It’s been a crap week for televised sport in this country. Once the ICC Champions Trophy was finished there wasn’t any more cricket, and it was a week without footie because of the internationals at the weekend, and then we couldn’t watch Ukraine-England either. The “rights” to televise it had been bought by a Mickey Mouse Irish company which had gone bust, and so in true dog-in-the-manger style no-one could televise it at all. You can’t even watch it in the pub.
But wait, the powers-that-be said, do not repine – you can get it on your computer for only £11.95. Yeah, we all thought, great: sit down with your mates huddled around a 15-inch laptop and watch the whole thing in dodgy picture quality with a crate of Albanian lager. The shape of things to come.
All this “rights” stuff is a perversion of the “choice” it’s meant to represent: it’s governed by the great imperative of Revenue Protection. This, for the uninitiated, means quite simply that the service provider thinks it is a million times more important to stop people who haven’t paid from receiving the service than to ensure that those who are entitled to receive it can. All national major sporting events should be on the BBC. End of story.
All right, it wasn’t a great game. We lost 1-0, and evidence that there is anything more to Rio Ferdinand than a face like a duck was not forthcoming. And yes, I’m sure more money is made the way they do it now. But football needs more money like…oh, I don’t know, fill in your own cheesy simile. All I can say is that this stinks.
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