Legit subscription packs are silly, worked out what my cost would be per year.
Rangers TV = £60 p/yr
Sky (HD content) = £828 p/yr + £20 One Time Fee
- Sky Sports - Complete Pack
- BT Sport
La Liga TV = £69 p/yr
NFL Gamepass = £148 p/yr
Looking at over a grand, no thanks. I'll stick to using google thank you very much.
Don't forget the games on Amazon Prime...Originally Posted by Macman
I didn't realise that if you subscribed to the football packages you were forced to subscribe to all of them at once. Even the NFL.
And, on top of that, even having paid all of that money, you still can't watch all of the games.
3pm kick-offs can't be shown, so literally the only option to see it on TV is piracy. The utter joke of all this moaning, clampdowns etc, is that you can spend £100 per month and still not be able to watch all of your team's matches. Or, you can spend less than that for a year's access to everything.
And of course, you can then do a shocked face that people picked the second option.
*nothing personally intended here*
Or, and I know this is controversial...you could just not watch it.
I know.
I never buy the "it's not available to watch legally so i'll just pirate it" argument, it doesn't justify the behaviour any more than the "I can't afford it so i'll just steal it" argument.
Piracy has become so normalised in our society, it's really sad.
Well at the end of the day as football is concerned you could always go and watch the match live, Travel , ticket , maybe a burger and drink then looking at £100 or more all in , bloody joke. Money has ruined sport as in most things. Some players £300 + grand a week , it's madness. Earlier comment from Cheesemp about F1 , at least those guys are actually risking their lives every minute so maybe their wages are kinda justifed but I gave up with watching it as down the years it's become boring , true driving skill remains in Rallycross. I wish I was a Pro footballer these days , could afford Sky and BT then , no worries. lol.
Wouldn't say steal it, I don't pay for the likes of Sky Sports because its not worth it. If It was reasonably priced and not tied down to a long contract then I think more people would pay for it, I know I would. But due to the ever rising player salaries and transfer deals this will reflect in the Broadcasting/TV rights, where we get shafted on cost of sport packages.
^^ that was a poor choice of words on my part; whilst I equate piracy to stealing it's obviously not in law and is closer to fraud (and is actually neither), but either way the point is the same.
I don't dispute that sports fans get "shafted" on the pricing, but it's not a justification for piracy & funding these criminals.
Wasn't it the money raised from said TV rights that caused the increase in salaries/deals in the first place?
My point was really that nobody should be surprised, not that I defend piracy, but I actually disagree with your point.
We're not talking about a new music album, or a film in the cinema, or a TV show.
We are talking about the national sport, which has been a major part of some people's lives for generations. In my case, both my father and my grandfather supported the same team that I do. As do my extended family. There are entire towns and cities where it's an ingrained part of the culture. Even if you wanted to physically go to the matches, you can't, because there aren't anywhere near enough seats. And the cost of that is easily into 5 figures for some teams if you're including travel. The idea that you wake up one day and say "Well, I'll just have to cut myself off from that part of my life and tell my family, friends and co-workers that I haven't seen the game".
The government clearly recognises this to a degree, because they legally force certain football matches to be shown for free.
I know this is a tech forum, so I'll likely be shouted into oblivion by people who have no interest in football, but I just fundamentally disagree. It's part of our culture, and saying "Just don't watch it" is frankly not realistic. In this age of technology, we really shouldn't be in this position at all - it's perfectly achievable for each competition to stream its matches for a small amount of money, but unfortunately so much money has been ploughed into the game that any notion of fairness has been erased.
I do think that the way football is paywalled in this country is absolutely immoral and unethical. I don't promote piracy as the solution. But I have no intention of standing up for Sky and the like, trying to defend the notion that people on minimum wage should be compelled to spend £100 per month to watch their team play, purely so that ever increasing amounts of money can be shovelled towards players and owners. No, I'll happily die on this hill.
I think we actually agree in general - the pricing is crazy high, it should be more accessible, but it isn't. Piracy isn't the answer, and I actually think that charging directly for watching sport remotely should not be a "thing" at all - particularly given the amount of advertising revenue the providers take from it...unless significant added value can be gained, which in most cases it cant.
I think you can compare directly to music too - many people have just as much emotional & generational investment in music or other things as they do football - but I totally get it and I know many people who's entire life is football.
I can't see an easy solution but equally don't want to mix that debate up with what FACT are doing here, which is fundamentally a good and positive thing. The law is there law here and whilst they should always be some flexibility in the law for special circumstances , I don't think not being able to watch football fits.
It's geoswapping actually piracy? A contract of sale is agreed and money exchanged. It may be closer to fraud, but I don't think it's illegal.
Depends on how you define it -legally I guess it is closer to fraud, since you [not necessarily you personally!] have not paid for access to that content, and have deliberately subverted the providers systems in order to access that content....
So yes I would class it as copyright infringement (piracy in this context!) all the same.
E2A....I am not a lawyer, but my understanding is it generally only matters if the rights holders decided to come after you. You'd be breaking the TOS for your provider (e.g. netflix), but all they can do is cut off your account without refund I think...then the people who own the rights to the material viewed could in theory come after you for damages etc.
Not likely to happen, not that it changes the morality or legality
It's unlawful (to breach contract) rather than illegal.
What's even more sad, is that the providers don't pay the same tax as other commercial entities in the respective countries. With the exception of BT here in the UK.
They are economic vampires.
I'm no fan of any sport, but I'd say that at the very least the 3pm blackout rule should be scrapped and consigned to history.
I highly doubt it has any real impact on whether people will travel to watch it in person these days, so instead should be a choice that fans make just like with any other type of public performance.
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