Should I go to the match?

[YF Dan]

Great post Joey's Toe ^^^^
I didn't realise that radio Oxford were not allowed to broadcast match commentaries online. That is a pisstake in my book. The club and BBC should be ashamed of themselves...

This is nothing to do with the BBC. Football League did a collective deal with Premium TV for the online commentary rights. The BBC probably could have made a big offer to the FL for online commentary rights, but that would no doubt have been criticised by its haters for &quotspunking licence fee payer's money away&quot.

At the moment it provides free commentary for people who live locally to their clubs, which is the whole point of BBC local radio. Its commentary is then sold by the clubs via Premium TV as part of an AV package, which makes the club money.

The entire Football League does this.

Where's the piss take?

[Joey's Toe]

This is nothing to do with the BBC.

Except it is, because the BBC allow (presumably for money) their commentaries to be used for this purpose. My argument is that they should not, for the same principle outlined above - that their commentary has been paid for by the licence fee payer, and therefore should be available freely to that same licence fee payer.

The entire Football League does this.

Agreed - but just because they do it, it doesn't make it right. Again, the argument is about the principle of the thing.

[YF Dan]

I would imagine the FL/BBC deal was negotiated along the lines of &quotif you want the commentary rights for local radio, you'll have to let us use it for Premium TV.&quot

It makes perfect sense for both parties.

[Joey's Toe]

I would imagine the FL/BBC deal was negotiated along the lines of &quotif you want the commentary rights for local radio, you'll have to let us use it for Premium TV.&quot

I would question that assumption.

It makes perfect sense for both parties.

That's as maybe, but I'm not convinced it makes as much sense for the clubs or the fans - which was kind-of my point.

[YF Dan]

Tell me about your background in sports rights?

[Old Abingdonian]

I agree that it makes commercial sense, although I do have a sense of exploitation.

As an exile (sort of my choice, but living in Oxford is so expensive....., I already drive 140 miles to and from each home game: fair enough. But then for an away game, which may be closer to me than to Oxford (eg Exeter), I cannot receive the radio commentary in the same way as a fan based in Oxford. I'm not sure this is fair, even though it may be commercially inevitable.

[SmileyMan]

I assume that paying(?) the BBC for the commentary is cheaper than sending two commentators plus an analyst to the game, setting them up with professional audio kit and then getting that audio from the ground to the internet in a reliable way. The Beeb gets to recoup some of its costs (which is has to spend because it owns the radio rights), Premium TV gets high quality (YMMV!) commentary cheaper than it could produce on its own, and the PTV punters get the service they've paid for.

Sounds like perfectly good capitalism to me.

[Joey's Toe]

The arguments are similar to those which many (most?) of the participants on this forum probably use for refusing to subscribe to Sky. Quite apart from the ideological objections to having a Murdoch box in my living room, the fact is that the existence of Sky Sports has made football irreversibly shitter* during the last 20|| years, and has moved it further away from the average fan. Actively funding it is tantamount to acceptance/support of an approach to which many of us find completely at odds with the game with which we fell in love.

* = for which - in the case of Sky - read &quotsignificantly and irretreivably less competitive, but also more synthetic, anodyne and formulaic&quot. The arguments in relation to PTV are slightly different.

[YF Dan]

While I do not know the details of this contract, I do know it is common for the selling party (ie the FL) to maintain ownership of the audio and video rights, even if its an external body that is providing the coverage.

If that's the case here - and I stress I don't know for sure - the BBC's contract would be to provide local radio coverage, but the FL could use it for their own purposes, ie selling it to PTV. So the FL would make money out of it, the BBC wouldn't. You'd hope the BBC would have negotiated a smaller fee however for the rights in exchange for providing a generally excellent commentary service for PTV, thus saving the licence-fee payer money.

Sadly, it means Oxford exiles - like me - have to pay 3.50 a month for PTV, but at least some of that goes to the club.

[Kernow Yellow]

The arguments are similar to those which many (most?) of the participants on this forum probably use for refusing to subscribe to Sky. [...]

