The Future Of Football TV Coverage

Currently football is shown on TV by Sky, Setanta, ITV and BBC. It is on about four days a week and sometimes more, but as technology improves, people want more and more options. The latest technology is streaming. Most channels are already doing it with their TV programs, but very few do it with any kind of sport.

You can already stream football online for free using channels broadcast from China, America and Greece. In America, football is generally shown on ESPN, Star Sports or FSC (Fox Soccer Channel), and they have permission to show more games, so the 3 p.m. kick-offs that you wouldn’t normally be able to watch in this country are now available. If there are six matches on a Saturday afternoon, then chances are you would be able to watch at least five of them using streaming.

Streaming works by effectively recording and broadcasting an existing channel over the internet. Then thousands of people from around the world connect to it using different programs. The most popular programs are SopCast, TVU Player, UStream and TVAnts. By getting these programs, you are enabling yourself to watch streams. Or you can take the direct approach and go on sites such as Justin.tv, which are like YouTube - they are on all the time with the player built in, so you don’t need to download anything and you can just watch.

You may now be wondering if streaming is in fact legal or not, and the answer is, who knows! There have been two high-profile cases where companies have taken people to court over streaming football. The first was a pub owner who was broadcasting it for free rather than paying for Sky. He actually won his case, and was allowed to carry on doing it! The second case was lost though, so there is obviously no clear law on it. It is very similar to P2P program for downloading music and films etc., in that the TV companies don’t like it, but will never be able to stop it because the moment they shut a site down, another 10 open up. You are also safe watching it, they never go after people who watch it, only the people who run it.

There is only one solution for the TV companies, and it is what the film and music industries should be doing, and that is to embrace it. If they carry on trying to fight it and take people to court, then they will spend millions and never make any progress. They need to open up a high quality, fast streaming service that anybody can connect to for a very small fee. This way they will beat the competition because it is worth paying a little to get decent quality. If it’s too expensive or the quality isn’t much better, then it won’t work but it is up to them to do something, not us!