Are streaming services ruining how fans consume sports? Wine and Gold Talk podcast

Takeaways:

• The landscape of sports broadcasting has drastically changed. Streaming services have made watching sports more complicated.
• The shift from cable to streaming has financial implications for consumers.
• Nostalgia for cable and simplicity is prevalent among sports fans.

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Read the automated transcript of today’s podcast below. Because it’s a computer-generated transcript, it may contain errors and misspellings.

Ethan Sands

What up Cavs Nation? I’m your host, Ethan Sands, and I’m back with another episode of the Wine and Gold Talk Podcast. I’m joined by none other than Jimmy Watkins, columnist, cleveland .com. Jimmy, how are you doing today? How has your day been?

Jimmy Watkins (00:27.816)

It’s been good hanging out with Jim Schwartz, Ken Dorsey and the boys over at Brown’s facility this morning. Hanging out with you. Nothing but heavy hitters, Cleveland heavy hitters on my schedule today.

Ethan Sands (00:41.646)

Man, I’m still trying to get known. We were talking about getting more people on this podcast. I was like, well, maybe if they see me come back to the cast facility for year two of mine on the beat, they’d be like, he wasn’t just an intern. He might be sticking around for a little bit. I mentioned to Jimmy Off the Pod that guys like Campy Russell and Austin Carr have come up to me and been like, yeah.

I know of you, but it’s good to put name to face in all those good things. But yeah, Jimmy, it’s, it’s just trying to grow, right? Continuing to build these platforms and all these guys, and getting to know the people around the world, around the league, especially NFL, NBA, MLB. Obviously you’re doing a great job of that being at training camp now in the regular season in those scrums, getting those faces to be seen. But how important do you think that is just for.

us to continue to get our feet wet, not only for any beat, but just trying to figure out where we stand in this lay of the land of journalism.

Jimmy Watkins (01:48.184)

I mean, you always got to have boots on the ground. You always have to be, never, just for two reasons, right? You never know when a story is going to happen. You never know when someone’s going to say something newsworthy or crazy. You always want to be around because you never know where there’s going to be a story. also sometimes, for my purposes in particular, I think about it as

like days like Sunday where the Browns looked awful and I had to grill some folks and write some hard things about them. You have to build up credibility to do that and the only way you can do that is sticking around.

Ethan Sands (02:34.52)

For sure, for sure. And speaking of guys like Campy Russell, Austin Carr, guys that work were always gonna be Cleveland legend, Cavs legends, but also understanding their new roles and how they kind of are in the TV business now and how that world is continually changing. Recently, they came out with a report that Amazon could be nearing a new deal to

Scream Cavs and Guardians games, Jimmy. And the potential deal comes as Diamond Sports Group, the parent company of Valley Sports, obviously attempts to emerge from bankruptcy with Amazon stepping in to potentially offer fans a streaming option for $20 a month. And I know like this is, there’s a lot of things behind the scenes going on with this entire deal, like how apparently,

DSG and Amazon had come to a deal earlier this year and Amazon pulled out. It was supposed to be like hundred fifteen million dollar deal or whatever. That obviously doesn’t help when it comes to gaining credibility, gaining partners and things, but apparently it’s not going to hurt this next deal that’s potentially coming. more so other than the jargon that we’ve been speaking of, it’s how the lay of journalism also just

streaming sports games digitally on your TV, whatever it was, has changed over the years, And that’s more so what I want to talk about on today’s podcast because it really does feel like there was a time where a young Ethan and a young Jimmy could wake up, go downstairs before school, middle school, high school, maybe even elementary school, and go and watch Sports Center.

where they got Stuart Scott on, listing off the top 10 plays and you’re sitting on the couch, standing up probably with your backpack on, ready to go to school, and you’re just wiring, trying to see if you’re gonna get to see what the top play was from the night before, before your bus comes or whatever. And now it’s like, okay, well you can’t watch this game unless you have Peacock, Amazon, TNT, NBA TV, whatever it may be. Sometimes it’s…

Ethan Sands (04:54.39)

YouTube TV and sometimes YouTube TV blocks out some games so and I and we’re get into some of the responses that I got from subtexters on this but Jimmy how do you feel like this whole world of just watching our beloved sports has changed over the years?

