Wednesday Champions League games no longer free to air on TV3

Utopia Parkway

Fancy shelling out for yet another subscription?

https://www.irishtimes.com/business/media-and-marketing/virgin-media-to-charge-up-to-20-a-month-for-new-sports-channel-1.3563111

https://www.balls.ie/football/champions-league-on-tv3-392743

pjohnson

Utopia Parkway wrote: »

Fancy shelling out for yet another subscription?

https://www.irishtimes.com/business/media-and-marketing/virgin-media-to-charge-up-to-20-a-month-for-new-sports-channel-1.3563111

https://www.balls.ie/football/champions-league-on-tv3-392743

Lol. Good job tv3. I guess theres absolutely no other way the game can be watched for free without buying rubbish.

Surely ad revenue on FTA would have been a nice income they have shagged away.

average_runner

CL is rubbish most of the time so wont be buying it.

5starpool

I can't see that channel getting many voluntary subscribers. Just pushes more people towards illegal sources.

You could easily be looking at 80+ quid a month on sports channels alone (even forgetting about club premium channels). Ridiculous.

Harry Palmr

Well as my most dodgy stream provided a better picture and certainly commentary than TV3 on saorview it's not a loss to me but it does just indicate how the pay TV market is hoovering up as much CL/EL/PL as possible.

My brother in law has Virgin over Sky so he'll be happy enough with this new channel.

GLaDOS

The league of ireland needs to be taking advantage of the increasing monetisation and commercialisation of football at the highest level. There's a growing ill-will towards the amount of subscriptions you need to follow high level football. Try and tap into that discontent and convince a percentage of them that their money is better going towards an Irish club.

LiamoSail

This is a huge issue. Those bastards are talking away our free to air football. What next, the WC? The euros? I wouldn't subscribe to them out of spite

LuckyLloyd

Hold on, how are they allowed to do this? I thought the CL stuff in Ireland is sold on the basis of it being FTA?

LiamoSail

LuckyLloyd wrote: »

Hold on, how are they allowed to do this? I thought the CL stuff in Ireland is sold on the basis of it being FTA?

Not sure how Ireland can be different to the uk in that regard?

LiamoSail

The CL should, along with the WC and euros be strictly free to air

Agent Coulson

I'm guessing Virgin are going to buy/rent the rights to the PL 3 pm games, Spanish and Italian leagues off the Irish company that is buying those ones up.

Harry Palmr

LuckyLloyd wrote: »

Hold on, how are they allowed to do this? I thought the CL stuff in Ireland is sold on the basis of it being FTA?

.

Starting in September, Virgin Media 1 (the new name for TV3) will show a Champions League game each Tuesday night at 6pm. Rival broadcaster RT meanwhile, has acquired the rights for the 8pm kick off on the same night.

So we will no longer be able to see both legs of a round FTA unless UEFA change the schedule in that regard which is unlikely of course.

batistuta9

LiamoSail wrote: »

The CL should, along with the WC and euros be strictly free to air

Why? Only Irish clubs in the CL or EL should be FTA in ireland

GLaDOS

Yeah, while I hate to lose the free CL football, I don't see why CL should be free while League football is subscription.

This is modern football, if there's a profit to be made, it will be made.

Guy:Incognito

LiamoSail wrote: »

The CL should, along with the WC and euros be strictly free to air

I disagree. All sports, just like anything else, should be sold on the basis of what the owners want. There shouldn't be any interference from governments on these things.

If it turns out to be a bad decision and no one pays, then so be it, it's on their heads.

rob316

My tenner a month IPTV sub just gets better and better value. How much would Sky set ya back with all the bells these days? Considering bar the sport its mostly ****e on.

pjohnson

Large swathes of people can't get VM TV here anyway as cables weren't laid. They've pre-emptively reduced viewership :pac:

Zebra3

CL is rubbish until the new year anyway.

Few good games then but the winner is only gonna come from a small handful of clubs.

Viewing figures will absolutely plummet for this.

brianregan09

the TV3 coverage is by far the worst coverage available anyway I wouldn't pay 20 cent to watch it

adox

As a non Virgin customer there’s not a hope of me paying for this.

Pushing customers to illegal sources.


€20 a month. Ha!

theoneeyedman

What's the story with eir sport/BT then?

A lot of folks get BT with their eir BB, so are these virgin rights exclusive rights to the ROI, will BT be geo blocked?

pjohnson

theoneeyedman wrote: »

What's the story with eir sport/BT then?

A lot of folks get BT with their eir BB, so are these virgin rights exclusive rights to the ROI, will BT be geo blocked?

