A reader responds to another who bemoans the loss of ESPN after canceling his cable subscription:
There are two very good options for watching streaming ESPN content. One is the Watch ESPN app, which is restricted to a handful of Internet service providers. I've never used it and am unsure of content restrictions. The other is the ESPN Live via XBox Live. It is not full content (no Sportscenter or Monday Night Football) but I have watched every ESPN network broadcast game played by my favorite college football team via this app. Streaming live or viewed on replay. One could augment that with an MLBTV subscription with an XBOX app coming soon. I'm sure NBATV will be soon to follow. NFL is the difficult one. I chose to go with NFL GameRewind. There's no convenient porting to my television (ie an XBOX, Roku, or Apple TV app) and it's watching everything after the fact, but it serves my purpose.
By the way, according to our unscientific survey of Dish readers, 29% of you have "cut the cable" and 66% of you are sports fans. Another writes:
"Eventually, I would suppose that ESPN would wise up to the fact that they are sitting one of the most valuable assets in the cable package and look for ways to offer their product to streaming viewers on a stand-alone subscription basis." That's exactly what won't happen.
ESPN already has plans to do to Internet service what the content have done to cable. They are blocking access to ESPN3 streaming content and forcing Internet companies to pay a per-online subscriber fee to unblock streaming access. There is no option for individual subscribers to purchase access and there is unlikely to ever be one – it is a much more successful business model to force consumers who don't use your product to pay for it.
Earlier this year, they dipped their toes into exclusive content with their first Badger football game being exclusive to ESPN3. It was a minor game and we received only a couple calls, but of course their hope was to start adding pressure to ISPs to pay the fee to allow access to their content. By resisting any pressure to buy into their Internet content agreement, I will fight this effort of ABC/Disney and other content companies to ruin Internet like they have cable TV. But frankly it will probably take an act of Congress to stop it if they find financial success in this near extortion tactic. Is it actually starting to dawn on people that there are layers of evil beyond the cable company that make their television services so expensive? Is anyone clued into the potential threat to the Internet posed by these content companies?
The Dish 