Live AFL on rogue OS websites

[one-eyed]

Live AFL on rogue websites
Adam Hamilton, Damian Barrett | September 04, 2009

THE AFL's TV deals are being compromised by a growing number of renegade websites.

The Herald Sun has learnt www.justin.tv and other overseas sites are offering free live coverage of AFL matches, including this weekend's finals.

AFL chief operating officer Gillon McLachlan was made aware of the free internet service yesterday, and was last night trying to prevent the net broadcasting of tomorrow's Geelong-Western Bulldogs and Sunday's St Kilda-Collingwood qualifying finals.

AFL chief executive Andrew Demetriou said this week he would not allow the game's official broadcasters - Channels 10 and 7 - to go live unless the games were sold out.

The websites rely on their users to provide access to the footage in what the industry calls peer-to-peer streaming.

Herald Sun reader Troy said he had regularly watched AFL matches live on the internet this season.

"I can tell you there will be at least five live broadcasts of the Geelong-Bulldogs game on the net -- justin.tv will be one of them," Troy said.

"They've been up all season. I watched the Cats-Bulldogs game two weeks ago and the Essendon-Hawthorn match last Saturday, both live.

"It's over the net in high-definition digital and doesn't cost a cent."

While Ten sometimes broadcasts its Saturday night match live, Seven has at least an hour delay on its Friday night and Sunday afternoon broadcasts.

"There are people breaching our copyright . . . and we are constantly vigilant in our monitoring so as to enforce our rights," McLachlan said.

This is the third AFL season of the AFL's $780 million, five-year TV deals.

The league is hopeful of reaping $1 billion for the 2012-16 rights, but to reach that figure it will need to prove to broadcasters it can ban all rogue internet access.

Justin.tv yesterday boasted it had "millions of people watching 1529 live channels".

Troy said accessing live footy on the internet was easy.

"I bought a cable to connect the computer to my plasma for the Essendon-Hawthorn game," he said.

"You don't even have to be web savvy."

http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/sport/afl/story/0,26576,26023487-19742,00.html

[the_boy_jake]

AFL shaking its fist as usual. Boneheads. If some geek can run a high def stream from his bedroom they could too. Happens because there is a market. They won't do it because I would think that they entered into a very shortsighted TV deal with 9/10/Foxtel. Lets say they charged $5 per game. If there are 20,000 expats who watch it thats a decent pay day.

Interestingly the premier league tried to block an Israeli person from doing the P2P broadcasting and the Israeli government told the PL to F.O.