iFollow for 2021/22Season

[horseman]

I will ask again who and why sanctioned Ifollow if it's not for fans of clubs wherever they may be to be able opportunity to watch their team.
The Blackout whilst allowing streaming overseas is another puzzler as i doubt individual clubs in the lower leagues have many Overseas fans in such numbers to warrant the costs.

One assumes there is data revealing the numbers during the past 18 months yet it strikes me that rather than thinking they had got a captive audience of thousands of fans they've as good as told us all to go and find these other means of watching your team play.

Some 20.000 + Pompey fans were denied opportunity to spend their cash watching their team because it's thought that a few that were going to Fleetwood would not have bothered which has prevented 100's of thousands in income to those 2 clubs and likewise all those EFL fixtures over the weekend and beyond.

As i said the other day it's not just the cost of Sky Bt etc that has people seeking alternative ways to watch an individual game.

 

[holdsteady]

It is mental that clubs who are struggling for cash can’t show games on iFollow to anyone who is willing to pay. I am likely working away Tuesday so won’t be able to use my season ticket that I have already paid for but would be willing to pay a tenner to watch the very basic IFollow footage on my phone, so the club could essentially be paid twice by me and not have the hassle of me in the ground.

But RyanBirdio points out it’s Sky with the actual power, I doubt they would fork out for the tv rights if on a Saturday everyone is watching there own teams.

 

[RyanioBirdio]

My, how you are right on the latter point - the business was so preoccupied trying to protect physical sales, it allowed the means of distribution and access to the customer to be grabbed by tech companies. Having said that, Spotify is still some way from turning an operating profit and Apple don't break out the iTunes figures. Sitting in my easily dispensable middle-management role, that Daniel Ek story is commonplace - he was literally laughed out of all of the major record companies.

On the other side of that, in the late 90s I worked for producer (and Buggle) Trevor Horn - he had a look at file sharing and declared that music companies would 'never get the genie back in the bottle'. 25 years on and we're fighting for fractions of pennies.

What Spotify has going for it is an indisputable business model. As soon as the subscriber numbers hit a very, very achievable target, it’s milk and honey as far as the eye can see. And it will definitely happen in the next decade, as will the inevitable price increase. £9.99 for access to basically every album / song ever made is ludicrous. That has to go up at some point, and too right, I say. I used to splash £15+ on an album once or twice a month even as a 14/15 year old, let alone an adult. We should be paying more than a tenner a month for unlimited access.

Your story about Trevor Horn doesn’t surprise me. Very few people saw or believed what was about to happen, but they were out there. A small handful had their heads screwed on. Jimmy Iovine was pretty similar by all accounts. Apparently he downloaded a torrent programme to his office computer, downloaded and played a song, and immediately set about creating a headphones company. A few years later he and Dr Dre had created and turned Beats into one of the biggest music hardware companies in the world. A million chancers, but among them are a few who know their onions.

Hopefully somebody, somewhere within football will eventually do the right thing and look to be similarly creative and proactive. In the meantime, though, it’ll just be more utter nonsense.

 

[Malc]

I agree that we could/should pay more for Spotify and other such services. But if the price went up would Spotify pass on 50% of the increase to the artists that provide them with their income? I doubt it.
I have Spotify included with my internet service but I would not object to paying an extra tenner if I knew that the artists would benefit from my money too.

 

[Kamal]

Do you normally have to pay for an iFollow subscription to watch the extended highlights? It's letting me watch them for free on the app..

 

[ZeroTheHero]

At the moment, the only real benefit of having a monthly iFollow sub seems to be that you can listen to RadOx for commentary if you can't get to the games (I am out of the RadOx broadcast area so can't listen to it 'normally'). The vast majority of everything else is just put out onto the club's social media channels for free anyway.

 

[ThatSlopesATwelfthMan]

Do you normally have to pay for an iFollow subscription to watch the extended highlights? It's letting me watch them for free on the app..

