Come on(line) England
So the Ukraine vs England World Cup Qualifier will only be broadcast online in the UK. Personally I don’t have a problem with this. I’ve got a Mac Mini hooked up to my living room TV so that’s fine. Cost-wise, £4.99 seems like a fair price too.
So why won’t I be forking out and watching this match then? Well, it’s all down to expectation. I expect there to be technical difficulties; I expect there to be quality issues; in fact I have very little in the way of expectations full-stop - this is my experience of live streaming video. That's not to say I have never witnessed a decent live stream, it's just that I have witnessed more than my fair share of shoddy ones – especially those that are popular/well-subscribed.
Now unless Perform, the company appointed by Kentaro to broadcast the match after the collapse of Setanta, can offer some sort of money-back guarantee, that’s the way it’ll stay. It's somewhat reassuring that they will limit numbers to a million users, which would furnish them with at least £5m incidently, so maybe it will go without a hitch. Perform also have some prior experience live-streaming football having shown UEFA Cup matches for Manchester City and Tottenham. However, Kentaro have admitted that the stream won't be suitable for large screens as, I assume, Perform will be transmitting low resolution video, Hopefully Odeon will be getting a better feed of it, as they will also be showing the match in selected cinemas.
Either way, and not that it matters as they are already through but, come on England - we may not be watching, but we will have high expectations of you.
Picture credit: flickr user gingerbeardman
