Great News For Expats (skysports.com)

Member Name: michaelhudson

Product:	skysports.com
Date:	05/09/01 (95 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: The only source of video highlights I've found on the internet, good in-depth text coverage

Disadvantages: Only games shown live on Sky are shown, Chris Kamara

Over the past two years I've become accustomed to picking up mere scraps of football news from back home. With Korean TV showing delayed coverage of just one game a week(screened seven days after the original fixture on the SBS Soccer Channel if you're ever in Korea), and the local print media concerning themselves more with baseball and basketball scores than with what's currently happening with the Beautiful Game, the internet has, with the exception of a few emails from friends and family, become my sole source of information.

While I've found some terrific football websites like www.footballunlimited.com, www.optasoccer.com and www.teamtalk.com, I've really missed seeing, as opposed to just reading about, any Premier League action since www.nufc.com stopped showing MPEGs of Newcastle's goals halfway through last season. The situation reached its nadir when the local cable TV company replaced CNN(who at least showed goals from one or two games on their World Sports programme) with CNBC(an Asian business news channel). Then, like a mirage appearing tantalizingly on the horizon, a friend of mine told me about the Sky Sports Video Lounge.

The Video Lounge, while not quite the answer to all my prayers, certainly marks a vast improvement on Sky's previous service. The post-match interviews with managers and goalscorers are still there, but they are now accompanied by around three or four minutes of highlights from every live game shown on Sky. Thus, whereas a series of still photographs on www.bbc.co.uk provided my only view of Andy O'Brien's equalizing goal in last season's Tyne-Wear Derby, I've been able to watch Craig Bellamy's strike in last week's game over and over and over(it just seems to get better with every viewing). The videos load relatively quickly, feature commentary from the original Sky Sports coverage and play at a decent speed. The downside? Well, one big minus in my opinion is th
at Sky don't make us of their access to footage from games other than those shown live on the channel. As much as I enjoyed seeing Bellamy's belter and Houllier's face after Westerveld's last-minute howler against Bolton, they merely served to whet my appetite for more. Additionally, it can be more than a little irritating, although admittedly not too time consuming, having to log in with your user name and password before you can access the Video Lounge itself.

As for the rest of the site, the football section is particularly good with separate sections for every Premier League team, news footage from Sky Sports Centre, a round up of the European and non-leagues and a good reference section with up-to-date tables and details of forthcoming fictures(I'm not too enamoured with the often inane 'expert analysis' provided by columnists such as Rob McCaffrey and Chris Kamara however). Further, as well as TV listings and in-depth coverage of other sports such as Cricket, both codes of Rugby, Tennis, Boxing, Extreme Sports and Formula 1, there is an interesting games section that currently includes Sky Sports Football Manager, Sky Sports Grand Prix, TV Games, The History Channel Game, Sky Sports Fantasy F1 2001 and Sky News games.

To conclude, while I'd like to see Sky improve their service still further by extending the number of games for internet coverage, www.skysports.com definitely offers a great lifeline for football-starved expats. All in all, an excellent site with the potential to be even better.

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