Sportsbet.io's English Premier League Football Pool Discussion Thread

[DeathAngel]

Love that you guys are sharing illegal streaming sites to help each other watch the games. We’re hack next week boys, it’s been a long wait.

Well, I don't mind paying even considerable amount of money if somebody will give me top quality legal service which has rights to all the games from Premier League, La Liga, Bundesliga, Serie A and all the tennis tournaments out there. Problem is nobody has anything even close to that in my corner of the world.

I’ll be watching in the UK so I will have all the games on my TV, a mixture of Sky Sports & BT Sport. If you struggle for good quality streams, this site is ‘ok’ -

hesgoal.com

They only list which games are on close to kickoff but it’s not bad.

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[LTU_btc]

Love that you guys are sharing illegal streaming sites to help each other watch the games. We’re hack next week boys, it’s been a long wait.

Well, I don't mind paying even considerable amount of money if somebody will give me top quality legal service which has rights to all the games from Premier League, La Liga, Bundesliga, Serie A and all the tennis tournaments out there. Problem is nobody has anything even close to that in my corner of the world.

Yeah, actually I have local pay TV subscription, but it doesn't satisfy my needs. I get just maybe 6 EPL games per round, limited number of La Liga or Serie. I can't even watch F1 in legal way in my country. So, I have to search for alternatives. I watch lot of football and I want to pick which game to watch, instead of watching what they show on TV.
Now I'm looking on schedule of upcoming games and it seems that I will stay in front of TV in upcoming few weeks all day long. It will be strange, because it's summer after all, not dark ugly winter .

[examplens]

Love that you guys are sharing illegal streaming sites to help each other watch the games. We’re hack next week boys, it’s been a long wait.

Well, I don't mind paying even considerable amount of money if somebody will give me top quality legal service which has rights to all the games from Premier League, La Liga, Bundesliga, Serie A and all the tennis tournaments out there. Problem is nobody has anything even close to that in my corner of the world.

@Trofo, don't you have SportKlub in Croatia? as far as I understand they are sending streaming to both of our countries. They also always make a great choice of games, also if there is a possibility they release 4k. have a fairly high quality.
I've seen a lot of people from your country coming to his web portal/app, comment and follow his podcast, interviews and etc...

[Trofo]

Love that you guys are sharing illegal streaming sites to help each other watch the games. We’re hack next week boys, it’s been a long wait.

Well, I don't mind paying even considerable amount of money if somebody will give me top quality legal service which has rights to all the games from Premier League, La Liga, Bundesliga, Serie A and all the tennis tournaments out there. Problem is nobody has anything even close to that in my corner of the world.

@Trofo, don't you have SportKlub in Croatia? as far as I understand they are sending streaming to both of our countries. They also always make a great choice of games, also if there is a possibility they release 4k. have a fairly high quality.
I've seen a lot of people from your country coming to his web portal/app, comment and follow his podcast, interviews and etc...

I have SportClub package and I am paying for their 6 channels (4 in HD). Quality is ok but they don't have nearly enough coverage for me. They have Premier league but in previous years they were showing all the matches nowadays they show just one match and 3 PM, they cover some tennis but they don't have any grand slams nor all ATP 1000 tournaments.

I am also paying a lot for Arena Sport package with 5 HD channels, they have Croatian league, Seria A and Europa league.

Than I am paying also for Planet Sport package which has only Champions league. This one I will cancel soon. And all that channels have different providers which complicates things as well.

When you add all that it comes to about 50 $ and i still don't have all I want. Therefore, I have to turn my eyes to less legal solutions. I am betting every day with considerable amounts and I see that as investment, I don't mind to pay for service but I expect the service to really be top notch and has all that I need. I don't have a lot of free time but when I want to watch something I want to be able to do so on my TV/computer/mobile in best possible quality without any hassle.

[buwaytress]

@deathAngel: Problem is I'm 100% sure 100% of us here would love to pay to watch EPL legitimately but the circumstances are such that it's not always possible. I have a similar situation to Trofo. I already pay for TWO services where I live, the first plays 1-3 EPL games per week (which it judges to be the most popular), and 1-3 Champions League games per week. But if your team isn't playing the big 4, or the particular game is at the same time as a bigger match, forget it.

You can expand the selection with a second more expensive package (which by itself is almost twice the amount of the first package, but it's still not going to give you cup games or all Champions League games.

So I could still pay over 50 euros (standalone packages mind you) per month, without being able to pause (so yes, I actually paid all lockdown months) and still probably watch half of the games... NOT IN ENGLISH. So I can't understand the commentary, can't watch all the games, and still pay a lot.

