Good news, Man City fans: You can watch your team lose the title in on-demand 3D One of the most maddening aspects of live sports may not just disappear in the next two years but may actually become, well, awesome. Unless you are lucky enough to have season tickets for your favorite team, thanks to the mosaic of contracts and agreements that exist around live footage, it can often be hours or days before …
It's a nice idea but Liverpool aren't winning the league, they'll slip up.
I think this will fail due to the rights, the current system is bidding on multiple packages (7) meaning you have pay multiple providers (Rip off) and they paid an eye watering 5.14 billion, so the only way this is going to succeed is if the rights holders want to invest in the technology themselves but as they are already paying so much will they do it? On top of that you can't show Saturday 3pm kick offs so it can't replace season tickets (this was put in place to protect the income from gate receipts of lower league clubs, they also do collective rights so you don't end up with a situation where the top 6 sell their own rights and take all the money). It might work in foreign countries though. I also don't know how useful it will be, if you're watching a match live you aren't really going to faffing about lining up different replay angles while the match is being played, you might at half time or after the match. As for 20 second delay people put up with anything up to that on streams so it's not a huge issue.
IT angle - Sounds like very interesting and cool technology. I guess the idea is to have an interface such as Google Street View where a user can zoom, pan and move around, but live. As mentioned in the article, most people watching live will do so from the live feed because that's the optimal viewing position, but it's great for video montages, tactical analysis, seeing things from a particular players' perspective... opens up a lot of possibilities. Also, I guess, to be able to have better angle for a Video Assistant Referee to be able to make a disputed call on*.
Rights angle - This is, truly, a giant mess. 'Plurality' is supposed to mean that you can get an offering from multiple providers. Splitting up rights packages just means that you have multiple different monopolies, all of which you have to pay if you want access to the whole thing. From a consumer point of view, I want to be able to choose the same match or set of matches from multiple providers, or choose an individual match at a reasonable price without having to subscribe to a package. That's not happening because all the providers think in terms of monopoly and lock-in. It's crazy that it's often easier and cheaper to see a match abroad and locally, and that's not just for UK but most / all major leagues.
Football angle - The Premier league this season is bloody amazing. Quite possibly 2 teams will record 2 of the 3 highest-ever points totals in history. Whoever comes second, it will still have been a great achievement and a fantastic season. Just sit back and enjoy instead of slagging off this or that team, won't you?
*Not that they still won't make mistakes and/or manage to displease half the stadium, mind you
If I go into a Spanish bar looking for a refreshing beer while a major event is on the telly, the barista will hold the glass in one hand, the bottle in the other while watching the action and then pour my beer over his left foot.
As has been said before sport is okay but like sex, it's better when you are a participant.
Seems like a fancier version of the 'hawkeye' thing they have in snooker.
Given that football has so far taken 100 years and counting to implement a bloody obvious technology:
- put a camera on the goal line to see if the ball went over it.
- let the referee have a look at the footage*
It may take a while to bring this thing in
*its ironic the only person not allowed to watch the replays after a goal / foul / dive is the referee.
resulting in everyone except the person making the decision knowing what happened.
If i gave a fuck about football i'd probly find that frustrating, rather than comical.
Tech like this has already been tried and mostly already failed in English football. Multiple angles are already available to be shown immediately after an incident, and even more after the game when there is more time to view them without missing any of the live match. I have no idea why anyone thinks it takes "hours or days" to get a good view of an important incident? The contracts keep the action rights-holder exclusive only until midnight the same day of the match, at which point it is available elsewhere, e.g. other channels showing both the full match and highlights packages, live matches are shown on the clubs own websites just after midnight, etc.
Some of the bigger teams (e.g. Manchester United) already have many cameras installed both at their stadiums and even their training grounds, covering every angle, facial expression, etc. in some detail. These seem to be primarily used for performance analysis, as for the fans nobody seems to gives a shit as the TV companies already use the 'best angles' for the action and replays. Nobody who ever viewed a 'player cam' would ever think you could watch a game with one, they are unwatchable and far worse than what is already available.
The strikes me more as a tech looking for a reason to exist, it is not a solution to any real problem I am aware of.
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