Yeah, but when NBC paid their $700m or so, they made sure that their crappy coverage wouldn't be ignored by ensuring that the likes of the Beeb weren't allowed to stream into the US market.

A stateside visitor to the Beeb's live coverage gets a "Sorry, content only available in the UK" message. Some UK-based anonymous http proxies 'work', except for the fact that I can't find one with the bandwidth/availability to watch more than 10 seconds of a stream.