Coliseum Sports - EPL Overlords

True I guess, although Arsenal TV is free through arsenal.com, anyway so I wouldn't pay for it. Foxsoccer2go also has FA Cup, A League, Euro qualifiers and England home games which are the other games I'll need to be able to watch so looks like the only one of those options that ticks all my boxes. It's a shame they are the only one without a free trial option though so it would have to be a gamble.

I have Sky Sport. The problem is ESPN Australia have lost CL coverage to beIN Sports and we get the ESPN Australia feed so it's currently unclear whether there will be CL coverage in NZ. I assume Coliseum would be all over it if the rights were up for grabs. Surely they would love to merge it with PLP and charge a higher "premium" rate to get both.

New rights holder for UCL in Oceania:

http://www.beinsports.com.au/

you'd think they'd sub-lease (?) the rights to someone in NZ. A service like PLP or VS live would seem a prime candidate. 

Yeah, we don't get beIN in NZ, so presumably they would want to make a bit of money selling the rights to someone.

It doesn't seem to geoblock from NZ on the subscribe page: http://www.beinsports.com.au/how-to-subscribe/

Just went a bit further and is geoblocked in NZ.

On top of the UCL, also has the following leagues (not sure if updated for the upcoming season): http://www.beinsports.com.au/our-sports/soccer/

Just emailed them to ask and email bounced back. Oh dear.

Edit: Twitted them so we'll see if I get a response.

Did you get any response Surge (I don't use twitter)? I asked them on Facebook last week if they had any plans to broadcast CL in NZ and they have not responded.

Yeah I did, sorry - though nothing from the mouth of the horse:

Grant McKavanagh‏@grantmcknz Jul 17

@SmithyInWelly @beINSPORTS_AUS @ChampionsLeague streaming on VSlive

Thanks. Excellent, so yet another service to pay out for. Isn't that Sky's pay per view service? As frustrating as I find PLP I was hoping it was going to be them as if it was merged and an upgrade or premium subscription offered it would probably have been cheaper than another separate service. Also saw some rumours of beIN sports looking at coming onto Sky. Looks like VSlive charged $29.95 for the 3 Champions Cup pre-season games (or $14.95 for one game) in Australia so fudge knows what a whole CL season will be! Might be pay per view for each game instead of a whole season pass.

Less than impressed.

Especially if it's pay per view for each game and no on demand option (which tends to be more essential for CL given the kickoff times tend to be when many people are at or have to leave for work).

Sounds like a bloody mess in NZ trying to source football. Was a lot easier when Sky had the lot...a bit like the UK, where you now need Sky and BT subscriptions in order to watch all PL and CL games.

I like the fact that competition is happening, is annoying having to pay for multiple services. I think that while it is going to be a bit painful in the current state it is likely to be better in the future as we will be able to choose which game we want to watch as opposed to only being able to watch the games Sky wants to show us.

Also I guess it depends what you have Sky for. In my families case it was down to Zone (Wife), Discovery (Me), Kids Channels, plus Sports that I watch. We've now ditched it and using that ~$90 per month we are now getting Lightbox, Netflix, PLP, NFL, NHL (& Unotelly) for a total of $70/mth but able to watch what I want when I want. Including live or ondemand coverage of every game as opposed to just a few and only at the time they wanted to show it.

We can't have our cake and eat it too - well, I s'pose we can, but you know what I mean!

Yeah but it's an annoying cake - 15 different layers, all different ingredients that have to be purchased from different stores.

I just want one sponge cake. 

yeah bit worried about the price point vslive will have with champions league. 

These online platforms are ideal for me in the way I watch sport and TV, can understand how others find it annoying. (Though it's not that hard to set up bookmarks). 

Ideally we'd be like the U.S. where the sports have their own online platform which gives you access to all games for those who want to watch EVERYTHING, while ESPN etc caters for those who want to follow a game a day/week or whatever of many different sports. 

I guess you'd call this a transition phase and the market will work things out in the end. 

