Hello Heathens,

This week we’ll be talking about the Olympics. I’m not someone who would say they’re a sports fan, but I always enjoy watching the Olympics. This year more than any other has really highlighted how bad legacy media companies are when it comes to streaming. I’ve seen numerous headlines about how viewership is down this year compared to 2016 Rio. In 2016 live streaming was pretty good, but not to the level it’s at now. Now NBC owns the rights to broadcast the Olympics in the US, and they launched their streaming platform Peacock in 2020. Streaming the Olympics is one of the best ways to see sports that are not shown on the live tv broadcast or tape broadcast as they tend to show the “popular sports” on those broadcasts to maximize eyes seeing ads. The problem is, unless you like bullshit like 4 stroke variations and 5 distance variations of swimming, running, and boating, you won’t see the sports you enjoy. This year I wanted to watch table tennis, weightlifting, and sports that don’t take place in a pool or on a running track. Since none of these sports are very popular they didn’t get a tv appearance so I was forced to try to stream it.

Streaming these events turned into an extreme exercise in patience. The official NBC streaming site lets you watch for 30 minutes with ads interrupting the stream which makes for a terrible viewing experience. With so many sites showing viable profitable models for streaming, how is NBC not able to do this on their official app for tv’s or websites? I decided to try Peacock only to find out that you can’t stream full events on Peacock, but instead you can watch individual clips of athletes. Want to see the full 81kg category of weightlifting? Too bad, watch these 3 clips we have for you instead.

Plenty of streaming services would kill for a chance to stream the largest international summer sporting event, but NBC seems to have really fucked the dog when it comes to making it so viewers can see events without paying. Instead fans are using VPN’s to create accounts for other region free streaming services such as Canada, Australia, or the UK. Maybe they’ll figure it out before the Winter Olympics, but so far the Summer games have been a flop to try to watch.

Keep heavy the Sabbath Day
8.3.21 Playlist