TWC/Charter/Verizon/AT&T/Cox/DTV Ch. Guide (see 1st post)

How does League pass broadband work?

Scnottaken wrote:How does League pass broadband work?

Its the nba league pass on your computer. You go to nba.com, log into your account, and click on the nba league pass to bring up the screen.

Pretty easy and its nice because they archieve all of the games during the year so you can re-watch them.

I've ditched cable/satellite/FIOS for good, I think. Just not willing to pay so much money for so much stuff I never watched. The last few years I had it, I had it only for the Lakers.

I've said since we first heard of this that I'd be willing to pay a subscription fee to get this channel on broadband so I could view on my computer or push it to my TV. But I'm guessing NBA League Pass broadband is my only option now. That sucks I won't get the home games though if I'm back in the LA area during the season.

Was reading some business news somewhere: some 400k subscribers have stopped their cable TV service this year; TWC took the most losses so I can't say I blame them for wanting some content that'll make people in the LA area pay for cable to get it.

Battle Tested20 wrote:

Scnottaken wrote:How does League pass broadband work?

Its the nba league pass on your computer. You go to nba.com, log into your account, and click on the nba league pass to bring up the screen.

Pretty easy and its nice because they archieve all of the games during the year so you can re-watch them.

What I meant was, they still have local blackouts right? Could you just use a VPS in, say, Nebraska, and get LP broadband?

Scnottaken wrote:

Battle Tested20 wrote:

Scnottaken wrote:How does League pass broadband work?

Its the nba league pass on your computer. You go to nba.com, log into your account, and click on the nba league pass to bring up the screen.

Pretty easy and its nice because they archieve all of the games during the year so you can re-watch them.

What I meant was, they still have local blackouts right? Could you just use a VPS in, say, Nebraska, and get LP broadband?

Yes I'm almost positive they still have local blackout. They had them last year. Usually if a local game is blacked out its because its on a local channel instead.

Battle Tested20 wrote:

purp n gold wrote:

Finwë wrote:

Battle Tested20 wrote:I guess we just have to pray and hope that they reach agreenments with these Cable Companies before the season starts or else I'll have to go bar hoping when the Lakers play at home just to see the games as they will be blocked on the League Pass because they would be considered local channels for me in San Diego.

How about league pass broadband? Drop league pass for TV and pick up broadband league pass... You can connect your computer to your TV and you hardly tell the difference.. You'll get every single game, and you can watch them live, on demand; you can pause & rewind; you can watch up to 4 games at a time.. If you have a good internet connection you should get HD quality for every game.
Just throwing an idea out there. I live in Argentina and I have international broadband league pass. It's brilliant. I never miss a game.

How much did you pay for International broadband league pass, Finwe? I'll out of the country next year and this may be my soulution...

No, I don't think you get it. Normally just getting the NBA League Pass like I've done every year for however long its been around would fix my issue I have here. The problem isn't that its that I live (san diego) where the Lakers are considered to be playing on a local channel, which means that it would be blacked out on the League Pass like it was last year. Say I lived in Northern California like I have my whole life except for this last year then the league pass would be a great solution to this problem.

The same thing occurred when I was in NorCal. Whenever the Kings or Warriors played they would be blacked out on League Pass and I would have to watch those games on my local channels.

Well, now that the Lakers will be on local channels this year (exclusively on that TWC Lakers channel) I have to hope they make agreements with Cox or Direct TV because where I am living I can't get TWC.

What is not to get... I will be out of the country next year and therefore not in any American media market. When I use it overseas, I'm pretty sure the league pass will function without any blackouts.

But when I'm here in the US... I really, really hope Cox Communications picks up the new Lakers network. I find it hard to believe the Lakers will let Time Warner will play hardball & lose the entire Orange County market. I hope I'm right...

Kevin Ding column: Satellite or cable affiliates must agree up front to pay in order for fans not to miss Lakers games on the new Time Warner Cable SportsNet, launching Oct. 1.

Ding: Concern growing about Lakers games not being on TV
By KEVIN DING
2012-08-29 03:19:21

Dwight Howard and Steve Nash are here.

But Lakers games on TV aren't. Not yet anyway.

The Lakers are done with KCAL/9 and Fox Sports West, and their locally broadcast games will be on the new Time Warner Cable SportsNet channel (and Time Warner Cable Deportes, the new Spanish-language sister network).

If the provider you use for TV in your household is Time Warner Cable, you're set – because that is the only cable or satellite distributor we know right now will have Lakers games.

