The Archive

Gary Andrews delves into this year’s FA Cup, which kicked off with a pioneering move that offered free football streamed online (for adults only)

When Ascot United were drawn at home in the FA Cup’s extra preliminary qualifying round to Wembley FC, their board may have reasonably expected a gate of around 100. That would have been a wild underestimate. After 88 fans watched their midweek Hellenic League draw against Ardley United, a record crowd of 1,149 made their way to the Racecourse Ground.

Those punters weren’t the only ones watching the tie. On Facebook 27,000 tuned in to a live stream of Wembley’s eventual 2-1 victory, all of whom chose to stay in on a Friday and watch two teams playing five steps below the Football League. That’s more than the average attendances of eight Premier League teams. The reason can be summed up in one word: Budweiser. The all-American beer hardly seemed the most natural fit for the FA Cup when the sponsorship was announced in June. Since then, however, the brewer appears to have demonstrated a better understanding of the competition than previous sponsors.

At the ground, fans were offered cheap beer and free burgers, while corporate razzmatazz was kept to a minimum. Online, users had to become a fan of the beer’s UK Facebook page (providing they were over 18) then click on a bespoke widget on the page to view the match.

Instead of the usual jerky, slow video, the quality of the stream was high, and commentators Dan Roebuck and Stewart Robson had done plenty of research. There were no patronising asides to second jobs as binmen that often characterise ESPN’s and ITV’s coverage, while occasional pitchside swearing and one fumbled handover seemed in keeping with the occasion.

But for Budweiser and the FA, Ascot v Wembley was about more than bringing attention to teams in a round of the Cup that would usually attract next to no sponsorship. Viewed as an experiment, the Facebook stream can be seen as a success and several parties will be analysing the data with interest. Facebook has over 700 million members, meaning there is a large captive audience, both in the UK and abroad. Having “Liked” the Budweiser page in order to watch the game, all users will see the company’s updates in their Facebook news feeds. The benefits to the brewer’s marketing arm are obvious.

Streaming games legally online is not new. All major broadcasters offer online streaming of their live games, while sites like bet365.com have an array of rights to foreign leagues. ITV.com even streamed Wantage Town v Brading Town at the extra preliminary qualifying stage of the competition in 2008. Although ITV did an impressive job, viewing figures were low and costs high, and the extensive coverage was quietly dropped the following season.

With cricket’s Indian Premier League signing a deal with YouTube and organisations as diverse as Major League Baseball and film studio Miramax experimenting with Facebook broadcasting, it was only a matter of time before football decided it wanted a piece of the action. The FA and Budweiser have now shown the appetite is there – the viewing figures for Ascot were certainly more than some broadcasters’ Europa League streams and, you would suspect, Premier Sport’s Conference coverage (although Premier doesn’t release any viewing figures).

With ongoing uncertainty over TV rights, not least due to Portsmouth publican Karen Murphy’s case against the Premier League, leagues and clubs are already having to plan for the possibility of a different media world. Facebook itself has ambitions to grow into a major broadcasting player. Although the cost may be prohibitive for individual clubs below the Championship to produce their own broadcasts (at least of the same quality as Budweiser’s), it wouldn’t be unexpected if the Conference, or sponsors Blue Square Bet, offer live streaming via Facebook when their current deal with Premier expires, if the sums add up.

However, unless Budweiser does further matches, it’s difficult to tell if the figures were down to a one-off novelty factor or a wider desire to watch grassroots football. But a large portion of younger fans were unable to access the beer’s Facebook page due to the age restrictions, meaning the numbers could be even higher if the brewer can find a way around this.

In the short term, it’s hard to criticise Budweiser and the FA too much, as they pitched their initial stream perfectly. In the longer term, it remains to be seen if Facebook viewing can be sustained and, if it can, exactly what kind of broadcasting monster it may spawn.

From WSC 296 October 2011

Henrik Manninen explains how a raft of match-fixing allegations in the far north of Europre has swiftly ended an international experiment

“If I was wearing my cap the bet would be on, and if I took the cap off, there would be no business,” said Wilson Raj Perumal on his chosen method for catching the attention of players during a Finnish league cup game between Rovaniemen Palloseura (RoPS) and Jaro played on February 20 this year.

Read more…

Fans are raising funds for their clubs through a variety of means, writes Rich Middleton

You would be hard pressed to work out what a gnome dressed in a Mansfield Town home kit has to do with former Stoke and Swansea striker Paul Connor. Saying that, the link between Oxford United’s Jake Wright and a crested mug could be considered to be equally confusing. But both footballers have been direct recipients of creative financing as fans turn to new and increasingly innovative methods to fund players’ salaries.

