England Football Game Streamed Online Only
The latest England Football match has caused shockwaves because it is only available to watch online – streamed exclusively on the Perform website.
For Football fans (soccer to US readers) in England, watching their national team play games especially world cup qualifying games is a sacred experience not to be missed. The game is always on a tv station who usually fight over the rights, however this time there is only the option, and that is to watch the game online.
Fans will only be able to watch Saturday’s World Cup qualifier against Ukraine on the Internet because the TV networks decided not to pay for the broadcast rights.
The match is admittedly not of major importance as England have already booked their place in South Africa next year, meaning interest in this match is not as high as would normally be expected. The tv companies seem to have decided that its not worth paying for leaving coverage via internet streaming only which comes at a cost.
The match which kicks off at 5.15pm on Saturday 10 October, will only be shown online, after the usual networks of ITV, BBC and Sky decided against bidding for rights to the match.
So how did this ever come about? The rights were sold at the beginning of the year to Setanta sports, the irish sports network who have since collapsed. International agency Kentaro then sold the rights to digital sport specialists Perform.
Peter Silverstone, managing director of Kentaro, told the BBC: “You will watch as you would any other streaming on the internet, like YouTube or the BBC iPlayer – there will be a pop-up player that will show the match in a very good quality stream.”
The match will be available on the dedicated football streams website, and fans will be able watch it by subscribing using PayPal, the electronic payment service.
Football fans will have to fork out £4.99 ($12) to watch the game or pay even more if they leave out subscribing till the day of the game.
Silverstone has reassured fans who are worried that the service may be over-subscribed and the quality reduced by confirming that Kentaro will only allow a maximum of one million users for the match – because this would be the “safe number to stop at to ensure the optimal broadcast.”
The England team has already earnt a place in the 2010 World Cup, after winning all eight of its group stage matches. All previous games have been available to watch on TV, through Sky, ITV and ESPN.
For non online viewers, the match can be watched at 13 different Odeon cinemas around the country, including the flagship cinema in Leicester Square, London.
Many fans are hoping the online venture flops as it is not the preffered medium to watch football and they want it back on free tv. We are all for championing online tv but make it free guys.
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not pleased how england is not on tele and that we have to pay to watch our country play its competely wrong and they show al other countrys play.
[...] streaming of England v Ukraine world cup qualifier has been judged as a streaming success after around 500,000 viewers tuned [...]
A BIG Thank you good post