No Eurosport for US market

[1centaur]

Discovery Channel has recently gained control of Eurosport and I had been hoping this meant our cycling coverage was about to improve. One of my analysts was on a call with Discovery this morning and they specially said they have no plans to bring Eurosport to the US audience - too crowded a market and too expensive.

I am disappointed.

[MattTuck]

Wow.

I was actually thinking of paying for a British VPN and the Eurosport player so I could stream better quality race videos this classics season...

I know Eurosport covers a bunch of stuff, but their cycling stuff has to be super low budget. They send probably 2 commentators and 1 or 2 engineers to the race. They don't make lots of over-produced cut scenes or interviews or advertorials... I like their more Spartan approach frankly. Just show me the race, with decent commentary and limited commercials.

By contrast, watching cycling on US tv is almost as bad as Football with all the commercials.

[echelon_john]

Hola for Chrome. Watch whatever you want, no geo restrictions.

[oldpotatoe]

Discovery Channel has recently gained control of Eurosport and I had been hoping this meant our cycling coverage was about to improve. One of my analysts was on a call with Discovery this morning and they specially said they have no plans to bring Eurosport to the US audience - too crowded a market and too expensive.

I am disappointed.

Crowded, no doubt. Look at who compete for the 'ball' sports, the networks. What Eurosport carries are Euro-centric, and advert money not well spent in the US.

Is Discovery small in Europe? Otherwise why did DSC buy Eurosport?

[Gsinill]

How is that? Special setting?
Asking because once in a while I am trying to watch some documentaries on a German website but I am getting an error message that they do not allow streaming from the US. I am using Chrome.

Hola for Chrome. Watch whatever you want, no geo restrictions.

[MattTuck]

Hola for Chrome. Watch whatever you want, no geo restrictions.

Same question as above.

Usually I watch races through cyclingfans, and have not run into problems with their streams. As I understood it though, if I paid for the eurosport player I'd need to get a british VPN. Are you saying that I can launch the eurosport player from chrome and do not require a british vpn? or that I do not need the Eurosport player at all?

The main reason I'm interested in the Player is not for access to races, but hopefully access to better quality (maybe even HD) streaming.

[Climb01742]

it's interesting to watch the evolution of things.

once, the big 3 networks, broadcast over the air, were mass market media and cable was started to reach niche markets.

now cable lusts after only mass audiences, and leave niche content to the web.

to my pea brain, cable is leaving the door open for a pure-web based TV, which would be, essentially, a browser with a ginormous screen.

[1centaur]

Web-based TV already has its own acronym, OTT for Over The Top, in the cable TV world. Comcast and FIOS know that OTT is an existential threat because they don't want to be just "dumb pipes" for Net service and get paid accordingly. So they will delay that eventuality however they can, whether by owning content (Universal) or signing contracts with content providers that pay for the non-provision to OTT wannabes. Apple could not get around the road block and today in the WSJ is talking about a scaled down version possibly in partnership with cable companies. It's a complicated dance that will no doubt take much longer to play out than we would like - 5-10 years at least. Make up of the FCC and judicial decisions will be a part of the denouement.

On Eurosport, what I don't know is why is why it's not better to make some money than no money by putting it out on the Web for the fans at a few dollars per month or ad supported. I have to think European race organizers think the US market is worth more than that but they certainly are not getting their imagined price. Maybe they don't want to set a precedent. So we suffer from their ego.

[PQJ]

Their ego? How'd you know it's not our ego?

[1centaur]

Is Discovery small in Europe? Otherwise why did DSC buy Eurosport?

Discovery is surprisingly global (nature documentaries can be recycled at low cost by dubbing in foreign languages) but wants to be more so. Their channels do extremely well in "must carry" surveys of customers which gives them pricing power and a lot of free cash flow that they can use to buy more channels so they can sell a block of channels to the cable networks. This is why the rich get richer.

[Gsinill]

In case you are still deciding on a VPN provider: Hotspot Shield (http://www.hsselite.com)is your friend.
Using it as we speak on my Mac, mostly for securing public WLAN while I am traveling but they have proxies in the UK and the bandwidth has been great.
$30 per year and well worth it IMHO.


I was actually thinking of paying for a British VPN and the Eurosport player so I could stream better quality race videos this classics season...

[1centaur]

Their ego? How'd you know it's not our ego?

We just want to watch, though not many of us. They think more of us should want to watch so their product must be worth more than they can get. I suppose you could claim that the non-watchers in the US have an ego in the sense of not caring about non-US sport, but those of us who want to watch don't seem to have ego on the line.

