A Likely Scenario:
The match is on. You’re a soccer fanatic. You’re pretty much out of luck getting the game on your Cable or Satellite soccer channels. There is no game playing at your local pub, and your buddy with the full cable and satellite setup is out of town. So what to do? This entry is a situation I as an avid EPL soccer fan has faced on many an occasion. Below is a list of the likely options I am privileged to have to choose from.

Radio & Radio Streams

If your lucky you might be able to get it through Live Radio, for example
most games in the Portuguese Liga are broadcast through Radio Difusao Portuguesa
(RDP) from the Portugal Government and which the local Portuguese stations
in Toronto, Newark etc tap into. In Toronto you can catch most Benfica matches
through CIRV 88.9 FM. This station is also available through
RTP Radio web site - http://multimedia.rtp.pt/index.php?aud=1 .

UK users benefit from the BBC’s radio coverage of EPL matches also available
through local radio and available online at http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio .

If you find your self outside of the UK you may be out of luck as geo-filtering
is setup and usually limits users trying to access this from outside of the
UK. There are ways around this. More on this later. You can also use popular
footy sites that list comprehensive radio / audio listings of matches and programs.
Here is a one stop site that should give you a big picture of what’s available: http://www.socceraudio.com

Text, Images and Gamecast websites

Text and image updates through giant footy sites such as UEFA, The BBC, SkySports,
Soccernet and LiveScore have become a faithful providers of live scores as
they happen. The latter LiveScore provides options to get the results on your
mobile as well. UEFA, BBC and Soccernet also offer live Gamecasts with
features such as scripted commentary of events over the 90 minute match. Extensive
statistics are also available of the match ranging from Time of possession
to fouls, bookings and shots on goal. Some even go as far to include visual
representations of the game with timeline bar that shows you what happened
when visually. UEFA has invested heavily in this technology and have nicely
integrated images and video / flash with this interface. You’ll also find other
features set up for more interaction with the users such as live chat as the
game occurs. This is another popular feature available on UEFA’s site. We’d
like to hear your opinions on which sites you use, contact us and give us your
thoughts.

Pay Per View Online Soccer

Pay Per View for online matches. Yes, it’s happening already and soon it’ll
be in most broadcasters plans on distributing matches for new revenue generation.
UEFA gets hundreds of thousands of soccer savvy visitors on their site during
champions league matches. Imagine if they could squeeze 10 bucks per user per
game. This kind of revenue generation has huge potential, and one that UEFA
is taking seriously. Over the past year UEFA has partnered with SportFIVE and
with broadcasters across the globe such as ESPNSoccernet in the USA and TSN
in Canada to offer infrastructure to stream the games. With more and more investment
being made in video infrastructure on the web and with an exponential acceptance
of this by web users today, soccer on the web will soon be a legitimate option
for soccer fans. Already Setanta is offering an online version of their channel
in the form of Setanta Broadband which works as a pay per view web site. Another
player JumpTV, considered a pioneer in this area by providing TV Channels from
all over the world through their web site. by purchasing a monthly subscription
usually around $9.99USD per channel per month. Currently UEFA is offering matches
through their web site. for $9.95USD per game, and other options for video
highlights that range from Free to a small accessible fee to get daily highlights. But
if your like the average diehard soccer fan who watches anywhere from 3-5 matches
per week, well this could become a bit expensive.

The music industry is a good example of how users will always find a way to
share digital media at no cost. The sport of football / soccer will be no exception.
The most popular sport in the world today is Soccer and it has the largest
fan following globally. The Canadian and North American audiences are still
small in comparison to the acceptance of the sport everywhere else, but it’s
slowly catching on in the US as the MLS continues to grow and work it’s way
into North America airwaves. In the meantime, we can thank the web for offering
us fans the platform to share videos and streams at zero cost. All you need
is a computer and a connection to the internet.

Posted Videos of Soccer Highlights

If you can’t get the match live on tv or web, then you can always wait
until the game highlights get posted on popular footy sites that link to video
streaming sites such as the popular DailyMotion.com, YouTube.com, or GoogleVideo.com
which offer a super platform and unlimited space to post soccer vids. This
isn’t quite as good as watching it live, but nevertheless it’s a great supplement
for the avid soccer fan. One of my newest favorite site I use is 101greatgoals.com,
this site offers daily links to all the best goals of the day / week / year
as well as insightful articles pertaining to European footy with a special
focus on the EPL.

Live Soccer Streaming – P2P

Let’s start by saying that you’ll need to have a high-speed Internet setup
at home, preferably without a bandwidth cap which luckily most providers in
Canada and the US have now removed. A mac or pc with video streaming software
and some timely access to current streaming links. Easy Peasy!

Get ready to watch the match live on the web, which in theory is any live
broadcast match no matter where it is and what restrictions there are on
broadcast rights. Welcome to the future of Live Soccer TV on the web. No matter
where or who, or when, there will always be someone that is catching the match
live on their TV with good a signal and with a good high speed connection to
upload and re-transmit with relatively good resolution. Relaying this stream
to other computers over the Internet is basically the first step in getting
this match to the rest of the world online. That’s all it takes, one user to
get is started. Gratefully, this is the nature of the web today. It’ll also
take other users to carry this forward, but it starts with one good fan willing
to capture and share that signal for all of us to benefit. Isn’t it great to
beat these large broadcast institutions intent on exploiting the soccer fan
by controlling transmission of live matches. Well with the web, they have a
challenge at hand and be sure that they are working tirelessly to find a way
to put measures in place to control their revenue generation and protect their
profits. So, if this sounds too good to be true, well it is. And it’s surely
about time. For too long us soccer fans have suffered with previous
options mentioned here, which to tell you the truth isn’t so bad, considering
pre-internet days we relied on the evening news or tomorrow’s sports papers
to recap the match details. No longer.

As we move forward, technological barriers will be dissolved and tomorrow’s
savvy soccer fan will have the game at his fingertips. Literally! In the
meantime welcome to the revolution. You will unknowingly be part of it in one
small form or other. Broadcasters will invest their efforts to wiggle their
way into this new age technology to sell advertising. Google is already taking
big steps in this area to sell advertising in print and broadcast mediums.
So in an effort to help promote the game to our fans, we’ll be setting up a
series of articles and tutorials to help you get the games online. Feel free
to contribute to this effort with your experiences and knowledge by writing
to us, commenting on these articles or even collaborating with us to help get
the know how out to the community.

Check back soon for follow ups to this theme.