Someone has to make Denver look better.
NOT suggesting anything or even hinting; should Watson (or any other player) die, what happens to the cap hit?
I forsee a number of 0-17 or 2-15 seasons coming up. “Oh Steve, don’t be so pessimistic. I’m sure if Clevelend and Ohio taxpayers fork over $2 billion or so for a new domed stadium, Superbowl here we come!”
I just saw a promo that the Monday Night Chargers-Cardinals game is exclusively on ESPN+. Do they think anyone is going to sign up just for that? I don’t know how many subscribers they have but that seems like a bad decision.
Depends on the terms of the contract. But not being privy to all of those, I suspect they would be on the hook for all of it.
If it were not a fully guaranteed contract, they might be able to convince the estate to some kind of team or cap friendly settlement. Since it is fully guaranteed, and it is unlikely Watson or his agent agreed to a clause voiding it in case of injury or death, I suspect they would be out of luck as who would give up tens of millions of dollars they don’t have to?
But that’s all a bit of a WAG.
If he did give that kind of money up and quit, he’d be considered a hero.
He stays and drags the Browns down…depends how much he loves money.
I am fairly certain that the answer is “yes, they do.”
In the teams’ home markets (Los Angeles and Phoenix), the game will also be shown on local over-the-air stations – which is, as I understand it, the normal set-up for NFL games which are on non-over-the-air networks (traditional ESPN, NFL Network, Amazon Prime, etc.). As the article below notes, “Exclusively on ESPN+” only applies to the national broadcast.
But, if you’re a fan of either team (or just a football fan in general), and don’t live in those markets, you’d need the ESPN+ subscription.
The TV promo didn’t specify the local markets still having normal access (it may have been in a disclaimer I didn’t look at) but that makes sense.
I think that they usually don’t, as it’s an irrelevant additional message for 90+% of the audience. But, if you’re in one of the markets that has a local OTA broadcast of the game, you’ll likely see ads on the channel which will be carrying it, as well as “how to watch this week’s game” articles in local media websites, like the above.
This trend towards streaming games infuriates me beyond reason. I don’t like it in baseball or football. I have most of the streaming services (but not ESPN+) but I honestly think I’ll boycott streaming games.
I dropped him from my fantasy team for consistent underperformance.
Don’t see the two being exclusive. If Cleveland get a shiny new dome it is is quite likely the NFL award them Super Bowl LXIV or whatever where the Chiefs will play whatever team comes through the NFC. A couple of months later the Browns get first overall pick in the draft for the nth successive year.
I’m no fan of it, either.
In a way, it’s very similar to what happened 30 years ago, when the then-fledgling Fox TV network paid a ton of money for the rights to broadcast NFL games. Fox used having a premier broadcast property to build out their affiliate network, advertise their other programming, and get viewers to think of them as being on a tier with the three established networks.
The streamers are using big-league sports to drive subscriptions, and give them a venue to advertise other programming that they carry. And, the NFL seems to not care that some games aren’t on a national OTA network anymore; they’re happily counting the big money from those rights deals.
They’re not entirely insane. Teams still get their games (home and away) broadcast OTA in their home markets.
That’s not the greatest thing for general football fans, but that does address the vast majority of typical viewers.
I’m still somewhat tickled that the smart play in the 2020s was bringing MNF back to a broadcast network after years of only showing it on ESPN. We live in strange times, truly.
Cable TV operators were doing exactly the same thing 25 years ago, back when ESPN was new. And strictly a cable network, instead of a streaming one.
It’s hasn’t been strictly an OTA universe in a very long time, and most games have been extra cost for anyone outside of the game’s own media areas.
Most games are not on a national OTA network. I’d go so far as to say the vast majority of them are not. And it has always been so.
If I don’t have Peacock I don’t get to watch that game in the same way that if I don’t live in Jacksonville or Nashville I probably won’t get to watch a Titans @ Jaguars game on a Sunday at 1pm.
This is not true at all – or, at least, not what I meant when I wrote what I did – but I think that you and I are saying two different things.
Here’s the NFL schedule for this upcoming weekend; there are 15 games being played, and the networks carrying them break down as follows:
- Fox: five games
- CBS: five games
- NBC: one game (also showing on Peacock)
- ABC: one game (also showing on ESPN and ESPN+)
- Prime Video: one game
- NFL Network: one game
- ESPN+: one game
So, of the fifteen games, twelve are running on one of the national OTA networks (though two of those are also running on a streaming and/or cable service). Only three games are not available, at all, on a national OTA network.
However, what is true (and what I think you are actually saying) is that, for any given viewer, or in any given city, most games are not available to be watched by that person, or in that market, on one of the national OTA networks – and, yeah, this has always been the case. This is entirely due to the fact that most games (ten of this weekend’s 15 games, for example) are on two networks (Fox and CBS), and are running in either the early Sunday afternoon (1pm ET) or late Sunday afternoon (4:05pm / 4:25pm)
In most cases, in a given market, you’ll have a choice of two early Sunday games to watch (one on Fox, one on CBS), and then one late Sunday afternoon game (the “doubleheader” game, usually, on either Fox or CBS).
What is different now, compared to decades ago, is that, on any given weekend, there are games that aren’t on an OTA network at all; further, within the last few years, now there are games each week that are only available on streaming services. (The exception to those is that games on cable or streaming are shown OTA in the home markets of the two teams.)
All of which does mean that, if you are a fan of a particular team (and don’t live in that team’s home media market), or if you just have very specific games you want to watch, the national OTA network coverage often won’t let you see the particular game you are interested in that weekend (and, hence, you would need a subscription to Sunday Ticket).
I was actually looking for Halloween yard grave stones that said Browns.
But Nick Chubb is back Sunday and Everyone is rooting for him.
I don’t make a distinction between an OTA broadcast I can’t get because it’s in another market versus a pay service I can’t get without paying for. Either way I can’t watch the game for free, so what’s the difference?
Googling now, those streaming games on Prime and Peacock are apparently not included in Sunday NFL Ticket. I thought that was every game but apparently not. But that’s $120 a month, non-cancellable for like 4 months. If you’re already paying that, what’s another $7 a month for Peacock or whatever, right?
In most cases, if that game on a streaming service instead were played normally on a traditional network, you probably wouldn’t be able to watch it anyway, is what I’m saying. At least not without paying money. It’s not like it’s hiding a game you would normally be able to see behind a paywall.
I think part of the difference, now, is that the streaming-only games are often in time slots (Thursday night, Sunday morning, Monday night) when they’re the only NFL game at that time, and, until a few years ago, would have been on an OTA network (and nationally televised), or on regular cable (ESPN or NFL Network).
The difference is that some games you used to have access to OTA, like MNF, are no longer available without a subscription. The out of market games were never available to you if they weren’t a national broadcast.