Believe me we would want to pay for good shit.

DAZN Germany will probably bid on the rights for the PL eventually, it's just they're not available right now as some other channel in Germany has them. Dazn could become a major player in sports streaming and they've said they envision themselves as becoming the Netlix of sports. It probably depends on how well their service does. I'm sure it will blow up if they keep getting the PL rights but to bid for the UK rights they're going to need a hell of a lot of money and Sky Sports are unlikely to want to give up their domination as it would be devastating for Sky on a whole.

Either way, it'll still be years of putting up with the current situation. Central bank here came out with a dire forecast of worst ever recession since Second World War, so hopefully it breaks current monopolies so badly it even hits tv rights. But you know, hope springs eternal;)

[DeathAngel]

There has to be a sports channel in the future that just think, hell I’ll buy the rights to every live football game. I know for sure I’d pay good money to be able to have a channel like that. Sky have a lot of games on their various sports channels, I think the ruling behind not having the 3pm Saturday kick offs all live is because it’d kill the smaller clubs, people would stop attending & just watch it from the comfort of their own homes.

[cryptofrka]

The future will probably introduce a pay per view system, I'm really surprised that we do not have it already.

If you look at the sports like MMA, boxing and some others, they have already breached that barrier and have shown that it can work without lag even with a lot of people streaming.

The bad thing that will bring is that big clubs will increase the financial gap again because people will pay to watch every Liverpool/City/Real/Barcelona game and will not pay to watch Burnley, Osasuna or Bari.

[hilariousetc]

There has to be a sports channel in the future that just think, hell I’ll buy the rights to every live football game. I know for sure I’d pay good money to be able to have a channel like that. Sky have a lot of games on their various sports channels, I think the ruling behind not having the 3pm Saturday kick offs all live is because it’d kill the smaller clubs, people would stop attending & just watch it from the comfort of their own homes.

Companies like Google, Facebook and Amazon are the only companies that could bankroll that, but it's whether they'd take the risk. Imagine how many Prime Customers they would get if Amazon bought all the PL rights. They dipped their toe into those waters this season by buying a handful of games and it was a success as their subscriptions rose quite significantly so maybe they'll go for more games once the rights become available. I think the current UK deals runs out in 2022 and it will be interesting to see who bids for what. I think Amazon will go for more and Dazn will attempt to grab some games too. Not sure they'd be able to outbid Sky for the main bulk of them though but I doubt Sky can hold on to them forever either. In the meantime if you want to watch all the PL games you'll have to go with one of the services that already has them all but you'll need a proxy to view. Dazn already has a lot of football rights along with a load of other sports. Canadian Dazn has the PL, CL and Europa and a few other leagues. Their UK service is launching soon but I think it's going to be mostly boxing centred, though I'm sure it will have other sports as well but it just depends on what they can get rights for.

The future will probably introduce a pay per view system, I'm really surprised that we do not have it already.

If you look at the sports like MMA, boxing and some others, they have already breached that barrier and have shown that it can work without lag even with a lot of people streaming.

They should just do their own streaming service. You can either pay for the games you want or pay a subscription fee and watch everything. They'll probably do it eventually but it's annoying it isn't sooner rather than later.

[buwaytress]

They should just do their own streaming service. You can either pay for the games you want or pay a subscription fee and watch everything. They'll probably do it eventually but it's annoying it isn't sooner rather than later.

THIS.

I wonder why they haven't thought about it. Think about it, if they charge even 1 pound a game per season that's what, at least 45-50 per person who watches the stream (I'd happily pay two times that per season). You know most big clubs have millions of fans abroad. Forget the stupid TV money and earn direct, earn more. The TV ppl will come crawling back.

[hilariousetc]

They should just do their own streaming service. You can either pay for the games you want or pay a subscription fee and watch everything. They'll probably do it eventually but it's annoying it isn't sooner rather than later.

THIS.

I wonder why they haven't thought about it. Think about it, if they charge even 1 pound a game per season that's what, at least 45-50 per person who watches the stream (I'd happily pay two times that per season). You know most big clubs have millions of fans abroad. Forget the stupid TV money and earn direct, earn more. The TV ppl will come crawling back.

