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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I have it here in Thailand.
An Android box which i got just last week.
I paid £140 for the box and the guy set everything up for me and pay additional £6.60 per month for loads of channels including all sky sports and a bunch of others too.
Comes with loads of tv shows, latest episodes, movies and much more.
The quality depends on how good your internet connection is.
Cant wait till the season starts now.
I really would like to see this burst the TV bubble of the EPL. Its insane that teams like Burnley are Bigger than Celtic and Ajax. Its Obscene in fact.
Here’s hoping this catches on fast
sipsini / Cowiebhoy
Hooper would be great to have back, he is the perfect striker, I love how he drops deep to create the moves, eg dropping in getting the ball out to the wing and getting into the box. He’s not a lazy striker by any means.
we would get him back for a snip as well.
Cowiebhoy /BMCUW
I don’t even know how much a bottle of ginger is nowadays
Proudbhoy
Again, no expert but there is major crap going on in Greece right now which could weaken the Euro, so if you want to buy Euro then I think there is a chance the $AUS might strengthen against the Euro, watch on a daily basis.
France has a 77% dependency on nuclear energy
Slovakia- 57%
Belgium- 47.5%
and the squeaky clean Sweden and Switzerland have a near 40% dependency.
The UK gets by with a 17.2% rate, lower than the US and close to the German 15% figure despite their lengthy Green history.
The paranoid question occurs to me-
“What do these sneaky swines know that we don’t know?”
ThompsonTwin
How many of those WMD’s have ever been found to back up the reason of going to war?
its a sham.
Same as invading Afghanistan to punish the country to find one man Osama Bin Laden! then to then give the reason of the Taliban for invading Afghanistan later.
they are both False flag wars, much the same as this ISIS mob, created by you’ve guessed it, the same mobs who invaded Iraq and Afghanistan.
I’m not sure if you’ve realised, but there is no threat to us or our allies or ever will be.
BOBBY MURDOCH’S CURLED-UP WINKLEPICKERS
13:22 on
17 June, 2015
COOLMOREMAFIA
Yep,and if you want to discuss organised criminal gangs,look no further than the banks.
————————
Couldnt agree more Bobby just google RBs and GRG-[Global restructuring group]..shameful
Rangers should go for Hooper. Would show the ambitions of the new regime. Would maybe guarantee SPL football next year. Cue more squirming ;-)
timaloy29
13:29 on 17 June, 2015
‘SNP has no interest in the opinions of English people.’
###
They have an interest in the effect that the opinions of English people have on the opinions of Scottish people.
They want the Scots to regard the English as the enemy, and vice versa.
Only until they get a yes vote of course, then we can all be pals again.
Breeny
I will keep close eye on it.
Goodman
THOMPSONTWIN
I wish you’d take a deep breath now and again,and use that time to think out your argument.
Don’t get me wrong,I’m broadly in agreement with you. But for someone who has rarely posted on here about anything other than party politics or Celtic politics,you don’t seem to get the main focus of politics.
It’s about winning and crucifying your opponents from a position of strength.
When you are not in a position of strength it is about building bridges between the disaffected,and trying to bring on board those who had voted for the powerbrokers.
By going kneejerk GIRUY you’ll realise what a fool you made of yourself by not voting the way I wanted,you’ve only hardened opinions.
Please stop and think. And more importantly,listen. People had a very good reason to desert Labour. I don’t blame them.
In six months time we need to ask them if they have a good reason to continue to back the SNP.
And if they waver,have a better answer than-you shouldnae have voted for them in the first place!
Droidsticks.com box costs 85pounds best box on market
2nd run in memory of my wee pal Oscar Knox and to raise funds for NCCA UK on Sunday
Any donations welcome :)
https://www.justgiving.com/TommyMelly-Edinburgh-Run/
billybear
Think you’ll have more chance signing Tommy Cooper than Hooper lol, though he’ll need to come back as a zombie!!, hey might not be a bad signing, he’ll fit in well with all the other zombies at castle doom!!! anyway you bought your £411 season ticket for the championship yet????
@ernie lynch
Don’t disagree. They can encourage the anti-English in Scotland and the anti-Scottish in England at the same time.
Garngad to Croy, will check out Kodi, thanks.
LiviBhoy, thanks for those tips too.
Chairbhoy, aye, still don’t, ok!!!
sipsini, we love an oli’.
fender, maybe then Celtic will be able to get the deal direct?
Cowiebhoy, it sure did.
ernie lynch, aye, a wee Freudian one slipped in there.
kennie67, thanks Kennie.
SFTB
Check the age of the fleets in these countries, that’ll give you some idea as to what they know (now) versus what they knew (when they built them).
You’ll also find an inverse correlation between the size of the nuclear fleet and the reserves of fossil fuels.
While France, for example, was determined to have domestic energy security, without the massive gas and coal reserves of the UK, they opted for nuclear.
98% of Norway’s electricity is Hydro generated simply because they can. Why burn all that free oil and gas when you can sell it, and use the free water for free power instead.
The trouble in Ukraine is putting much of western Europe in a bit of a tizzy, given the reliance of so many countries on Russian gas, much of it piped through Ukraine. Turn off the tap and Germany gets very cold, very quickly.
It’s all pretty complex. The more secure the world, the more cooperative we are inclined to be, the better able we are to share and trade energy resources, the single biggest of which is Saharan Africa.
