Lots to pick up on today but a Bloomberg article on “Soccer Pirates” grabbed my attention. The US business news broadcaster focussed on a recent fundamental technical shift which has seen high quality and reliable feeds of Sky and BT broadcast football games illegal appearing on TV sets across the globe.
The days of illegal content consumers scavenging around their laptop for a feed in the minutes leading up to kick off are on the way out. Now you can subscribe to a feed of your chosen content in Eastern Europe or China and it will be streamed to a device attached to your TV, where it will appear pretty much as it does direct from Sky.
This is important for several reasons. Subscription football is expensive. Thousands of Scottish football fans pay a significant portion of their monthly disposable income to Sky and BT to follow their team on television. They also get English and Spanish football as part of these subscriptions, but there is a dysfunctional market for football content.
While Sky earn 8% of their UK subscription income from Scotland, they send only 1% of their football outlays north of the border. English Premier League football is the key to entry into the UK subscription TV market, own this content, and you have market control. Cost per eyeball paid for Scottish football is a tiny fraction what is paid for English football (or English rugby league, for that matter), which has fostered a feeling among Scottish subscribers that they are being exploited by an oligopolist.
For some time now the comments section of CQN has seen discussions on how to organise a boycott of Sky, with many making the unilateral declaration “Just cancelled Sky Sports”, but there is a fundamental truth: if we have the money, we are going to watch Celtic.
Scrambling around for an illegal feed minutes before kick-off, fighting pop-ups or coping with lags is not how I want to watch my football, however, as the Bloomberg article makes plain, these issues are irrelevant if, like 2.4 million others, you subscribe to an Eastern European or Chinese feed. To force an oligopolist to change, you either need regulators to step in (they have abandoned us to a fragment of the UK market), or you need to find a way to take your business elsewhere.
One of the main advantages of being paid a pittance is you can take bold steps; Scottish football has nothing to lose by burning bridges with those who collect revenues here and pour the money into the coffers of clubs elsewhere.
The more fundamental question, even than losing Scottish subscribers, to Sky and BT, is the risk this technology poses to the value of their English Premier League broadcast rights. Viewers in England (and across the globe) also pay a substantial levy to watch English football. If the pick-up rate of Eastern European subscriber numbers continues, and assurances given to Bloomberg that prosecutions for use are unlikely, Sky and BT will see collapsing revenues – and maybe then we’ll see the English football bubble burst. Indeed, if Scottish viewers prove the concept and move en-mass, English viewers will not be far behind.
This is an important subject, we’ll talk more about it. I’m not going to advocate breaking even an unenforceable law, although others will, but there is no point playing TV money-victim anymore. This technology will eventually remove the enormous discrepancies in our game, so I’m off to buy one of the boxes, just to take a look, of course.
4-in-1-row DVD, £10.99, on CQN Bookstore, still available for Father’s Day (Sunday)!
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SUMMA OF SAMMI
Oh,I dunno. You spelt Brindisi correctly.
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Bob..
Well they Did Stamp in on My 3x One Year Passports.. Ha
001
Little Italy in NYC. The tables and chairs are all outside the bars and restaurants on the street.The people eating and drinking without a care or a worry in the world.
Like a wee European oasis in the midst of all the madness that is downtown Manhattan.
You have got to give credit to the Italians, I thought that was a wee bit of class – we do things our own way so to speak.
HH.
SUMMA OF SAMMI
Left a lasting impression then?
The U.S has a special relationship with the U.S…britain is a lapdog,nothing more…
..
It..
Lol..
001 &1/2
And here was me reading the MSM when Greece went under and it looked exactly like here, the top of the tree refused to pay their taxes with goldmansachs leading the evasion.
Originally came to link this:
http://www.thefootballlife.co.uk/post/121768768021/does-the-spfl-premiership-miss-rangers#
But, considering the matter of the article, I’ll leave this here as well from a while back which looks specifically at the possibility of dumping Sky:
http://www.thefootballlife.co.uk/post/113607597851/the-spfl-network-the-proposal
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=dtflAXHh-jk
Slan.
Gotta love CQN – when there’s no football to argue about us belligerents find the Grexit to waffle on about! What next?! :-)
.
Canamalar..
I Sincerely Hope You have Not.. Taken one of My Posts Seriously.. Ha
Ps.. How You enjoying Ramadan..?
001
When history is written, Gordon Brown (and Alistair Darling) will claim a podium place for being the right men, in the right place, at the right time.
He acknowledges his mistake in trusting the city and the bankers to regulate themselves and bowing to ‘nanny state jibes’ from Cameron, Osbourne, Salmond assorted financial institutions and the city to leave well alone.
Yes, Salmond (ex RBS banker and Fred the Shred buddy) wanted Scotland to copy Ireland and Iceland’s financial template, as well as join the Euro. Imagine the carnage if Scotland had been on its own then?
About a year after the near meltdown of the global financial system in the autumn of 2008, BBC2 ran a three-part documentary on the subject. One after another, European and American politicians, bankers and other members of the global elite lined up to pay tribute to the starring role that Gordon Brown had played in averting catastrophe. “Why is this a secret?” I remember thinking at the time. “How come foreigners know about this and we don’t?”
