Except that it isn't true.

Candycrush (CrunchyRoll of course) had gained the love of the anime crowd. Until they started to "optimise" bandwidth. It wasn't a pricing error as subscription price didn't increase.

They claim the degradation was perceptible. Except that it was.

It was many years ago, and since then candycrush lost subscribers. It won't because illegal streaming platforms got better, simply because the illegal platform provided the choice to go all the way to lossless quality.

For football, imo that's a pricing issue as well as a distribution issue. Basically I need to subscribe to a lock in plan even if I just desire to watch, say, the quarter to finals. Or simply the champions league.

I assume you meant Crunchyroll. They've gotten even worse recently by moving away from .ass subtitles which removes a ton of typesetting options

Candycrush? I suppose you mean Crunchyroll, right?