Fifteen years ago, the world of streaming used to be a simple place. You could pay $9.99 a month to Netflix or Hulu and open the door to a vast array of primarily archival content. At the time, this was a veritable Library of Alexandria of licensed content in which the original rights holders had lost interest, given that scheduled television programming and theatrical screenings were still the way that most people consumed content. Then, new programming such as Netflix’s Kevin Spacey-fronted House of Cards, exclusive to the streaming services, began to appear. Much of the old licensed content, such as reruns of Frasier, disappeared — reverting back to the original rights-holders, many of which were now launching their own streaming sites, each of which charged upwards of $9.99 a month for access. 

For us fans of sports, a source of seemingly infinite content, who could once plan much of our viewing across the broadcast networks, ESPN, and a regional sports broadcaster or two, the story of this period is far worse. Want to watch a niche sport such as amateur wrestling, for example? Good luck. That’s spread across ESPN+, FloSports, Fite TV, and UFC Fight Pass and will run you upwards of $50 a month if you want to access all of it. How about the NFL? You’d need CBS, NBC, Fox, ESPN, Peacock, Amazon Prime Video, and the NFL Network to access all of that programming. That’s three broadcast networks, a cable network, two streaming services, and a premium cable channel, if you’re keeping up.