TELESIDE, U.S.A. — Last weekend saw an explosion of sports programming which seemingly fit the model of streaming broadcasts: if one game isn’t enough, you can take your pick of multiple consecutive games on the same network — binge-watching, in the parlance.
With the emphasis on the word “network,” as you didn’t have to invest in a streaming service to watch many of these broadcasts.
Of course, men’s and women’s basketball led the way with loads of games from Thursday afternoon and will continue through this evening. In both the Division I championships, the tournaments were each whittled down from 64 teams to 16, and all of the games were available on various over-the-air and cable outlets.
It turns out that you didn’t even need to be a basketball fan to be able to binge-watch high-quality sports without a paywall. Saturday, USA Network broadcast four consecutive Premier League soccer games. And this from a conglomerate who has been trying to push its content onto its Peacock streaming platform for years.
Yesterday afternoon, two consecutive Major League Soccer games were broadcast by the Fox network. This is stunning, considering the fact that MLS put all of its content under the Apple TV Plus bushel with some fanfare in 2023.
It turns out that even the National Women’s Soccer League were caught up in the binge trend, as Ion Television broadcast a pair of games on Saturday evening.
It’s an interesting trend, one which I hope continues as leagues and rights-holders figure out that they can’t squeeze more money from the general public and hope to survive.
I’ll be interested to see, for instance, if fans of the NFL, Formula 1, or the FIFA Women’s World Cup will begin rebelling against the streaming platforms.