Surprisingly, for such an in-depth piece, no mention of 'Ad-Blocker', which does a pretty good job of masking all the numerous pop-up ads - especially when viewed in full screen. So I've been told http://babb.telegraph.co.uk/2014/08...-murky-world-of-premier-league-livestreaming/
A few thoughts....if they dropped the price and made it accessible online, would that not be a good option? They talk about losing £3bn a year, they could so easily reduce that loss by providing access in a legitimate way but it would have to be top quality across the globe. I am sure there would still be quite a number who would want to watch for free, but when I trailed a site 2 seasons ago, I was more than willing to pay £4.99 a month to watch the games as the quality was sensational throughout.
Maybe I'm misreading you, but that's what BT and Sky pay, not what they lose. As for your point, I think there's a satisfaction in giving two fingers to Sky and the Premier League that means a lot of people will be more than happy to continue watching for free.
The rest of the world can watch 3pm kick-offs anyway - hence all those streams from America last season.
Yes, but they are mostly poor quality, which is why I believe there is an opportunity here that is being missed. Perhaps they cannot do it as part of the deal with the TV companies, I don't know.
If they gave people what they want, ie make ALL the matches available then people would pay but they cherry pick and lock the fans out from being able to support their club. They could easily show every match either via their website or on the red button on a sky box
Of course, part of Sky's problem with making all Saturday 3pm k/o games televised is that it would then mean there was no justification for moving the football matches earlier, later or to Sunday, or staggering them. This of course means that people would then generally only watch one match, which means lower viewing figures overall and lower advertising revenue.
It really does annoy me that our league has become the play thing for Sky and billionaires to just push money around. Germany have a great system, tickets are cheap and every game is watch-able. It's almost like they care about the fans enjoying games more than lining their pockets with other people's hard earned cash!
And of course that's exactly it - if all games are watchable, then ticket prices have to be cheap to attract attendances. The two go in hand. The FA has no interest in the fans IMO Rather than lobbying for cheaper tickets, I think fan groups should focus on making all games watchable. It's an easier sell and it will almost certainly have the same effect. Unfortunately I suspect it won't have quite the same emotiveness gathering people to the cause...
Also, Sky will demand they show it and suddenly all their prices will double! This country is going to the **** with all the focus on money and how to make this country appealing to billionaires. It really does sicken me. Not trying to pull us into another OT politics debate but it's totally relevant to the way football has gone in this country, with the ridiculous inflation in prices!
If canary player actually showed all our games i would sign up but at the moment you click on the goals and it asks you to log in, they put it up on Youtube for free too so it's completely pointless. I had BT Sports last year and we were on maybe 2 or 3 times in the entire season so i cancelled.
I cancelled my canaries player last year but it still lets me log on and watch all the videos! Pretty sure I haven't been charged for it in about 18 months!
In the Gulf, an EPL package which allows you to watch every single game (on separate channels or on 5 TVs if you are rich enough) is available for about 70 quid for the year. Not sure what the Sky package is, but I'm guessing about that much a month? Prices fixing/setting? In the last 15 years when visiting England to see family, I have noticed football slowly slip away from the free screens. Who wants to pay half their week's salary in order to watch the game to line the pockets of already multimillionaires when the advertisers and kit sales can do that anyway. Make the pricing fair and people will behave. Price them out (i.e. alienate them) from a game which ostensibly required jumpers for goalposts and anything kickable and it just becomes about money/ glamour. Where is the love I ask thee? Where is the love! Oh there she is - on the live stream, and just around the corner and willing to meet me...
The contrast between the UK and Germany is the contrast between a 'cost of everything, value of nothing' UK culture for the rich only and a culture which still genuinely tries to attend to the needs of all its citizens.
The whole caboodle needs a 75% price cut from players wages through to ticket prices.Even after that top players would be on £50k a week
If I'm honest while I do watch streams online, to make every 3pm game freely accessible online would have a negative effect on lower league attendances.
Short term, you must be right (though I'm not sure how bad the Sunday PL match attendances are - I think they're pretty good), but if you look at Germany who have had it for ages it hasn't affected attendances (quite the opposite) - why? Because to encourage people to go to games the ticket prices had to drop. Watching it on the tv is just not the same as watching it live. If I could access a PL match for £20 or so, I would take that over the tv any day. So long term, I think making 3pm games freely accessible online would most likely lead to lower ticket prices, which is clearly a good thing.
