Sports broadcasting

[Deutsch Wolf]

Jags v Bills game in London will be the 1st ever NFL game to (legally!) be streamed by the NFL over the internet for free worldwide.

Not an NFL fan but I like this and it really is something that sports in this country (football and cricket basically) need to look at. It is crucial that some live "regular season" (for want of a better term) is shown free-to-air and made accessible to as many people as possible. They can't keep shutting vast swathes of people out from seeing anything and they can't keep pretending it's 2003 and Pay TV is the only game in town. Music's refusal to embrace digital sales properly for years fucked the industry up and if they're not careful the same could happen to those two sports. It's telling that Flintoff and Pietersen are still two of the most recognisable England cricketers if you ask the general public - and yet the former stopped playing properly nearly six years ago. The reason - they were involved in an epic series live on FTA TV.

Of course you are never going to get a situation where by the value of what Sky/BT pay is vastly diminished by giving vast swathes of games away but I really can't see the issue in letting (say) the BBC show 8-10 Premier League games a season and Channel 4 have one Test a summer and some decent coverage of the county game - especially T20, why not let them have a game a week, it's on Sky every day when that tournament is running. Then they really need to look at streamed coverage much more deeply, huge amounts of people these days watch TV by non-traditional means, Netflix etc. It isn't going away so you can't ignore it, sport isn't any different.

I find the argument of "showing 3pm kick offs live would affect attendances" to be absolute bullshit as well. All the games were shown live in Germany when I moved there in 2001, it might even pre-date that and they have the highest average gates in Europe by a mile. Also how nonsensical is it that say, Alan can watch any PL game he wants, easy as pie and yet we can't, at least not by non-nefarious means.

 

[Alan]

For the record, I've thought that was dumb since we got that level of coverage.

Our NFL system is also totally backward to yours. Presumably the Prem wouldn't want to show, say, Wolves matches in local Wolverhampton because that would "discourage attendance". Yet here in the states the local games are the only ones you can watch (more or less)! Of course they have to sell out first but the juxtaposition is startling.

 

[Deutsch Wolf]

I know that MLB have some kind of system where you can subscribe to watch any game you like online - not that expensive either from what I hear? What a brilliant set up that is. I'm not sure why we still live in a world over here where anyone who wants to watch Premier League football live (legally) has to pay for a load of other shit too that they probably don't even want. I pay it because I'm fortunate enough to be able to afford to do so but that's just my good luck really.

We live in a world where choice is king, people have tons of data and entertainment at their fingertips any time and any place they want - as I say our sporting authorities seem to be about 15 years behind the times.

 

[Alan]

Mhm, we here in the states totally lucked out when NBC splashed the cash for Prem coverage. Outside of the Prem/UCL/Europa, though, you usually have to shell out major money for high-end channel packages. Even El Clasico is on the most obscure of our sport stations.

As for the MLB thing, every major sporting league here has an identical service to that. Although usually local teams are always carried on base packages... provided you know where to look for them.

 

[Lord Knows]

Shouldn't it be possible to have a streaming season ticket to watch the team or teams of your choice?

 

[The Bear]

They have NFLPass which is about £70 per year that streams every game every week. You also get some preseason games as well.

 

[Carrotdude]

I think they do a team pass too for a bit less (£50?) where you get all games from one team for that season. The NFLPass is great though as you can watch every match from the past 5 seasons or more too.

 

[Deutsch Wolf]

Thanks to Vis for splitting this into a new topic.

Those prices for NFL are great. 16 games minimum is it in a season? So if you just want to watch your team, just over £3 a game.

 

[Tredman]

Our NFL system is also totally backward to yours. Presumably the Prem wouldn't want to show, say, Wolves matches in local Wolverhampton because that would "discourage attendance". Yet here in the states the local games are the only ones you can watch (more or less)! Of course they have to sell out first but the juxtaposition is startling.

I like this idea - local streaming FOC when crowd is above a set percentage (90%?)

 

[Deutsch Wolf]

There's a range of things that clubs could do very easily as well, for instance me being a sad twat would have no problem paying a fiver a month for live coverage of our Reserve and Academy games. Easy money for the club surely?

 

[Sniffer]

There is nothing stopping Sky showing some free to air football or cricket on one of their free channels rather than give it to the BBC or C4.

 

[Donegal Wolf]

Not an NFL fan but I like this and it really is something that sports in this country (football and cricket basically) need to look at. It is crucial that some live "regular season" (for want of a better term) is shown free-to-air and made accessible to as many people as possible. They can't keep shutting vast swathes of people out from seeing anything and they can't keep pretending it's 2003 and Pay TV is the only game in town. Music's refusal to embrace digital sales properly for years fucked the industry up and if they're not careful the same could happen to those two sports. It's telling that Flintoff and Pietersen are still two of the most recognisable England cricketers if you ask the general public - and yet the former stopped playing properly nearly six years ago. The reason - they were involved in an epic series live on FTA TV.

I think Boxing is the best example of what can happen, 80's and 90's fights drew big tv audiences when they were on BBC/ITV and the top names (Bruno, McGuigan. Benn, Eubanks etc) were know outside sports fans, nowdays it barely registers on even the casual sports fan radar.

 

[Tredman]

Cricket really needs to sort out some Fta live international coverage. I've noticed a big drop off general interest in cricket since they went to sky.

 

[lemonjelly]

Increasing the availability of such sports (I'm including U21/youth football, cricket etc) may well increase participation too. Having seen matches online may well entice bigger crowds, or at least more spectators.

 

[FrankMunro-371]

Cricket really needs to sort out some Fta live international coverage. I've noticed a big drop off general interest in cricket since they went to sky.

Many people expected this to happen. And yes something does need sorting out.

 

[Deutsch Wolf]

The media are hypocrites sometimes. They frequently handwring about the lack of talented young English players, seem to revel in it every time the senior team does poorly, you tell me how much coverage any of them, print, TV, whatever, gave to the U17 team last summer. We won the European Championship. It was hidden away on Eurosport and I don't even think all the games were shown live. Virtually nothing in the papers. We've won 5 out of 5 in the qualification for the next one as well but you'd never know.

 

[Law's Bus]

F1 is the same, apart from there they also have CVC grabbing every penny they can. Sky's F1 audience numbers are tiny, and Bernie keeps insisting on taking things away from fans and trying to force you to pay it. A few years ago the F1.com website had live timing of every session down to sector times - now they won't even tell you what time race start is in your local time.

 

[Carrotdude]

Trouble with a lot of the sports is they rely on the big money from sky who then rely on money from subscriptions to afford it. Personally I feel like sky has a responsibility to put some on for free to get more people watching (might even encourage more subscribers). One test match a summer on free to air would be nice.

 

[FrankMunro-371]

Trouble with a lot of the sports is they rely on the big money from sky who then rely on money from subscriptions to afford it. Personally I feel like sky has a responsibility to put some on for free to get more people watching (might even encourage more subscribers). One test match a summer on free to air would be nice.

When sky first got the rights to show test matches I thought that was the original idea.

 

[Sniffer]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/olympics/35473371

Good news for fans of the BBC coverage of the summer and winter games.