If teams felt they could make more money self broadcasting, then they would. And if the league thought they could make more money opening up Center Ice or whatever they'd call in that manner ... guess what? They'd already do it. Problem is, they'd also be carrying all of the risk and all of the costs associated with marketing and producing and delivering a half a bajillion broadcasts when they can't even get their refs to call a simple stinking rule book. You want to see a REAL cluster? Let Gary Bettman basically run a TV network. That'd go great. I'm not really trying to be sarcastic so much as to point out the monumental task that a lot of people seem to think is super easy ... and the monumentally screwed up human beings we assume could manage this task.Why wouldn’t the teams just keep their rights and sell a subscription to their season? Produce and publish it themselves. That would give them more control over the TV revenue and they could sell their own advertising.
So you’d have a CanesHockey app you watch the Canes on.
Or the league put it together with something like Center Ice. So you can get:
Center Ice - out of Market
Center Ice - Hometeam
Center Ice - Everything
I’m paying $100/month for DTV pretty much only to watch the Canes. Instead of the Canes getting a small fraction of that I’d probably pay 50/month for just the Canes games and find cheaper option for whatever else I want to watch.
I’m sure there’s a reason. I’m sure someone here knows the reason. I’m hopeful they’ll share the reason. I’m hopeful this wasn’t a stupid question.