Great whatever you watch (What's your view on the new TV football deals?)

Member Name: Lakerfanster

Product:	What's your view on the new TV football deals?
Date:	05/10/07 (58 review reads)
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Ever since the Premiership began in 1992 Sky have been the major player in Live Football on TV and I have welcomed that because they after all paid all that money to secure the rights to show these live games and that should be the end of that but apparently people think they should be able to affect something that they are not even part of like people who complain that there isnt enough competition to Sky. Well there hasnt been because Sky are the best and remember what happened with ITV Digital who promised to compete with Sky's premiership coverage.

You get the all of the England games on either Sky Sports or BBC and sometimes they are shown live on both and during the World Cup and the European Championships are shown on ITV aswell. And Channel Four and Channel Five show a lot of foreign football from the likes of Holland, Italy, Argentina and United States. This can only be a good thing for Television Football in this country.

I have recently bought a Sagem freeview box that comes with Setanta and this is the way to go if you are against Sky for whatever jealous/bogus reason. Setanta gives you 46 English Premiership games and 60 Clydsdale bank Premiership games from Scotland. This is basically the package that Sky had with Prem Plus for the English Premiership. Setanta also show European Leagues with the top teams from the Super liga in Portugal, Eredivisie in Holland, Le Championnat in France and Bundesliga in Germany regularly shown live on Setanta.

The Reason why Sky have had the Premiership rights for so long is because they have built up a great package and their coverage is among the best live football broadcasts. And of course they have secured the rights fairly by bidding just like any other company who wanted Premiership Football on their network.

I feel Setanta have started something good as other Television companies are actually playing along instead of spitting out their dummies. While I see Sky being the majority holder for sometime to come I can see networks like Setanta becoming more popular and getting more and more big games. This gives people a real choice about what football they watch. Something that should have been so a few years ago without all these tantrums when Sky fairly won the rights.

I have no problem at all with Sky having the rights as they have consistently been proven as a great Broadcaster when it comes to Live Premiership football and I say again they won the rights fair and square. But I do thing it is a good thing that Setanta have secured a very good deal to show live top flight football. This will hopefully wake other TV companies up to stop complaining and do something about it.

Summary: Setanta, Sky,