Jimmy Watkins (05:13.264)

Yeah, I’m no, I’m no expert on, on media contracts, but I know a thing or two about being a couch potato and watching some games. And it does feel like I remember to your point about, about young Ethan and young Jimmy, remember. You know, I’d have friends over after school or something. And I’d like sneak into the living room and plug my, I don’t know if it was a GameCube or PlayStation, whatever, and the TV, and you have to like change the input on it for that to work. My dad would get so mad at me because he didn’t know how to change it back.

Now, those two things are one and the same, Like you need your, whether it’s a PlayStation or a smart TV, something that can put apps on it. You need that as much as you need cable to watch all this stuff. I think we lose in general as the consumers because we’re paying for more things. We used to have a one -stop shop with the cable package. Now it’s…

splitting off and there’s, I think there’s a parallel here between what’s happening in TV industry and what’s happened with newspapers, which is that it used to be with newspapers, no matter what part of the newspaper you were getting, you were paying for the whole thing. Same thing with TV, right? Like ESPN, some of these big time cable titans had made a lot of their money.

by just having like the cable bundle packages, right? Like people who wanna watch, I don’t know if this is it actually works, people who wanna watch, know, HGN, the Home Improvement Network and A &E and some of those other channels, you don’t get to pick one by one, you have to pick groups of them. So even non -sports fans, we’re getting ESPN on their televisions. Now everything is so…

segmented and it’s so made for consumer that I think a lot of these sports entities are rethinking much like journalism industry. It’s kind of like a pay for play in the print world. Like you subscribe to read our stuff, to read the premium stuff. And we’re seeing professional sports leagues tip toe into that world. And now we’re seeing it with the

Jimmy Watkins (07:37.576)

the regional sports networks, you know, the Chiefs and Dolphins playoff game last year, that’s pay for play. gotta pay or at least sign up for Peacock to watch that game. Ohio State, think, a Peacock football game last year. It’s like everything else, it does come back down to money. And I think it’s especially unfortunate for people around here because we’re talking calves.

I basketball’s like baseball might be losing a little steam in national prominence, but the regional passion is as strong as it’s ever been. I don’t think people care as much about watching all the national television games as they care. Can I just see my calves? And now all this stuff, all this disruption and change is even impacting us on that local level. So it’s kind of a bummer.

Ethan Sands (08:36.814)

And to your point, I want to point out so it’s very clear, Like this new deal would only really affect the next season for both Guardians and Cavs. So the 2024, 2025 season is still going to be aired on Valley as of right now, as of what day is it? Thursday at four o ‘clock? That is what the deal is going forward for the Cavs, at least for this next season. And then

The Guardians obviously are in season, about to get into a playoff run, and they’re still gonna be streamed on Valley as well, until next year when they said, and this is comment from our guy Paul Hoines with cleveland .com talking to the Guardians, is that they don’t know, it’s uncertain what is it gonna be with Valley or Amazon or whatever because their contract ends at the end of the season. that’s.

where this kind of comes in is what’s going to happen in the future. How quickly is this going to change? Because we know that there are other teams around the league that already are getting streaming rights with Amazon, right? And I think this next deal is going to be for, it could be for around 27 teams, I believe, or yeah, it’s 27 teams across the NBA, NHL and MLB. And I mean,

It could bring Cleveland sports fans more reliable streaming platform with Amazon because what I’ve heard from our subtext is that I’m going to get into this now because you talk about the regional stuff. We know how much Clevelanders love their brownies, love the guardians, love, love, love the Cavs, right? This is a big sports town and being able to.

have a reliable source to watch the game is as important as being able to figure out where to get tickets, right? Jimmy, that’s why we rewrite the stories every week, trying to help guys out, help people out, figure out where they can get tickets for these games. But now it’s like, all right, are we to be watching on Amazon? Are we to be watching wherever, right? So I asked our subtexters, I said, which platform would you prefer to watch the games on? And I wanted them to give

