IN THIS ISSUE:

• 🏈 The NFL is going streaming. Here’s how to make NFL+ unstoppable.

• ⚾ Bally Sports+ streaming quality strikes out so far

• 🧴🍺 Shampoo beers? Leave it to John Kruk

The Main Event: How to make NFL+ unstoppable

NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell confirmed two big moves for more streaming football. Can the NFL be bold enough to offer a plan that would make NFL+ an unstoppable service?

The league is launching its own sports streaming service called NFL+, with live local games streaming to mobile devices only. The NFL will also offer their out-of-market games package NFL Sunday Ticket through a major streaming service, likely partnered with Amazon, Apple or Disney.

Goodell didn’t confirm pricing for either, but here is the latest:

• NFL+ is heavily rumored to be affordable at about $5 a month.

• NFL Sunday Ticket is expected to stay $74 a month or $294 for the season due to contacts.

The NFL is the king of television sports, so it makes sense that they don’t want to rock the boat. But if they made a bold move, they could take NFL+ from launch to the top level of sports streaming services.

The NFL should offer NFL RedZone as an add-on to NFL+, and make that RedZone add-on available on all devices, including smart TVs. NFL RedZone is the whip-around channel that shows all the big plays and touchdowns during the Sunday afternoon games.

There are currently two ways to get NFL RedZone without cable.

• In the NFL app for $35 per season for mobile access only. Breaks down to $8.75 per month. No TVs or computers.

• From a Live TV Streaming service like Sling TV, which means subscribing to Sling Blue ($35) + Sports Extra ($11) for $46 per month. $182 total for the season. Works on all devices. Other Live TV services with RedZone cost even more.

Combining NFL+ with NFL RedZone feels like an easy decision to make, but fans are bound to be disappointed if they have to pay extra for NFL RedZone and still can’t watch it on their TV.

Instead, the NFL could create an NFL RedZone add-on priced to fit in the middle of their offerings. It could cost an extra $15 a month — enough to keep broadcasters from revolting, but still appeal to so many fans that NFL+ would blow up. Here’s my idea:

• NFL+: Live local games on mobile devices — $5 a month

• NFL+ w/ NFL RedZone: Above plus Live RedZone on all devices — $20 a month

• NFL+ w/ NFL Game Pass: Live local games on mobile plus every game on-demand — $30 a month

• NFL Sunday Ticket: Live out-of-market Sunday afternoon games — $74 a month

Looks great, so why is this unlikely to happen?

• Networks, who pay a ton for rights and might block this in contracts.

• Cable partners, who believe live sports like the NFL keep the customers they have left.

• Owners, who wont want to rock the boat with TV rights deals that pay them $10 billion a year.

If the NFL is going all in on streaming, this powerful league would be wise to maximize their broadcast deals but also build a powerful service they own and control themselves. It's better to disrupt yourself before someone else can. NFL RedZone is the big play that could make NFL+ an unstoppable service.

The Fast Break:

🎾 Tennis Finals = Double Fault Wimbledon welcomes its Championship weekend, and the finals won’t stream live on ESPN+.

• The pattern of keeping the biggest games and matches is carried into the men’s and women’s finals.

• The Thursday morning women’s semifinals were only available on ESPN or with a Live TV Streaming service.

• ESPN+ users are left with Doubles, Juniors, Wheelchair and Legends tennis instead.

This is a disappointment, but not a big surprise. Fingers crossed🤞🏾that in future years we can see a simulcast of the finals matches on the streaming service.

❌ Streaming RSNs bobble the launch 

Sara Winegardner has a great story from Cablefax on the Regional Sports Networks (RSNs) streaming launch, including some of the first user reviews of Bally Sports+.

Reddit users who are subscribers to Bally Sports+ have complaints about the video quality, which falls short of the same game streams in MLB.tv. They also mention the lacking device support, but remain hopeful things get better.

Sara smartly brings up that RSNs need to fix this if they hope to convince MLB to give them more local streaming rights. She also has interesting ideas from cable operators, who are considering two large channel bundles, one with RSNs and one without.

All of this is to maintain a broken system of RSNs that no longer need to exist in the ways they did before.

‍🎓 Who runs college football: Conferences or Networks? 

The ACC and Pac-12 are discussing a partnership to combine their broadcast rights and cable networks into one deal with ESPN. Possibilities include:

• A joint championship game between the ACC champion and Pac-12 champion.

• Merging the Pac-12 Network content onto a renamed ACC Network, which is co-owned by ESPN.

The more I hear of these stories, the more I suspect it is the TV Networks that are pulling the strings. Without TV money, these conferences will crumble. And the networks can’t stay locked into multi-year deals with conferences that lose all their valuable teams to rivals.

The purity of amateur competition, right?

Watch. Learn. Stream.

I Watched:

• Some 4th of July Baseball streaming. Also 4th of July fireworks in person, because sometimes you need experiences off screens.

• More Wimbledon, including Jannik Sinner taking Novak Djokovic to five sets. Watch the highlights on Youtube. Great performance by the underdog, but as I learned from Uncle Tony, tennis is a sport where winners must close it out.

I Learned:

Like Brother, like Sister.

Also, which beer brands work best as shampoo? Bud & Shoulders?

I’ll Be Streaming: 

• The Wimbledon Mens' Finals.

• WNBA All Star Game. Also, 🙏for Brittney Griner.

The Starting Lineup - July 8 - 14

Select key events shown. All times shown are Eastern. Dates and times are subject to change. (* if necessary)

Tennis:

Wimbledon

• Men’s Finals Championship & Ladies’ Doubles Championship, Sunday, July 10 at 9 am on ESPN

ESPN available on Sling TV Orange ($35 / month), YouTube TV ($65 / month), FuboTV ($70 / month), Hulu with Live TV ($70 / month) & DirecTV Stream ($75 / month)

Cycling:

Tour de France 

Stages 7 - 12 from Friday July 8 - Thursday 14 on Peacock, NBC & USA Network

Peacock available for $5 a month

MLB:

Sunday July 10

Los Angeles Angels vs Baltimore Orioles Noon on Peacock

Peacock available for $5 a month

Wednesday July 13

Milwaukee Brewers vs Minnesota Twins 1 pm on YouTube’s free MLB channel

WNBA:

Sunday July 10

WNBA All-Star Game 1 pm on ABC

Thursday July 7

Dallas Wings vs Minnesota Lynx 8 pm on Twitter

Chicago Sky vs Los Angeles Sparks 10:30 pm on Facebook

Gratitude

Thank you for reading this week’s Streaming Sports Newsletter. Also, thank you for being patient this weekend, because an outage with my newsletter platform delayed this issue from Friday afternoon to Sunday morning.

It is wonderful to be able to welcome in new subscribers, and I hope you all have enjoyed reading it. If you haven’t joined in yet, please subscribe so you won’t miss an issue. Also, take a moment to share this issue with anyone you think might enjoy it.

Thanks to so many of you for the wonderful feedback. These official issues are better because of you. I always enjoy hearing from readers. Even if you just reply to say ‘Hi’ to let me know you are reading it would mean the world to me. You can reach me by replying to this email at [email protected]