The FA Cup must be the only football competition that has been shown on the BBC, ITV, BSB, Sky, Setanta, ESPN and BT Sport. End of an era as you say in many ways, but will the pay TV side of this tournament be missed? Highly unlikely.
I'm enjoying seeing Football Focus using the screens at Wembley as part of their presentation today.
Also, thay rendition of the Grandstand theme from the Coldstream Guards..
JonNoFun post_id=12634 time=1621077826 user_id=800 Wrote:Also, thay rendition of the Grandstand theme from the Coldstream Guards..
that was excellent... The youngsters I work with didn't appreciate it as much though!
Here's the clean version:
https://twitter.com/mrdanwalker/status/1...2501105664
News Engineer post_id=12615 time=1621072505 user_id=729 Wrote:The FA Cup Final today is significant in UK broadcasting terms for a few reasons. I think all these are right and are true for at least the next four seasons:
The last FA Cup game to be shown by BT Sport.
The last FA Cup Final to be shown (simulcast) live on a pay TV channel, ending a run that began in 1998.
The last FA Cup coverage to be shown by a pay TV broadcaster, ending a run that began back in the days of BSB. (So 1990?)
Sorry to be a terrible pedant but those last two aren't quite true. In 2010 the final was only shown on ITV, there was a season's gap between Setanta going bust and ESPN picking up the rights, and in 2009-10 it was only on ITV.
Also, though BSB/Sky had FA Cup rights, up until 1997 the final was still exclusively live on the Beeb, with Sky only having highlights. 1998 was the first season Sky showed it live.
Next year will see the 70th anniversary of a sort of non-broadcasting milestone - the last time the FA Cup final was *not* shown on television, 1952.
(The FA, usually very co-operative with BBC Television, didn't allow it as there were other games taking place that afternoon. Despite some last-minute begging and pleading from the BBC to show the last half-hour with no advance publicity, pointing out they could rig it up in secret as their OB department was based at Wembley anyway, the FA wouldn't budge)
nwtv2003 post_id=12620 time=1621074305 user_id=1028 Wrote:End of an era as you say in many ways, but will the pay TV side of this tournament be missed? Highly unlikely.
Depends on who you are speaking for. The reduction in the interest in the FA Cup and the elimination of pay TV interest has meant that the money from rights is now miniscule, and fans to a large extent and clubs do not take it anywhere as seriously as they used to, at least until the last couple of games.
Amazon Prime Video have picked up, at relatively last minute, the ATP 250 tournament in Geneva, that up until now was broadcast by Eurosport.
Behind the scenes there is some slow progress on the rights for ATP tournaments, including increased coverage of doubles and outside courts at lower-level events, and hopefully this is good news for the tournaments that don't currently have a UK broadcaster.
Eurosport have less and less interest in Tennis these days. Eurosport’s contracts for the Australian Open, the French Open and Wimbledon all expire this year. It’ll be interesting to see whether they stick with the sport or walk away entirely.
Steve Williams post_id=12647 time=1621080372 user_id=1326 Wrote:News Engineer post_id=12615 time=1621072505 user_id=729 Wrote:The FA Cup Final today is significant in UK broadcasting terms for a few reasons. I think all these are right and are true for at least the next four seasons:
The last FA Cup game to be shown by BT Sport.
The last FA Cup Final to be shown (simulcast) live on a pay TV channel, ending a run that began in 1998.
The last FA Cup coverage to be shown by a pay TV broadcaster, ending a run that began back in the days of BSB. (So 1990?)
Sorry to be a terrible pedant but those last two aren't quite true. In 2010 the final was only shown on ITV, there was a season's gap between Setanta going bust and ESPN picking up the rights, and in 2009-10 it was only on ITV.
Also, though BSB/Sky had FA Cup rights, up until 1997 the final was still exclusively live on the Beeb, with Sky only having highlights. 1998 was the first season Sky showed it live.
Pedantry is fine when someone is making those sort of claims!
I’d forgotten about the gap between Setanta and ESPN, I thought I’d edited the post to add the live clarification to the last bit, thanks for the corrections.