Ethan Sands (10:54.638)

their experiences and things of that nature as well. So I sent a poll out and 77 % of the people said that they would rather watch Cavs and Guardians games on Amazon and further even if the $20 a month isn’t stated and then 23 % said Valley Sports. Still trying to figure out probably it’s still gonna be like a $20 on top of cable.

just like you do for any other streaming platform that you have currently, Like Netflix, Hulu, HBO, Max, whatever you want to call it. Like it’s going to be the same thing. It’s going to be like Amazon Prime. So you get that and you’ll have it on top of whatever your capability is. And that’s why we’re talking about how important it is to know where the streaming life is going to go over the next years and especially what it used to be. I mean, for me personally,

This last season, my first year covering the Cavs, I have a Roku TV, right? So I don’t have cable. I don’t have any of that. And I had to learn very quickly that any away game, I had to go to my local bar to watch because they had Valley Sports and I wasn’t getting Valley. I didn’t have that on my TV at the time. I didn’t feel like doing that when I had, shout out to Flatiron Irish Pub down the street from me.

Because that’s where I would be watching the away games when Chris was away or at watching the games. So it was hard for me to figure out where I was going to be at each day because sometimes, you know, your regular bar is closed on Mondays or closes at 10 and the game starts at 930 and you got to find another place to be at. Right. So as as a reporter, I can I can relate to.

what these consumers, these people that are trying to regularly watch these fans, are trying to watch their team just for the fun of it. I’m trying to do work at the same time. Bring them lugging my laptop around trying to figure out where the best spot is gonna be, Jimmy. So here is what some of our subtexters said, and you can stop me if you wanna comment on these things. And I wanna start with the ones that are just kinda rants because,

Ethan Sands (13:11.022)

One of them says blatantly Amazon Valley sports is way too buggy and unreliable not to mention overpriced I love the Cavs broadcast team, but Valley itself is a nightmare Remember when their broadcast fee went completely dark during the Cavs great win in Madison Square Garden down two starters last year I mean, I remember the bar I was at going nuts Right like what is going on?

change the channel, we’re missing the game, right? Like this is crazy, right? For that to happen. The other thing, because I mentioned Campy Russell, Austin Carr, those guys, I don’t know what would happen to their roles if Amazon were to take over this contract in the coming years, because we know that they’re obviously a part of that team, that broadcast team, and there’s…

sports teams all across the nation. It’s not just Cleveland’s but like Valley sports or whatever. So it’s definitely going to be interesting to see where like how all these other jobs are going to just disperse depending on what happens.

Jimmy Watkins (14:20.03)

I would guess that Amazon doesn’t want to fool around with hiring a bunch of like up to 60 new broadcast teams. And I would hope that they would have some empathy for the people that are already doing, and respect for the people who have already been doing this for so long that they would want those jobs to transfer over. I don’t know that, but that seems like the easiest solution to me.

Ethan Sands (14:46.318)

That’s probably smart. Yeah, just add in them back in and give them a roll just with Amazon instead of, like, you get an Amazon mic instead of a Bali Sports mic, right? Like, yeah, that would make the most sense.

Jimmy Watkins (14:57.042)

Yeah, because like what happens to Ballet if they lose these games? What is Ballet Sports without the games? That’s what I’m… Yeah.

Ethan Sands (15:03.736)

think we’re all trying to figure that out at the same time. It’s up for grabs up in the air. And I mean, the other thing is, like I mentioned earlier, Campion off in the car aren’t just like Joe Smolls off the street. These are Cavs legends. And we talk about rapport and guys knowing the team. They have connections that nobody else does because they’ve been around for a long time. They have the respect of the organization and they’ve been there, done that. They can just talk to players.

how they need to, to get the information to give it to the fans. I think that’s, as much as seeing former players be taking a lot of journalism jobs sometimes can hurt my heart. It’s like, well, it makes a lot of sense because they have different relationships than we can have with them.

