Chinese P2P footie

Most of the rest of the world are allowed to watch Premiership football games live every Saturday. But here in the UK no matches are shown - to protect football gates - and, unless visit one of the dodgy north London pubs that have dishes picking up Scandinavian channels, you have to wait for Match of the Day

But that's changing. The world of 442 has met the world of P2P and, having caused the music industry (Napster) and the movie industry (BitTorrent) a world of pain, now it's TVs turn.

Some smart Chinese people have worked out how to use P2P to stream a live TV signal - and the most watched shows are the Chinese coverage of live Premiership games. It's regularly mentioned in most football mailing lists or forums and there are a few websites promoting it. The only downside is the Chinese commentary - but how much worse is that than John Motson anyway?

As with all P2P, once the genie out of the bottle it quickly goes mainstream, and we expect the same to happen with this - especially as the Chinese market is very resistant to anything to do with copyright.

The FA are concerned - and so they should be. Just as they celebrated the emergence of Setanta as a serious rival to Sky and therefore increased the chance of a lucrative bidding war for the next set of football TV rights, the rug may be pulled from beneath them. Who will pay big money for exclusive rights to football when everyone can watch live on their PC -for free!

And that will have a big impact on a lot of TV advertisers too.

Comments

[john]

might i recommend PPLive normally good picture quality & no jitters! :)

[Fraser]

Simon
So glad you wrote this. I've tried some of this stuff , not great but watchable, but why should I as a consumer with money in my pocket pay for stuff on existing sport channels I don't want?

Just let me choose my games, my team and I'll gladly pay. And I bet there's millions of others like me - just look at the non sport channel subscribers to see the market potential.

Read this article on what Malcolm Glazier is potentially up to :

http://www.celticquicknews.co.uk/2005/06/premiership-plans-for-america-asia.shtml

Your blog's getting very engaging.

Fraser

[Simon Andrews]

We've had a lot of interest in this - it shows how powerful content is, and how easily technology can usurp that power.
I think that most big clubs will all have ipvtv through their websites within a couple of years -and that as they see how many people around the world will pay £2(?) a game they'll walk away from the leagues and BSKYB.
And Leeds will be back to being a big club again!