Bally Sports announces direct-to-consumer app pricing

[Mac Attack]

Well this Bally Sports App must be a real bust!?
No updates or thoughts for almost 3 weeks now!
Ugh...

[Brock Beauchamp]

46 minutes ago, Mac Attack said:

Well this Bally Sports App must be a real bust!?
No updates or thoughts for almost 3 weeks now!
Ugh...

Being out of market, I can't buy it because baseball blackout rules are awesome. So I can't give any kind of review on it because baseball blackout rules are awesome.

[brewerfan82]

I'm interested in hearing how it's going as well (I'm also out of market, but I have friends/family that may be interested if it works well). Hopefully silence is an indication there hasn't been much to complain about!

[yfinn6]

It's been hit or miss for me. It works about 100% of the time on my computer, but the app for my smart tv (and granted this TV is old) works about 50% of the time. When it doesn't work, it will just give me a "load" screen of sorts. My internet may also be subpar. When it works, it's been fine. 

[ClosetBrewerFan]

It works fine for me.  Just read the fine print.  This only works on apple tv, firestick, etc.  Will NOT work on a samsung smart TV and I cannot chromecast.  That is surprisingly restrictive.  Hopefully they expand into more devices.  I generally watch games on my laptop.  I have a nice 60" screen TV with surround sound but cannot watch Brewer games on it.  Not great but better than nothing.

I did find a way to view older games though its only for the most recent games (e.g. yesterday's game) and is not easy to find.  For example, they have removed the last game already.  I cannot view any older games today.  If you are paying $20/month, seems like you should be able to watch older games.

In general, its poor value for $20/month.  But for die hard fans like myself, its hard to not pay for it.  Still cheaper than $120/month for cable when I don't watch anything else on cable.

[brooks_quichenick]

12 hours ago, ClosetBrewerFan said:

I generally watch games on my laptop.  I have a nice 60" screen TV with surround sound but cannot watch Brewer games on it.  Not great but better than nothing.

 

Can you hook up an HDMI cord from the laptop to your TV? That's what I've been doing for the most part.

[ClosetBrewerFan]

6 hours ago, brooks_quichenick said:

 

Can you hook up an HDMI cord from the laptop to your TV? That's what I've been doing for the most part.

I'm sure that would work, but it just would be inconvenient in my setup.  A firestick is probably the way to go.  Hard to beat for $40.

[wildcat83]

On 7/20/2022 at 7:04 PM, brewerfan82 said:

I'm interested in hearing how it's going as well (I'm also out of market, but I have friends/family that may be interested if it works well). Hopefully silence is an indication there hasn't been much to complain about!

I've used it with no complaints.  I use it on my phone at times, but mostly on my TV through a firestick.  I have never had it pause or glitch.  There is a 30 second ad when you first turn it on, but for me they only play through about half the time.  The rest of the time it will say "ad loading", then the game just pops up almost instantly.

[Ron Robinsons Beard]

The app seems to work fine. However, I am miffed that it is not available yet on Samsung smart TVs or Roku devices. I have a Samsung in my living room, and every other TV I have in my house has streaming capability through a Roku Express, which also doesn't support Bally Sports+. I hope this is rectified soon. I've been able to stream games to my TVs via my phone or a laptop, but it would be nice to just be able to click on the app and have it work.

[wildcat83]

We took a trip to WI Dells.  When I turned on the game (hotel tv didn’t have the channel), I got a warning that I’m out of my zip code.  It said it could lead to my account being deactivated.  Kind of frustrating that I was still in the market area and still can’t use my own device to stream just because I’m not home.  If you lived and worked in different area codes that would be a real issue.

[Brock Beauchamp]

15 minutes ago, wildcat83 said:

We took a trip to WI Dells.  When I turned on the game (hotel tv didn’t have the channel), I got a warning that I’m out of my zip code.  It said it could lead to my account being deactivated.  Kind of frustrating that I was still in the market area and still can’t use my own device to stream just because I’m not home.  If you lived and worked in different area codes that would be a real issue.

This is something I worried about. That's not good. We have a cabin in NW Wisconsin, which obviously takes me out of the city (obnoxiously, both the Twins and Brewers are blacked out there so MLB.tv does not work while I'm "relaxing up north").

It's so maddening that MLB teams do everything they can to prevent paying customers from accessing their product.

[patrickgpe]

45 minutes ago, wildcat83 said:

We took a trip to WI Dells.  When I turned on the game (hotel tv didn’t have the channel), I got a warning that I’m out of my zip code.  It said it could lead to my account being deactivated.  Kind of frustrating that I was still in the market area and still can’t use my own device to stream just because I’m not home.  If you lived and worked in different area codes that would be a real issue.

I"m no programmer, but there has to be a way to limit password sharing and still let you use your own device when you leave your area code? I have been thinking about switching to sling / this app in the fall to save a few dollars after brewers season, but this may be a reason not to. 

[brewerfan82]

They should just limit how many devices can be streaming at the same time for each account.

[bensheeps]

20 minutes ago, brewerfan82 said:

They should just limit how many devices can be streaming at the same time for each account.

We made the switch to the app this weekend and were told that we are limited to 5 devices.

So far so good with our firestick working on both of our tv's.  Haven't tried using the app away from home yet, so that will be of interest as we go away for the upcoming weekend.

[nate82]

Not sure why they are going by zip code.  They could just have you register your device instead of using zip codes.  Feels like a lazy project manager decided to go with zip code instead of using devices.  

[Brock Beauchamp]

50 minutes ago, patrickgpe said:

I"m no programmer, but there has to be a way to limit password sharing and still let you use your own device when you leave your area code? I have been thinking about switching to sling / this app in the fall to save a few dollars after brewers season, but this may be a reason not to. 

There are plenty of ways to do this. Authenticating devices and limiting the number of attached devices to any single account is used in many apps.

[Brock Beauchamp]

11 minutes ago, nate82 said:

Not sure why they are going by zip code.  They could just have you register your device instead of using zip codes.  Feels like a lazy project manager decided to go with zip code instead of using devices.  

Yepppppp. Using IP geolocation is a TERRIBLE solution for this kind of application.

Using a mobile device's location-tracking system makes sense for something like MLB.tv, which constantly has to check to make sure the game you're watching is not blacked out locally. But for something like the Bally's app? It's total nonsense.

[yourout]

For now I'll stick with expressvpn and mlbtv.

Hopefully next year they get it straightened out.

[yfinn6]

The app has been unusable on my Firestick and now barely plays on my computer. 

Thumbs down.