How I And Many Other People Watched The Fight Of The Century Illegally

Well, face it folks.  I think the sport of boxing is dead forever in the United States.  Boy, that was a boring match between Manny Pacquiao and Floyd Mayweather Jr.  I mean, I knew that Pacquiao would have a very hard time winning that fight, and he had some moments.  But, most of the fight was the Floyd Mayweather show, and you got to see plenty of his dance moves in the ring.  And you also got to see weird figures like Jimmy Kimmel, Justin Bieber and the Burger King mascot.  This was not a boxing match, this was a publicly stunt!

So, we all knew that HBO and Showtime was trying to shut down any illegal livestreams of the big fight.  But come on, this is the internet!  You can not shut down every illegal livestream you can find.  And it did not take me long to find an illegal livestream of this fight.  Sure, the picture was not 100% HD quality but it was good enough.

Heck, I think a lot of people probably watched an illegal livestream of the fight of the century.  And HBO and Showtime both thought they had the internet under control.  Nope!  No one will be able to control 100% of the internet, about the only way that can happen if someone pushed an internet kill switch, that would kill of all of the internet at once.  No one will be able to stop all pirating and illegal viewing of pay per view events, like this one.

I mean, other than people watching livestreams of this fight, you also had people watching the fight in front of other homes.  I think the $99 price for this fight drove a lot of people away from the traditional cable TV PPV model to watch this fight via alternative methods.

And heck, for the people who paid the $99 to watch this fight via pay per view, some could not even see the fight.  The fight had to be delayed because there were problems with the PPV infrastructure.  Oh well, some people wasted $99 for nothing.

https://twitter.com/RobSchneider/status/594686279058526209

https://twitter.com/AntDeRosa/status/594700707053346817

The real winners of the fight was alternative ways to watch an event other than on cable TV.  Along with the many illegal livestreams that people watched, Periscope and Meerkat, the apps where you can stream things live via smart phones, could not stop all the illegal livestreams of this fight.  Heck, the apps and the livestreams online became an livesaver for people who had problems with the PPV.

https://twitter.com/AVAETC/status/594714781778452480

So, what is the outcome of the fight of the century?  Simple!  The traditional ways of watching live events only by shelling out money to purchase a cable TV package or shelling out extra for pay per view is about becoming a thing of the past.  Face it, the internet has gotten so good that anyone can avoid paying these crazy charges to watch something they want to watch, for free.  Don’t want to pay a lot of money to watch one show on cable, pirate it.  Don’t want to pay $99 to watch a boxing match, view an illegal livestream, and so on.

So, when will the cable providers learn this?  And begin to offer packages so people can pick and choose what they want to watch.  That will probably never happen.  Because the cable TV companies are busy trying to stop net neutrality.  The cable companies and content providers must begin to realize that the old model is now dead.  And unless you want to go out of business, you need to change!   Kill off channels that are a waste of space and money!  And allow people to pick the channels they want to purchase and watch.  It’s that simple!

I want to leave you with one last tweet.  While close to 50 million people in America lives in poverty, one guy can earn close to $200 million in one hour.  Something is wrong with that picture!

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• The Burger King and Justin Bieber join Floyd Mayweather as Manny Pacquiao takes walkout selfie… and Jamie Foxx sings US national anthem
• Manny Pacquiao, Floyd Mayweather have amazing entrances for historic fight
• Jimmy Kimmel Escorted Manny Pacquiao to The Ring Wearing His Bieber Best

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