Re: I discern a few more things from this.
I agree with you on point 3 but only in respect to international sport. Most football, loathe it or hate it, is a private business. The businesses have a perfect right to milk the shallow minded for their cash. Sport between nations should be free to air. Besides, keeping most of it on paid for services means I don't even have to suffer the unpleasant moment of seeing it when channel hopping.
Which brings me on to the other part that should be regulated, service providers should be required to offer major sports as clearly defined and separately billed packages. You cannot get Sky, even the most basic package with no sport channels, without some of your money going to the FA. If I want a package without cretinball I should be able to get a package that does not fund other peoples watching of cretinball. Back in the late 90's the basic no sport package used to be £8/month, then they did the first of their £billion deals with the FA and my bill went up to £30 for no more channels. And my contract got cancelled. There's some good original content on Sky1 now, I'd pay for that if I were only paying for that.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
