A couple of days ago, I posted about how Peacock exclusively streaming a Wild Card Game felt like a bad idea, and just the latest sign of the unprecedented greed of the league and advertisers, and on and on. Charles Barkley, the NBA great, had blasted the league for this.
Personally, I am drawing a line in the sand with this issue. The more the NFL opts to have playoff games aired exclusively on channels that require fans to pay, the less I will watch and follow NFL games. It's that simple for me. The greed in sports, and perhaps especially the NFL, has always been there, but it has just been growing more and more out of control in recent years. This move by the NFL is just the latest such proof of that, as they were clearly testing the waters to see how much fans were willing to accept. Evidently, the answer is quite a lot. That is a huge disappointment to me. A poor showing likely would have quelled this trend for some time. Instead, the relative success assures that the league will continue to charge fans even more money, at a time when we are all feeling the crunch from inflation and wages that just are not keeping up with it. How long will it be before they begin to air even bigger games, perhaps even the Super Bowl itself? So the league will lose me as a regular viewer, at the very least, if this trend keeps up.
Apparently, we might be the minority viewpoint on this.
Joe Pompliano touted it as a huge success in a tweet, which I republished here (see below), including the link. Apparently, the 23 million who streamed the Chiefs-Dolphins game shattered the previous record. That qualifies it as a streaming record in the United States. He sums it up by saying that it is a safe bet that we will see more such games to be aired exclusively on channels which fans will have to pay for.
Still, not everyone thinks it was such an enormous success. Below also is the link to an Op/Ed article by Harry Entin of CNN, where he criticizes the NFL's move towards exclusive coverage on a channel that fans had to pay for, and how this likely will set the tone for other playoff games moving forward.
Forget Taylor Swift: Peacock’s NFL game is the real talking point of America’s favorite sport Analysis by Harry Enten, CNN, Sat January 13, 2024:
https://www.cnn.com/2024/01/13/sport/peacocks-nfl-game-analysis-spt-intl/index.html
Joe Pompliano @JoePompliano
NBC says 23 million people streamed last night's Chiefs-Dolphins game on Peacock.
That shatters the previous NFL streaming record (15 million) & makes it the most-streamed event in U.S. history.
Safe to say we'll be getting more streaming-exclusive playoff games in the future.
9:54 PM · Jan 14, 2024 · 231.3K Views 87 Reposts 66 Quotes 758 Likes 29 Bookmarks
https://twitter.com/JoePompliano/status/1746727624506777785?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Etweet
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