IPTV in Western Europe is becoming more popular because it's decently priced for what you get. Say you want to watch football, but don't give a shit about anything else sports related. Well, you're probably still paying for everything else in a giant package for 50-100+ USD a month.
Especially for someone who only cares about their team, watching two games a month, that's a really bad deal. Even more so if your local offer is burdened with bad commentators or ads you can't get away from. Scale that problem up to someone who watches a few different sports, but none are available as one single package, and the value for money gets worse, while the experience grows worse as well, being you're now divided between several services. Add in DRM and bad app experiences, and you get people who just can't be arsed to do things properly any more, given they are functionally being punished for doing so.
Or you could pay a shady guy a few quid a month, but the service is good, and you get everything under the sun, moon, sky, and maybe even the stars. Can't blame them for wanting an experience that isn't trying to wring them dry.
It's so funny how much that reminds me of working in a university acquired by a large for-profit corporation.
After the MBAs arrived, the whole thing was about selling shitty packages for students.
- The college was somehow legally allowed to charge a minimum, so people only needing one single class was still paying for 3.
- They would push high distance learning for anything they legally could, showing the same video of the same teacher to all their 10 universities and paying "tutors" a minimum wage to moderate hundreds of Moodle classes (if not putting Masters students to do it for half the minimum wage). So 80 students paying $1000 on average to take a 5 class, and some of those cost on average $2000 + server costs. What a business.
- Of course classes that had 10 people in it suddenly had 40. And for when there wasn't 40 people to attend, they would consolidate classes with another group and half would have to go to the other side of town for the one class that, if they didn't attend, would set back their tuition by one year.
But yeah, sure it makes more money.
When you don't even have to compete on quality, that's what happens.
Especially for someone who only cares about their team, watching two games a month, that's a really bad deal. Even more so if your local offer is burdened with bad commentators or ads you can't get away from. Scale that problem up to someone who watches a few different sports, but none are available as one single package, and the value for money gets worse, while the experience grows worse as well, being you're now divided between several services. Add in DRM and bad app experiences, and you get people who just can't be arsed to do things properly any more, given they are functionally being punished for doing so.
Or you could pay a shady guy a few quid a month, but the service is good, and you get everything under the sun, moon, sky, and maybe even the stars. Can't blame them for wanting an experience that isn't trying to wring them dry.