Over here, the most important sports channels are all Sky Sports, and a few others (there's ESPN America which clones, well you can guess, and ESPN, which shows mostly games that Sky weren't as interested in). Those channels are available on either Sky (satellite) or Virgin Media (cable). Sky until recently had an online Sky Player that you could subscribe to for online watching, and had an iPhone/iPad app, and so on - but it was hardly cheaper than a normal satellite subscription. That has now been rebranded Sky Go or something, and will relaunch in a month or two.
But I'm a big fan of American sports (I guess in order my favourite sports are Baseball/Football(soccer)/Basketball/Cricket/American Football/etc), and some of the digital offerings from America are awesome. For example MLB TV, $120/season (that's roughly what I would pay for 2 months of Sky Sports), let's me watch any game live or on-demand (no blackouts thanks to living in England), I can watch on my PC, on my TV (through Boxee), on my iPad (seperate ~$15 cost to buy that)... it's awesome.
I think on this side of the pond we're going to take a while to get there, but for American sports, I think streaming services are going to explode in popularity really fast, in the next couple of years.
It's the blackouts that kill you in the US. You can't watch your local team over the net because of that and most (all?) local games are broadcast on cable only networks. I fell really bad for the people in Iowa. They're blacked out from 5 markets.
Yeah, I've noticed that when I'm in LA, and while I guess it's annoying for most people, a cheap VPN could bypass the issues for anyone at all techie.
(I've never really been that fussed when out there, if the Dodgers are playing at home then I'll be at every game, and if they're away I just don't watch, there's better things to do during a short trip to LA than sit in my hotel room.)
Blackouts are basically MLB's way of saying to networks "yeah, we want to monetise this area, but we'll put blackouts in for you so you don't lose customers", right? In which case I would expect there to be a point when MLB decide they can afford to piss off traditional media and remove blackouts - though when that will happen, god knows.
Over here, the most important sports channels are all Sky Sports, and a few others (there's ESPN America which clones, well you can guess, and ESPN, which shows mostly games that Sky weren't as interested in). Those channels are available on either Sky (satellite) or Virgin Media (cable). Sky until recently had an online Sky Player that you could subscribe to for online watching, and had an iPhone/iPad app, and so on - but it was hardly cheaper than a normal satellite subscription. That has now been rebranded Sky Go or something, and will relaunch in a month or two.
But I'm a big fan of American sports (I guess in order my favourite sports are Baseball/Football(soccer)/Basketball/Cricket/American Football/etc), and some of the digital offerings from America are awesome. For example MLB TV, $120/season (that's roughly what I would pay for 2 months of Sky Sports), let's me watch any game live or on-demand (no blackouts thanks to living in England), I can watch on my PC, on my TV (through Boxee), on my iPad (seperate ~$15 cost to buy that)... it's awesome.
I think on this side of the pond we're going to take a while to get there, but for American sports, I think streaming services are going to explode in popularity really fast, in the next couple of years.