This 100-page monograph is an attempt by the respected economic commentator, William Keegan, to restore the balance. Keegan’s thesis is that Brown, for all his many shortcomings, deserves a better place in history than his contemporaries have allowed.
The evidence is clear. It was the British government’s decision, announced on 8 October 2008, to take a controlling interest in three major banks that prompted the Europeans, followed quickly by the Americans, to do likewise. Indeed, the Europeans made no secret of this. A few days after the British had acted Brown was invited to address the 15 eurozone heads of government. “My friend Gordon has the right plan, we must do it in Europe,” said the French President Sarkozy, introducing Brown to the gathering. The Europeans followed suit on 13 October and the Americans, prompted by Brown, the next day.
It was the turning point. The following April Brown, chairing the G20 summit, would also take the lead in persuading world leaders to inject an unprecedented trillion dollars into the IMF and the World Bank with a view to stabilising the global economy. Again, foreigners noted the importance of what was achieved and of Brown’s pivotal role, but so far as most people in Britain are concerned it was a well kept secret.
Brown’s other enduring achievement, to which Keegan devotes a chapter, was to keep Britain out of the euro despite considerable pressure from Tony Blair to join. Again, not a small matter in view of what happened next.
Keegan is upfront about Brown’s many shortcomings. His scheming and plotting, his atrocious treatment of colleagues. Likewise, as Keegan also acknowledges, Brown made his share of mistakes, not least the fact that for so long he took the City at their own estimation and – like George Osborne – bought into the mantra of “light touch regulation”. This is not a panegyric, but it is a welcome reassessment of a deeply flawed leader who, when the moment came, rose magnificently to the occasion.
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NatKnow..
Grexit..?
Is that Like Netflix.. Good Value in Oz.. $8.99 per Month..
Need to Prove Your Front Door is Painted though.. 【ツ】
001
timomouse
Very interesting. Really like the idea of SPFL network.
LB
A panegyric
CQN word of the day, gold star
Personally, I think Brown’s crowning glory for the working people was to take interest rate control out of the hands of the politicians and hand it over to the Bank.
I remember watching CNN in a hotel in Norway as Norman Lamont went ‘all in’ with my mortgage against George Soros = and lost.
All our mortgage interest rates DOUBLED that day as the nightmare unfolded.
Interest rates used to be adjusted by the Chancellor of the day with horrific results for us plebs.
Bawsman @ 12.07
Gordon Brown! So why bother having a government if it can’t set interest rates. What other important economic/fiscal decisions do you want to leave to unelected people?
captain beefheart
11:36 on 18 June, 2015
Chavez, jesting aside, I wish your friend well.
*****
No bother. It’s individual people I feel sorry for. In general it’s richer people who are able to avoid tax – if you’re PAYE you’re screwed. Ordinary Greek people are being hammered by this austerity drive.
Modern life ———.
Bought some books from a London bookstore on 4 / 6 / 15. . Paid a small fortune to have them delivered by the Royal Mail’s super duper Internional tracked and signed for system Parcel entered the system on 5 / 6 / 15 – a London Post Office and then the International Delivery centre at Heathrow . . Parcel then disappeared / hasn’t been delivered etc .
Cue contacting the relevant Customer Care Centre ———— ” Sorry Sir – that delivery was mistakenly sent to New Zealand but it has been redirected to Milan for delivery to you in Sicily ” – I could’t resist asking why a parcel for Sicily , Italy had been sent to New Zealand ———— ” Some of our staff can’t read English , Sir “
Bawsman
That ties in with what I remember from reading Who Runs Britain by Robert Peston (BBC).
The Iceland alternative is worth examining but it depends which articles you read. One that I did suggested that Iceland, because of the richness of energy and food resources on and under the shore, was in a good position to adopt their screw their bankers stance.
It seems the personal fish catch allowance was upped, heating came from below and Icelanders diverted their leisure time into knitting those colourful jumpers and screwing each other (as married couples) during the long nights.
Every cloud etc.
79caps
12:12 on
18 June, 2015
Bawsman @ 12.07
Gordon Brown! So why bother having a government if it can’t set interest rates. What other important economic/fiscal decisions do you want to leave to unelected people?
=====================================
Have you ever had a mortgage?
Have you ever had a young family, single earner and a mortgage?
Have you ever watched your monthly outgoings on said mortgage double in a day?
I, and millions like me have.
THAT’s why politicians should be no where near interest rates.
Fieldofdrams
Only reason I know what that means is that Panegyric is the record label that is reissuing the YES back catalogue. And I looked it up.
Politics is all very well, but have we SIGNED anybody today?
new article posted.
Boom!
testing….
http://www.newsnow.co.uk/A/779054747?-10583:834:0
Re SKY BT stuff
Unfortunately I live where broadband is sh**e Mbits/sec so dont have luxury of picking & choosing.
Also – No main gas BTW !
Anyway not complaining…..but BT get yer finger out & install fibre