Read more…

Glen Wilson examines at a new online TV venture which looks set to maintain the general trend towards manufactured controversy

We have all received emails that though provoking initial interest, we know to be bad news. We are tuned in enough to realise he is not really a retired Nigerian general, that millions of single women are not actually waiting online specifically for us and that, ultimately, despite the “scientific proof”, it is unlikely to add two inches. In July I received such an email, this time from a “brand new TV sports channel”, and it proved another which promised a lot and delivered only disappointment.

The email came from Sports Tonight Live, an online TV channel set to launch at the start of the Premier League season. “We will broadcast from 7pm-11pm every night and will discuss, debate and deliberate over the big sporting stories of the day.” This sounded promising enough, but things went downhill rapidly. “We are aiming for an opinionated and entertaining discussion show, led by presenters which include Mike Parry.” And kept going. “The new channel is being backed by a group of city investors, including Kelvin Mackenzie.” Some sales pitch.

It landed in my inbox because Sports Tonight were in the process of recruiting fan representatives of each club to appear on the show. “We’re looking for someone who is eloquent, opinionated, informed – controversial but clean cut,” read the email though the appointment of Parry would suggest that two out of five would ultimately suffice.

“Ideally they would also need a bit of banter” – banter of course having become a quantifiable commodity since professional footballers began referring to people as “tweeps” and hanging out with James Corden – “and a thick skin as we aim to be controversial, with Parry at his outspoken best.”

It is often suggested there is too much football on television. Perhaps a better argument is that there is not enough actual football in relation to the coverage which surrounds it. This is an argument that Sports Tonight, having outlined three aims, to be controversial, opinionated and entertaining, only further enforces. Would it pain Sports Tonight that much to strive to be informed, or accurate instead, or perhaps seek a presenter who is lauded for being intelligent rather than outspoken?

But this is the direction in which much football reportage continues to stumble, with the game itself increasingly subsumed beneath opinion masquerading as fact. Coverage of the sport is becoming less about the game on the field and more about what is happening around it, all delivered in basic cliched rhetoric. “Football programming” of this level is akin to going to the local cinema only to find that instead of screening films they are just dishing out copies of Heat magazine. Here you go, flick through that. I know it is the artistry of cinematography you really enjoy, but have you seen George Clooney’s new beard?

Increasingly, and disappointingly, football comes down not to knowledge, but who can shout the loudest. Earlier in the year Sports Tonight recruited staff for its new venture with adverts featuring the line: “You will be ambitious and almost certainly yet to be discovered. Sport will be your drug and you have plenty to say but until now nobody was listening.” Would it not perhaps be wise to examine why no one was listening to these undiscovered twitching football dependents? I mean, there is a bloke who sits a few seats away from me at the Keepmoat Stadium who has plenty to say and nobody is listening, but I (and anyone within ten seats) would sooner see him sectioned than behind an exciting new television channel.

The email also featured a familiar line, one which I see regularly in correspondence I receive: “We will not be able to pay people for appearing on Sports Tonight Live, but… we’ll happily acknowledge and advertise your fanzine.” Football bloggers are being increasingly looked on by those at the top of the media tree as freelancers with an emphasis on the “free”. And yes it may be our hobby, but if Parry is being paid to trot out soundbites and be “at his controversial best” about clubs he knows little about, why should comparative experts be expected to give their time and insight for free?

Speaking to the Guardian in May, McKenzie described the venture as “Sky Sports News meets TalkSport”. I cannot think of anything the game needs less and so, as you have probably guessed, I declined my invitation to be involved with his “exciting new programme”. Besides, the exposure it would have brought my fanzine is nothing compared to the investment I have recently been promised in a much more encouraging email from an exiled Ugandan prince.

From WSC 296 October 2011

Slavia Prague were brought to their knees by financial chaos and mysterious ownership. Sam Beckwith reports that the Czech club’s future could be just as murky

The 2007-08 season seemed like a new dawn for Slavia Prague. Having finally qualified for the Champions League’s group phase at the sixth attempt, the Czech Republic’s oldest club went on to win their first league title since 1996. The following season, the popular Prague side moved in to their newly reconstructed Eden stadium and won the title again. Talk of the Sesivani (literally “sewn-togethers”) replacing rivals Sparta as Czech football’s dominant force seemed justified. Then it all went wrong.

Read more…