Yesterday I was listening to England vs. Portugal on BBC5 Radio’s live Web feed. You might say, “what a triumph of technology; nowadays you can listen to radio broadcasts from around the world from home!”

That’s one way to look at it.

Here’s the problem: Here in the USA, there’s this scumbag company called Setanta which owns exclusive rights to the Euro2004 games. They have chosen to only offer the games via satellite and digital cable on PPV ($179 for the whole package or $20 a game, or via direct broadcast to pubs, where there is also a $20 cover charge! (The cover charge goes straight to Setanta.)

So, basically, it means normal Americans can’t watch these games at all.

Also, UEFA has blocked ALL web streams of the event (they don’t even offer a games stream from their own web site, though they offer a package of ‘highlights’ and bullshit I don’t care about, as I just want to watch the games.

So what’s the deal UEFA? You’re actively trying to keep soccer unpopular in the United States, the biggest economy in the world? You don’t want our money? Seems to me, as we have a national team that is rapidly becoming respectable on the world stage, with a dozen or so American players starting for top European clubs, soccer is poised to take off in the States.

Anyway, I just had to reflect about how lawyers, and marketers, and moneygrubbing pigs, despite the fact that this is 2004 and there are a litany of ways they could get games to us, plunged me back into 1950 yesterday, listening to the game on the damned radio.

This entry was posted on Friday, June 25th, 2004 at 1:18 and is filed under Miscellany. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.