FYI.
Disney said in release this week that No. 1 Georgia’s 48-7 win over Tennessee-Martin on ESPN+ is the most-streamed college football game in ever on that platform. ESPN+ is Disney’s streaming service which caters to sports fans.
“Saturday (Sept. 2) was the most-viewed day of college football ever on ESPN+, and two-time defending CFP National Champion and top-ranked Georgia scored a season-opening win and the most-watched college football game on the platform all-time,” Disney said in an e-mail.
Don’t get any ideas, Mickey.
(h/t)
Get The Picture 
But how many enjoyed the ESPN+ / SEC+ viewing experience? I’m guessing that figure is somewhat less than half…
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Terrible app, and it was overwhelmed and underwhelming. Plus, the ratings are boosted by cable companies losing their ESPN channels almost that very day.
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I had to record the Tuesday morning replay and watch that. I was not happy
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Ditto. If this is where things are going, I’ll invest in a nicer radio.
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Get a RoKu at Walmart for less than $100, You can get the game in real time by watching it on YouTube…its a bit of whack a mole as they cut the streams and you have to find another one…you can also watch complete games and highlights and commentary on YouTube anytime you want…cut the dam cable BoBo….
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They don’t need us to enjoy it. They need us to pay for it, which we did.
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…That would involve thinking!!
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I’m prepared to go back to the days of being there or listening on the radio. Disney thinks they can go full streaming and charge an arm and a leg to prop up their failing cable revenue model. I anticipate their set price will be higher than most people are willing to pay, especially in an era of soaring inflation. I guess we will see.
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I agree and would even add that it’s not even particularly close to the quality of something like Peacock. I’m not thrilled about any bifurcated ecosystems where the parent and channel family has both cable/OTA and streaming, it feels rackety, but a game on Peacock is IMO produced way better than ESPN+.
I’m kind of worried about the SEC getting completely tethered to Disney. People are already kind of grumbling, I bet this deal looks really awful in about 4 years.
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I love to listen but I really can’t take Scott screaming at me for 3+ hours. Plus, I still can’t tell what happened.
I do miss the days of getting the picture from Larry.
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Larry gave us “Run Lindsey” and Howard gave us “Gu…hu…hu…hu…hood.” On that I rest my case.
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To be fair, Larry’s later years were tough to listen to. There were long stretches where you would have no idea where the ball was on the field and more than once he called the opponent by the wrong name. When he and Loran were in the later years the broadcast could be comically bad at times, “these boys love their mothers” and “do you like boiled peanuts?”.
Scott is generally OK but I think he tries too hard to come up with some classic call that people will remember forever. “McConkey got on his donkey…” was beyond stupid. I’d like to hear how Jeff Dantzler could do on play by play.
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Agreed. He is generally fine in between the 20s so to speak, but presses when trying to manufacture a memorable call. And then weirdly didn’t really have anything particularly great loaded and ready at end of Bama game when we finally broke through.
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I have harped on here ad nauseum about Scott Howard. I don’t mind his screaming that much, and he has calmed down a lot the last few years. What hasn’t changed is that he is a terrible play by play announcer. It’s just plain difficult to know what happened on the field. If you have Sirius radio, tune in to some other teams and compare. For example, LSU has a great play by play announcer. Georgia football deserves a top notch guy.
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This is the truth. I’ve listened to many other play by play announcers for other teams and the vast majority of them are preferable to Howard. The guy that calls the Texas Longhorns games is fairly young, but does a great job of describing the scene and is generally objective (in a home announcer way).
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Jeff would just talk about himself the whole time….
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I rested my case on “Chubb-y time! Chubb-y time!” but yours works too.
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It’s not that bad..
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Ive seen a “promotional” price for NFL Sunday ticket which allows you to watch out of market ball games, $500. With exclusive rights to the SEC ESPN could easily have “SEC Saturday Ticket” and charge whatever they want so we could watch non Georgia games. Heck, I’m in SC and I would have to pay just to be able to see Georgia since it’s “out of market” for me.
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That is where the market (and us) are going – it has already happened with EPL. Back in the late ’90s, early to mid-00s, you had to pay extra for Fox Soccer and get 3-4 EPL matches a weekend, then ESPN and NBC got them and made them all available via standard cable for 10-15 years, and now they’re almost all on NBC’s streaming platform now that you have to pay extra for (again). They are cannibalizing their own product(s).
I can remember several times in the late ’80s/early ’90s having to go to people’s houses to watch Georgia games because they were on $30 PPV – someone would buy it, and everyone would go over to watch the game. Those days will be here (again) before you know it….
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Definitely where it’s headed. We’ll pay, if we care enough at that point.
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I wonder what the actual number of viewers was?
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THE MOST EVAH!!1!1!!
(we don’t need to show you any actual numbers)
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Hopefully those folks only tuned in for the second half when we finally started looking good.