Buy a few hundred square miles of Algerian or Libyan desert, plant concentrated Solar PV on it, and you have enough electricity to power all of Europe.
There’s just the one small problem with that though. Can you see what it is?
:¬)
Hooper struggled to get first team games at Norwich. The reason was ,according to some pundit, that he didnt work hard enough at pressing and chasing back . He did get a bit lazy in his last years with us and if he comes back he’ll need to up his work-rate and buy into the Ronny pressing game.
The Battered Bunnet I am sure you will be very pleased with the new energy bill announced by the Tories tomorrow.
Just out of interest where do your consumption and production figures come from?
I hope you forgive me for trying to defend the industry I work and I believe in. Personally I am worried sick, we a one income family with a toddler and an 8 week old baby.
Looks like the job centre and no season ticket renewal for me.
I don’t have a Sky subscription to cancel either ;)
Glasgow’s GREEN and White….
BOBBY MURDOCH’S CURLED-UP WINKLEPICKERS
13:42 on 17 June, 2015
‘In six months time we need to ask them if they have a good reason to continue to back the SNP.’
###
The problem is though that once people embrace nationalism, reason is abandoned, so the question would have no effect.
“Men, it has been well said, think in herds; it will be seen that they go mad in herds, while they only recover their senses slowly, and one by one.”
http://www.retailgadgets.co.uk/Android-TV-Box/
Kennie its droidsticks.co.uk mate, not .com
Mike Bhoyle,
Laughed my arse off at your wee vignette there
HH
gsu
“There’s just the one small problem with that though. Can you see what it is?”
Nothing that can’t be solved with that oul tried and trusted tactic of invasion.
It’s Scotlands Sand! Revenge for that 3:0 drubbing by Morocco.
I read a story about a women who made claim to The Sun (the old celestial body, not the tabloid) as governments had agreed not to claim it. She had made £1600 selling plots of the Sun to rubes on e-bay. However, e-bay refused to give her the money though they did retain their own transaction fees.
Reminds me of a Tom Leonard (??) poem- “When I grow up, I want to be a liaison facilitator”- that’s where the big bucks are.
All you need to do is download Kodi, whether it be to your laptop, tablet, phone, android box, or apple device.
As long as you have a very good data connection, Fibre or 4G, you will be whistlin Dixie, as such.
$A dollar exchange rate.
I`d be waiting to see if/when Greece defaults.
Probably significant upside for the $A/Euro.
What happens when the Chinese gangsters turn off services to these boxes?
“O Lord I’m stuck with a Kodi again”
Whilst we’re on the subject of these boxes, I bought an Apple TV box a couple of years back, but have never used it. Does anyone out there know if this “streaming” is possible on it?
I would imagine the answer to be no, as I understand that the annual subscription for Sky Sports etc., is downloaded by a “subscriber” somewhere in Eastern Europe/China.
What happens after the yearly subscription expires?
HH
Kjam
Figures are drawn from the usual public sources, and backfilled with the MacKay data.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m in favour of wind and other renewables, provided they are appropriate to the local conditions and national needs. Hydro’s good, but there’s a big enviro impact for example. Using wind to mechanically pump water up hill as storage is a good combination. Using wind to electrically pump water uphill on the other hand is an absurdity of market economics.
The current fad for wind and tidal for example fails to recognise that ‘analogue’ mechanical power gen isn’t terribly efficient per £ invested.
Scotland does have abundant ‘renewable’ sources, but we don’t have the technology to use it at a price the consumer is prepared to pay.
Onshore wind doesn’t work in terms of the commercials, that’s been recognised for 20 years, hence we’ve gone offshore where we can plant really big turbines, and gain an economy of scale, albeit there’s a limit to that. The proliferation of onshore wind is a political measure to satisfy Kyoto and other CO2 commitments, not an indication that onshore wind is a viable commercial generation system.
As I say, we need to greatly reduce the amount of energy we use, be prepared to pay considerably more for what we do use, and find the best mix of power generating systems to suit circumstances, all the while reducing the output of CO2 and other emissions.
Dead easy eh :¬)
Afternoon all,
just back from vegas, met quite a few CQNers, as usual all nice guys.
Jonny the Tim
Unfortunately Apple devices have to be “jailbroken” before allowing third party apps.
But you can pick up an android box such as a MXQ on amazon for around £40
Sftb,
my wee kodi box is magic.
Nice timing with the article Paul.
I had a wee look at the site that i have used to watch games on last week and Virgin are blocking it as there’s a court injunction out on em!
Been wondering what the hell i was going to do for the new season.
Think one of these things may be my best option for viewing the games i cant make.
Breeny
13:32 on
17 June, 2015
You beat me to it.
:-)
lovejoysalegend
Cheers for the reply!
HH
Hooperman? Would have him back in a heartbeat. Aiden too.
Get shot of Plooky,Balde and Boaconstrictor.
Simples.
I’m willing to give Griff a good run in Europe
Is he proven yet? No but in 2015 he’s been arguably our best player. And I think he will be a success in Europe
Just take a look at his goal v ICT last day of the season. One touch quick shot bang bottom corner from 18-20 yards out. It doesn’t matter who the opposition is, no one is stopping that sort of goal that Leigh is more than capable of doing on a regular basis. Ideally id want another striker in, a good strong tall one ala Sutton, but Sparky will be good enough for the qualifiers I think
HH
where I do I get one of these boxes? ( just to have a look of course)