Raiders need to get Raider-Vision

On Monday night of this week, I was attending the Demolition Derby at the annual county fair. It is a favorite passtime of mine to go every year and over the past few years I’ve been fortunate enough to have my two sons come along with me and enjoy all the hard hitting action. In front of us this particular evening sat an older man and his teenage son. It was in between heats, so they were chatting and I was listening in, because they were talking about football, Army University football.

For those of you who don’t know, Army is the school that reportedly gave Mr. Al Davis inspiration for the current Raiders colors, Silver and Black. It was reported that Mr. Davis liked the contrast in Army’s old gray and black uniforms (they are now Gold and Black) and brought the Silver and Black to Oakland. So, their discussion was of interest to me. I heard the son say, “Dad we should get ESPN GamePlan so we can watch all of the Army games on T.V.”

The father replied, “Well, we already go to all the Army home games…and besides, if I was going to get anything, I would get Knight-Vision.”

Now, I have to admit, at first I was perplexed. What is this “Knight-Vision” I thought to myself? Is this a website you can go to and buy the rights to legally watch football games over a live stream on the internet? And then it hit me, Knight-Vision is exclusive to Army University…the Army Black Knights.

And that’s when I decided that the NFL let the Raiders create Raider-Vision. For those without access to satellites, or who cannot afford buying Sunday Ticket, watching Raiders games is a real pain in the butt.

But alas, in March of 2009, the NFL extended their exclusive contract with DirecTV through 2014. DirecTV is the only company that has ever had the rights to what’s arguably the most valuable sports product on TV. The real kicker is that they are not even paying as much annually as companies who do not have exclusive rights to the games, we’ll get to that later. Sunday Ticket gives the satellite company a huge selling point in attracting customers who want to watch more than a handful of games each week.

DirecTV has had its stranglehold on NFL games since 1994 and the hold on Sunday Ticket has been a sore point for cable operators like Comcast, Time Warner, and Cablevision. Cablevision had said it would distribute the NFL Network if it could offer Sunday Ticket. But negotiations to expand Sunday Ticket to cable have failed. As have negotiations to offer NFL Network on Cable providers.

However, the NFL was smart when they extended the deal with DirecTV. When they rewrote the contract they made DirecTV agree to a provision that would allow the NFL to offer Sunday Ticket over the internet for folks who can prove that they are not able to get DirecTV at their house, like myself, as early as 2012. Personally, I have Time Warner Cable because when my landlords refurbished the apartment I live in, they ran the cable lines underneath the vinyl siding. They wouldn’t allow us to get a satellite installed for cosmetic reasons.

But, I’m not one of the people who can’t make it through a Sunday with only three games on television. I am a person who hates going through a Sunday without a Raiders game on television. I don’t necessarily want to pay for all the games; I just want to pay for the Raiders games.And thus, I arrive at my previous conclusion which is the Raiders need to get Raider-Vision through their website on the internet. Unfortunately, at the professional level, the NFL has rules against such things.

The TV rights to the NFL are the most lucrative and expensive rights of not only any American sport, but any American entertainment property. The Super Bowl Annually rakes in a ton of doe and is one of the highest rated shows of the year on a global level. The NFL rules prohibit NFL games from being shown on local television stations while a local team is playing a sold-out home game. The rules are designed to make sure ticket-holders show up at the stadium instead of watching the game on TV.

Currently, the NFL rakes in $1 billion per year from DirecTV’s Sunday Ticket, $3.73 billion per year from CBS, $3.6 billion annually from NBC, $4.27 billion per year from FOX, and $8.8 billion annually from ESPN. DirecTV’s contract runs through 2014, as previously mentioned, ESPN’s deal runs up in 2013, and the other three networks will have to renegotiate in 2011.

So much for Raider-Vision; but it would be nice of the NFL to consider the average fans who are turning in to watch all of these games on the different providers and give them what they want, which is to see their favorite teams play every week, regardless of how much money the NFL loses for doing such a good service to the fans who make them so rich.

Needless to say, I’ll probably be in line to get the NFL Sunday Ticket package over the internet in 2012. As long as we don’t all perish with the Mayan calendar that year!

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