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Oh, trust me, they already have ideas.
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It’s not you it’s me.
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Yeah, screw you, Disney. 2-time defending national champion and you put us on a streaming platform to open the season.
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We were going to be streaming only at some point this season. It was either this game, Ball State or UAB.
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So when do Bammer and the POS big¹⁰ get streamed? Spring game? That was nothing but a hearty fuck you from The Mouse. I hate mice!!
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I have heard that streaming at least one game for each team is pretty much baked in. I ain’t interested enough to look up when Bama is streamed. That is what ee is saying above. Don’t know if the B1G has such a provision. I think it’s just part of the ‘Exclusive’ SEC/ESPN contract.
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Big 10 is not a part of the SEC deal..you could probably look at Bama’s schedule and figure it out.
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Against UT Chattanooga , Nov 18.
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I believe it was either last year during Sanford or 2 years ago against UAB when ESPN didn’t start the stream on time and the stream didn’t come on til after a drive or maybe two!!!
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And it should have been Ball State or UAB. Opening game of the season to recognize the back to back champs shouldn’t be streaming on the Ocho.
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Wait until ESPN is purchased by Apple…
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I don’t know if it was my internet provider or the app, but the picture quality left something to be desired. If it had been any game NOT involving my DAWGS I would have turned it off and watched the highlights later.
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It’s the ESPN Plus feed, I think. Regular ESPN streams are decent quality.
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The quality was just a step above my old 27″ tube TV with rabbit ears.
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Yes, why would they build an inferior product that it looks like a Walmart streaming app, and then push people to buy it? Oh it’s for the kids.
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I grudgingly admit that Xfinity handled it about as well as it could have been handled. I already had it on my tablet, but just for a test, I used the voice search for “Georgia Bulldogs” on the Xfinity remote and it automagically pulled up the game from the internet on my TV. Picture quality was at least as good as a regular broadcast. The only hiccup I noticed was the commercials would skip/hiccup, but it actually skipped parts of the commercials so even that worked out. I kept expecting it to happen during the actual game, but it never did.
Overall, it went smoothly, but I still want them to get off my lawn!
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Same experience but just feels like we’ll be paying extra for this in the future.
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It must be the UTMartin Eagles, they are a bucket list, must-see show you know
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Err…It must be the UTMartin Skyhawks, they are a bucket list, must-see show you know
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It’s because it was the ONLY FECKING WAY to watch the game sans being there or going to a sports bar/restaurant.
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Being in North Carolina, I don’t have a lot of options.
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Biggest audience ever on ESPN+ sounds like a pretty low bar.
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I’m really thinking of all the other things besides college football to do on Saturdays.
NASCAR freed my Sunday afternoons right up with the same money grubbing, get it ALL now, today, this fuckin minute attitude.
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When my Talladega tickets hit $150 (or maybe it was $180), I was out and I never looked back. That was probably 2010ish.
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I have that F’n mouse.
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I have Hulu+Live TV and I just went to SEC Network on my TV and it was right there.
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Same if you did that on the ESPN app and your package regardless of service provider includes the SECN.
No one who has access to SECN was supposed to not have the game. My parents watched the game sitting at home on their Kindles after logging into their cable account.
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The key there is “logging into the cable account”. How many people that aren’t tech inclined do that more than once, and that one time is when the cable is set up initially? I knew people that have SEC Network but didn’t know their credentials to log into a tablet or computer. They just listened to the radio.
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It’s just my parents aren’t the type to access their cable account. 😉
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I found the best way to run this was to use my computer web browser and put the actual browser on my TV screen through the casting option in Display Options. Gave a much better picture that way than through the ESPN App through Roku or otherwise.
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That’s what I was going to do until Xfinity did it for me.
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I’ll be listening on ear buds in the deer stand pretty soon. I’ve done more and more of that the last few years. I hate ESPN/Disney so damn much.
As for Scott Howard I really don’t think he’s bad. He’s just about totally stopped all that high pitched screaming. I don’t find the game hard to follow when I listen to him. And I wasn’t nearly as bothered by the “McConkey got on his donkey…” line as a lot of y’all were. I dont get why things like that bother people. Yeah it was corny but so what? He’s a football play by play guy. He’s not a lit professor reciting Shakespeare. Who the hell cares? Then again I’m the kind of guy that went to see Smokey and the Bandit in the theatre when it was rereleased about a year ago so I’m probably not sophisticated enough to be bugged by such. Scott Howard’s problem is that he’s the guy that followed Larry Munson. One thing I’ll say for him over Larry is I do t have to listen to Scott moan about how we are going fall on our face walking into the field. Munson’s pessimism and the way people copy it was way worse to me than any corny thing Scott Howard has ever said.
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When you put the two-time defending national champion, winners of 17 straight and 33 of their last 34, on your streaming service, it’s going to get a lot of views. This ain’t Prarie View A&M.
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