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Reader views (44)

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its a discrace when we can not watch our national team in our own country--then again i am beginning to think is england our fatherland any more,the fans that have supported england in all kinds of weather abroad and at home have payed through the nose at the turn styles have been kicked in the teeth by the greedy ruling bodies of our national game---u should all be ashamed of themselfs.

- Terence Holmes, stockport--england

I do not pay for Sky or Setanta (I go to football matches) so it makes no difference to me, football sold out the true football fan years ago for the TV income fan, so get used to this.

- David, Abbey Wood SE2

What a rip off nation. I have finally made up my mind not to bother watching England play again. I will be watching Scotland play, support the opposition, and get a lot of pleasure seeing them lose.
M W Staffs

- Mick W, cannock,England

Outrageous, the company that sells the rights wants to have a look at their own advertising. It states that they sell the rights to broadcasters that will reach the maximum audience and satisfy their advertisers by getting the largest possible audience. So how is this possible over the internet with an estimated maximum of 1.2Million streams World wide?

- Stuart, Douglas, Isle of Man

Excellent! Won't interrupt the much more interesting scheduled programmes.

- Mark, London

I agree, let people power do the talking. BOYCOTT it. FA are really useless, over paid and as far as i see don't actually do anything constructive full of old gits with no gumption to promote and do whats right...useless!

- David, London

Another thought for all those who want England games "free", how about this.
All those millions with Freeview boxes get Sky3; by definition therefore it is "free". All those with Sky Satellites or Virgin cable pay for them, but they pay any way so Sky3 is effectively "free" for them too. That only leaves the households with no digital and there will be none of those in a couple of years.
So Sky could bid aginst other "free" channels for the England games and as long as they transmit them on Sky3 (leaving their pay channels for the Premiership etc) everyone gets the games "free", whilst a competitive revenue generating market is maintained.
Everyone wins!

- Steve, London, UK

i dont know why so many people are complaining, the Internet is about as secure as an Essex womans belt. there WILL be a way around paying for it, but yea, cba watching it on a little screen -_-

- Smidget, Liverpool

As ever, the FA wring their hands and whinge that it's outside their control. In Germany, the DFB - the Game's governing body there - have a simple policy; that all the national team's matches are screened on free-to-air terrestrial TV.

Fans here should boycott the internet deal and hopefully leave Perform out of pocket, thus ensuring that such an arrangement is unlikely to be repeated.

- John C, Leatherhead, UK

Paul R! What a good idea, sadly you will have to wait about three years for the focus group to report and by then England will probably be out of the cup.

- Colin Macpherson, Gramat France

Good. On Saturday I will be able to go to the pub for a beer and will not have lots of drunk lager louts acting like idiots until closing time. Can this please be a regular thing so that those of us who like pubs, beer and their social atmosphere will not have another day ruined by football supporting drunks.

- Chris, London, UK

Football in Brazil galvanises the whole country. What could be better for this country and a publicity coup for Gordon Brown than announcing that as a public service broadcaster, the BBC should by law from now onwards, show all England Football matches for free as (proven by the numbers watching) it is in the nations interest?

- Paul R, London

Oh well, I suppose it will have to be:
COME ON U-KRAAAIIIIINNNNE

- Steve, Brentford

No Way FA. Can anyone please explain to me what use those at the F.A. are to the game. All they ever do is offer lame excuses in respect of the sport. Our National team should be offerred on our National provider the BBC. For the most recent useless friendly England fixture I listened to Graham Taylor offering the most pathetic reasons for the game being played. To raise money for the F.A. to put back into to grass roots football. Where and when does this actually happen. Clubs hire pitches from their local authority by way of fees from players to pay. Kits and equipment are bought from fund raising by the clubs. What do the F.A. contribute. Now we have for this game a shrug of the shoulders by these people. What do they contribute to the game.

- Steve, London

The fixtures of the national side should be free on BBC whether it is football, rugby or hockey. Why are England's matches no longer on the list of reserved sports events like the Boat Race etc like they used to be ?

- Squiz, Islington

Its an absolute disgrace that we can't watch England struggle to get their win over Ukraine, not that it'll make a blind bit of difference since they've qualified anyway. Sport should be limited to terrestial channels and pop music to satelite channels. And party political broadcasts should only be shown on radio.

- Dhan Raj, Basildon

Everyone should boycott the event. Real fans should condemn Kentaro by saying no way!

- Jay, Southend

As we have already qualified and the match is not important, we should boycott paying for watching this game on the monitor. Let the people's power do the talking.

- Ed, Croydon, London

So for all those who think that all England games (in whatever sport) should be "free". where does that leave the sports organisers in terms of income. If tranmission is mandated to "free" channels why should they pay anything at all. Or perhaps BBC will say to ITV "we'll have this one for a pound, you can have the next one".

- Steve, London, UK

Hopefully one or two of the regulars in your local pub will be able to get the stream playing from a PC on to the plasma/lcd on the pub wall !

- Pete London, London, UK

It could only happen in this country, I for one won't be watching. We are already the laughing stock of the world,and this should keep them laughing for at least a decade.

- Malc, London,England

I live in Madrid and I will be watching it live on tv for free.
Disgusting that the UK cannot.

- Jaime, Madrid, Spain

Why do you have to pay?

It's called rights management, it happened to football a long time ago.

You have a commodity that is very valuable, what are you going to do? Exploit it offcourse!

I would pay £10 if it was HD quality, because that's what I think its worth, I could then stream it to me TV and a few of us could then watch it in comfort.

