Congrats to Karen Murphy of the Red White & Blue pub in Portsmouth on winning round one of her battle with that corporate font of greed BSkyB. Temporarily at least she now has the right to broadcast English Premier League football matches, some at Saturday kick off times, via a provider from Greece, or anywhere else in the EU for that matter, apparently at a yearly cost of £800 as opposed to BskyB's unsurprisingly extortionate demand for £600 per month, a figure which drove her to this course of action in the first instance.
One of the EPL's arguments against this landmark ruling is that by broadcasting games at 3pm on a Saturday afternoon, attendances would suffer throughout the football pyramid. That may be the case for clubs with large fanbases outside their immediate area, for example the more fickle fan of Man Utd who lives in Surrey could well decide to stay at home in Esher and watch the game on his 40" LCD HD TV on a cold wet February afternoon rather than make the long trek up to Old Trafford, and eventually may stop buying his season ticket. However countering this are a not insignificant number of Liverpool fans in particular who fly in to every home game from Scandinavia and all points in Northern Europe, places where they can quite legitimately receive the Saturday game live via their own country's satellite provider. They are obviously all a smoked herring short of a Smörgåsbord, but a whole lot less fickle than the Esher dweller.
Clubs like Everton, Stoke, Fulham, Sunderland, Newcastle, Spurs etc, and all clubs in leagues below the Premier League where 95% upwards of the fanbase live within 30 miles of their team's ground tend to have a much less fickle support who will still go to the game regardless of whether or not they can watch it live on TV. Would a devout Cobblers fan who also follows Liverpool stay home on a Saturday so he could see Liverpool play Blackburn Rovers? I think not, he'd simply record it and watch it when he got home. Effectively the EPL are saying it would adversely affect the rich elite, but not the majority of the other clubs, so we're against it. The argument does not wash with me I'm afraid.
Mind you, if the ruling is upheld, the EPL would simply end all the country by country deals and sell one package for the whole of Europe at a much higher price than before to compensate for the reduction of Sky money for UK exclusive rights, so Bill Kenwright et al can rest easy for now. Also, guess which is the only broadcaster with the clout both financial and technical to deliver Europewide coverage? Irritating though this may be for BSkyB, ultimately they end up making even more money out it.
The real moolah to be made for the EPL is from overseas deals in Asia and the USA, and of course this ruling has no bearing on these arrangements. Unfortunately, even allowing for the continued rise of decent quality but illegal internet streaming the gravy train looks set to roll for some time to come, but on the upside we would see much cheaper monthly subs for our legal footy fix.
You probably won't find this story given any prominence in any of Murdoch's rags for obvious reasons. BSkyB will not take this lying down, and you can be sure that unfortunate though it may be, big business will likely beat the little man (or in this case woman) every time, but for the time being keep up the good fight Karen!
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El Camerero Gordo is at it again. The funniest man in football has revealed how he "thinks" £70 million was "talked about" in relation to his compatriot, the famous hair gel consumer Fernando Torres, while he was in charge at Anfield, and "maybe you (Liverpool) receive an offer", and how he reckons Chelsea got a bargain! Beggars belief really, but we are talking about Rafael Benitez, so jaw dropping complacency combined with a deliberate vagueness are nothing new. He "thinks" an obscene but unremarked £70 million was talked about, and "maybe" an offer was made? What, doesn't he know one way or the other? He was there after all. You can bet all the Britneys in Essex that if this was during Waldorf & Statler's tenure and they had been offered £70 million for Torres they would have leapt at it with all the fenzied glee of Keef being let loose in a cocaine factory.
Also Mr B revealed he wants to manage Liverpool again. Sure, after Dalglish has painstakingly rebuilt the team from the dregs left by the FSW any owner would be a fool not to re-employ him. However for sheer entertainment value I say give him the job back now. In fact, let's start a campaign!
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Those rather funny middle aged schoolboys on Top Gear are in trouble again, this time for slating a Mexican sports car and implying that Mexicans and by extension the car are "lazy" and "feckless" and that Mexican food resembles "refried sick". Admittedly taken out of context it is a tiny bit OTT, but come on! Apparently the Mexican ambassador demanded an apology from the BBC and called the comments "offensive, xenophobic and humiliating". The skit was raised in the Mexican Senate no less, and an all party group of MPs over there on a beano (sic - but not refried) were told the remarks were "ignorant, derogatory and racist", with more apologies being demanded.
Jaysus Hairy Christ, if these people ever had to advertise in a lonely hearts column they would have to advertise themselves as having NSOH. Have they not got more pressing matters to worry about like drug trafficking, kidnappings, border control and gun running, or am I being stereotypical?
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Overheard mobile phone conversation in a hospital waiting area:
Heavily accented and be-tracksuited local yokel..."...well we've already got an Emma, Jemma, Carol..(plus 3 or 4 other girl's names) so we can't call her any of those.." I sincerely hope he was talking about gerbils or somesuch and not children!
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