This weekend another round of qualifiers for next year’s world cup in South Africa are taking place. Rather unbelievably England have already qualified for the finals next summer with games to spare in the qualification phase. This however has led to a problem; with the collapse of Setanta earlier in the year, their rights to the England qualifying games were lost when the company went under. Seemingly, no other television broadcaster in the UK wants to take the rights and pay out for a somewhat pointless match, leading to the momentous occasion of the first ever England game to be solely shown over the internet.
The company taking the work on is a Swiss based operation called Kentaro. Football fans have the option to pay online to stream the match or to visit an Odeon Cinema, where the game will be shown. While it is likely that Kentaro will make their money back, and most likely a healthy profit, the fact that England have already qualified and that sitting around a computer screen or cinema hardly has the atmosphere of a pub or living room surely means that viewing figures will be well down. As a Sky customer I already fork out a large amount of money each year for football I rarely watch, it is unlikely that I will pay the extra to watch a match on my computer that will be poor quality and most likely will crash half way through the game. Once again the FA has chosen to pursue profits rather than provide the loyal fans of the national team with a practical way to watch the weekend’s match.
