[temp_praneshp]

If you watch Tottenham despite all that, you deserve the pain their football causes.

Jokes apart, is the BT Sports "early kick off games" completely different from the Sky Sports game you mentioned? That's ridiculous. I was in England in Summer 2019 for the cricket world cup, and was shocked at how difficult it was to watch the games on TV. Wimbledon was very easy though, so maybe Tennis is way more popular?

[12907835202]

Tennis is definitely not more popular.

It's odd that you seem to think popularity = it would be easier.

Soccer's popularity is what causes this issue because there is so much money to be made by splitting it up and selling to multiple companies rather than just one cheap, easy solution.

If Tennis attempted the same it would be so detrimental to its viewership it wouldn't be able to survive.

Unlike soccer which is so popular it can get away with it.

[celticninja]

This is not about popularity though. Wimbledon is in a particular class of sporting events, known as the Crown Jewels, that are protected and must be shown on free to air terrestrial tv.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ofcom_Code_on_Sports_and_Oth...

[Crosseye_Jack]

> Soccer's popularity is what causes this issue because there is so much money to be made by splitting it up and selling to multiple companies rather than just one cheap, easy solution.

The reason they are split up in the UK is to stop a single pay tv gaining a monopoly on the broadcasts like in the past. So even if sky wished to pay all of the monies for all the games they can’t, they are limited to a set number of game blocks they can purchase, so the other providers get a chance at showing some games too.

It was meant to be a “good thing” but turned into the mess we have today.

However IIRC this only covers the premier league, TV providers can bid for all the games in other leagues. But not really much of a football fan so I don’t follow the subject that closely.

[rusticpenn]

It would have made more sense to make the broadcast non exclusive….

[temp_praneshp]

> It's odd that you seem to think popularity = it would be easier.

Yeah, I can see how my line of thinking doesn't make sense. I was thinking popular -> can earn more from ads, less popular -> need subscribers, but there is no way tennis shows more ads than football

In India it'd be unthinkable to put cricket on paid channels, because the money is from putting ads wherever there's space

[LanceH]

A lot of European countries have a list of events which must be freely available. I guessing Wimbledon is on that list in the UK.

Check out: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ofcom_Code_on_Sports_and_Other...

[bbcloluebsj]

heh. not sure if that's a internal joke from them... but they did wait until nobody is getting signal from airwaves to put in place rules limited to airwaves distribution. bloody marvelous.

[celticninja]

How do? This list was drawn up in 1991 when pretty much everyone was still using signal from airwaves

[rjmunro]

I think most people got "signal from airwaves" in 1996.

Most people still do, although don't necessarily use it very much.

[cjrp]

Does iPlayer over Wifi count as "signal from airwaves"?

[tomgp]

There are certain sporting events which are required to be broadcast free on terrestrial TV. Wimbledon and the FA cup final are the two that I can remember this applying to off the top of my head.