Jimmy Watkins (15:51.634)

Austin Carr is also just an institution, man. I have a picture from my ninth birthday of me and Austin Carr at some local video game store that he was at that just happened to be at that day. It’s just cool. It’s cool to keep the connections to franchise traditions alive that way.

Ethan Sands (16:15.278)

I’m gonna keep reading some of these responses to our subtext based on whether they would want to watch it on Amazon or DSG, Valley Sports, whatever. The next one is, as an Amazon hater, literally anything is better than DSG. My in -laws moved to YouTube TV and there’s basically zero way for them to watch The Guardians in market. I got them Fubo for the rest of the season at $100 a month.

that would be cheaper than the alleged price for Amazon at $20. So kudos to you for being a good person, for getting your in -laws that, but good lord, man, $100 a month is crazy. The next one, I think this is from our guy Dave in Tucson, because I think that’s the only guy we know on this platform from Tucson. He says, being in Tucson, sign me up for $20 a month. You would not take my money fast enough, especially if the suns can’t black me out.

even though I am not in their metropolitan area, and an hour and a half of sand separates me from their arena. Tons of Cleveland fans down here from all the years at high Corbett Field for guardians spring training. So that, I mean, that’s a very valid point, right? There’s fans all over the world for Cavs that sometimes can’t watch the game because they can only watch the team in state.

Jimmy Watkins (17:35.112)

Can we just, there’s a theme here. think we’re, regardless of what brand you want to put on it, we’re just looking for reliability here. We were looking for streaming reliability. Live sports are basically the only thing in, in the modern culture that we, that you either watch it when it happens or you don’t, or you miss it. Right. We’re not, we’re kind of out of the era of taping games on your VCR and watching them back unless you’re a sicko.

Like most people are just, most people are either watching the games or they’re watching the YouTube highlights. That’s basically how it works. it’s almost impossible to, even if you were to try to do that, it’s almost impossible to watch a game without knowing the score, especially with all the alerts we have set up on our phones and stuff like that. So reliability that like I’m going to be able to see the game when I need to, when it’s going to stream there, in its entirety uninterrupted, no buffering or anything like that. I mean, that could partially be related to, I stream a lot of stuff at my house.

My internet isn’t the best and I get frustrated when I have to stream things sometimes, but I guess that’s the day and age we live in. other thing I think wherever, wherever we, we, whichever direction we choose here, I think we would also all be looking for sustainability. Like I don’t want to have to be pivoting around a different streaming services once every three, five, 10 years. You know what I mean? Like I want, I want familiarity. don’t want to have to be.

tracking streaming services seasonally and adjusting my budget because, okay, we’re out of season now, or the Cavs were on Amazon last year and now we’re doing the Ballet Sports Plus thing. Can we just pick a direction and stick with it? I think that’s the other thing that we’re all looking for here.

Ethan Sands (19:24.922)

And I’m glad we got your perspective, Jimmy, because obviously you aren’t at every Cavs home game either, because you got a whole lot to do on your plate. So sometimes even when the games are at home, you got to be watching it from the crib. Right. And I think that’s like just a perspective that you like, that’s what the fans are trying to deal with. And I think those two things, reliability and sustainability are definitely two of the biggest things that I saw on the spot and replies from our subtexters. But

How is this going to continue changing? Because you mentioned VCRs, right? There is an era, there’s a generation that’s not gonna know what a VCR is. And that’s coming up pretty soon. I know kids that are growing up now that might not know what a VCR is.

Jimmy Watkins (20:10.604)

we’re already there. We’re already there. DVR, even DVRing a game is like kinda outdated at this point.

Ethan Sands (20:16.856)

Bro, I remember having those, the Rugrats little like, Teevo. my God.

Jimmy Watkins (20:20.286)

TiVo. Remember TiVo? I thought when I had an uncle that had a TiVo, was like, man, this guy’s rich.

