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A Senator is Trying to End the Modern Hell of Needing 16 Streaming Subscriptions – Plus Cable – Just to Watch Your Team
By Matt Schultz
Published:
We’ve all been there: It’s a warm spring evening, windows open, breeze rolling in. You had a long day. You just cooked dinner, and you’re finally sitting down to relax and enjoy a Phils game. You flip the TV on to NBC Philadelphia…
But the game’s not on.
You check NBC10.
It’s not on there, either.
You check ESPN. Nothing. You check TBS. Nothing.
Confused, you say “Phillies” into your remote, and what you see next sends a shiver down your spine: The game is on AppleTV.
You start to panic. “Do I have AppleTV? I thought I did. Why is it asking me to log in? I should be logged in already. It’s giving me a QR code. Why do I need that? Wait, I gotta type in my password with the Comcast remote? This is going to take like fifteen minutes. It’s so hard to type with the TV remote, it’s so slow…”
Maybe you successfully get the game on, maybe you don’t. Either way, it doesn’t matter. It’s too late. The damage is already done. Your dinner is cold.
I think we can all agree that it’s a real nightmare trying to follow your teams in the age of streaming. How many streamers are there now? Seven? Twelve? Twenty-six? And every one of them has games now! Wednesday night was a perfect example: The Sixers Play-In game was on Amazon Prime Video – meanwhile, what was on ESPN? Pickleball! Why do we gotta pay for both? How much money are these mega-corporations gonna wring from us? Will it ever end? Who among us will stand tall and put a stop to this? They say that a hero can save us… Is there a hero among us?
Maybe our hero will be Wisconsin Senator Tammy Baldwin, who, in an interview with Andrew Marchand at The Athletic, made it clear that she understands the problem as well as anyone:
“The other thing that has been unifying us recently is absolute frustration about how confusing it is to watch your games and how costly it is to follow your teams and keep up to date with these streaming services and blackouts.”
The third-term Democrat is proposing a bill to end the madness called the “For The Fans” Act:
“If enacted, the new bill would impact the NFL, MLB, NHL, NBA, WNBA, MLS and NWSL, among other leagues. All nationally televised games involving pro teams from a state would be made available for free statewide, via broadcasting or streaming and on a consistent channel or service. This is similar to the NFL’s policy with TV partners that mandates free local access for fans of participating teams in nationally streamed games, like “Thursday Night Football” airing on Amazon Prime Video.
Another function of the bill would make it so services, like NFL Sunday Ticket, NBA League Pass, MLB.TV and other platforms that offer the majority of games for out-of-market fans would no longer have national blackouts when games appear exclusively on a streaming service requiring an additional fee. For League Pass, as an example, the service, under the bill, would make it so a subscriber would not need Amazon Prime, Peacock or ESPN to watch their team’s games on those networks.
Whether or not this stuff will actually happen, I don’t know. Feels like probably not anytime soon. Seems like laws take a good thirty years to get passed, or they don’t ever get passed, and the idea just kind of just disappears from the news cycle. But! It is nice to see that someone in government is at least recognizing this is a problem! And who knows, maybe it’ll actually work out! Until then, I’d suggest turning the game on first, then, once it’s all set up, heating up your dinner after.
Matt Schultz is a comedy and sports writer from Philadelphia. He’s written extensively for ClickHole, The Onion, and Conan O’Brien’s Team Coco. His work has been featured in Vulture, Deadspin, The A.V. Club, Paste Magazine, and other publications. Much of his sports journalism can be found on college basketball websites that don’t exist anymore (PhilaHoops Heads rise up…)