PPV Sports

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What type of sports would you pay money to see on TV? Almost every sports league now has a PPV service, available if you have satellite TV that allows you to see just about any game you would want to see. I pay $200 per year to get the NFL Sunday Ticket. This allows you to see all 16 games per week in the NFL. Granted, many of these games are played simultaneously, so you technically do get to watch ALL of them, but with the NFL Sunday Ticket, you can watch ANY game that you want to. This approximately triples the number of games that are typically broadcast on national TV. In a typical week of games, everyone gets at least three games, and depending on where you live, you may get up to five. The typical way it works is everyone gets the NFL Game of the Week, the Sunday night game, and the Monday night game. The other two games are potentially broadcast, and they are done so on a regional basis. You get the local teams in your area, provided they are not included in one of the three games that everyone gets. I live in the Baltimore area, so the local games here are the Baltimore Ravens and the Washington Redskins.

So does anyone else pay for services like this? Other examples inlcude basketball (for both NBA and the NCAA), NCAA football, MLB (baseball), MLS (soccer) and NHL (when hockey isn't on strike).

 

Well...I wouldn't mind forking out money for the soccer World Cup, nor would I mind paying for the UEFA champions league...both of which are not shown on the local channels in Sydney.

 

I used to have NFL Sunday Ticket (provided by DirecTV) and the one with the MLB, also I had ESPN which shows Sunday night and Monday night NFL; as for argentinian soccer I didn't pay for it; I wanted Nascar but Fox Sports (latinamerican) went kind of a local channel, with about 15 hours at day with local soccer (I hate it). Here in Spain I can't afford still digital cable, just 4 local air channels who shows only UEFA games... I miss NFL, MLB, NHL, NBA, NASCAR, Cart...

 

Have never really used any PPV, a few times I have watched when my local team have played away at some friends house on PPV. It stings my cheap heart to pay for a single game on TV.

Hmm, what you describe Aldeth doesnt sound like PPV to me, more like an ordinary TV package.

 

I agree with dmc. If it's not on the basic package, I don't need it.

I wouldn't pay one cent for a staged WWE/WWF match...the last thing I want to see is bad acting and a bunch of sweaty, oily men in spandex grabbing at eachother.

The same goes for boxing. You what if you pay a lot of money for tickets, or a little less for PPV and one of the guys gets knocked out with the first punch? You just wasted all that money for about 2 seconds of a fight. Wow.

Now movies are different, since I don't have any of the movie channels...I'd actually order a PPV movie if there was now way of getting to the local movie rental store.

 

In New Zealand, we have free to air TV and we have pay TV (Sky).

Most sports are now shown exclusively in Sky so you have to buy a package that includes Sky Sports to watch them. Some big games, especially rugby are still shown on free TV but the coverage is delayed by an hour to provide an incentive for people to get pay TV.

On top of that, there are certain events that you have to extra to be able to watch. Strangely enough, these events are not ultra-popular things that people would be happy to pay for (like Rugby) but are almost always Wrestling, Boxing, and K1 Martial Arts (which would have a limited audience at best).

At the moment I do not have any form of pay TV which means I have to watch the rugby delayed and I don't really get to watch the cricket at all. But as I don't have that much time to watch TV anyway, I don't really mind that much.

 

I have Canal+, purely for watching the NBA and MLB games. They air movies of all sorts as well, but that's not why i pay roughly 32€ per month. I need that channel because no other station in the Netherlands pays any attention to the major American sports.

 

If wrestling counts as a PPV sport service, then yes. I'm not watching it for the gruelling athletic competition (since there really is none), it's more like getting a few mates over to watch a movie. Sure it's staged, you can debate the homoerotic content if you really feel it's necessary, but it's like watching a more brutal form of ballet when it's done properly (to me, at least).

Most other things, though, I'm not super-keen on - not enough to shell out for, anyway. Besides, not having cable where I live now means that ordering a PPV isn't an option, but even if I could, I'm not that sports-keen that I'd want to subscribe to a PPV deal.

@Kitrax: Pay out all on me you want for that - I'm proud that I watch a male-oriented soap opera!

But hey, each to their own.

 

'a bunch of sweaty, oily men in spandex grabbing at eachother.'

It's really not the case, just watch it now

I myself watch WWE PPV's, but I don't pay for them. I can't pay anywayz. Europe has no PPV's as far as I know, only channels you have to pay for. Not many people here will pay for xtra television, that's a fact.

 

None. I'd much rather play sports than watch them. Besides, we have so little time for TV watching anymore that our TiVo wish list fills faster than it empties anyway.

OK, I thought of one exception. Does it count that we went with the expanded basic package from DirecTV to make sure that we got OLN for the Tour de France (and Giro, and Vuelta, and...) coverage?

 

@ joacqin, NonSequitor and others

I used the term PPV as it was the best thing I could think to describe the sports packages. However, I do admit that true PPVs are things like WWE events, and boxing matches, where you pay a fixed fee for one particular event.

The season packages (is that a real word?) gives you all the games, so it really isn't PPV as you aren't buying a specific event, but rather an entire season for a particular sport. Anyway, the point is I was talking about buying a season package of NFL, MLB, NHL, NBA, etc. and not things like WWE.