Ethan Sands (20:28.536)

Man, I’m talking about going back to the tape days, Jimmy. I’m talking about having to plug in tapes and games. said, you want to record some, put the tape in the TV and press record so it’s on there. You watch it later. I remember being a little kid on, might’ve been Halloween or something. I don’t even know. We had these like the special ones that came in like the color. Like for the cartoons, think it was like one was Charlie Brown and he had like, it was like an orange little tape.

that you could plug in for Halloween or whatever. I was like, man, but I just think it’s so interesting how we continue to evolve. But in some ways, it’s making it harder for everybody else. It comes back to the topic that we started with, right? All these different platforms that you have to have to watch different games, right? Obviously, if you like one sport, you probably like two sports. If you like two sports, you might like three sports.

and all these different teams. I don’t know about you, Jimmy, but my teams are very sporadic. And I think I told Christus when I first got on the beat, and I was like, I feel scared doing this because I might get ostracized. But I mean, I’m from Maryland. So I’m not a Browns fan. I’m not a fan of anything also because this is our job. So we can’t really be fans and not be objective. But growing up, like,

My parents went to Texas for college. So I was a Texas fan. And then I liked Kobe Bryant. So I was a Lakers fan by proximity, not so because of the team or whatever. And like my dad and my mom is also from New York. So was like, go there and see the family and everybody’s wearing Yankee stuff. So I’m like, it’s a toss up to learning.

from all these different fans that are wanting to watch their teams. We talked about Dave from Tucson, from our subtext, who’s a Kaz fan but lives in Phoenix. And he gets blocked out because the home team wants you to watch their stuff, right? It’s just like how difficult it is for a fan, not only at home, but especially if you’re not in your area, to watch these different things if you don’t have all the streaming platforms. And the one complaint that I really saw

Ethan Sands (22:54.676)

on subtext was, well, I don’t want to pay for cable and pay for the streaming service or pay for Amazon on top of that. And like, that’s very valid because you feel like you’re giving your money to the direct TV. You feel like you’re giving your money to Verizon, whatever you’re watching it on. And now, okay, now I got to go get something else. And I feel like that’s going to continue to happen. And that’s the sustainability portion that you were talking about earlier. mean, Amazon might be a little bit different because

I feel like Amazon’s gonna be used for multiple different things in the future and has been around for a while. But what do you think about the situation, how it’s changed, how it’s growing, and how fans feel about having to get two different platforms?

Jimmy Watkins (23:40.786)

Yeah, I think the point about not paying for cable and the streaming service X, Y, and Z is a good one because I think that’s just a product of the time that we’re living in. We’re living in a really weird middle ground for TV, streaming service, movies, television, sports, sports rights, all that stuff. Because we have the old guard, like we were talking about earlier, like these cable titans that are still trying to keep it pushing that way and get you get eyes to, you know, Fox.

ESPN’s got the college football playoff for the next 10 years. So they’re not, they’re not going anywhere anytime soon. Monday Night Football is going to keep them afloat for a long time. But then we have these new, these new people, the streaming services, Amazon, Apple TV, so on and so forth. Netflix is messing around with, with live comedy shows and wouldn’t, they’re doing these, all these sort of, like they’re doing the Olympic, the Olympic, whatever you want to call it, like

They followed around the Olympic teams last year. do the drive to survive with Formula One. That’s becoming a defined niche for them. These people are coming in with deep pockets and they’re, I think everyone’s recognizing, like we said before that like, there’s nothing, there are few things more lucrative in that business than a captive audience. That’s going to be like, you just feed them ads and they’re like, yeah, I have to, I have to see what happens next after this commercial break because I’m, I’m locked in here.

And there are a few things that, that bring that captive audience, like live sports. Like it was, again, it’s the only thing that we still have to sit and watch as a community, everything else, you know, your game of Thrones, your house of dragons, whatever. There’s a time that it comes out and you might, they’re, they’re even trying to the HBO maxes of the world are trying to condition us by dropping them one at a time to make that shorter, try to recreate that communal setting, I think. But you can still watch it Monday the next day with that really no.

