“I’m three hours north of Philly and I haven’t had cable in years, with no plans on getting cable just for Sixers games,” he tells MEL. Rob, a 33-year-old Sixers fan living in Central Pennsylvania, ran into the same problem. It’s like paying for Netflix, but being able to watch only every other episode of The Office, except it’s worse because the only show available is The Office and it costs twice as much.” “The entire concept of a blackout should be fucking illegal. “Why the hell would I sign up for when every time I try to watch my home team it’s blacked out?” asks Alex, a 32-year-old in Chicago. Most NBA fans came to r/NBAstreams because of the blackout rules that hampered League Pass. What’s holding it back? NBAstreams Was an Oasis - Far Superior to Its Legal Counterpart It’s a high estimate, sure, but take into consideration that in 2017, the Guardian reported that 54 percent of millennials use free streams to watch live sports. To do some sketchy math, if 80,000 people tuned in to all 82 games for all 30 teams on r/NBAstreams, that number would look more like 196 million game views. While the NBA doesn’t provide subscriber numbers for League Pass, in 2016 it reported 26.7 million game views. “As for the streamers, there could be from 20 to 40 streamers for a game on the time of the year.” “At its peak, the sub would easily have 80,000 to 100,000 people during any game,” says Luke, a moderator of the subreddit, using a pseudonym. NBAstreams after its first month online, in December 2014. On June 17th, 2019, the last blessed day before r/NBAstreams was finally shut down, the forum boasted over 400,000 subscribers. “I was so disappointed, I never used it again and have been streaming ever since,” Jordan says. Soon after, he discovered the new subreddit r/NBAstreams, a safe haven for cord-cutting NBA fans who wanted to watch their favorite teams without paying an exorbitant amount and fearing that a game might be blacked out. It was clear there was no legal method for Jordan to watch his favorite team, as much as he wanted one. “I hate it too,” Cuban responded to Jordan. He knew it was a Hail Mary, but maybe the Shark Tank star and media entrepreneur could somehow swoop in and save him.Īlas, Cuban’s hands were tied. So Jordan reached out to the most powerful figure in a Mavs fan’s universe: Cuban himself. “ They were all blacked out in my area, even with League Pass.” In 2014, after three years of desperation, Jordan broke down and bought a subscription to the NBA’s streaming service, League Pass, hoping he could finally watch Mavs games again. Because of Austin’s proximity to San Antonio, the NBA’s antiquated “blackout” restrictions, put in place during the 1998–99 NBA lockout to sell more tickets, meant the Spurs were the only basketball team Jordan could watch. Jordan, a bona fide #MFFL (Mavs Fan for Life), had to move from Dallas to Austin in 2011, the year his team finally won a championship. It was a cold November night in Austin, Texas, when Jordan, a fed-up 25-year-old Dallas Mavericks fan living away from home, triple-checked an angry email he was about to fire off to Mark Cuban, the billionaire owner of his favorite team.
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