Pay Per View NFL?

I heard on ESPN this morning that this might be coming. Pay per view on the NFL. There are lots of blogs out there talking about it, and I wouldn't be surprised, though not much recently.

Would I pay $50 for a game? Not likely, and I think it would be a mistake. A huge mistake. Part of the NFL excitement is that it's available in so many places, so widely available. I'd be surprised if the NFL network didn't have lower viewership because it's not as widely available. The other part of it's success is that it's limited. There are 16 games, they matter more than each of the 82 that come in basketball or the 162 in baseball.

If it cost me $5 a game, I'm not sure I'd watch as much. I would watch a few, but there are plenty of games that I watch a portion of, I enjoy them, but if they fall apart, I move on in my life. It's just not important, and with more and more choices, and less tolerance from many families for giving up a complete day, it makes sense to keep things free.

I do think having the options to watch later, not be tied to the TV on Sunday afternoon, is a good idea. It definitely would be interesting if I could pay for the games and see them at a different time, but I think that's a niche. If you know what happened, it's not as exciting.

I think I'd pay to watch some out of market games, I might go for $5-10 a few times a year to see a game I wanted to see, but since I often watch alone, it wouldn't be worth more. If the idea is to get more groups together to watch, and have them split the cost, that's possible, but I still think it would make for less viewership.

Pay per view, if it impacts the Sunday games (3 most weeks), is a bad idea. If it supplements them, that's not a bad move.