In the US, local TV is still very much a thing. Which i get, it’s a big country and you don’t exactly care about the weather or sport in Florida when you live in Arizona am I right?
If you’re one for NBA League Pass or just plain streaming, you know that most NBA teams have a FOX Sports affiliate to provide local TV coverage. But if you’re in the region of the LA Clippers, you might be welcomed to a streaming network started by none other than Clips owner Steve Ballmer.
Steve Ballmer, the owner of the Los Angeles Clippers, has turned down a $60 million-a-year offer for local TV rights and is forging ahead with a plan to start his own over-the-top streaming network, The Post has learned.
If he follows through on the plan, Ballmer, the former CEO of Microsoft, would be the first owner of a major US sports team to deliver games direct-to-consumer via a Web-based service and not through traditional cable or satellite companies, sources said….
(Fox Sports) Prime Ticket currently pays the team a rights fee of $25 million a year — and offered a 140 percent increase, to $60 million, but the billionaire Ballmer turned it aside… Some observers think the bombastic Ballmer is merely using the threat of forming an over-the-top network as a play to wring more money from an RSN.
So a dedicated Web-based service for an NBA team. This is very interesting. I wonder if he’s missing out though. Because not everybody is that high on streaming. I’m not a fan, I don’t stream unless I have no other option. Everybody has a TV, why try and fix what isn’t broken you know?
