Why should only people who can afford to pay for paytv be able to watch sport?

You can watch sport for free, go down to any local (Public) sporting field and there are usually games of all kinds on every weekend.
Why shouldn't you be expected to pay a little to watch professional sports?

Why should only people who can afford to pay for name brand milk be able to drink name brand milk!?

I hate sport but here's my 2 cents anyway.

Without easily accessible exposure to competitive sport on tv, must kids will quickly lose interest and move onto a billion other forms of entertainment and activities on offer for them. These kids will grow up and...

A) not continue to play the sport at school, high school and then eventually competitively, potentinally taking possible professional players out of the sport.

B) more importantly, not follow the sport at all when they grow up.

So while they might gain a few extra dollars charging for the sport now, it'll hurt their exsposure and audience in the future.

As I said, I hate sport, but I used to follow Rugby league and play it recreationally as a kid and I was big into basketball in high school, I lost interest in rugby with all the superleague BS back in the day and it was a chore to follow the NBA at the time and is probably even worse now, so I gave up.

The execs need to be doing all they can to widen their diminishing sports fans cause frankly people will find better s*** to do than barrack for a couple of polynesians wrestling on the field and stick fingers up each others arses.

this is dumb... why should the govt be involved at all? let it go to the highest bidder. if the sports leagues find they're not getting enough ppl watching they can just choose to sell it to free to air. it'll balance itself out.

another example of a law where they doesn't need to be a law.

Why should only people who can afford to pay for paytv be able to watch sport?

Because they are the ones supporting the game.
You are just watching it for free ya bum !

Some of the League games last year on Friday Night footy were appalling.
Its not like free to air is showing the game YOU want to see or even the best games. If you have an iQ you can choose to watch your team play whenever you want.
You arent just getting One sport when you get Foxtel.
If you only like one sport then its prolly not for you.

State of Origin will always be free to air. What Foxtel wants is to be able to give the punter Live sport when they want it. They dont mind competing against the Other live broadcast of State of Origin for instance.
Channel 9 however would be terrified of this happening. One of other point, Channel 9 is able to demand the NRL play its games at certain times so it can maximize ratings. Foxtel doesnt care when the game is played they will show it live or in some cases give the punter the chance to choose which of two games he watches. (very cool idea)

Those 20/20 and one day games against the Kiwis were prolly the best cricket all summer and thx to Foxtel I got to see it. If Id been a long suffering Free To Air fan of Cricket then I missed out.

I was in Melbourne a few years back, Game 3 of origin started on Channel 9 at 11pm. Now I hate Rugby League, but that is just dumb and Fox should have been allowed to broadcast it live.

that is why I hate this bulls*** campaign

It'd be good to pay for sport on Foxtel instead of paying for a constant stream of f***ing ads like I do now.

Spidz: I agree whole heartedly. Unfortunately when you get south of the NSW border, AFL is god and king, thus NRL doesn't get much airtime - even if the Storm are kicking major ass. It's one of the few things I'm not looking forward to with my move to Tassie :(

I'd love to watch the australian tennis open live :|

Hehe, we went this year ;-) Last year too. Just change states is the solution to that one.

lol @ soccer being at risk. Soccer is already gone. Ok, the FA Cup final is on FTA and I watch it every year - but that's just one tiny game. At least we still have Champion's League on SBS. Bordeaux game this morning was tops.

That site is totally lame IMO. I wouldn't touch their petition with a 10-foot pole. Spook, you disappoint me by not making a sarcastic comment about the usefulness of their petition.

Spidz: I agree whole heartedly. Unfortunately when you get south of the NSW border, AFL is god and king, thus NRL doesn't get much airtime - even if the Storm are kicking major ass. It's one of the few things I'm not looking forward to with my move to Tassie :(

Tell me about it, I live up here and I'm an AFL follower. The frustrating bit is that the coverage is pretty good these days with Foxtel being allowed to broadcast live on Friday nights, but come finals time all the f***ing games are delayed.

Great system, show the entire season live, but when it gets to the business end - show all the games on delay except the grand final (because its in the afternoon!)

so f***ing lame. there have been some absolute epic finals in the last few years, and I've listened to them on radio...

This entire campaign is bulls*** and not even foxtel is trying to restrict FTA from showing free content!

FTA can't show AFL games. They f***ing suck at it and only get in the way of Foxtel being the perfect service.

I think the current rules for foxtel are they are allowed to play 4 of 8 matches every round live regardless of what FTA is doing. They are also allowed to show live games in regions where the game is either not showed or broadcast with more than a 2 hour delay.

