Let us all assume all the below quotes and the news story is true. Are the authorities really bothered about drugs, forced labour, people trafficking etc? If so, why isn't some real action actually taken? Is it not really quite simple? Or is it just pretend so the rich media companies get richer? Go after the ones who legally steal* our "hard-earned money". Why not cap wages of top flight footballers (and league one for what it's worth) and then drop subscription prices, don't insist that people need TNT Sports, BT Sports, Sky Sports, Amazon Prime for top flight football. Then, not only will piracy all but disappear, you can save even more by not having departments set up to look for criminal activity, because there won't be any.. "The head of the Police Intellectual Property Crime Unit at the City of London Police has warned that the number of people of stream content illegally has gone “through the roof”. "According to Sky, Amazon’s streaming sticks account for almost half the illegal streaming of Premier League football in the UK." "Warbey warned that many consumers would not realise they were giving their personal details to fraudsters and organised crime groups. She said: “Those criminals are using that money, your hard-earned money, for lots of different things, usually drugs, certainly forced labour, people trafficking, huge amounts of other criminality that you’re feeding into, so it isn’t a victimless crime.” Concerns over rise in illegal streaming in UK - RXTV The average Premier League salary is around £3.09 million per year, or about £250,000 per month. This figure is significantly higher than the average earnings of other professional footballers in major European leagues like La Liga, Serie A, and the Bundesliga - source, Google AI * My opinion
The thing is if you had one broadcaster that had all the football rights & you could pay say £20 a month to watch premier league, football league, champions league, europa league etc & you could pick & choose your matches basically like it has been on the weeks where Amazon have the premier league rights then I don’t think many football fans would begrudge paying it but the prices are ridiculous & you have to pay a small fortune to be able to watch all the different competitions. Champions league knockout football is amazing but less & less people are watching it because of how expensive TNT is on top of Sky. Back when ITV had the rights everyone spoke about the big champions league games. The Liverpool - Chelsea & Man Utd - Arsenal semis were huge because they were on terrestrial TV.
I can afford it, I choose not to. That's not really the point though - I'm angered that there are simple solutions to big problems which aren't being addressed.
It's not a big problem at all. It's football. You aren't entitled to watch football at a price you choose, and if you do choose to steal then you are responsible for the consequences of funding criminal gangs.
Should nationalise sports broadcasting, then it could be paid for out of the licence fee. i’m sure we’d still accept advertising in sports channels… As it happens i get DiscoveryPlus as part of my EE contract and can watch TNT sports, but i’ll never go back to paying for TV again.
I’ve been saying for a long time that clubs should issue on line viewing season tickets with equivalent prices to in stadium ones. I don’t care about clubs other than my own and they are missing a marketing opportunity by giving it to the FL. There are fans living a long way from the ground who can’t afford to travel to home games and can’t afford to give up an entire day who would willingly pay. I don’t condone piracy, but it is a question of access and access denied because of the greed of the providers. If there was a single provider giving access at a reasonable price people would pay it and there would be no piracy.
What about matches you've already paid for but can't attend, because the broadcasters have changed the original date and televised it? Do you think it's fair that they should have to pay again?
Exactly. It's not life or death to watch Football. If you can't afford to pay for it, go without, don't pinch it.