* = for which - in the case of Sky - read &quotsignificantly and irretreivably less competitive, but also more synthetic, anodyne and formulaic&quot. The arguments in relation to PTV are slightly different.

Hang on, are you saying the arguments against Sky and against Yellow Player are the same or that they're not? I'm confused, as I think is your point of principle.

I don't buy Sky (and never have) for many reasons. But essentially it's too expensive, and there's very little I would really want to watch (but I'd waste lots of time doing so anyway). So it doesn't make any sense for me to buy it. Which is great because, like you, I have no reason to want to make either Rupert Murdoch or the Premier League any richer.

With Yellow Player, it's not too expensive, it gives me EXACTLY what I want (access to radio commentary of my lower league football team wherever I happen to be), and I am enriching my own football club. It sure beats ClubCall from the 80's/90's, but then football has moved on since then, as you point out.

[Joey's Toe]

KY - I'm saying the principle is the same for both. Sky and PTV involve clubs grabbing for as much money as they can at the expense of their relationship with their fans. Not only have clubs lost their sense of priorities, they have also followed a route which has made the sport less accessible to the casual fan as a result.

I doubt that an 11 year-old version of me would be able to access Oxford United in 2013 in the way I could in 1994 when I first started going up the Manor.

[OUFC4eva]

KY - I'm saying the principle is the same for both. Sky and PTV involve clubs grabbing for as much money as they can at the expense of their relationship with their fans.

Completely disagree.

You simply cannot reasonably compare a Sky Sports Subscription which basically underpins all that is
wrong about the game i.e the continued enrichment and largesse of the Premier League with a Yellow Player
subscription where all the funds go to your club to provide a news service for its fans on a different platform
and costs a paltry 10 pence per day !

[Kernow Yellow]

Not only have clubs lost their sense of priorities, they have also followed a route which has made the sport less accessible to the casual fan as a result.

I doubt that an 11 year-old version of me would be able to access Oxford United in 2013 in the way I could in 1994 when I first started going up the Manor.

I'd argue precisely the opposite. If you'd lived in Wales in 1994 you would have had no access at all to OUFC without attending games. The only way you could access OUFC in those days was to go up the Manor, as you say. Or by buying a local paper or listening to RadOx, neither of which were options open to people outside of Oxfordshire. Now there are club and fan websites, discussion forums, even streamed radio commentaries. You can immerse yourself in OUFC for several hours a day if you want to.

But none of these things are free, and like all internet-based content we pay for them either by subscription or by putting up with advertising. Or we just assume we should get everything for free and the content-providers suffer. Many of them can afford to give stuff away for free, of course, but when OUFC is losing hundreds of thousands of pounds a year I'm happy to contribute my little bit, especially since my exiled circumstances mean that I put much less cash into the club's coffers through ticket sales than I used to.

[Isaac]

I doubt that an 11 year-old version of me would be able to access Oxford United in 2013 in the way I could in 1994 when I first started going up the Manor.

This simply isn't true - I've been an exile since 1989 and even if you don't subscribe to yellow player, the opportunity to stay in touch with the club for free is significantly, incomparably really, better than it was then (as KY has explained).

Back then there was no Radio Oxford outside of Oxford and even then they didn't always commentate on away games. it's just people have become spoilt by having access to it via BBC iplayer for a few years.

I moved to Kent in 1989 and the only way to find out what was happening at the club was via national newspapers (which was rarely) or by phoning Clubcall for a lot of money - neither of these were free (unless, like me, you were a paperboy and got to read the newspapers every day). Even getting the scores when Oxford were playing involved listening to the national radio and hoping they were giving out score updates. These days there are many, free ways to stay in touch.

[Joey's Toe]

Apologies - the final para of my last post was ambiguous. My point is that it is harder now for kids IN OXFORDSHIRE to follow their team now than 20 years ago. Ticket prices are higher for the average teenager, the club is physically further from town, and (germane to this post) less information is available for free - so you either need to have the wonga to pay for all those increased costs, or a generous relative to do it for you. I can't be alone in thinking that is a Bad Thing and a retrograde step.