It’s time has come, as the news was announced yesterday of a joint venture for sports streaming from a combination of broadcasting entities. Following the lead of consumer entertainment video entities and their move to streaming models in this post-pandemic world, it looks like more and more the concept of free access to sports on television is going bye bye soon. This is no surprise in the modern world of greed.

As one pundit we enjoy reading phrased it,

“Fox Corp., Warner Bros. Discovery and Disney are going in on a new joint streaming venture that will combine all of the sports programming on all of the ESPNs, all the FS1s, TNT, TBS, as well as their other various networks that bear sports programming. Pricing will be north of the $20 to $30 of your typical RSN but south of the $75 to $80 per month a typical live digital package runs. Combined, they control 85 percent of the sports rights market in America.”

Ouch.

Does 85 percent qualify as a monopoly? Will we be “forced” to pay $50/month to watch sports now, on all our streaming devices, from a smart TV to a handheld device? The thing is that a lot of people have shown they’ll do this—at any price. These are the same people we’ve implored to stop watching bowl games, college football, MLB, and other corrupted sports enterprises for the past handful of years since starting this blog.

Too late.

Suckers are born every minute, and they ruin it for the rest of us. In some sense, we’re lucky to have lived this long—40 years after the landmark SCOTUS case that separated NCAA control of college football TV rights—with so much easy access to sports entertainment. The music industry started leaving the average consumer behind a long time ago, and Covid finally brought the film industry closer to the financial truth.

Now it’s time for sports, as well. We know how hard it is to attend sporting events now, and pretty soon, it will be cost prohibitive to even watch them in the privacy of your own home. You will have to go out, fight crowds, pay a cover charge, and order at least 5 alcoholic drinks if you want to watch a game. What’s cheaper? In-home streaming with small groups or out-of-the-house viewing with the neighborhood?

Hmmm. Dilemmas, for sure. Nothing is ever going to be the same.