BT have confirmed they arent blocked and will air them.

Agent Coulson

RTE's ratings will get a boost for the Tuesday night games I'd guess if there are the only ones showing games free to air.

Fr Tod Umptious

I'm curious what exactly this Virgin Media Sports will actually have for content.

Right now it just looks like they will have UEFA soccer and club rugby.

That's feck all content for a full sports channel.

DM_7

Fr Tod Umptious wrote: »

I'm curious what exactly this Virgin Media Sports will actually have for content.

Right now it just looks like they will have UEFA soccer and club rugby.

That's feck all content for a full sports channel.

This is just the BT model to slow people leaving them and going to sky for tv and broadband. If you sub to Virgin Media for TV and broadband then the sport station is 'free'.

The 20 option is not one they expect to sell in any high numbers but something they can put up as a reason to pick them over Sky's paid sport or Eir with the BT link as Virgin have also have 'free' sports.

Cookiemunster

Fr Tod Umptious wrote: »

I'm curious what exactly this Virgin Media Sports will actually have for content.

Right now it just looks like they will have UEFA soccer and club rugby.

That's feck all content for a full sports channel.

In rugby they only have 1 match every round of the European Cup. So 9 total over the course of the season. Eir Sport have the Pro14 and BT have the rest of the Euro games.

ArmaniJeanss

Fr Tod Umptious wrote: »

I'm curious what exactly this Virgin Media Sports will actually have for content.

Right now it just looks like they will have UEFA soccer and club rugby.

That's feck all content for a full sports channel.

In addition to the above.

15 games in the Rugby 6 Nations (or 10 presuming they don't put Ireland behind any paywall)
All the Nations League soccer games.
All the non-Ireland games in the qualifiers for UEFA 2020.
I guess they'll pad it out with all magazine programs which come with the various soccer competitions.

It's all a bit condensed though, e.g, 6 successive days of 2020 qualifiers then nothing for 2 months, or 2 nights of ECL then nothing for 3 weeks.
So they'll probably have to acquire some other stuff cheaply.

Fr Tod Umptious

ArmaniJeanss wrote: »

In addition to the above.

15 games in the Rugby 6 Nations (or 10 presuming they don't put Ireland behind any paywall)
All the Nations League soccer games.
All the non-Ireland games in the qualifiers for UEFA 2020.
I guess they'll pad it out with all magazine programs which come with the various soccer competitions.

It's all a bit condensed though, e.g, 6 successive days of 2020 qualifiers then nothing for 2 months, or 2 nights of ECL then nothing for 3 weeks.
So they'll probably have to acquire some other stuff cheaply.

So a soccer channel with a spattering of rubgy, that's all they are as of now.

As the other poster said, it's more about customer retention than adding new "non Virgin Media" ones.

ben.schlomo

It's free to current VM customes though yes?

ArmaniJeanss

Fr Tod Umptious wrote: »

So a soccer channel with a spattering of rubgy, that's all they are as of now.

Currently have horse-racing as well come to think of it, think they show about 40 days racing from the UK, generally the Cheltenham/RoyalAscot/Derby/Goodwood jewel events. But could probably pick up the events just below top level quite cheaply and increase that to 100 days.
And all the stuff which (pre-riches) Eurosport survived on for decades is probably available for a song as well.

I really don't see a problem with filling one channel with 15 hours of sports content a day (with plenty of re-runs), whether there's quality to convince people to part with money is a different issue.

Okon

pjohnson wrote: »

Large swathes of people can't get VM TV here anyway as cables weren't laid. They've pre-emptively reduced viewership :pac:

Everyone here will get Virgin Media 1, 2 and 3 when TV3 (3E and be3) are re-branded in August, and the Virgin blurb did say "non-Virgin Media customers" would have to pay €20 a month for the new sports channel. So it looks like the Virgin Media Sports channel won't just be for VM cable subscribers.

Fr Tod Umptious

Okon wrote: »

Everyone here will get Virgin Media 1, 2 and 3 when TV3 (3E and be3) are re-branded in August, and the Virgin blurb did say "non-Virgin Media customers" would have to pay €20 a month for the new sports channel. So it looks like the Virgin Media Sports channel won't just be for VM cable subscribers.

But the only ones who will be able to get it for free are those on the "cabled" areas, which includes huge portions of the country.

That's why I doubt many will be signing up for it at €20 pm.

Okon

Fr Tod Umptious wrote: »

That's why I doubt many will be signing up for it at €20 pm.

If their team isn't in the Champions League, probably not.



Although quite a lot of people stream football for free anyway these days thanks to the internet, so VM will just push more down that route.