YouTube Highlights Will Be Scarce This Season

Filed in archive England on August 14, 2007

The big lesson from opening weekend in the Premiership was that NetResult are working overtime. They're basically the Premiership's evil legal representatives, working round the clock to prevent fans from watching football via YouTube, DailyMotion etc.

Steven Gerrard's amazing free-kick against Aston villa is a case in point. Look what happened when Liverpool Offside tried to post the clip. This was removed, then this, and eventually this will be too.

The two questions are: 1) Who is harmed by footy fans watching Gerrard's goal? 2) What's the alternative?

The answers are 1) No one and 2) Nothing.

If anything highlights, especially fantastic goals like Gerrard's do wonders for promoting the game. And watching that goal for free on a tiny YouTube video is a world away from watching the entire game. The people who want to watch, share and discuss Gerrard's goal are the same people who already pay for a Sky Sports, Fox Soccer Channel or Setanta Sports subscition. No one's going to cancel that subscription just to watch it on YouTube are they?

And what's the alternative to these highlights? If the Premier League had their own embeddable highlights service that they paid good money for the rights to, then fair enough. But they don't.