Thoughts on the feasibility of a football channel?
I'm fed up of flicking through 4 sports channels to find rubgy replays (even when its already got a dedicated channel), golf and I suspect netball will be entering the stage on a larger scale soon.
There's enormous amounts of televised football worldwide, even if the local coverage is limited. Surely it warrants it's own channel!
Robman
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Why would sky give any other sport that isnt rugby its own channel? Thats blasphemy!!
In a country where declining rugby numbers automatically means kids are lazy and not playing sport...I dont see it happening sadly.
Allegedly
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I'd sign up....
One proviso - No coverage from ESPN.....
One proviso - No coverage from ESPN.....
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good call on the no espn coverage. why is it so soo rubbish?
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They record off a tv in a studio somewhere in yankee land. That's why. Oh, and the commentators know f**k all about football too.
Three for me, and two for them.
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We don't get any FA Cup coverage (except for the final) - not even delayed. We get none of the football educated talk shows, we get only Premiership highlights (at different times and days each week... even the live Premiership coverage on weekends isnb't guaranteed - though I admit we seem to have had more Premiership games broadcast.
If there were enough subscribers, a channel that covered all things footy would be brilliant - and they could show as much golf and rugby replays on the sport channels as they liked.... it would be utopia if it'd include the highlight packages of the lower English leagues too - I'd get to see the magnificent Donny Rovers!
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Actually we do get FA Cup coverage it's just ESPN but we get all rounds proper. And we get around 5 live EPL games a week which is more than England get surprisingly.
Three for me, and two for them.
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We also get
- UEFA cup and champions league
- A league,
- MLS when its on,
- Spanish football,
- Serie A from Italy.
All free with the basic sports package.
You should do a search for the threads we have done about this before. Frankly this topic has been thrashed out heaps.
Bottom line - NZ market is too small to justify Football only channel.
The rugby channel survives because of the amount of local made content A soccer channel would require Sky to buy all its coverage separate.
Also Sky have no control over ESPN content, hell they barely even get the program listings right for that channel. If you want to know how much football we get through ESPN each week check out this site and look under ESPN Pacific Rim.
It's a lot more than most people realize.
Also Sky have a deal with the Premier league where they get the games that the Premier decide to give them, the whole seasons coverage is bought in a lump sum package which includes "Premier league world", "Premier league preview" and "Premier league review" shows. Not to mention they have a highlights package in the rotaion of their highlights channel which alternates games from the weekend.
If we didnt have ESPN coverage we would be seriously fu#ked off with the lack of coverage.
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I'd like to see some South American, Asian, and African football thrown in too.
And good call re ESPN and some of their associated commentators.
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It never ceases to amaze me just how shit the ESPN stream is. I can't believe they don't fix it up, it looks terrible.
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It never ceases to amaze me how sh*t Tommy Smyth's commentary is on ESPN.
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I'd rather have the ESPN stuff than nothing...
it would be nice to have a football channel, and no doubt there is enough stuff to put on it, but realistically it wont happen
it would be nice to have a football channel, and no doubt there is enough stuff to put on it, but realistically it wont happen
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It never ceases to amaze me how sh*t Tommy Smyth's commentary is on ESPN.
If that wasn't enough, we're also blessed with Andrew Orsatti on ESPN.
f**ken clueless Yanks.
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My point is - yes there's an acceptable amount of football broadcast. It's just poorly delivered. Time slots change weekly and replays aren't always guaranteed. If you're a hardcore football fan it can be frustrating when you turn on the box on a Sunday morning to watch a replayed EPL game to find Golf on 3 channels and Super 14 replay on the other.
So, if the same football programmes as we get delivered to us in piecemeal fashion today were broadcast from a dedicated football channel, there are no further packages to buy, and all they do is replay the same football they have to fill the 12 hours a day timeslots - hey presto, a 500% better service.
Games from the archives wouldn't be expensive either to give it further content. We'd then have a channel that would always be playing today's weekly coverage - games and replays wouldn't get bumped to silly times or skipped entirely - it would always be on the football channel.
I'm sure the cost highlight packages of the lesser leagues in the UK, Asia, Sth Africa etc isn't that much, and could be brought in later if the business case stood up.
I guess I'm a paying customer - and get the impression that the world's biggest sport is given the back seat unnecessarily sometimes on the shared channels.
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So which of the FA quarters this weekend were broadcast?
The same EPL games are broadcast in the UK. Over there, depending on your subscription, you can have all the games + the feature matches from each division.
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The Barnsley and Portsmouth wins were both on ESPN. They showed replays of them on Sunday evening.
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i've already argued at length with sky over having a dedicated football channel
they don't care about football look at channel 33 on sky why is football a "best of the rest" yet cricket netball rugby get their own dedicated highlights slot and being a "best of the rest" you only get too see the highlights once every 4-5 hours as they alternate them with other sports
bring back big league soccer i say
they don't care about football look at channel 33 on sky why is football a "best of the rest" yet cricket netball rugby get their own dedicated highlights slot and being a "best of the rest" you only get too see the highlights once every 4-5 hours as they alternate them with other sports
bring back big league soccer i say
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Or match of the day.
The other problem with dedicated football channel is they would have to buy content to replace the football on all the other sports channels - The only viable solution, and one that actually works, is to get a My Sky decoder - record all the random football thats on and watch it when you have the time - I dont actually have enough time to watch more than 2 or 3 games a week, and a couple of highlights shows.
UberGunner2008-03-11 15:26:31
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Or match of the day.
I dont actually have enough time to watch more than 2 or 3 games a week, and a couple of highlights shows.
That's it in a nutshell - there really is enough on for most people already. Anymore for me and I just woudn't have time to watch it anyhow. I'd like to see a bit more MLS perhaps, but, again, I'd have to try and find time to watch it.
In an ideal world I'd have eight hours a day to watch football, eight to listen to and read about music and I'd fit the eat/sleep problem in the other eight.
Hang on, what about the "getting pissed" bit...
Nix, Leyton Orient and Alloa Athletic supporting schmuck.
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Hang on, what about the "getting pissed" bit...
Move to Wellington and you can merge it with the football...
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The point is we don't have the time to try and manage life around when Sky choose to broadcast highlights. A dedicated channel would make it easier to catch the highlights etc.
Anyway - I just wanted to gauge the level of interest. There seems to be more resistence than enthusiasm.
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No, theres plently of enthusiasm...everyone just also doesnt see it happening and is giving reasons as to why sky would never consider doing it
Allegedly
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The point is we don't have the time to try and manage life around when Sky choose to broadcast highlights. A dedicated channel would make it easier to catch the highlights etc.
Anyway - I just wanted to gauge the level of interest. There seems to be more resistence than enthusiasm.
like i said earlier do a search for "football channel" on these forums and you will see we pretty much covered this whole thing last year a couple of times.
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No harm in revisiting a topic - unless there's a rule about doing so.
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Absolutely, as long as people check the previous topics so we don't 're-cover' any ground.
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No harm in revisiting a topic - unless there's a rule about doing so.
Sorry, i wasn't saying i had a problem with this new topic, but when you said you wanted to gage the interest i was suggesting you read our previous efforts to convince sky about a football channel to see why some of us appear negative at this point in time.
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