You could still do that though?
I could, but I would be a lot less inclined to, I'm sure many would.
Thing is, non league watchers are a very small minority, attendances are usually in the hundreds rather than thousands. I'd wager there are many thousands more in this country that would like to see their team at 3pm that don't/wouldn't go to non league matches as it is now.
At the same time with the attendances being hundreds if you show games on Sky and 50 people stay and watch that instead it will have a huge effect on those non-league clubs.
No doubt the 3pm blackout helps boost lower league attendances a little, but as i said in my opinion no where near as much as the people who want to keep it in place would have you believe.
Im sure they could do that, and no doubt Sky has thought about it. But 3pm kickoffs are traditional to move them all would be a real pain for regular match goers. Back when i had a season ticket i loved going to the match at 3, early or late saturday kick offs never quite felt the same.
I suspect the lower price in India is compensation for the fact that the cable will invariably crap out half way through the match you were staying up til 2AM to watch (Champions League final in Moscow for me) or even when the cable stays on they may decide to switch to the recorded highlights of an India vs England test match from the '80s at half time and forget to ever switch back.
Because as others have pointed out, the UK preserves the archaic idea that since 3pm Saturday is the traditional kick off time for all matches (league and non league), showing the big matches at 3pm on a Saturday would eat into the attendances and finances of the smaller clubs. I'd suspect that my local non league club Tonbridge Angels might lose 10% of its 500 strong weekly attendance if that were the case but at £10 a head that's hardly going to break a club that are made up of amateurs and volunteers enjoying themselves at the weekend while more televised matches might bring a little more FA funding their way.
Wow, what's the service called?
No way. Infact these matches are now shown on HD channels. And it never happened to me during the Moscow final.
All the BPL matches in India are subscribed officially through Starsports.com. Check it if you can do it by changing the IP address.
It was meant in light spirits but HD or no HD, the fact is that when I lived in Chennai (2006-8) the cable service did crap out almost as often as the electric and late at night it took far longer for them to realise and to fix it, the whole second half and extra time of the Moscow final was relayed to me by text messages from my Sister in the UK as the cable being down meant we also had no internet access to get the commentary on line. I spent much of my time on the road so caught matches on hotel cable in many other cities as well and drop outs of 5 - 10 minutes were fairly commonplace. The match being cut at half time and replaced with a 25 year old cricket match was United v Liverpool IIRC, the only time we'd actually arranged to go out and watch a match in the bar of the Sheraton, myself and my MD just pissed ourselves laughing when it became apparent that it was not the bar staff who had changed the channel but the TV company.
I can safely say that's never happened to me in all these years. Besides, no one uses cable anymore I don't think.
Don't worry...we're are not taking it in a bad way anyways. Shebby Singh is no more now. We get actual team legends every weekend and the pre and post match discussions are very good now.
Yes they're as long as they pay the full sky sports football package for pubs. Its only illegal if they're shown on the foreign channels.
Except the full Sky Sports package does not have any 3pm kick offs due to the rule we are discussing here. Any pub showing them in the UK must be using foreign channels and Sky have tried to shut it down with some success although a few pubs have won small victories in the European courts.
Figs from Wiki: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_attendance_figures_at_domestic_professional_sports_leagues
Well, that's fairly conclusive.Figs from Wiki: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_attendance_figures_at_domestic_professional_sports_leagues
Bundesliga 13/14 13,311,145 (18 teams) av att 43,502*
Premier League 13/14 13,929810 (20 teams) av att 36,659
Championship 13/14 9,138,360 (24 teams) av att 16,555
2, Bundesliga 13/14 5,473,728 (18 teams) av att 17,888
English League 1 12/13 3,568,680 (24 teams) av att 6,465
3. Bundesliga 12/13 2,341,685 (20 teams) av att 6162
Must admit that this figure only grew this big after Germany flooded a lot of the money back into the clubs infrastructure to build bigger stadiums when they hosted the 2006 WC.
EDIT: bolder made it easier to read
Not really, Germany has a population of 81 million, in comparison England has a population of 53 million. As well as football, rugby is a well attended game in England which has to be taken into consideration.
Are you seriously using that to argue that things should stay as they are?
Did I say it should? However it's not a fair comparison, Germany is as football mad if not more so than England, yet has a far higher population. With the exception of Russia it has the biggest population in Europe, we are talking about roughly 30 million more people live in Germany compared to England, or five times the population of the Republic of Ireland if you like. Of course attendances are going to be higher.
It is a fair comparison if I was asked to supply the figures as a comparison however (even if you feel they are unbalanced due to population).
Can see more "worldwide" broadcasters coming into play as long as there is not a separate charge for each broadcaster I'd welcome the competition.
BT really are making a push, wouldn't rule them out vs. Sky going forward. Their 'core' business (landline phones) will be gone in 10 years, broadband/fibre and TV is a good route out for them
No idea why you wrote all that to be fair.
That's what my TV station offers.
BT are here to stay as shown by them getting exclusive CL rights. There'll still be more competition at the next rights auction for the Premier League and ultimately it'll be at the consumer's cost as we'll end up having to pay more just to view the same amount of content/slightly more.
… and I wrote in the first line that I was specifically asked to supply them and I even admitted "…they are unbalanced due to population"
BT have a lot more money than Sky to play with as well, they could wipe Sky out of it if they wanted to. Obviously it will be a long time before that happens, even if it does happens, as you say, until then we will all be out even more money with costs only going one way.
