A global journey…
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.
2 Responses
brant parsons on 14-08-2007 at 11:20 am
I agree completely. I know this is all about money, I just don’t see how these networks (or Premier League) are losing that much money by folks wanting to celebrate Gerrard’s amazing free kick or Martins’ brilliant bicycle kick.
Keith on 14-08-2007 at 8:21 pm
I can’t back this up strong enough…I realized Saturday night as I was looking for highlights that EVERYTHING was already taken down. It makes no sense, because as you’ve already said, there is NO ALTERNATIVE!!! I’d probably pay for a service to be able to watch these highlights, but not even that is an option. Blood…boiling…urge to kill…rising…
Ok no one is actually in any danger, but this is completely ridiculous.