What am I missing?

[echelon_john]

From a computing perspective, using Hola in Chrome enables you to spoof an IP address that's non-US-based. (You can choose/change the country)

So it bypasses georestrictions on streaming content. If you're talking about a pay/subscription service, they may still block a us-based credit card address if you need to register.

It's free, so download it and try it and see if it gets you where you want to go!


Same question as above.

Usually I watch races through cyclingfans, and have not run into problems with their streams. As I understood it though, if I paid for the eurosport player I'd need to get a british VPN. Are you saying that I can launch the eurosport player from chrome and do not require a british vpn? or that I do not need the Eurosport player at all?

The main reason I'm interested in the Player is not for access to races, but hopefully access to better quality (maybe even HD) streaming.

[MattTuck]

On Eurosport, what I don't know is why is why it's not better to make some money than no money by putting it out on the Web for the fans at a few dollars per month or ad supported. I have to think European race organizers think the US market is worth more than that but they certainly are not getting their imagined price. Maybe they don't want to set a precedent. So we suffer from their ego.

I think that is because there are already services that have bought the rights for both tv and internet broadcasting of the races.

[Gsinill]

Oh I see...
Interpreted the "Hola" kinda like Kudos to Chrome, not aware this was an add-on.


From a computing perspective, using Hola in Chrome enables you to spoof an IP address that's non-US-based. (You can choose/change the country)

So it bypasses georestrictions on streaming content. If you're talking about a pay/subscription service, they may still block a us-based credit card address if you need to register.

It's free, so download it and try it and see if it gets you where you want to go!

[Climb01742]

Discovery is surprisingly global (nature documentaries can be recycled at low cost by dubbing in foreign languages) but wants to be more so. Their channels do extremely well in "must carry" surveys of customers which gives them pricing power and a lot of free cash flow that they can use to buy more channels so they can sell a block of channels to the cable networks. This is why the rich get richer.

i wonder if there's another angle being played here since discovery clearly has global ambitions. sports are as global as content gets. two thoughts come to mind: might discovery be trying to gobble (meant cobble, but interesting slip) together enough content to create a sports/outdoorsy channel of their own? possible, yes, but costly and much competition. or are they locking up content to increase their value hoping to be bought out? with cable companies consolidating (see comcast buying TWC), content companies might want size to create clout when bargaining?

[gavingould]

I used Hola for Chrome to watch the geo-restricted-for-the-US CX Worlds youtube streaming.

From what I've gathered, the UCI YouTube channel was blocked for USA because Universal Sports bought the US broadcast rights for all the CX World Cup races. Now... as far as I know, they didn't show them live, nor did they live broadcast Worlds.

I miss the good ol' days a couple years ago when I could pick up Universal Sports over the air with an antenna on my TV and watch the Giro and Vuelta live or the re-broadcast later in the day. Then they went cable subscriber only, and apparently downhill from there. Since I don't do cable, that's just what I've heard - they'd show a schedule with cycling on it but when you'd tune in at the reported time it'd be weightlifting or golf.

All that said, I've caught the TdF via various streams from cyclingfans the last couple years. Yeah, sometimes it's not the best quality and there may be banner/pop-up ads... don't install anything, don't sign up for anything. Hola may be a good way around that this year... I think RAI or another Italian channel was streaming the Giro last year as long as it looked like you were on an Italian IP address.

[PQJ]

We just want to watch, though not many of us. They think more of us should want to watch so their product must be worth more than they can get. I suppose you could claim that the non-watchers in the US have an ego in the sense of not caring about non-US sport, but those of us who want to watch don't seem to have ego on the line.

What am I missing?

All I was suggesting is that there are 2 sides to this negotiating table. Could be that Eurosport is asking for too much. Could be that Discovery is offering to pay too little or wants more access than Eurosport is willing to provide for the money in play. I really dunno, as neither side has asked me to represent them. But I agree with you that it would be nice to have Eurosport stateside and it sucks that that can't happen.

[Straz]

We get the Velocity Channel in my house (Comcast), which is a Discovery Channel network. This past fall they started broadcasting British Superbike and European Rally Championships, both Eurosport offerings (with Eurosport intros).

I would enjoy seeing Eurosport coverage in the US. I currently download biathlon torrents from the UK just to watch the World Cup.

[MattTuck]

I get the reason for the frustration. It is the fact that the content already exists and that the marginal cost to make it available to the US consumers should literally be the cost of the electrons or photons, as the case may be. It is not as if we are demanding they shell out huge amounts of money to produce it for an American audience... just send us the stream they already have. It would be all marginal revenue.