Threat to Six Nations free to air viewing.

LorMal wrote: »

Because money should not be the number one priority. Society has been totally hoodwinked over the last 10-15 years by Sky and their ilk. Sport was all free to air before Murdoch got his sweaty palms on it.
Who 'owns' any sport? Why should any group of corporate executives determine the public's right to watch players representing their countries playing any sport?
If the Rugby nations sell their souls like the soccer idiots did, bad luck to them They will be facing crippling wages bills in a few years time and we will eventually be left with a small faction of big clubs with 'stars' from all over the world with little or no connection to the locality of their clubs.
It has made soccer a total bore fest. It will ruin rugby too.

Spot on.

My 2 kids play rugby with a local club. One of the senior team from years ago went on to play for Munster, hes a real hero to all the kids. All this coverage on sky has already distanced the game from the grassroots.

Theres no way watching a bunch of overpaid professional playing soccer gets the heart pumping when compared to watching 2 amatuer teams playing their socks off for pride in the club jersey.

I have seen more live Leinster matches in the RDS / Lansdowne than ive seen on tv because i refuse to buy in this sky BS.

I refuse to get a sky subscription on the basis of all the above.

themont85 wrote: »

Well you must have missed all the Pro12 games from the RDS on FTA in the last few seasons.:rolleyes:

You don't have an entitlement to watch all games FTA. I agree that there should be some form of FTA for the European Cup - the final - and that should be provided for. Hopefully at least with BT and Sky Sports both bidding hard for exclusivity next time the authorities will use this leverage to secure FTA coverage of the final and there's no need for it to be added to any list. It's common sense.

Yeah watched my share of Pro12 - my Irish is improving all the time :pac::pac::pac:

I agree that I have no right to FTA - sports on TV is entertainment. The point is that if rugby goes the same professional route as soccer then sometime in the future we will have 30 lads playing for 2 ''clubs'' that have no connection whatsoever to the area / city / province they are playing for. That would be sad IMHO, but probably inevitable.

Sky / BT / whatever will bring that day closer with their pay packages.

bilston wrote: »

Maybe that's what I had heard. Fair enough but there will still be some FTA CL football in the UK albeit less than before.

a LOT less actually.
Theres 21 weeks of matches (i.e. 21 weeks where theres a Tuesday/Wednesday of a game on)

The first 8 are the preliminary rounds so thats 13 match days that ITV show.
In the future they'll show one game from each british team, so incl Scotland thats a max of 5 games to be shown, but possibly only 3 or 4 if the english and scotish team in the qualification looses before the group stages.
So you could have 3 games shown and 10 not. And at that, you'd think that BT sport could specify the crappest of the fixtures involving British teams to be shown by the FTA channel.
The latter stages aren't listed as being of public interest by the UK government so it could be the case that a British team reaches the final and it's not shown on FTA TV.
So all in all "it is on FTA telly", but it may as well not be for all the use it will be.

RTE geo-blocked their signal to N.I. last night. I had to watch INVERTWAT.

jacothelad wrote: »

RTE geo-blocked their signal to N.I. last night. I had to watch INVERTWAT.

Geo-blocked on satellite yes but strangely enough not on Freeview.

Digifriendly wrote: »

Geo-blocked on satellite yes but strangely enough not on Freeview.

I've never tuned in the Freeview facility on my t.v.s, can you access Freeview thru' a Sky satelite dish?

OldRio wrote: »

You need an aerial jaco

Yes, Freeview is digital terrestrial television and to get RTE you need Freeview HD equipment.

Interesting piece about the impact of Pay TV on Irish Sport

Surprised I hadn't seen that before tbh, was drawn to my attention after reading this article about the 'disaster' (my term) that has been GAA to Pay-TV.

total former wrote: »

The problem with that article on the GAA is that it's completely biased IMO, but more importantly, comparing viewing figures for games on RTE and Sky is pointless because it doesn't factor in people watching in pubs and clubs.

He quotes the example of Dublin v Monaghan which, he says, got an audience of 54,000. That is utter bollocks. I watched it in a pub full of people, none of whom were counted as having watched it, and I'm sure this was repeated in many pubs throughout Dublin, Monaghan and around the country.

It's the same with Andy McGeady's piece in the Times today, if he wants to believe that only half a million people watched England v Wales in 2002, let him off, but it's nonsense (good article otherwise though).

But the y-o-y numbers are comparable, that's the point.

