I play on the softball team with twenty-four other girls. We spend countless hours at our stadium with each other, which means we need ways to entertain ourselves. We are fortunate enough to have a big flat screen TV in our team lounge. In order to watch TV, you have to have apps like Netflix, Hulu, and Prime Video. An old teammate of mine, Kate, was nice enough to log into all of her accounts on the TV. The entire team just has to click on the app of their choice, and they are free to watch any movie or show. The thing is... Kate graduated three years ago.
This is a prime example of the Free-Rider problem. We have been using Kate's accounts for the past three years. The whole team loves watching Hulu, Netflix, and Amazon Prime, but no one wants to pay for it . We have zero incentive to buy a Netflix or Hulu account for our locker room, because Kate is paying for us to watch on her credit card. This can create a market failure in Kate's house, because she gets a notification saying she can't watch Netflix or Hulu, due to an overload of viewers. The IP address of our stadium is different than Kate's home. Kate is paying for others to watch movies and shows, and she can't even watch herself. The solution to this problem would be for UVA Softball to create a Netflix, Hulu, and Prime Video account of their own. The accounts would be on the team budget, and we would log into those accounts on our television. Netflix is starting to crack down on their account sharing, as well. We might be in deep trouble.
No comments:
Post a Comment