If you have DirecTV, Dish Network, AT&T U-Verse, Verizon FiOS, Cox Cable, Charter Communications or anyone else, you could rightly feel antsy that you won't see on Oct. 1 TWC SportsNet launch day the exclusive footage already filmed of Howard's face as he put on a gold Lakers jersey for the first time in a quiet locker-room moment after all the hullaballoo of his inaugural news conference.

Or the Oct. 7 first game uniting Kobe Bryant, Pau Gasol, Howard and Nash, as the exhibition opener is only on TWC SportsNet.

Or the Oct. 31 road opener in Portland, just the first of 70 regular-season Lakers games on TWC SportsNet.

Or ... you could rest assured that it's unfathomable that any cable or satellite provider would incur the long-term wrath of its customers by not delivering Lakers games – a sure sell even if this wasn't the season when Kobe's sixth NBA championship is closer than ever.

"We think it's good that the fans are concerned, because it shows how much they care about the Lakers," said Lakers spokesman John Black. "We would hope the fans have confidence in our new broadcast partner – as we do – that they will get the deals done and everyone enjoys what will be a better product than ever before."

The Lakers know how many fans are so fired up that they can't stand the prospect of missing a single Nash hairstyle or discovering whether Howard's second imitation (after he already debuted an excellent Kobe one) focuses on Gasol's oft-raised eyebrows or Mike Brown's frequently flashed teeth.

Big picture: These new networks will give Lakers fans a lot more access to that sort of stuff – and even just people talking about that sort of stuff.

There will be far more extensive pregame and postgame shows – especially compared to when the road games were on KCAL/9 – plus nightly Lakers news and features. There will be 24-hour programming with no infomercials. Some Galaxy soccer, Sparks women's basketball, CIF high school action and Mountain West football and basketball ... yet mostly a lot of Lakers, such as an entire reality series covering the recent Laker Girls tryouts or the specific moment of Nash being welcomed by Jeanie Buss in her office.

It's not exactly subtle, but here's the website that Time Warner Cable has set up for anyone seeking to inquire about getting these new networks: iwantmylakers.com.

As if the acquisitions of Howard and Nash weren't enough pressure, Time Warner Cable wants subscribers to prod their local providers to ante up the $3.95 monthly fee per subscriber, according to Sports Business Daily, to carry the two new channels.

Time Warner Cable does have its own bills to pay – specifically to the Lakers in the form of $4 billion over the next 20 years (or $5 billion if the option for five more years is exercised).

"Our commitment to the Lakers and their fans for the next 20 years is to deliver in-depth stories about the organization and its players while televising the games they can't miss," said Mark Shuken, senior vice president and general manager of TWC Sports Regional Networks.

Shuken, who described the company as "thrilled that the Lakers added Dwight Howard and Steve Nash," also referred to the upcoming season as "historic."

And, well, you'll just have to tune in to his networks to find out if that's any sort of overstatement.

Negotiations on "carriage deals" usually go down to the final days, so no one should panic with a month to go. It should be said that Time Warner Cable knows how dicey these negotiations can be from being on the other side, earlier this year costing Knicks fans much of Jeremy Lin's whirlwind emergence in a dispute with MSG and today still holding out as a distributor against NFL Network and missing Padres games all season on Fox Sports San Diego.

But the notion that Lakers games won't be on TV in Southern California is ludicrous.

This isn't 2002, when Cablevision completely underestimated the Yankees' new regional sports network and held out against it. YES Network has turned out to be a fantastic success for a simple reason: People in New York love the Yankees and love watching the Yankees.

Some things are simple and true.

Lakers fans love having Howard and Nash before they even play a game, for example.

And people in Southern California will love watching the Lakers on Time Warner Cable SportsNet, even if this is the first you've heard of the network's real name or you can't help starting to sweat those tricky carriage deals not yet being done.

http://www.ocregister.com/articles/lakers-369863-cable-games.html

I'm not switching to Time Warner, so U-Verse better pick up that network. I both hate and love TWC, hate them for sucking at tv and Internet, but love that they're giving the Lakers 4 billion dollars.

I've got Directv and they better get that deal done. I don't want to miss a single minute of this season.

Weezy wrote:I'm not switching to Time Warner, so U-Verse better pick up that network. I both hate and love TWC, hate them for sucking at tv and Internet, but love that they're giving the Lakers 4 billion dollars.

Exactly.

Reading that Kevin Ding article this morning made me feel even better about TWC getting a deal with all of the cable providers. I've always believed prior to reading that article that both the Lakers and TWC would be crazy to not make sure a deal is done with most to all cable providers because then everyone wins.

