What The Sports Bar Dilemma Means For You  

From the Norman TV View

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: RSS

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: RSS

Have we reached the breaking point yet?

It’s a question worth asking, because most people don’t fully realize how much has changed in just the last few years in how we watch our favorite programming. The chickens have come home to roost — much as I predicted in my book over seven years ago. And honestly, it’s turned out a little worse than even I expected.

From my view, the changes came gradually enough that many people didn’t notice what was happening until they looked at what they were spending each month and did the math. The original reason for cutting the cord was to save money. Somewhere along the way, that goal quietly slipped away.

It didn’t take long for the providers to recognize the hit to their bottom line when cord-cutting took off. What took time was the process of reclaiming control — pulling back the programming rights they had previously handed to cable and satellite re-providers so they could deliver it directly from their own platforms and recapture that revenue stream themselves. Early in the cord-cutting era, it was relatively easy to find popular older shows and movies scattered across the web through channels that built their audience on that kind of content. Those days are mostly gone now. There’s still plenty of older programming out there, but the selection is becoming less current and less compelling over time.

If you’ve been a cord-cutter since the early days, you remember how it worked. You put up an antenna, watched whatever came in free over the air from your local CBS, NBC, ABC, FOX, CW, and PBS affiliates, and if you wanted something beyond that you might add Netflix or one of the early movie services. For a while it was genuinely lean and affordable, and many people were happy with it.

Then FOX launched Fox Sports 1, and that was really the first domino. The other networks followed with their own sports channels, tucked into separate tiers that cost extra. If you wanted to keep watching your favorite teams, you had to pay. From there it cascaded — sports channels gave way to full network apps, and now it isn’t just sports but a wide range of programming that lives behind a monthly or yearly fee. The vicious circle has fully closed its loop. The providers have recaptured their revenue, just through a different pipeline than before.

The key difference between what sports bars are experiencing and what you’re experiencing at home is the pace. For sports bars, the disruption has been abrupt and immediate — their business model depends on delivering any game, on any screen, at any moment, and the fragmentation of streaming rights has made that exponentially more complicated and expensive almost overnight. For the average home viewer, the same changes have been rolled out gradually and consistently, easing in one app at a time, one fee at a time, until one day you add it all up and wonder how you got here.

But make no mistake — you’re heading to the same place. The sports bar owner facing rising costs, complicated licensing, and frustrated customers is simply a few steps ahead of where the rest of us are going. More apps, more costs, more frustration as the technology keeps shifting underneath us. The cord-cutter’s monthly bill is already beginning to look a lot like the cable bill they were trying to escape in the first place.

So I’ll close with the same question I opened with: have we reached the breaking point? Or will viewers collectively decide to draw the line — stop adding services, stop absorbing the increases, and force the providers to find a way to deliver what we want, when we want it, at a price that actually makes sense?

I don’t have that answer yet. But I have a feeling we’re going to find out sooner than anyone expects.

Hey, this is Russ, and that’s the Norman TV View… See ya next time…