Premier League under investigation from TV rights company Ofcom

[Stanley]

OFCOM has opened an investigation into how the Premier League sells its domestic broadcast rights for matches.

The investigation follows a complaint from Virgin Media, which was submitted to Ofcom - the regulator and competition authority for UK communications industries - in September...

http://www.express.co.uk/sport/football/536801/Premier-League-investigation-TV-rights-Ofcom-Virgin-Media

[nige101uk]

This is essentially because fans want Saturday 3pm kickoffs and currently it is illegal in the UK to show live football on TV between 3pm and 5.15pm which is why you got the farcical situation of missing the first 15 mins of El Classico the other weekend.

Something has to give. Personally, I'd like to see all games screened live, mostly at 3pm, although I can see why Sky would like to keep their existing schedule too. Get rid of the stupid no footy on TV law and we can all buy TV season tickets for our clubs if we so wish...

*puts on tin hat and wait to be told to get myself to the ground*

[Chalet1882]

this story to me is utter B*llocks as I see it for the prem games you can watch 99% of them online and its all English commentary any way - I refuse to spend the £40+ a month on Sky when I can watch it for free via the use of a laptop and a lead connected to my TV if im not there

why does the TV have so much rights over what us real fans do that is the real problem

bring back all games at 3.00pm on a Saturday is my say works well in every other league

[Buffalo]

The point of the complaint is that if you are an armchair fan and want to watch lots of games on TV, you pay more than anybody else in Europe, and are able to watch fewer games. The fact that BT joined the party, should have meant increased competition and lower prices for fans. That's the way it works in any other industry.
Instead, it results in the opposite where the rights bidding goes up and the subscriptions have to go up too. In addition, you have to pay two subscriptions to two different providers if you want to see all of the games.

[oldskoolturk]

this story to me is utter B*llocks as I see it for the prem games you can watch 99% of them online and its all English commentary any way - I refuse to spend the £40+ a month on Sky when I can watch it for free via the use of a laptop and a lead connected to my TV if im not there

why does the TV have so much rights over what us real fans do that is the real problem

bring back all games at 3.00pm on a Saturday is my say works well in every other league

But that's not true. in Spain every game kicks off at a different time for tv, France and Germany regularly have Friday night kick offs as wel as Late kick offs on Saturday and Sunday games, Italy have early and late games on both Saturday and Sunday.

The reason we get less games televised in England is because we only have 5 possible games a week that can be moved for tv. The rest all kick off at 3pm sat (Europe league weeks aside). This is exactly how it should be, maybe reduced to 4 so that you can't have an early and late kick off on a sat in the same weekend, either early or late.

If all games got moved to a 3pm kick off then you would never see any games as they would kick off the same time as Us!!