NFL in Talks With Apple Over Live Stream of London Games

Yes, please. Wouldn't it be great to eventually be able to find all of your games on the Apple TV as opposed to having to go through DirecTV?

That'd be crazy if Apple locked down the streaming rights. Don't get me wrong, it would be fine for me since I'm all in on Apple stuff but then we'd have the same situation as DirecTV owning Sunday ticket.

I don't want exclusive rights on sports streaming. It's poison. I'm fine with paying but as many as possible need to be able to have access to the streams. I don't think I want Apple having football anything exclusively.

how about the entire NFL Season - London games are normally low rating weak teams.

Does the NFL app let you in effect, DVR the game? I mean, does it have to be watched live? Sometimes we have to time shift the Seahawks games, and it'd be nice to cut the satellite cable, and this would be a step in that direction.

They have a package that lets you do replay. The games are usually ready to go on game completion. It is a pretty good service. I usually catch redzone with my Dad on gameday and watch the Seahawks later on. Fortunately they've played so well the last few years they seem to have lots of prime time games now, heh

The NFL is also asking for Apple and Google to pay the NFLs taxes for 20 years, issue a 500 million dollar bond and give the money to the NFL in addition to a requirement that Apple and Google build new billion dollars stadiums to replace several 5 year old NFL stadiums. /s

I don't know the business, but I don't see why Apple and others can't lock down something like broadcast network streaming for $8 per month. Build it into an app on ATV and iOS. Use ad services like Hulu has so ads are fresh even if you watch a game a month later on demand. Use the traditional amount of ad time for live plus seven days, offer reduced ads for maybe another $5 to $10 per month, cut the ads down after seven days. You're welcome.

Apple could have broadcast HD for free if they just build in an HD tuner and put a jack on the box for one cable of RG6. No contracts to negotiate. No deals to strike. No broadband bandwidth caps to worry about. Etc. It's the easiest way to get all local programming on the :apple:TV for most of the people in the country (excluding only those too far from the broadcast towers to pick up a signal). The threat in going that way would also give Apple great leverage to motivate the local broadcasters to more readily strike a streaming deal too, which could then give those who live beyond the reach of free OTA broadcasts a way to get them too (just exactly as it works now with other boxes).

So why not do that? Some of us will spin how "antiquated" that model is, ignoring that THAT is the still the way to receive the highest quality of HD that is not delivered on a Blu Ray disc, better than cable, satt and streaming. But that would work if Apple would "just do it".

However, it's hard to monetize something commonly viewed as free and thus Apple wants to try to strike streaming-only deals with well over 1,000 broadcasters all over the country so that what is free can be monetized (though still received for free by other, perfectly-legal means).

If it was me, I'd put at least 2 local HDTV tuners in the box, leverage some of my DVR patents for recording shows to a local iCloud (the hard drives on our computers), NAS or off-site iCloud and then use that stronger position to try to strike favorable streaming deals to serve those beyond the reach of OTA. :apple:TV would immediately gain much greater utility for all users (the bulk of the most popular shows are still on the big 5 networks) and new show discovery would likely lead to iTunes season pass sales to catch up on shows we find that already have a few seasons behind them.

OR, if I just can't bear to build something "so antiquated" into my product, I'd normalize that USB port and open hardware attachment options up for app store developers. Then, let the likes of Elgato or similar bring tuner hardware and DVR software apps to market to make that work with :apple:TV.

But what do I know? Waiting potentially years for Apple to strike over a 1,000 deals is somehow a much better way to go I'm sure.