Greatest League in the World 2024 [new thread available]

Live View of Keith going into the dressing room at the start of the season.

Could Rovers suggest an alternative to their ban on their fans being able to going to the first game of the season the ban being moved to the presidents cup final on the week before?

Give Pats as many tickets as they want, no tickets for Rovers, point made and Rovers will check who get away tickets but can’t be held responsible for “Rovers fans” who enter in the home area and make their way to the rovers area

Rey Mysterio!

Shels beat us fairly comfortably this evening, 2-0. Played a very entertaining style of football under Duff. 343 with width from the two wingbacks. The two starting central midfielders, Dervan and Coyle(?), controlled affairs.

We were grand, created a couple of decent chances but we're still well off a full squad so not much to be taken from it as yet. Adeyemo looked okay and Lyons, ex Cobh, did well at CB.

Sligo Rovers finally have a striker. Aidan Keena (ex Pats) is returning from Scotland according to Neil O'Riordan.

Need a few more.

Straight outta the Marvel universe

Abankwah going to Udinese for over €500k just shows how badly we undervalued Kenny.

Great move for him and Udinese is a good spot to land and develop. Hopefully it works out and we see him in the NT in a few years.

https://www.thesun.ie/sport/football/8260668/udinese-james-abankwah-st-pats-transfer/

Bermo and Paddy “The Beast” Barrett. We’ll be grand !

LOITV details have been announced. Sadly they've removed the season pass and you can only buy individual PD games now for €7 each, up from I think €5. FD games are €5 each.

Yep, I'd agree.

I'm probably the casual fan the streaming was hoping to tap into. I would watch plenty matches on the season pass but at €7 a pop I'll be watching a lot less now

Agreed, disappointed no season ticket. As others have said it would have used it for harps games (especially living in Dublin, get more away) and maybe dip into others that I wouldn't have otherwise

Can't see it being around 2023 and hard not to see it as a deliberate move

Seems more like the government pandemic funding is being withdrawn and its not able to fund itself.

Talk of some clubs spending 1k per game on it. If that's true or even half true, you're looking at 100-200 match by match punters needed just to break even. I would say with season ticket holders getting it free last year, most clubs were nowhere near that.

It's a good idea but if it wasn't viable when the entire country was in lockdown, it hasn't much chance now.

This is the thing, they're likely to lose money by not providing a season pass. I'm abroad and due to work commitments and the time zone difference, I won't get to stream and pay for all of the Finn Harps games. This was the same last season, but made up for it by watching other games. The difference is now I wont be paying to watch the equivalent of Longford v Waterford in the relegation battle. So I'll be watching less and paying less where I would have had no problem paying for a season pass, even if it was increased.

James Abanwkah to Udinese confirmed. Excellent move for him.

€126 for away games means it'd be €252 for all games for fans living overseas or too far away from the stadium to be able to go. It's insane money for 36 games via streaming.

Can't even describe it as a f*ck up as it seems intentional to kill it off (as mentioned already). Happy to have streams again but really disappointed there is no season pass.

But that really doesn’t make sense as the layout in covering all games will be the same, but the income is likely to be lower. I’d echo what others have said, I’d happily have got the season pass, but now I’ll only buy Pats games where I’m not going. As was said, if you wr3 of a suspicious mind you’d think someone is trying to kill it off.

The income was already low and without government funding it wouldnt have been viable during lockdown. A time when the league had a captive audience.

The income is likely to be lower because people who are interested in LOI go to matches. It isn't a product that translates well on TV.

LOITV was novel but if it can't finance itself its probably not going to be around too long. Then theres the issue of its purpose.

If the majority of LOI fans go to matches and new fans arent going to pay money to give it a try on a stream when there are bags of other options, what's its purpose?

Wouldn’t argue with any of that, but I understood your original point as being that they dropped the season pass as a money saving exercise, which wouldn’t make sense to me anyway, as you’d still have the cost of covering every match, but more than likely less money coming in.

To be honest, I'm quite disappointed that there's no season passes myself. I loved flicking around different matches when I could, and thought the platform had real potential.

I accept that the model last year couldn't last forever, production was too expensive at many clubs and the price was too low. I think a middle ground could have been met. More club media teams should have taken the work themselves (as the more enterprising First Division clubs have done) and the price needed to be raised. Think back to the 2020 season - virtually all First Division clubs were able to create a streaming product that their fans were happy with, and none of them were spending much at all on it.

I cant see LOITV lasting beyond this year with the current pricing structure, and then we'll be left with very little live coverage on any platform. Awful shame.

I'm a sucker for supporting the LOI, I'll put my hand in my pocket at basically any decent opportunity. I bought my own First Division Pass just to support my club, and then bought a Premier pass as well just to support the whole venture. Didn't get much use out of it really, just switched on the odd game that didn't clash with one of my own. That's a decent chunk of money towards premier football that I would never normally spend. I absolutely can't see myself specifically spending €7 for a particular more than once or twice a year. But €80 to €120 to dip in and out as I want all season? Yeah, 100%, sign me up. Really wouldn't bother me if the stream was made by trained enthusiastic and passionate volunteers instead of the gold standard professionals of Siobhan Madigan and co.

I'd echo this. I split my time between Portugal and here and I'd have no hesitation paying for the season pass. When I'm home I'll get the home games and some away trips. When I'm in Portugal I'd stream all the games. But I cannot justify paying for every game separately. Like others I also enjoyed checking on the oppositions games on a regular basis. So it's not just a loss of revenue that this will bring but also a reduced interest/knowledge within the league generally, as apart from our games against Shels or Drogheda it's unlikely I'll see either team play again during the season (unless they feature on RTE and the match doesn't clash with a Harps match). I have no issue with cutting production costs. Unfortunately this is another step backwards.

We've always known the league's attractiveness is limited and even the lad from RTE was harping on about how their WatchLOI was unviable due to subscriber numbers. It was actually unviable because it's RTE and the production cost, like with everything else they are involved in, was disgracefully high. No attempt was made to put on a viable streaming service with them.

The FAI have 18 months of subscriber data available to them and still have done nothing to try to make it viable based off the numbers they could expect to sign up. In their announcement yesterday they advertise an "Enhanced two-camera set-up set to be available for all Premier Division matches". They're probably spending more now in some grounds to get a 2 camera set up going.

I think we're at the point of no return in regards to streaming. How can we all go back to twitter and flashscore updates for games? We're used to seeing every game live either in person or online. They need to figure something out, even if it means offering a simple, low production cost service using the automated cameras next season. Going back to 1 game on RTE every 2 months and everything else on flashscore/twitter with highlights a day later should be option Z at this point if we ever want to grow the league. Even NIFL have a long term streaming deal in place for the next few seasons.

edit: Also, I've noticed in my group of friends there has been more LOI interest since the streaming started and highlights are instantly available. Even lads who don't watch LOI would post a highlight of a good goal in our group chat. One of my friends in Germany watched many games last season because of the streaming. He watched them for free on a betting website, so no income came directly from streaming. But last summer he bought a Bohs home kit and we regularly talk about the league now. Streaming will play a massive part in any potential growth.