A whole new ball game?

I've noticed the increase in pubs now showing 3PM kickoffs on Saturday and I now ask the question: Does the ban still have any relevance.

Anyone with the nous and cash can get these matches so what is the point of the ban?

First of all, welcome to the forum.

It's not worthless, because a large chunk of people won't be inclined to seek it out who would watch it if it was on Sky Sports.

And the rules for european broadcasters are changing with the next contract, I believe.

I think only one 3pm kick off will be available to European broadcasters, and commentary can't be in English.

Arbitrary restrictions like this will become increasingly pointless. The web generation know where to get this content for free and their children will too.

You work for the Beeb you can't say that

It's never really made sense that it is enforced on Saturdays, but when there is a full midweek fixture list no such ban exists.

Things are changing in Europe at least under the new contract but it's always been an oddity that Britain is actually the one place where you can't watch all Premier League games live, and I think sooner or later that will surely change. Whether they go for 10 kick-off times across the weekend or a Champions League style arrangement of so many matches playing simultaneously for viewers to pick from remains to be seen.

I am convinced that eventually the Premier League will realise that the way it will make the most money - and at the same time, absolve itself of any responsibility to implement the 3pm ban - is to stop playing games at 3pm on a Saturday. The season ticket holders would be unhappy for a while, but such a move would allow it to sell the rights to all 380 Premier League matches to UK broadcasters. I'm just surprised they haven't done it already.

In the interim, they seem to be intent on putting restrictions on 3pm kick offs - worth noting that in Ireland there was already a restriction to one 3pm KO and this has been the case since the Premier League started selling rights to this game in Ireland in 2004. Obviously a restriction against broadcasting in English cannot be applied to Ireland.

Its already sort of being happening, with english commentry disappearing off all foreign tv packages and now Albania is going to get a black out as well, oh well we can rely on Final Score.

Football needs television it's true, but it is not the be all and end all of the game in England, especially for the Premier League. My view is that most clubs need the attendance on Saturdays to float above that red line, and most of the less-glamorous less-followed teams need those gate receipts, pie sales, beer sales etc. Tuesday and Wednesday night games already suffer from lower attendances due to being on TV - people are simply dissuaded from spending an evening in the cold and the rain when they can nip to the pub or shell out for Sky Sports.

For a comparison, look at what's happened to regional rugby in Wales. At any given time, you can catch at least two of the four Welsh clubs on TV over the weekend for FREE, sometimes all four if they're playing Ulster, Edinburgh or Glasgow through BBC NI and BBC Alba. Attendances have plummeted, the clubs are in financial peril, they can't pay the top players, the performances have dived as a result of relying on lower quality players, which dissuades people from attending, which starts the whole vicious circle again. I accept there are other factors at play (such as the general distaste the general public has for the regional system) but this is a major player (pun intended).

With regards to pubs showing 3pm kick-offs, we need to remember it's a clandestine and totally illegal practice which to be honest I frown upon not because it's generating business for our beleaguered pub industry (although if a pub is discovered showing a P2P stream or foreign satellite broadcast it faces censure anyway) but because it rewards and encourages media piracy by unscrupulous streamers desperate for hits - if a need is generated more and more P2P broadcasters will spring up and as a result it will drive up the price of subscribing to sports channels for those of us who wish to watch them legally. You will always get individuals accessing streaming at home, and that is to be expected and is just a fact of life in this internet age, but for pubs/venues to use them as a tool for generating business is another matter entirely as it encourages and legitimises this mass ambivalence.

Of course, this is the iPhone generation - the most selfish, lazy, me-me-me, everything-given-to-them-on-a-plate-all-in-one-place generation ever. Why type something when there's an app that will automatically finish words for you? Why bother taking good photos with a camera and process them properly to get your desired result when you can Instagram them? Why bother reading a book when you can Google? Why bother going to a game when you can bring the game to you?

Speaking theoretically for a moment, if we have to face the inevitability that our demand for 3pm football on a Saturday, fuelled by internet usage/access, is overwhelmingly and statistically significant, then there is some validity in following the model demonstrated by MLB.tv in the USA where you can legally watch all baseball games online even if they're not on TV in your region by payment of a flat annual fee which then gets distributed across all baseball teams. Of course they play 162 games a season across a continent rather than the 40-odd our poor overloaded soccer players have to put up with, so there is more revenue opportunity available to a baseball franchise than a football team, including the almost religious place baseball has in the American public's heart.

So why not implement that? A season ticket for armchair fans? Charge £100 a year for access to your team's out-of-market matches in glorious HD with English language commentators as opposed to a grainy 150k Sopcast stream from China? That way the football club still gets its revenue, the pirates get a run for their money and the 3pm TV blackout remains in place. There is already something like it in the "Player" software which is prevalent on a few Football League websites, but I'm not sure how comparable that is, or how accessible it is.

I'm not sure how far we are down that road, but it's a slippery slope, and not one I don't think we should go down. I like sacred cows, and this is one I don't think we should slay. For all its hideous financial extravagance and facetious obsession with imagery and aesthetics over substance and fan-reward factor, football is traditional, football is a cultural thing with ritual and routine. "Saturday 3PM" is one of the few constants in an ever changing game. The ball has changed, the uniforms have changed, the players, attitude, fans, stadiums, substitutes have changed..... but 100 years ago there were Saturday 3pm kickoffs, and I hope that in 100 years time there will be Saturday 3pm kickoffs.

I don't work for the BBC.

Yet you seem to know about bbc news channel rehearsals, something dosent add up here...

You just need the right equipment and know where to look.

It cant be on satellite surely?