Shifts to Sports Streaming Affect Local Bars Shifts to Sports Streaming Affect Local Bars

Many sports games have been pushed to streaming platforms.

CHILEKASI ADELE: YOU SEE, MATT BEACH HAS A GREAT SPOT DOWNTOWN… HIS JOINT, ALE N’ ANGUS IS NEXT TO THE ONCENTER, WITH S-U DORMS IN THE DISTANCE… THE DOME NOT FAR AWAY.

ADELE: SO YOU’RE COMING OFF A LONG DAY AT WORK OR WANT TO ESCAPE FROM THE KIDS, YOU COME TO THE BAR, GET SOME FOOD AND A DRINK AND HEY — THE GAME’S NOT ON?

BEACH: “You need the equipment, the smart TVs, the proper WiFi internets, the proper devices…”

ADELE: SOME THINGS BEACH DOESN’T HAVE, COMPARED TO SOME OF THE BIGGER, MORE CORPORATE COMPETITORS… HE’LL MISS OUT ON SCREENING SATURDAY’S S-U FOOTBALL GAME… AND NUMEROUS YANKEES GAMES DUE TO SHIFTS TOWARDS AMAZON’S PRIME VIDEO AND APPLE TV PLUS… PROBLEMATIC WHEN AARON JUDGE WAS CHASING HIS HISTORIC 61ST HOMER OF THE SEASON… SOMETHING HE DID WEDNESDAY…

BEACH: “I can’t watch Thursday Night Football anymore, because I don’t have Prime TV, you know what I mean? It is frustrating… it’s annoying.”

ADELE: IT’S A BALANCING ACT… BEACH SEES IT AS “MONEY HUNGRY” TV EXECUTIVES WANTING TO EXTRACT MORE WHEN HE ALREADY COUGHS UP BIG BUCKS MONTHLY TO THE CABLE GUYS…

BEACH: “Sometimes, you just gotta weigh your options… Is one Thursday Night Football game worth going through all the hassle to get all this?”

ADELE: ALL THESE SPORTS ALREADY MOVING TO ESPN PLUS-PLUS-PLUS OR PEACOCK WON’T BE A ONE OFF EITHER…

DENNIS DENINGER: “There’s going to be a greater separation between the super-premium products in sports television, and all the rest.”

ADELE: BEACH KNOWS EVENTUALLY HE’LL HAVE TO GIVE IN… AFTER SURVIVING THE PANDEMIC, HE KNOWS SURVIVAL OF THE FITTEST IS THE ONLY WAY…

BEACH: “You either have to adapt, or you have to pivot in a different direction.”

ADELE: IN SYRACUSE, CHILEKASI ADELE, N-C-C NEWS.

SYRACUSE, N.Y. (NCC News) – If you’re looking to watch Syracuse Football look to go 5-0 this season against Wagner College on Saturday evening from your house, you will have to pull out a smart TV or streaming stick.

The game is scheduled to air on ACC Network Extra and ESPN+. ACC Network Extra is accessible via a cable subscription, provided that subscription contains ESPN. ESPN+ is a standalone service that works within the same application.

Matt Beach, owner of Ale n’ Angus Pub in Syracuse, lacks the technology needed to show the games. He subscribes to Spectrum for the pub, but does not have the streaming devices needed to watch Saturday’s game.

“Sometimes, you just gotta weigh your options… is one Thursday Night Football game worth going through all the hassle to get all this?” Beach said.

This game is not the first to upend the viewing experience for Central New York sports fans. Amazon Prime Video is airing every single Thursday Night Football game this season on its online platform, only putting games on linear TV in the home markets of each team.

“Everybody is money hungry,” Beach said. Everybody wants a piece of the pie,” referring to the owners of the sports leagues and the television executives bidding for rights to show games.

The Buffalo Bills play the New England Patriots on Dec. 1. Central New Yorkers will be able to watch that game on one of the major broadcast stations in Syracuse — that station has yet to be determined.

Fans of the New York Yankees in the region have also dealt with numerous games being put on Amazon Prime Video and other platforms. The Yankees currently air 21 games per season exclusively on Prime Video, games that previously aired on WPIX-TV, New York City’s CW affiliate, and WSTQ-LP, Syracuse’s CW affiliate. These games are produced by the YES Network, the primary broadcast home of the Yankees. Prime Video will allow Sep. 29’s game against the Baltimore Orioles to also air on YES, as Yankees slugger Aaron Judge looks to pass the American League single-season home run record set by Roger Maris.

Last Friday, while Judge was stuck at 60 home runs, the game was shown on Apple TV+, which signed a deal before this season to become the exclusive broadcaster of two national games each Friday. Apple TV+ showed the Yankees-Red Sox matchup, along with the Los Angeles Dodgers vs. the St. Louis Cardinals — in which, Cardinals player Albert Pujols hit the 699th and 700th home runs of his career.

Dennis Deninger, professor at Syracuse University’s Falk College, says these games are a way to make money beyond ratings.

“Amazon is going to be a champion at monetizing that,” Deninger said. “You’ll be able to click on the shoes you see on screen and have them come up as a menu… Amazon hasn’t even started what they can do, but it was important for them to get into it — and they see this as a means of forcing people to subscribe to new services. so, in their first Thursday night NFL game, in those first 3 hours, they signed up more subscribers than they had in the previous month.”

“It is a boon for them…it’s an inconvenience for all the rest of us, in that we used to be able to get things on one device through one source, and now, you’re having to multiply this out,” Deninger said. 

Deninger said household names will continue to see the spotlight on national TV, while more niche products will get shifted to streaming — something Beach agrees with.

“Unless you’re an Alabama, a Clemson, a Georgia, whatever… Kentucky in Basketball, Duke in Basketball, the world is revolved around money right now,” said Beach.

 

Reported by
Chilekasi Adele

Chilekasi Adele

Chilekasi Adele is a sophomore Broadcast and Digital Journalism Major at Syracuse University's Newhouse School of Public Communications. Adele is from Aldan, Pennsylvania -- a suburb of Philadelphia. When Chilekasi is not chasing a story for NCC News, he also spends time with other campus media organizations, such as CitrusTV, where he is an on-air talent in both the News and Sports Departments. Adele likes to spend time with friends and family in the meantime, and he is an avid Philadelphia sports fan.

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