The viewing figures quoted in this section have been sourced from official television ratings agencies, broadcasters and Public Relations firms. The ratings in Ireland are produced by TAM Ireland (Television Audience Measurement Ireland Ltd), which oversees an audience measurement system for the whole of the television advertising industry. TAM Ireland is made up of the majority of commercial broadcasters operating in Ireland (RTÉ, TV3, TG4, Channel 4, BSKYB Ireland, UTV, Viacom and Setanta Ireland) and the main Irish media buying agencies. It commissions Nielsen TV Audience Measurement to carry out the actual measurement service. The ratings in the United Kingdom are produced by the Broadcasters’ Audience Research Board (BARB). BARB was set up in 1981 to provide the industry standard television audience measurement service for broadcasters and the advertising industry. It is owned by BBC, ITV, Channel 4, Channel 5, BSkyB and the IPA (Institute of Practitioners in Advertising).

Massive Footnote issue! : Sky has not released the number of subscribers it has in Ireland with Sky Sports HD. and HD viewers are not included in his analysis.

In any case, it was the first article that I found more interesting/relevant than the second. His GAA article is massively biased, and he admits as much

I am a former employee of RTÉ where I worked as a reporter for Prime Time and I continue to do occasional work for RTÉ. I have also worked for the GAA, am currently under contract to complete a piece of work for the organization and am a lifelong, active member. As will also become clear I have a particular view on the GAA’s decision.

total former wrote: »

I don't understand what you mean by this, I don't see any year-on-year figures, and I'm not sure how the extract you've quoted solves the issue of pub/club viewers not being counted.

He's not collected and collated these numbers himself. They're official statistics for viewing figures.
That is, the 2013 figures also didn't control for more than one person behind every screen.

However, especially given the HD issue, I'd be taking these comparisons with a massive pinch of salt. I'd venture a a guess as to the real figure for both being significantly higher, but that the imbalance be sustained.

total former wrote: »

In a footnote. It renders the whole thing very shaky.

Worse tbh, but it is a blog and is personal. (re:GAA article)

total former wrote: »

But his first article is dodgy too. You're a man who loves stats Emmet, let's look at two from this one: http://historyhub.ie/the-impact-of-pay-tv-on-sport

Going on the ratings for the change from 2006 to 2007, you're looking at a massive drop, e.g.

So that's a drop of about 80% overall or 95% among farmers, based on ratings.

But skip down a bit; a Red C poll, which would take into account pub viewership, shows that the fall was a lot, lot less, that the decline was less than 50%. He doesn't make any attempt to reconcile these discrepancies. I dunno, it just seems he started with a position then looked for stats to back it up.

The Red C poll percentages aren't population percentages, they're samples from specific groups;

...less than half (46 per cent) of those who described themselves as “very interested” in rugby actually watched the Munster quarter-final match live in 2007 when it was exclusively on Sky Sports...

...only 28 per cent of people who described themselves as “fairly interested” in rugby watched the Munster Heineken Cup quarter-final live in 2007.....

They're not directly comparable numbers to "People of Ireland" which is what the other %s are (these include people who would declare themselves as being totally uninterested in rugby etc)

EDIT: sorry, I think you're meaning the disparity between the opening paragraph and the Red C graphs. The figures in the first paragraph (19k -> 1k) are from "AGB Nielsen Media Research, 31 March 2007 and 1 April 2006." whereas the graphs are from "Red C Research surveyed 1000 people with quotas set and data weighting to ensure the sample was randomly representative of the total Irish population 18+. Field work was conducted from 31 March to 4 April 2007."

And yes, they don't seem to tally in terms of numbers. TBH I'm not really bothered going in and taking the survey and research apart, (there'll doubtlessly be known issues with both) but I'm happy enough to note that they both agree that there is a downward movement.
--
In any case I wasn't prepared to defend the article to the nth, I was posting it more as an interesting piece with the history of "Pay Sports" and the developments in Ireland tbh.

It has always been a major challenge for sports organisations to decide how best to present their sports on television. The phenomenal growth of rugby in Ireland over the past decade is a tribute to rugby’s administrators and their capacity to extend rugby into areas where the game previously had no meaningful support. This is particularly true of Leinster. Striking the balance between using television to promote the game and using television money to pay its professional players is no straightforward matter

The article shows that people like us (interested in rugby) aren't really the ones that lose out when sport moves to pay-tv.