^^^ This isn't bad but for the sake of FTA getting less value from foxtel subscribers switching over seems like a completely ridiculous arrangement. If FTA thinks the content is worth less under this arrangement then f***ing pay less. Don't make me suffer every f***ing weekend.

Even our local lions games here are televised from 7:30pm when kick off is @ 7:10. They then subject us to one ad every goal or multiple ads given the opportunity AND make the game wait for the commercial to finish before resuming (see flashing lights (not sure if true but think that is what the lights are for)). Some umpires actually get sick of it and just bounce the ball.

In a normal game of AFL the scores are around 80 - 90 points per game each side with on average 11 goals kicked per side. So the total amount of single ads played during a game is 22 + 2 X 5 minute quarters with 1min30 of coverage in the middle + 20 minute half time with 7 minutes of coverage in the middle. Some games can have over 40 goals kicked.

Ads at quarter time or halftime do not bug me but cutting away a fraction of a second after someone has kicked a goal or completely missing a string of play because im listening to a f***ing sheep tell me how he wants to save me is a f***ing joke.

Point is if I don't want to put up with this bulls*** or like something enough that I would pay extra money to watch I want that option.

f***ing s*** drives me nuts

Because it allows the sports to negotiate a better TV deal, thus allowing more money for clubs, junior development, expansion etc.

Also you know FoxSports will show it LIVE, and not some Better Homes and Gardens repeat (channel 7 QLD/NSW instead of AFL). One time in Melb Channel 9 were showing Big Mummas House 2 instead of an NRL game lol. /Wrists

this.

by legislating that sport must be shown on FTA the government would be crippling each sport's (NRL, AFL, ARU, etc) ability to generate as much money from TV rights as possible. this will obviously affect the size, scope and quality of the sport.

if the government wants to do something in this regard they should do what the US does, legislate that cable companies have to provide a basic service at a set price - so in this case they could say Foxtel has to provide basic sport coverage (say NRL + AFL as they are the most popular) at $15/m or something like that.

but frankly I doubt the big NRL and AFL games are going anywhere from FTA in the states where they are most popular. and I happily pay for Foxtel so I can watch whatever sport I want, not just whichever NRL game channel 9 decides will rate the highest.

also, Ross made a decent post for once! WHAT THE HELL IS HAPPENING AROUND HERE!??!!@#!$

yer, reckon;
i hate it when i have to agree with ross, makes me feel like a spaz

all i know is my soccer rego this yr was 480 bux

that aint free n*****s.

we're talking about just watching sport petey, but f*** me that is expensive;

my indoor sports love to charge for anything they can and even they only steal $200 a season from ya;

The AFL/NRL will always be on FTA but at least if the Foxtel threat is fully available they could get a better deal. When you look at the end of year ratings sport takes up most of the top slots and it is cheaper to produce compared with Underbelly or whatever.

Foxtel can do multi camera multi sound for footy/cricket etc...
Free to air cant. Why must we settle for a 2nd class product ?

who says you have to settle for a second class product?
you aren't paying for it so you can't whinge about it, if you don't like it - don't watch it

the less sport on tv the better.

you aren't paying for it so you can't whinge about it, if you don't like it - don't watch it

wow are you missing the entire point of this thread completely or what?

Don't care either way whether we pay for sport or get it free. Neither of the camps are innocent in this. All I want to be able to do is what sport live, I can live with ads to an extent. What Ross was saying about the AFL coverage is just the tip of the iceberg. Channel 7 has the rights to Friday night AFL coverage but what time do we get to see the game in Brisbane, 11pm. Now thats a joke, instead they expect us to watch some crappy UK murder mystery movie (they have 3 channels ffs just put it on one of them).

I've all but given up on watching sport on TV, most of my sport watching is now done via one of the many streams on the net (and yes they usually have the ads still in). I'm sure where we'll get to point that the TV networks (both pay and free) will be suing these sites to try and shut them down instead of embracing the medium and actually keeping customers. I'd pay for a foxtel type service that offered me to watch the shows I wanted to watch live.....even with the ads (ie tv shows from the US as they show in the US or aussie sport). AFAIK there is no limit to the number of streams they could run over the web so why not drop the expensive air waves spectrum costs and move forward.

wow are you missing the entire point of this thread completely or what?

as usual a typical f***wit reply from reso, can you not clearly see where I've quoted the sentences from faceman?

lol wut?????????????????????????????????????????????????

$15 a week for the Basic + sport is pocket money stuff.

The government is saying he has to settle for second best, because they won't allow Foxtel to show the sports exclusively or at all. He would also GLADLY pay for it!

What the f*** man, seriously?

Its just TV Networks deciding what sport you can watch and when you can watch it.