Some battery of geeks will develop some sort of aggregator (app, website, whatever) that will provide us a single gateway into various online sport channels... I just wish they'd hurry up (and be in a third world country with low wages so we can afford to get it lol).

Yep transition phase is horrible

Interesting to read JonoNewton's early adopter case study

I want to do this, just scared to take the plunge. Might have to upgrade internet speed and television to cope...

Definitely no major issues streaming at the moment, but might be different when I want to watch live events while wife/daughter watch Netflix etc.

Daughter is loving Netflix, has favourite shows already. Loves not having to watch stuff she doesn't want to.

Any updates on broadcast holders in New Zealand for Bundesliga and FL Championship?? This has probably been said but would freaking love an on demand high definition service that had Options to add on different leagues. i.e. I pay $100.00 per year for a base subscription then say add Premier League for $50.00 or All UK leagues available for $100.00 type thing, oh throw on Bundesliga for an additional $25.00 per month and MLS for $10.00 per month, $50.00 for all Champions league and Europa league etc. etc.

I know its highly unlikely but come onnnnnn google (or Netflix or someone/anyone).

What's the gist with the Spark tie-in? Is there any pricing benefit? (aside from 3 mths free Lightbox, which I already get as a new Spark customer).

http://www.stuff.co.nz/sport/football/world-game/70606089/coliseum-sports-media-continuing-to-push-the-sports-tv-boundaries

Nah I don't think there is any benefit to the user.

The benefit comes from them being able to work together to get deals with content providers, Spark seem to be taking the idea of Internet TV pretty seriously and want to be the leader in NZ, this way they get a partnership in Sports Streaming without having to front up themselves. I think it is more about "alignment" than anything else.

Though I did "find" this (not sure if it's active or working yet, but will find out later this week) if your a Spark customer:

https://store.spark.co.nz/internet/football/voucher

I thought it was rather topical :D

There was supposed to be some sort of "partnership" with Lightbox that doesn't appear to have amounted to anything. Thought at the very least it might give them easy access to a playstation app.

There is a Lightbox Sport website, though currently it just links through to the Coliseum options :D

As I mentioned on the other thread, The Football league website says that ESPN has the rights for NZ. But seen nothing else mentioning it

Just got an email from them offering 3 months free Lightbox if you sign up in August. Hadn't done it yet as was waiting to see if there might be a last minute deal if numbers were low. Guess this will be handy as I was planning to try out the free trials for Lightbox/Netflix etc with a view to dropping Sky after the Rugby World Cup.

Anyone know of any promo codes for PLP?

Come on! I just signed up yesterday :P

It's actually quite stupid. Next season (if they have it) I'm going to wait until the latest possible moment before signing up so that I can get the best deal. Which is surely not the sort of behaviour you want to encourage. 

If I signed up this week I could have got 20% off (as a spark customer) as well as free lightbox for 3 months ($42 worth). 

Edit: though I suppose the 20% off is only for a monthly pass - so that doesn't count. And I did watch the copa america, which was $50 otherwise. So I did get the better deal for myself in the end. But others won't be in the same boat. 

This deal made a lot of sense for them with the rights expiring at the end of this season too. It is likely sky will use their spending power to price them out of the market (even at a loss to themselves), but with Spark on board they now have the resources to match sky and actually have more incentive than sky to pay too much for the rights. 

Oh I will sign up the week before next time...The 20% off was 20% off the pay monthly season pass, so $16/mth instead of $20/mth, making it $192, which is cheaper than paying for a whole season upfront...I w3ill sign up early if they offer returning subsidy at $149, but not aat full price with additional content. Also had 3 people respond to me on twitter saying "It's not worth it, just stream them for free" - oh dear do they realise they are the problem.

So turns out I did get the voucher :D

So just applied that as well, aleady had 3 months free from Spark, so next bill date for Lightbox is now 23/12/15

Plus I'd rather not stay up all night a few nights a week watching dodgy streams of different games (a lot of which are on at the same time). 

As for the monthly pass, that's assuming the 20% discount would roll over month to month, I assumed it was just the first month.