A big future for official streaming football

Tonight sees the FA streaming their second online broadcast of an FA Cup tie. The previous was Leeds United’s 2-0 victory over Oldham Athletic on 7th November last. That reportedly received 176,000 plays.

Official streaming of football isn't new, it's just receiving more publicity. Last season ITV broadcast an early qualifying round of the FA Cup on the Internet. Can't remember which one. Let's surf it up. Ah, Wantage Town v. Brading Town. Several seasons ago I watched Australia beat Uruguay one morning on my laptop. It was a World Cup play-off, free to view globally from SBS. There have been England U-21 matches, and the Milk Cup international youth tournament from Northern Ireland, and numerous club friendlies.

What's different about the FA entering as a provider is the unwillingness of Tv broadcasters to stump up the money to show the games. Probably the FA are using these games as loss leader. There is little to no advertising revenue coming in for the match but they can trumpet the viewing figures and hope someone will bid for future games.

On a personal note tonight's match is the pilot night for my new cinema room. I've spent a couple of months slowly redecorating a room, even bought new curtains. A Tv is going to be connected to the laptop and that is going to have a Ethernet cable to the router. Hopefully it will all work, well it should do as modern flat screen Tv's have video inputs from computers.

My new streaming cinema project is called "Cinema Pongol" after the French footballer - it's a mis-spelling of his name, just liked the sound of it. Next season official streaming football will be a regular part of entertainment so why be hunched over a small screen. Get it onto the big widescreen, sit back and enjoy.

Using Twitter to get the score

It's actually a breach of copyright to publish live match updates unless you have bought a very expensive licence. The story of Footietweets getting a cease and desist order from Football Data Co is here at EPL Talk and at Paid Content. So if you do live blogging or a touch of tweeting and it gets noticed you'll get a stop it right now letter. Even having a web page of fixtures is breach of copyright.

I'm reminded of the Marx Brothers getting such a letter from the Warner Brothers film company over the use of the word Casablanca (a city in Maroc and a famous film) in their comedy "A Night in Casablanca". The response was something like Groucho would sue them because they used the word "Brothers" and that belonged to them.

It's a lost cause. The march of free to use do-it-yourself publishing applications overwhelmes the old school control of the world. You can close one down but another three will open up. You can encrypt and protect but some geek will always come along with a smart way around it. The nub is fans not in it for the money wanting a few crumbs of information against people who want to make more money from them.

Meanwhile until further notice check these on Twitter :
Manchester United Scores
Latestscores - list of other teams available
ManUtd24 - news, rivals updates & etc
Manchester United Youth - Reserves and Academy

I've not found a particular good Tweeting service for FC United. I do a bit of Twitter milarky myself a mixture of my two hobbies - food & footie at Biffadigital