Watch ESPN online for $20/month with no contract. Yes, No, Maybe?

[Svnla]

What say you, sports lovers?

http://money.cnn.com/2015/01/05/med...x.html?sr=fb010514dishvirtualcable7pStoryLink

To be fair, you have a few other channels = ESPN and ESPN2—as well as 10 other channels: TBS, TNT, CNN, Cartoon Network, ABC Family, Adult Swim, Travel Channel, Disney Channel, Food Network, and HGTV.

 

[Mai72]

I've gotten out of sports watching, and I don't follow sports teams anymore.

I would say no.

 

[DesiPower]

No way. They rarely carry Basketball, just a few football games, I am not into all the sports center stuff, so no, I don't think so...

 

[JC]

Too much.

 

[I Saw OJ]

I would ditch my satellite and do that plus other streaming.

 

[MetalMat]

I've gotten out of sports watching, and I don't follow sports teams anymore.

I would say no.

So why comment if you don't watch sports?

Anyways, 20 bucks seems too high. You can get cable with ESPN included for not much more. Only reason I see it worth it is if you travel but even then most hotel rooms have ESPN

 

[Ns1]

...and this is why a la carte pay tv will never work.

 

[postmortemIA]

I can see this being poor man's cable for some big football fan

 

[Kaido]

Maybe. Would like to see SyFy on there (although I think someone mentioned it's available as a channel on Plex?). Trouble is, $20 right now gets me Netflix, Amazon (well, broken down monthly), and Spotify, each of which has a huge library of goodies for me to watch & listen to. I'd basically be doubling my monthly budget for entertainment for a few live channels...probably with ads too.

 

[mrjminer]

Too much. Not to mention, it doesn't really do anything for me; I don't want shitty channels I'll never watch.

I'd be more willing to pay $20 a month for five channels of my choosing than shit like Disney channel and HGTV.

 

[zerocool84]

You can almost guarantee that football won't be on it. The contracts the NCAA and NFL have with the TV providers already make it so you can't watch most games streaming so we can pretty much say that this won't have football or at least the big games ever if they are on that channel. That's why even though we pay for cable, you still can't steam lots of games on the ESPN App.

 

[RichieZ]

no, watchespn.com and my friends cable login works just fine for me

 

[ghost recon88]

I don't think they can get an online stream to be as fluid as that coming across cable TV or satellite. Using watchESPN, it's always lacking some quality or overall FPS compared to watching it live through the cable box.

 

[Childs]

Its a good set of channels. The 3 channels I miss from cable is HGTV, Travel, Food and ESPN. The only thing I really miss from ESPN is College Gameday and NFL Primetime, although I don't think they do Primetime anymore. If they had FX and AMC it would be pretty close to perfect for what I would want for $20. I am assuming the content will be streamed in at least 720p. If not its a deal breaker.

 

[Dirigible]

...and this is why a la carte pay tv will never work.

Yup. The free market without tying agreements is a total failure. Can't believe anyone would think that would result in a functioning economy.

 

[Captante]

I wouldn't pay $5 a month for ESPN.

 

[mikegg]

I hope this is a massive success and other companies will want to compete and offer more channels for less.

 

[OBLAMA2009]

i wouldn't pay $5 a month for espn.

i was just thinking this myself, $5 is about the right price for a channel like espn, hbo etc.. Streamed

 

[Captante]

i was just thinking this myself, $5 is about the right price for a channel like espn, hbo etc.. Streamed

True ... while I wouldn't pay $5 per month for ESPN there are channels I would pay that to have although I'll take Netflix or Prime over HBO etc. For example being a Met's fan I would pay it for SNY which carries all Met's games.

Of course I'd prefer to subscribe to MLB TV and would do so every season if they didn't black out the Met's televised games. As is I listen to most games on the radio and spend my money on other things.

 

[Carson Dyle]

For the whole package it may be worth it to you, but no way would I value ESPN alone at anywhere near $20 per month. I'm not sure I'd even consider it the most valuable channel in that package.

Expect Comcast to increase Internet fees to consumers and justify it by their lost cable TV revenues and increased Internet bandwidth. Or else expect them to extort the content providers the same way they did with Netflix, by providing them with purposely bad peering.

Going to be interesting to see how it all shakes out over the next 5-10 years. I expect someone is going to figure out how to make an ass-load of money and TV viewing will get even more expensive for the average consumer.

 

[Wonderful Pork]

If USA was in that lineup I'd be all over it - TBS, TNT, USA are basically the only cable channels we watch anyway. It'd be nice if it was closer in price to Netflix.

I think a better solution is to stream by TV show. I believe you can buy seasons through iTunes for the day after they air, if I could stream it day after (or week after, whatever I DVR everything anyway) for $5-10/season/show I'd be all over it. I'd bet that my entertainment bill would go up, but at least I'd support shows I actually want to watch and let the other crap get canceled due to lack of funding.

 

[rcpratt]

Sports is the only thing keeping me from cutting the cord. But I would need my local Fox Sports channel and the Big Ten Network as well.

 

[Ichinisan]

People like me would probably rather ditch ESPN from their cable lineup and save $20/month.

 

[z1ggy]

ESPN doesn't play much hockey, or have hockey highlights, so no.

Almost all hockey here is the Bruin's on NESN, and then sometimes random NHL games that aren't on blackout on NBC or basic cable.

 

[Uppsala9496]

ESPN, no. Give me NBCSN and my local CSN so I can watch the Blackhawks and I would. I pay about $20 a month for NHL gamecenter so I can watch them.
I currently stream all of my tv. Gets a little choppy at times and isn't nearly as smooth as cable. I can see people cutting the cord and then getting irritated that sports do not look nearly as smooth as cable (or the quality goes in and out).