > > Nope. Sadly, since I live in the Lakers broadcast area, their games are > blacked out locally. > > So, a product that I want, which I could easily obtain illegally (there are > dozens of streaming services out there) but which I prefer to pay for, I > can't get. So, I cheated. I paid for a VPN service, spoofed my IP address > so it looked like it was in San Francisco (outside of the Lakers broadcast > area), and got it that way. > > I hope Nat is right. I would gladly pay to watch, and I don't like illegal > downloading.
That's because KCAL (Disney) and Fox Sports Prime Time have paid serious money to the Lakers (and Clippers) for the rights to that region. They don't want you watching video streaming via NBA League Pass because each viewer who does that isn't watching local TV, which means ratings are going down and advertising revenue with it. Simple fiscal reasoning. Best, R.E.F. ---- www.crydee.com Never attribute to malice what can satisfactorily be explained away by stupidity.