I also like the fact that John Black is even in the know about Lakers fan complaining about not having the channel yet. As the article mentioned that the cost per month if your not with TWC for the channel would be around $3.95 a month I would totally be willing to pay 3-5 times that amount if I had too. The Lakers are just a hobby to a lot of us, they are a way of life for us.

BILLIONS. With a "B".

I HAVE DIRECT TV IT DONT LOOK GOOD

PurpleNGold1 wrote:I HAVE DIRECT TV IT DONT LOOK GOOD

why?

Kit wrote:

PurpleNGold1 wrote:I HAVE DIRECT TV IT DONT LOOK GOOD

why?

nothing, he's just not as positive or hopeful as others are on this board.

They'll get deals done eventually I'm sure of this. The real question is when. Is it before Oct. 1, during the month of October, or after the season starts???

Battle Tested20 wrote:

Kit wrote:

PurpleNGold1 wrote:I HAVE DIRECT TV IT DONT LOOK GOOD

why?

nothing, he's just not as positive or hopeful as others are on this board.

They'll get deals done eventually I'm sure of this. The real question is when. Is it before Oct. 1, during the month of October, or after the season starts???

Well, negotiations are expected to get serious around mid September so hopefully we have some results by the time preseason begins.

XXIV wrote:

Battle Tested20 wrote:

Kit wrote:

PurpleNGold1 wrote:I HAVE DIRECT TV IT DONT LOOK GOOD

why?

nothing, he's just not as positive or hopeful as others are on this board.

They'll get deals done eventually I'm sure of this. The real question is when. Is it before Oct. 1, during the month of October, or after the season starts???

Well, negotiations are expected to get serious around mid September so hopefully we have some results by the time preseason begins.

Yeah, but as the Kevin Ding article also said and judging by past history and tv deal negotiations such as how the Yes Network went down don't be surprised if it goes down the to the wire or even a little bit into October.

Obviously we all hope they get a deal done before October 1st because that's when Media Day is this year and our first preseason game is in Fresno on Oct. 7th and all of these things will be fully Live and covered on this channel.

TWC should go at least "national" with the channel and then make it international ..

Living in Europe , I never get the local channel thing ... if you are a Lakers fan , who cares if you live in LA , NY or in freaking Utah ... you should be able to get access to the channel of the team you root for

wcsoldier81 wrote:TWC should go at least "national" with the channel and then make it international ..

Living in Europe , I never get the local channel thing ... if you are a Lakers fan , who cares if you live in LA , NY or in freaking Utah ... you should be able to get access to the channel of the team you root for

This will NEVER happen.

It would defeat the whole purpose of NBA League Pass.

Both the Lakes & NBA won't allow it to happen also.

That's these new channels are called a Regional Sports Network.

^^^^ must be pretty upset with this TV deal to post 5 times in a row lol.

On topic I hope dish gets it...I have more confidence in them than direct TV that's for sure

EvoXR1 wrote:^^^^ must be pretty upset with this TV deal to post 5 times in a row lol.

On topic I hope dish gets it...I have more confidence in them than direct TV that's for sure

Lol.

Didn't mean to do that.CL was acting weird and hung for like 10 minutes while I was trying to post that and I hit the submit button a few times.

And actually out of all the TV providers that TWC needs to make deals with I really think people should be worried the most with Dish Network.

They currently don't carry any regional sports networks or channels in any TV markets in the country. They also recently lost the popular AMC channel over a price carriage dispute.Directv on the other hand had a dispute with Viacom where they lost those channels for like a week but settled on a new deal and got the channels back.

CaCHooKa Man wrote:for those in hawaii

http://www.oceanic.com/products/television/agreements_with_programmers

Statewide, on or about October 1, 2012 Time Warner Cable Sports Network will be launched on analog Ch. 23, digital Ch. 400 and HD Ch. 1400 on the CPST tier.

Great! Finally i can watch all lakers road games on TWC SportsNet! So looking forward to it! Thanks for posting this.

Lakerjones wrote:I've got Directv and they better get that deal done. I don't want to miss a single minute of this season.

Directv will be the first one to be done. Think about it, all bars have directv for the Sunday Ticket and DTV is the only one who can provide it, they arent switching to time warner. If the LA area bars cant show Laker games, there will be a major problem. It wont happen.

4 billion in 20 years. I was afraid the Lakers would be ruined after the tighter taxes but they'll be earning 200M per year alone in TV rights for the next 20. That alone could pay for tax penalized payroll while adding millions more from attendance and merchandise.