The Sport Thread

[Brekkie]

A real shame and rights being bought on a European wide basis, excluding British only broadcasters from bidding, is where the culture secretary should be interfering, not with selling C4.

I would have hoped Quest would at least show the finals. Indeed is this the first time certainly this century the tournament hasn't been free to air. I think even in the pre-red button days the finals at least would be on Grandstand.

[thebigdog2022]

A real shame and rights being bought on a European wide basis, excluding British only broadcasters from bidding, is where the culture secretary should be interfering, not with selling C4.

Exactly, same with the Olympics given full access by a FTA broadcaster and same with the UEFA European Qualifiers for each of the Home Nations.

[RhysJR]

[bkman1990]

Ryan Tubridy just confirmed on The Late Late Show a short time ago that RTÉ have the free to air rights for all of the Nations League & The European Qualifiers matches for The Republic of Ireland team on a non-exclusive basis with Premier Sports.

https://www.rte.ie/sport/soccer/2022/052...gue-games/

This means Virgin Media Ireland & Sky Sports do not have the rights to show these games as this new deal has gone to Premier Sports & RTÉ.

[Rdd]

Virgin Media TV have secured a package of Nations League and European Qualifiers rights for ROI 2022-24 - unclear exactly what the terms are but appear to involve England and other top teams. Do not include Republic of Ireland (gone to RTE, as per above) save for highlights.

https://www.independent.ie/sport/soccer/...72658.html

[RhysJR]

[Brekkie]

Looks like UEFA packaged the Nations League in with the Qualifiers this time then. Did the ViaPlay 2024-28 deal cover the Republic of Ireland?

[Rdd]

Looks like UEFA packaged the Nations League in with the Qualifiers this time then.  Did the ViaPlay 2024-28 deal cover the Republic of Ireland?

Depends what you mean - it didn’t include rights in ROI afaik; Viaplay have not declared any intention to launch here (which also means incidentally that there’ll be no NHL coverage here next season). 

The deal does include UK rights to Republic of Ireland games.

[BcastCornwall]

Interesting from the BBC, non SKY games goals live on Final Score tomorrow

https://twitter.com/BBCMOTD/status/1528018564220960770

[bkman1990]

Freesports HD has gone FTV on Satellite in the UK. It means that you need a Sky viewing card to watch it your Sky box at home. I wonder what is the reason for that disappointing decision. Why is the channel being restricted to Sky viewers on Satellite? I used to watch it very frequently before it went FTV.

The last thing I watched on it in full was the NASCAR Highlights from the Kansas Speedway about two nights ago.

[SuperSajuuk]

Freesports HD has gone FTV on Satellite in the UK. It means that you need a Sky viewing card to watch it your Sky box at home. I wonder what is the reason for that disappointing decision. Why is the channel being restricted to Sky viewers on Satellite? I used to watch it very frequently before it went FTV.

The last thing I watched on it in full was the NASCAR Highlights from the Kansas Speedway about two nights ago.

Freesports has been missing on Freesat since July 2020, when it was removed without warning from the platform: as far as I know, it was never restored to Freesat since then. According to Freesat though, the removal of FreeSports from the platform was done "at the request of the channel owners' themselves": perhaps related to the frequency sell-offs by Ofcom and the like to make way for 5G or whatever.

It has been on Freeview though, but HD channels on there are incredibly hit and miss depending on location: in fact, where I live, the HD channels that come through on that platform can sometimes be fine for days, then just break up a ton for no reason.

So realistically, Freesports hasn't been FTV on satellite since then, its only been reachable on Sky (to their credit, FreeSports does tell you how to tune your box manually to receive the channel despite it not showing up, but this comes with the limitations of not being in Freesat mode, with no recording or rewind functionality available, its just the channel as-is from the satellite).

[bkman1990]

Freesports is on COM 7 for Freeview in the UK. I just read from a post on DS that COM 7 is closing in the UK on the 30th of June. Even though it was expected before this move on satellite; it would mean more confusion for viewers for Freesports in the UK at that point.

[Jon]

Interesting from the BBC, non SKY games goals live on Final Score tomorrow

https://twitter.com/BBCMOTD/status/1528018564220960770

I wonder if this is because Sky wanted to do this and the BBC had to agree to allow them as it could be argued it would devalue the Match of the Day rights. Of course Sky show highlights before the BBC in a normal round anyway but them showing the goals on Soccer Saturday/Special arguably devalues them more.

[Tom]

As Quest's time showing the Football League highlights come to end, let's have a look at the first episode of the BBC Football League Show from 2009: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oKLZIU01i0c

[Jon]

Seems like it’ll just be the goals on those games on Final Score, no live footage shown yet. Whether they’ll be able to show any live penalties I’m not sure. Of course it’s mainly about the games there is no footage from.