Oh, they'll have thought about it. I'm sure they'll discussed it quite a bit, but it's huge leap to do, especially in the UK. They'll basically be severing ties with Sky who have been a huge part of their revenues since the PL started and once they get rid of Sky there'll be no going back. Sky losing the PL broadcasting rights would be devastating to them. It might even kill Sky sports as we know it. It's only a matter of time before the PL does some sort of streaming service in the UK through. They do it in some foreign markets. I actually think they'd make much more money because a lot of people get rid of Sky because they don't want to pay £40-80 a month for all sports when all they watch is football. Most football fans would happily pay £15-30 a month direct to the PL for all the games. As I said before, they could offer plenty of packages. A monthly subscription for all the games, a pay per view just for the games you're interested in, or team packages where you just get all the games of the team you support. They could offer on demand steaming of classic games and other programs they've created.

[LTU_btc]

They should just do their own streaming service. You can either pay for the games you want or pay a subscription fee and watch everything. They'll probably do it eventually but it's annoying it isn't sooner rather than later.

THIS.

I wonder why they haven't thought about it. Think about it, if they charge even 1 pound a game per season that's what, at least 45-50 per person who watches the stream (I'd happily pay two times that per season). You know most big clubs have millions of fans abroad. Forget the stupid TV money and earn direct, earn more. The TV ppl will come crawling back.

Oh, they'll have thought about it. I'm sure they'll discussed it quite a bit, but it's huge leap to do, especially in the UK. They'll basically be severing ties with Sky who have been a huge part of their revenues since the PL started and once they get rid of Sky there'll be no going back. Sky losing the PL broadcasting rights would be devastating to them. It might even kill Sky sports as we know it. It's only a matter of time before the PL does some sort of streaming service in the UK through. They do it in some foreign markets. I actually think they'd make much more money because a lot of people get rid of Sky because they don't want to pay £40-80 a month for all sports when all they watch is football. Most football fans would happily pay £15-30 a month direct to the PL for all the games. As I said before, they could offer plenty of packages. A monthly subscription for all the games, a pay per view just for the games you're interested in, or team packages where you just get all the games of the team you support. They could offer on demand steaming of classic games and other programs they've created.

Something similar like NBA League Pass would be great with various subscription plans like month, yearly or where you can pick your own team and pay just to watch their games. But I doubt that such is going to happen in upcoming few seasons. Current broadcast contracts doesn't allow it. And things like 3 PM  blackouts makes things even more complicated. I remember when F1 launched their own streaming service and UK is one of few countries where it's nto available just because of contract with Sky.

[LFC_Bitcoin]

@hilarious

I’d happily pay for an ‘all games available’ package. All I really watch is sports & movies any way, all tye other stuff I couldn’t care less about. I don’t think it’s anything that is coming any time soon sadly.

[hilariousetc]

Something similar like NBA League Pass would be great with various subscription plans like month, yearly or where you can pick your own team and pay just to watch their games. But I doubt that such is going to happen in upcoming few seasons. Current broadcast contracts doesn't allow it. And things like 3 PM  blackouts makes things even more complicated. I remember when F1 launched their own streaming service and UK is one of few countries where it's nto available just because of contract with Sky.

The rights held by Sky/BT end in 2022 I believe so they'll probably start the bidding process the year before, or maybe go with their own service when it elapses. They could easily get rid of the 3 o clock blackout if they wanted or just stop showing games at that time to bypass the restriction. We know from other leagues around the world that it doesn't effect ticket sales. La Liga has all their games at different times so you can watch them all if you wanted and they're not financially hit. The PL could easily make an argument that millions are lost by not showing them. With the billions in extra revenue that showing all the games brought in you could give more to the teams that was affected if any.

According to the Premier league the 2018/2019 season was watched by 1.35 billion: https://www.premierleague.com/news/1280062

Even one hundred million people paying £100 a year is 10 billion. The PL made £4.8bn in 2017/18 on tv rights so that's a huge difference and that's just based on 100 million. I'm sure it would cost more than £100 a year as well. It'd probably be nearer £150 a year if not more.

Most sports services seems to be around $100 though. NFL passes are $99. UFC Fight Passes are $95.99. NBA has a few ones including a team pass:

Here's how the NBA League Pass pricing breaks down: NBA League Pass Premium: $249.99/yr. or $39.99/mo. NBA League Pass: $199.99/yr. or $28.99/month. NBA Team Pass: $119.99/yr. or $17.99/mo.

So does Baseball: $121.99 (all teams), $93.99 (single team)

So the PL could easily get away with £100-200 (or the equivalent in USD) and that money goes directly to them with no middle men.

[buwaytress]

According to the Premier league the 2018/2019 season was watched by 1.35 billion: https://www.premierleague.com/news/1280062

Even one hundred million people paying £100 a year is 10 billion. The PL made £4.8bn in 2017/18 on tv rights so that's a huge difference and that's just based on 100 million. I'm sure it would cost more than £100 a year as well. It'd probably be nearer £150 a year if not more.

