Five, Livestation To Broadcast Live European Footy On iPhone
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Broadcaster Five has partnered with VOD site Livestation to offer live streaming of Europa League football via Apple’s iPhone. The £3.99 app launched on Friday allows live viewing of Five’s Thursday-night fixtures, plus highlights, for a one-off fee. The app’s iTunes page says it will work via wifi or 3G connections, so it’s a genuinely mobile proposition, and is currently the cheapest way for UK consumers to watch European games live on mobile. The Europa League, previously the UEFA Cup, might not have the same razzmatazz or profile as its big brother the UEFA Champions’ League, but it’s a step in the right direction for UK sports broadcasting, which is still mostly tied to pay and terrestrial TV.
The £3.99 pricepoint seems cheap for all that live football: Is Five conceding that it can’t continue to monetise its sports rights through advertising? This deal comes days after Kentaro and Perform announced they would broadcast England’s upcoming World Cup qualifier live online via PPV, a decision prompted by the collapse of Irish pay TV operator Setanta. BSkyB (NYSE: BSY)—and now ESPN (NYSE: DIS)—uses sports to draw in paying customers as part of broader subscription deals, but for the less-popular matches that can’t attract the big advertising budgets or millions of paying subscribers, taking it straight to the customer via direct payments is next best option.
SEE ALSO: Online PPV For England Football Match After Setanta Collapse
Irish broadcaster RTE offers live streaming of full Champions’ League games for €5 each, while ITV provides mobile highlights of games for the cost of two text messages. Sky Sports’s Football 24/7 mobile subscription has Premier League and European highlights plus downloads from Sky Sports shows for £5 a month, while you can subscribe to Sky’s entire news and sport output, with prices starting at £6 a month, via Sky Mobile.
Posted In: Entertainment, Sports, Mobile, Companies, Five
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