I'd like to cut out my cable provider, and need to be able to get several sports-related things first. One of those, unsurprisingly, is Caps games, so I looked at NHL Gamecenter Live.
It fails, badly, for several reasons. The first is that you can't guarantee getting every game, unless you're an out-of-market customer (even then, I'm not sure it's guaranteed). It only promises up to 40 out-of-market games every week. No promise at all on seeing the home team. And you can restart out-of-market games the next day, but home team games two days later.
Even next-day is next to useless; two days later is absurd.
No mention of commercials; I'm guessing they're still there and that there's no 30-second skip control. Another deal-breaker.
You'd think they'd want to sell me what I want, but it seems they have no interest in that.
If they could guarantee that I could get every home game (especially remembering that the FCC just removed the government angle on sports blackouts), and could watch the whole thing, as long as I started it before the game ends, it might work for me (typical for me is to watch the first period live, then watch the second and third periods a bit late, after the kids are in bed). Add in the 30-second skip, and it would definitely work.
Makes you wonder how much money, on a per-viewer basis, each of those commercials makes the league. Hard to believe that it would total up to more than the subscription price. If it didn't, I'd probably be willing to pay double to get it.
But, the NHL doesn't want my money, it seems.
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