Yep, extended highlights and replays now included in the free subscription. Paid version gives you radox audio commentary, full versions of player and staff interviews and early access to preview show. Not sure whether the ifollow version of preview show will have additional content to the free YouTube version.

 

[Norwich exile]

Yep, extended highlights and replays now included in the free subscription. Paid version gives you radox audio commentary, full versions of player and staff interviews and early access to preview show. Not sure whether the ifollow version of preview show will have additional content to the free YouTube version.

To be fair I think it's really good that you have access to a full replay the day after the game, free of charge. A far cry from the days where if you missed the 30 second highlights that came at the end of the local news, you'd missed the action.

 

[MarkG]

I've just been reading about the difficulty watching baseball in the US where regional teams can enforce tv-blackouts to encourage people to go to the games. So it's not just UK football fans.
"I live in Des Moines, Iowa. I am 200 miles away from the nearest MLB ballpark, which is Kauffman in Kansas City. I don’t have cable, but would like to still watch games for this upcoming season.
I was looking into MLB.TV and expected there to be blackouts, but not to the extreme of what I found. Six teams (Cubs, Cardinals, Brewers, Twins, Royals, and White Sox) are blacked out in my region. I am a Twins and Cubs fan and Target field is 250 miles away while Wrigley is at least 300."

 

[OUFCGav]

I've just been reading about the difficulty watching baseball in the US where regional teams can enforce tv-blackouts to encourage people to go to the games. So it's not just UK football fans.
"I live in Des Moines, Iowa. I am 200 miles away from the nearest MLB ballpark, which is Kauffman in Kansas City. I don’t have cable, but would like to still watch games for this upcoming season.
I was looking into MLB.TV and expected there to be blackouts, but not to the extreme of what I found. Six teams (Cubs, Cardinals, Brewers, Twins, Royals, and White Sox) are blacked out in my region. I am a Twins and Cubs fan and Target field is 250 miles away while Wrigley is at least 300."

there are 162 games in a regular season schedule for each team. Every game is on a regional tv sports channel in the region of the two teams involved, and some are licensed nationally to one of the big channels like ESPN or Fox, the MLB app (which is one of the benchmarks of how a sports app should be) shows every game live - except in the geographic area covered by the regional sports channels that have the rights to show it live on tv (with some exceptions to add complication).
Its more to do with TV contracts than encouraging fans.
That person is likely in an odd area where a bunch of regional sports channels overlap.

 

[Mystery Yellow]

Is tonight’s game available to watch on IFollow?

 

[Northstandboy]

Is tonight’s game available to watch on IFollow?

It should be, yes.

 

[holdsteady]

I have just paid to watch it tonight so I hope so.

 

[tonto]

Is it possible to pay to watch it then pause it and watch the game later?

 

[holdsteady]

Is it possible to pay to watch it then pause it and watch the game later?

Don’t want to miss Love Island?

 

[tonto]

Don’t watch rubbish! Going out at 730 and can’t change it. Could I then watch the game at 1030?

 

[Wandering Yellow]

Could see some very low Tuesday night away followings due to this?

 

[beyondthefourth]

Could see some very low Tuesday night away followings due to this?

It's not new for this season. Was the case pre-pandemic too. If anything they should be slightly higher than before.

 

[oxfordkne]

I enquired and there is no video stream for UK based supporters which I think is a great shame but according to the ticket office is an EFL decision not the club's. I wish they would restore the video streaming as it would surely be an additional revenue stream for both the EFL and the clubs.

Off topic but I see that t**t Evans has received yet another touchline ban.

 

[captainox]

I enquired and there is no video stream for UK based supporters which I think is a great shame but according to the ticket office is an EFL decision not the club's. I wish they would restore the video streaming as it would surely be an additional revenue stream for both the EFL and the clubs.

Off topic but I see that t**t Evans has received yet another touchline ban.

The club had put an article up before the first game of the season explaining all.