How to fail at going digital 101: The NFL

August 17, 2011
matt
Television

The news out of the websphere is a new deal that DirecTV, the NFL and Sony have struck. One that will allow PS3 owners to get the NFL sunday ticket direct to their PS3. It sounds great, you don’t even need to have a DirecTV subscription. Of course if you do it’s $50 to add the service to your PS3 (why there’s an up charge, I’ll never know). If you don’t have said service though you can STILL get the NFL direct to your PS3. I can hear you now, this must be heaven! The NFL, much like our oft talked about friends at HBO, are notoriously slow to move to digital. Most likely due to existing contracts and layers of fine print, but regardless we should all be happy about this right?

Here’s the deal breaker. It is $340. You didn’t read that wrong. $340 for a season pass to the NFL, which is a considerable amount. It also weirdly is $5 more than if you have it through DirecTV, which is nominal but still odd. Let me break something else down to you, this only guarantees Sunday games and is still subject to local blackouts. That’s right. You will pay $340, still get feasibly blacked out, not get Monday Night games, only a handful of pre-season and to be entirely honest, I don’t know that it includes post season either. At a price this hefty (it breaks down to about $65/month) I can’t honestly recommend it. I had NFL Sunday Ticket one year and barely watched more then I would have anyway. It is also odd that they paired themselves with Playstation even though XBox already seems to hold the fort when it comes to sports (ESPN).

So enough with the whining what should have happened? If you ask me, there should be tiered pricing, offer team packages or division passes. Why force someone to pay a massive price tag when the reality of how much they’ll watch won’t match the cost. You could go to 4 games comfortably for the price of a season of watching. Then again if you are into the RPG’s of sports (fantasy), then maybe this package is a must have. Scott and I are no small fans of football and I can’t imagine his stance is much different from mine. I want access to content through new means of course, but at this cost, seems like a miss to me.

This Post Has One Comment

Scott August 18, 2011 at 7:12 am

Agreed! Some might wonder what this is doing on a nerd blog, but Fantasy Football is more D&D than it is sport.

So here’s the thing, a few days ago Sony added a “Content Channels” icon (or something like that) to the dashboard. Right now I think there’s Netflix, Hulu, NHL Pass, and MLB Pass… oh and Vudu… really? Sony? not Amazon VOD, not even Blockbuster on demand, but Vudu… but I digest (family guy joke).

So for three and a half bills I get to consume just slightly more football than I would with some antenna and tin foil hooked up to my tv? Good job.

I know this is for fans who don’t live in the home market of their favorite teams, so you’re basically paying the cost of buying three tickets to their games… but for anyone else? Heck, I’d rather just go to a bar with some buds (present company included) to catch out of market games and MNF.

And what’s Microsoft / ESPN to think, “oh Hai! We’ve got sportz ovur here 2! k thx bye” Of course no NFL on that beat yet. When it comes to being a fan, I don’t care whose fault it is, or why you can’t purchase a comprehensive package, or stream on already established services. Nice effort, still a FAIL in my book too.