AJB39 post_id=12756 time=1621115429 user_id=1285 Wrote:Eurosport have less and less interest in Tennis these days. Eurosport’s contracts for the Australian Open, the French Open and Wimbledon all expire this year. It’ll be interesting to see whether they stick with the sport or walk away entirely.
We get no figures for the Amazon broadcasts but just have to wonder if the move to Prime away from a scheduled channel of most of the tour has just lowered interest in the events Eurosport still had. Even though I have Prime the fact it's not in the TV listings or on my EPG means I'm not suddenly finding myself watching an ATP Final because I've spotted it in the schedule and just flicked the channel to watch it.
Brekkie post_id=12797 time=1621167155 user_id=976 Wrote:AJB39 post_id=12756 time=1621115429 user_id=1285 Wrote:Eurosport have less and less interest in Tennis these days. Eurosport’s contracts for the Australian Open, the French Open and Wimbledon all expire this year. It’ll be interesting to see whether they stick with the sport or walk away entirely.
We get no figures for the Amazon broadcasts but just have to wonder if the move to Prime away from a scheduled channel of most of the tour has just lowered interest in the events Eurosport still had. Even though I have Prime the fact it's not in the TV listings or on my EPG means I'm not suddenly finding myself watching an ATP Final because I've spotted it in the schedule and just flicked the channel to watch it.
You can argue it the other way around too though - at least from the POV of a tennis fan, rather than a Eurosport executive. I checked the other day and Prime supposedly has 10 million UK households now (a huge jump in Q3 last year). Of course the difficult bit is guessing how many of them (a) regularly watch any video at all (b) and of them, are tennis fans, versus those who watch football, rugby etc. It's also hard to tell how many new subscribers are joining for content vs. free delivery (which is suspect is the only reason many of us originally had it…)
But if you are looking at the video page, for me at least, whenever they're covering any tennis live at all it gets prominent coverage. I suspect that's not entirely personalised. And despite the fact Amazon are still struggling to handle sport in a sensible way in the UI (generic content warnings, encouraging people to 'review' it…) they do at least make it easy to see when all the matches are due to start and to watch the replays.
And the lack of ads on Prime is a
massive, massive deal for me. Negatives? Variable picture quality sometimes, and I'm sure for some people having to stream it at all feels like a downgrade if they have a dish and a nice home theatre setup. But still, more streams and no ads, and for tennis, ATP and WTA in one place, so…
I assumed Eurosport would desperately want to keep hold of the Aus Open, given how they always offer promotional deals at the start of the year.
AnthonyW post_id=12706 time=1621094064 user_id=1355 Wrote:Next year will see the 70th anniversary of a sort of non-broadcasting milestone - the last time the FA Cup final was *not* shown on television, 1952.
(The FA, usually very co-operative with BBC Television, didn't allow it as there were other games taking place that afternoon. Despite some last-minute begging and pleading from the BBC to show the last half-hour with no advance publicity, pointing out they could rig it up in secret as their OB department was based at Wembley anyway, the FA wouldn't budge)
:o Wow, so the 3pm blackout, where they can't show games on TV when the majority of games are being played, isn't a modern concept then!
JAS84 post_id=12804 time=1621171986 user_id=881 Wrote:AnthonyW post_id=12706 time=1621094064 user_id=1355 Wrote:Next year will see the 70th anniversary of a sort of non-broadcasting milestone - the last time the FA Cup final was *not* shown on television, 1952.
(The FA, usually very co-operative with BBC Television, didn't allow it as there were other games taking place that afternoon. Despite some last-minute begging and pleading from the BBC to show the last half-hour with no advance publicity, pointing out they could rig it up in secret as their OB department was based at Wembley anyway, the FA wouldn't budge)
:o Wow, so the 3pm blackout, where they can't show games on TV when the majority of games are being played, isn't a modern concept then!
Well, it is comparatively. The FA were usually perfectly happy for the BBC to show Saturday afternoon games, and initially after the war this included a few professional FA Cup ties. But the Football League hated TV and put pressure on the clubs not to allow televising of matches from their grounds even when they weren't League games, so apart from the FA Cup final the BBC was left with amateur games and international matches - still mostly on Saturday afternoons, though.