ITV 4 Blocked & Now ESPN on UPC

deeroy12

What's the story with these Channels been Blocked???ITV 4 always seems to be blocked anytime a sports event is on & now ESPN is blocked during Europa League.

MrJoeSoap

deeroy12 wrote: »

What's the story with these Channels been Blocked???ITV 4 always seems to be blocked anytime a sports event is on & now ESPN is blocked during Europa League.

It's all about the rights. They obviously don't have the rights to show these matches in the RoI. Same went for the Isle of Man TT if I remember correctly.

http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2055814490

0ph0rce0

Setanta have the irish rights to show the ball tonight.

So therefore itv 4 will be blocked.

Was looking forwad to watching the Pool game too

Kristopherus

MrJoeSoap wrote: »

It's all about the rights. They obviously don't have the rights to show these matches in the RoI. Same went for the Isle of Man TT if I remember correctly.

http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2055814490

It must be from this season that UPC are blocking ESPN. I had UPC up to a week ago and ESPN was not blocked for Europa Cup matches last season. Only noticed the blocking at the last round of said competition.

Infoanon

The EPG detail reads "Due to rights restrictions,this programme is not available in ROI,For Europa League action please check ot 3e and Setanta.

Same message on ESPN & ITV4.

deeroy12

This is 1st time ESPN has been Blocked for Europa League Games on UPC.What makes it worse ESPN's earlier match wasn't even broadcasted in Ireland.Also can never understand why ITV4 gets blocked,was de same in The Euros when 3rd round of games were on the same time but when BBC 3 had the coverage games were shown so rights are not a issue there?...Im wondering now will UTV & Sky be blocked out also on Champions league nights when TV3 & RTE have coverage????..As a Spurs fan Tonight having 2sit thru horrendous coverage & Picture quality on 3e was a joke!..But at least i prob got 2see my team unlike Liverpool supporter's unless de have Setanta

lertsnim

Consider yourself lucky that you had ESPN unblocked for so long. The Europa League was blocked for satellite viewers in this country from day one. ITV4 however cannot be blocked on satellite.

icdg

deeroy12 wrote: »

.Im wondering now will UTV & Sky be blocked out also on Champions league nights when TV3 & RTE have coverage????.

Sky won't be, like all sports rights Sky buy their Champions League rights include Ireland (on a non-exclusive basis in this instance). If you go to the "Video Centre" on UEFA.com, where the contents are determined by country, you will see Sky Sports included with the other Irish rights holders for the Champions League.

UTV is a different kettle of fish, their rights do not include Ireland. Up until this season when they had Wednesday nights (RTÉ's night) they were unlikely to be blocked for the reason that if RTÉ go down the road of asking for ITV programmes to be blocked in the Republic UTV is likely to do the same to them in NI. With TV3 it is different because they do not broadcast in NI unlike RTÉ and they are a commercial broadcaster. However I think its unlikely for the present.

afatbollix

MrJoeSoap wrote: »

It's all about the rights. They obviously don't have the rights to show these matches in the RoI. Same went for the Isle of Man TT if I remember correctly.

http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2055814490

Who has the TT rights?

starviewadams

Setanta and 3e have paid for the exclusive Irish rights to show the Europa League.

ESPN and ITV have paid for them in the UK.That's why UPC have to block them on their service.If they didn't then TV3 and Setanta could sue them.

http://www.uefa.com/uefa/events/marketing/media-rights-and-services/news/newsid=1791613.html

http://www.uefa.com/uefa/events/marketing/media-rights-and-services/news/newsid=1623933.html

MrJoeSoap

afatbollix wrote: »

Who has the TT rights?

Couldn't tell you. I remember it being listed on ITV4 each night that it was on, but wasn't viewable in the RoI. Don't think anyone else showed it.