Yeah! I did the rough numbers for a lot of scenarios too, and I know for sure that people are paying a lot of money already for options to watch, most of which in fact don't even get to the clubs. A EPL cable TV sub in Malaysia comes up easily to over £100 a year and again, not every game's featured.

100M paying 100 or 200M paying 50? That's double the income, no need to hassle and haggle, and it's satisfied fans who're more than happy to pay to see their club get it.

[hilariousetc]

Yeah! I did the rough numbers for a lot of scenarios too, and I know for sure that people are paying a lot of money already for options to watch, most of which in fact don't even get to the clubs. A EPL cable TV sub in Malaysia comes up easily to over £100 a year and again, not every game's featured.

100M paying 100 or 200M paying 50? That's double the income, no need to hassle and haggle, and it's satisfied fans who're more than happy to pay to see their club get it.

It almost certainly would be a huge success, it's just the PL having the balls to take the plunge and sever ties with traditional broadcasters. Eventually most things will go to streaming or VOD so there's no point trying to fight the inevitable. It seems most other sports have their own streaming streaming as well so the PL just needs to get with the times. People will just continue to use either illegal services or go the grey market route like I do and find a foreign broadcaster like dazn that you can use with a proxy without them. I'm sure even a lot of the people who pay for illegal IPTV would just go with the legit streaming service if there was one as IPTVs are probably going to cost you around £100 for the year anyway. They could probably even still keep Sky involved as well if they wanted. They should probably offer an exclusive Premier League package along with a streaming/VOD service that you could buy rather than coughing up for the full Sky sports package when most people don't want 90% of the stuff on there.

[LTU_btc]

They could easily get rid of the 3 o clock blackout if they wanted or just stop showing games at that time to bypass the restriction. We know from other leagues around the world that it doesn't effect ticket sales. La Liga has all their games at different times so you can watch them all if you wanted and they're not financially hit. The PL could easily make an argument that millions are lost by not showing them. With the billions in extra revenue that showing all the games brought in you could give more to the teams that was affected if any.

But probably problem is FA. They simply don't want to lift blackout. It doesn't affect ticket sales in EPL, because stadiums are full, no matter game is on TV or no. But I remember reading that it may have negative impact for lower division clubs. Some people may prefer watching EPL on TV, instead of supporting their local team at stadium. But IMO, this rule is so outdated and from other top leagues we can see that it doesn't have significant impact.
Folks, it's time to finally sign in to your Superbru accounts and leave predictions. Less than 48 hours until return of EPL.

[hilariousetc]

They could easily get rid of the 3 o clock blackout if they wanted or just stop showing games at that time to bypass the restriction. We know from other leagues around the world that it doesn't effect ticket sales. La Liga has all their games at different times so you can watch them all if you wanted and they're not financially hit. The PL could easily make an argument that millions are lost by not showing them. With the billions in extra revenue that showing all the games brought in you could give more to the teams that was affected if any.

But probably problem is FA. They simply don't want to lift blackout. It doesn't affect ticket sales in EPL, because stadiums are full, no matter game is on TV or no. But I remember reading that it may have negative impact for lower division clubs. Some people may prefer watching EPL on TV, instead of supporting their local team at stadium. But IMO, this rule is so outdated and from other top leagues we can see that it doesn't have significant impact.
Folks, it's time to finally sign in to your Superbru accounts and leave predictions. Less than 48 hours until return of EPL.

Well yeah it's the lower leagues they argued it would effect but the Premier League can easily give them their share of the TV revenues if they were effected, but we know showing games or not doesn't effect them. It's an outdated an faulty argument based on nothing but presumption. The millions possible billions this would bring in extra revenue could easily be shared between lower leagues. I think it would be a good idea for the PL to put some money into supporting the lower league teams more to help them get a boost up for potential growth anyway.

Only ten people have done their picks so far. Over 20 still need to do them.

[Mbitr]

Thanks for the reminder   I’ll get on it now !
Nice to feel the excitement/pressure of selection again- with the added anxiety of whether to change your original picks from 3 months ago ??
It’s almost like starting a new season for us AND the clubs. To be honest I’m just happy we get to finish our competition - good luck all  

[DeathAngel]

God damn it hilarious, you don’t have to remind everybody, I’m doing bad enough already, I could do with a few people forgetting to put their predictions in so I can climb a few positions

I hope to do much better next season if we do it again?

[big_daddy]

Made my pool picks for those two first restart matches, playing today
I’m giving the advantage to Sheffield and Manchester City, but the stats are broken by the covid pause, so, we can expect anything