Quote:
Originally Posted by greyshep
Funny. I have often held the belief that live sports programming is the only thing propping up cable TV providers. Thats how it is in my house at least. I would cut the cable if live sports wasnt on there.
I know there is other subscription alternatives out there for live sports now, but at the end of the day once I factor in the monthly costs for SN and TSN online subscriptions, I am close to what I am paying monthly for my Cable subscription anyways so I just keep my cable in place like a dummy maybe.
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I would say people posting on CalgaryPuck talking about hockey during the offseason are not typical cable subscribers. I'm sure there's many people on CalgaryPuck that are willing to pay hundreds of dollars per year to get good quality broadcast of hockey games, which currently is via cable.
nfotiu's post above described it pretty well. People who don't care about sports will continue cancelling their cable and the money that they've been paying to subsidize these massive TV contracts will dry up, and there's only so many dollars I'm willing to pay to watch hockey.
I think we'll get to a point where NHL can directly offer live streams without blackouts (since blackouts are due to TV contracts). But by the time that happens, I would think that cable would've already lost a lot more subscribers and we won't see these massive TV contracts anymore.
It'll definitely be interesting to see what happens to professional sports and player salary when it's time to renew these TV contracts.