Football has left the realm of the "people", get used to it.

- Decency, London, UK

It's a fair charge, where did you think the salaries for those footballers would be paid from.
Too many football games, most dead boring anyway...

- Mike, London

Mickinlondon "I am not paying anything to any private company that has hijacked football from the public etc"

I would hardly say they've hijacked the situation. they've taken up the option on something becasue the UK broadcasters don't want anything to do with it. that's hardly hijacking is it?

I'm sure that if BBC/ITV wanted to take the rights for it, even with only a few days to go, then they would still be able too. I'm guessing, but I imagine there'd be a clause in the rights agreement sipulating that if a broadcaster did want to take it up then they'd still be allowed too with perform still having the online rights? That's a guess, and a well educated one I might add.

But, the BBC/ITV/SS don't seem to want it so I say hats off to perform for providing a service for sports fans - At least its available to watch somewhere.

- Andy, Richmond

I believe BET365 are showing the game free to subscribers.I'm not sure if you have to place a bet or not.Check it out.

- Mike, london,uk

Internet Explorer cannot open the Internet site. The operation timed out.
Seem familiar? Come the weekend it will.

- Bob, Cheam

It's pretty pathetic that we sold the rights to Setanta Sports in the first place... All English matches should be shown on the BBC for free. I hope this is a total failure for Media group Perform. Having watched live events such as the snooker streamed by the BBC on my computer before I can testify it isn’t fun waiting for the video re-buffer every other minuet… At least I wasn’t paying £4.99 for the privilege!

- Paul B, London

What about old life long football fans who don't have a computer. What about the "ripoff the public" BBC surely the can afford to screen importent sporting events out of the millions they get from license fees,or do they think Strictly come dancing and Friday night with Jonathan Ross is more important???

- El Del, Valencia Spain

Oh perleeease! The world has moved on. Don't watch it if you want but don't bleat on about a time before Sky. I seem to recall getting 3 channels in b&w and almost no sport at all. Deregulation may bring consequences that are not to everyone's liking but that genie is long since out of the bottle. Your next tv set will connect to the internet and you'll get the choice of a vast array of archive programming. This is tv's golden age - get with the programme.

- Phloss, London

Please DO NOT be blackmailed into watching this pointless match. SHAME on you GORDON BROWN AND EVERYONE at the FA.

- Mj, East Anglia

BOYCOTT this - Setanta finally collapsed and whereas I feel for those who worked there I would never pay extra to a compnay liek them to watch an important game. This really is ridculous and I hope that very few people sign up to this stupid idea - I mean come on - how mnay people are goi to sit round their laptop watching this game - also what happens to people who live in say Cornwall who are only just on the internet - if at all!!!! Stupid idea.

- Marcus Newman, London

Pay good money to watch England's footballing millionaires on a laptop? Send for the men in white coats, someone!

- Ted, London

It won't work. You will spend more time watching frozen pictures whilst the server `buffers' the information.

- Carlton, London

Why on earth is it the case that we have to pay to watch our national teams at all? I want to sit down with my Son and watch all England games in all sports without paying through the nose for the honnour and privalege of supporting my own country!

- Gary, London

Only in this dump, any other country in the world would not let this happen.

- Steve, England

I hope know one shows any interest. Rip Off!!

- Kunle Sotunde, London

So the old aged pensioner who has supported England all his life will be deinied the right to see them Because he is not It literate

- David Smith, Croydon

So what if it's the home country who own the rights? The FA should be charged by the Government to ensure that all games, including away games, are watchable on BBC or ITV. If it means that the FA have to buy away rights and then sell them to BBC and/or ITV at the FA's risk, then so be it. What is more important as a use of FA money than that they ensure that all England can see all national matches on national TV? Bevington's just another FA twerp resident at the FA Home for the Hard-of-Thinking.

- Barry1858, Welwyn

The price also rises to £9.99 and then to £11.99 if you fail to sign up before thursday and saturday respectively.

The highest quality on offer is 320x240 @ 1mbit. This is far from a "very good quality" stream that they advertise. In fact the quality will be less than half that of a TV broadbast.

There are plenty of sites offering higher quality (albeit less reliable) streams for free. Search on google.

- Jc, London

£4.99 to watch a poor quality broadcast on a computer screen.
No thanks.

- Andrew, London

Ridiculous: 1) This will alienate the poor so we'll have more football loving kids on the streets instead of watching the game with their friends. 2) The Internet is NOT suited to mass audience broadcasts - that is what television was invented for. 3) Watching ANY sports on a small screen lacks the detail offered by large screen TVs at home or in the pub. 4) Ethically, this is outrageous anyway and as per 1) will continue to boost the rich/poor divide - and under a so called Labour government. Time for the PM to stop in me thinks!

- Oflife, Oxford & London

I am not paying anything to any private company that has hijacked football from the public etc.

We used to be able to follow all our national games on normal TV, until Sky started their pay to view sports events etc.

If we all ignore these privateers, we will soon get back to watching all our sport on normal television channels, free of extra charges.

I would never use Sky at all, nor ever have, for just these reasons.

The more you feed these hijacking companies; the more other companies will jump on the bandwagon of extortion and daylight robbery of the general public etc.

But that is only my personal opinion; many other people will continue to pay through the nose, more fools them.

- Mickinlondon, london

£4.99 to watch a meaningless game on your small computer monitor or laptop with dubious picture quality. I think I will give this one a miss.

- Dc, London

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