No penalty to your viewing experience. That’s just not the case with sports. So all these different entities are trying to are competing for for sports rights right now and We kind of just need to let it shake out I don’t think unfortunately, I don’t think there is a near future Existence where we’re gonna be able to Neatly watch everything under one umbrella. I think we are gonna have to

Jimmy Watkins (26:06.174)

pick and choose. In some cases, you might have to pick and choose what you’re just more interested in, right? Like, are you more of a football fan? Maybe that’s where you’re throwing your money. And maybe you care a little bit less about getting some of these NBA packages. And that that’s where, again, these regional packages become more enticing to us, right? Like if you, I don’t care about seeing your 27 nationally televised games a year. I don’t care about whatever prime has given me with that. But if I can get

just Cavs games, it’s kind of NBA, NBA league pass does this. You can do a league wide league pass or you can pick one team or you can buy certain games one at a time. Like that’s a model that’s interesting to me. I, if I can, if I can just, you know, cut pieces of the cake for myself to make it a little bit easier for me to live in the world where we’re so scatterbrained right now, that would be nice.

Ethan Sands (26:59.178)

I completely agree and that kind of touched on what I was saying with fans being fans of multiple sports, right? How like just hectic that is, that lifestyle is and trying to be a fan and watch all your teams. I’m man, Jimmy, we talk about fantasy football, dude. Like you, you’re not even a fan of the team, but for

the allotted period of the season, your fans are 16 different guys, potentially on 16 different teams, right?

Jimmy Watkins (27:29.586)

But in sports gambling, sports gambling drives interest in a lot of these games too.

Ethan Sands (27:34.166)

Right. And we talk about being in an age where sports gambling is taking over it is being so prominent and promoted and all these different things. You would think that they would make it easier, right, for our consumption, but that’s just not the case at the moment. And like we talked about at the beginning, it just makes me reminisce on a time where everybody had cable and we could just, hey, what’s the…

Game on it’s on ESPN. It’s on Fox. It’s on NBC. It’s on what where is it at? Like can I just what’s the channel number? Let me just type the channel number in and it’s already paid for Unless you had eight you didn’t have HD or whatever then you had to go to a lower number and it gets a little smaller on your screen or whatever but like that that’s like the only Like get back that I remember of having on those

back in the day, Jimmy, it feels like we’re nearing a time where it’s just getting so complicated. you mentioned just how things are kind of shaping up. And it’s just really interesting.

Jimmy Watkins (28:44.018)

Dude, I remember being able to go to my friend’s house and being able to use their TV. Like now, now I go over someone’s house and it’s like, okay, maybe I could figure out a way to get this on. And then if I have, I’ve used a Roku or something like that before and they have a smart TV, I can kind of figure my way around. But like you got weird volume buttons that are like on the side or underneath and all that, all that sort of stuff.

And of course, every television or every entertainment center has like three different remotes now. It’s like, yeah, this one’s for our for our sound bar, our surround sound speakers. And this one’s for the actual TV. And then this one’s for our Roku or whatever smart TV, however, however you get their TV apps going. And it’s just like, man, technology is great. But is it not a little bit? Is it not also a little bit fricking extra? Like, shouldn’t we be?

Shouldn’t technology be simplifying the world and not giving us more headaches?

Ethan Sands (29:46.774)

I miss, like you said earlier in the podcast, when we could show up in our mom and our dad or grandma, grandpa’s house and be like, all right, well, the Wii’s not working. I need to plug it in. Okay, put the red with the red, the yellow with the yellow. And they’d be like, how’d you do that? You should take up engineering. Now it’s like, okay, I’m in the newer generation and I’m struggling trying to figure this out. And like, my.

Jimmy Watkins (30:02.322)

Yeah, dude.

Ethan Sands (30:15.128)

Goodness, it is just trying to figure out where we’re at.

Jimmy Watkins (30:19.164)

No one used to know more about my grandmother’s television than I did. Now it’s like, if somebody calls me, if a family member calls me, it’s like, I don’t know what your setup is. You might be better off reading the manual in different language, you’re calling me.