Digifriendly

Answer to this is to go down the Freesat route or with high powered digital now from NI on air erect an aerial and see if you can pick up ITV4 that way. Here in NI RTE's coverage of CL on Wednesday was blocked on new NI mini-mux (RTE via local transmitters) but for those who can receive RTE via Saorview from across the border (and this is widespread given latest reports of new high powered Saorview signal from Clermont Carn) obviously it was viewable.

sligotrain

A similar situation to Ireland exists in Canada where many local Canadian stations simulcast what's being shown on a US station. The Canadians ensure that when a Canadian station simulcasts a US channel, the Canadian cable networks switch the coverage of that US channel to whichever Canadian station is showing the same programme.

So for instance if Survivor is being shown on both CBS and the Canadian Global network any Canadian TV tuned to CBS on cable will switch automatically over to Global, thus preserving Global's advertising.

There's no reason why UPC couldn't use the same technology so if TV3 are simulcasting ITV, any cable viewer watching UTV would get the TV3 coverage instead. Same goes for ITV4 and ESPN. In this case a TV tuned to ITV4 on cable would switch over to Setanta to get their coverage and Setanta's Irish broadcast rights are preserved. So when the Champions League game finishes the channel would revert back to ITV4.

icdg

That's called "simultaneous substitution" and is a process which applies on cable TV in Canada whereby if a Canadian broadcaster is showing either the same sporting event, or the same episode (and it must be the same episode) of the same pre-recorded show at the same time as a foreign (read US) station, the foreign station has its signal replaced by that of the Canadian station for the duration, so that the Canadian station gets the benefit of the viewer numbers and advertising revenue.

It is something I would be adamantly against. In Canada it leads to Canadian stations essentially mirroring US stations schedules, in order to avail of simultaneous substitution. TV3 and UTV would be the main example of where it would happen here and it would lead to UTV being replaced by TV3 for large chunks of prime time. It would kill whatever advertising business from the Republic UTV has left at this stage. But there would be others. You'd no longer be able to watch the BBC or ITV's coverage of such events as the World Cup, European Championship, or Olympics for example.

I'm not sure its even legal here given Television Without Frontiers. You also have to remember that in Canada, although NBC, CBS, ABC, Fox, and PBS are available generally on cable, other US channels require specific approval by the CRTC, which is generally only given if there is no similar Canadian channel. As a result there are far more Canadian cable channels than there are Irish cable channels, Canada is also a far bigger market (pop 35m instead of 3.5m) and well more able to support such stations than Ireland is.

Infoanon

MrJoeSoap wrote: »

Couldn't tell you. I remember it being listed on ITV4 each night that it was on, but wasn't viewable in the RoI. Don't think anyone else showed it.

All sport gets blocked irrespective of there being any Irish rights holder eg TT & BTCC.

Eamo71

deeroy12 wrote: »

This is 1st time ESPN has been Blocked for Europa League Games on UPC.What makes it worse ESPN's earlier match wasn't even broadcasted in Ireland.Also can never understand why ITV4 gets blocked,was de same in The Euros when 3rd round of games were on the same time but when BBC 3 had the coverage games were shown so rights are not a issue there?...Im wondering now will UTV & Sky be blocked out also on Champions league nights when TV3 & RTE have coverage????..As a Spurs fan Tonight having 2sit thru horrendous coverage & Picture quality on 3e was a joke!..But at least i prob got 2see my team unlike Liverpool supporter's unless de have Setanta

At least you got to see the match. 3e coverage is poor but so was the Spurs performance.
COYS!

icdg

We'll leave any talk about anything actually happening on the pitch to the Soccer forum, if you please.

mollser

What's on espn now that's blocked? Premiership rugby highlights?

lertsnim

I would be very surprised if that wasn't an error of some kind. Surely ESPN have highlights rights seeing as they show live games.

icdg

Yeah that's one I'm surprised at too. Sky and ESPN do have the live rights to Premiership Rugby here.

However Setanta do have highlights rights, although all they do is rebroadcast ITV4's show (complete will fully ITV-branded graphics and Craig Doyle).

It's not something I'd expect Setanta to kick up a fuss over given that there isn't exactly a massive audience for Premiership Rugby here. But then again, they might.

icdg

UPC EPG thinks that there is live Europa League action on ESPN tonight and that its' blocked. There isn't (the only Wednesday Europa League games are in December), its a combination of miscellaneous pre-recorded programmes and live Serie A and its not blocked.