Ethan Sands (30:37.748)

I mean, bro, and you talk about going to a friend’s house. Now you got to figure out which friends have what? Like, do you have it? Do you have Peacock? Can we go to your house? I don’t care if you got a small couch. We’ll figure it out. If you have Peacock, that’s fine. We’ll be over there to watch the Brazil game, Philadelphia and Green Bay’s coming on in an hour. I got to figure out how to watch it. Like, these are the conversations that we literally have.

Jimmy Watkins (31:02.248)

Well, the other thing is they’re starting to crack down now on these streaming services on like the shared passwords thing. Like for most of my life, I was just riding my parents Netflix wave. Now it’s a little trickier than that. Like you, and that’s, think that’s a, that’s a thing widespread. Like think about, think about families with kids in, in school, right? Or kids in college, like those kids, those kids don’t have the money to be blown on Peacock and Netflix and all that stuff.

I don’t know the nuts and bolts of how that works. If you’re like we were, if you’re a sophomore in the dorms at Ohio University and obviously there’s a cable package in the dorms, but that’s limited. How do you go about finessing the system to be able to share your parents’ passwords anymore? I don’t know.

Ethan Sands (31:51.788)

mean Netflix just did everybody dirty when they did that. Netflix said, and they were like the first ones. They were like, okay, yeah, so that sharing stuff, that’s dead. Y ‘all not doing that anymore. And you said sophomore year when we had the cable package that they wanted to help us out with or whatever, or you had the…

Shared living areas where they had a TV. That’s what I like more. You can just go to the TV y ‘all don’t have this Ohio University needs to step their game up cuz how you not gonna have the game on then you go to the Apartments and you live by yourself you get the big TV from the Walmart you feeling good about yourself. I can’t log into the Netflix. I can’t get the game on. I don’t know like Because all of these different things

Especially when we talk about Netflix just taking the password and be like if you’re not in the same location You can’t be on the same account. That was nasty work

Jimmy Watkins (32:52.114)

Or how about being a sports bar right now? Like, you gotta, that’s gotta be a huge chunk of your budget. You need six different streaming services to satisfy your customer base. Because I guarantee, if someone walks in there, whether it’s their first time or their 10th time, the one time you don’t have the game, that’s kind of the cardinal sin of sports bardom. You know what I mean? Like, I can’t imagine how much stress those people are going

Ethan Sands (33:15.534)

man, and it’s hard to keep restaurants open, bars open as it is when it comes to 2020, the pandemic, all these other things. These people are hanging on by a thread. You say, all right, so you gotta have Peacock, you gotta have Netflix, gotta, like, all these subscription services. And like we said, you can’t just share the passwords from somebody that might’ve had it from their house. It’s gotta be stressful. Yeah, Jimmy.

I just think we’re in a different era. I think it’s for people that are gonna wanna have cable and Amazon are gonna have to do that to watch games. understand their feelings about it, but I also understand like if people didn’t have good experiences with Bally because there will be some times where Bally wasn’t airing games or was blacked out or whatever. And being like, Amazon is more.

Reliable. know I can watch anything on Amazon Prime right now if I have it. But I just think it’s it’s there’s definitely two sides to it. Two things can be true. Right, Jimmy? Two things can be true at the same time. And I think this is one of those situations. But. All right. I think that is where we will wrap up today’s podcast talking about where we are in the streaming world and if streaming services.

are ruining what is the experience of watching sports games for just fans on a regular basis, right? So Jimmy, any last thoughts before we head out?

Jimmy Watkins (34:54.556)

I miss man caves, miss cable boxes, miss simplicity. That’s it, that’s all I got.

Ethan Sands (34:59.662)

And with that being said, that’ll wrap up today’s episode of the Wine and Gold Top Podcast. But remember to become a Cavs Insider and interact with Chris, me, and Jimmy by subscribing to Subtext. This is where we send polls that are exclusive to our subscribers, like the one when we talked about Amazon and Valley Sports. And you can get your opinions off and tell us how you feel about every situation.

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from me, Chris, and Jimmy. This isn’t just our podcast. It’s your podcast. And the only way to have your voice heard is through subtext. Y ‘all be safe. We out.