England football match to air online but not TV. Do you care?

I don't care about soccer, HOWEVER I am a sport fan (mainly Australian Football). I would LOVE this to become an option, whereby we can cherrypick our sporting coverage at say $5 per match, $10 per sport or $30 for a live internet stream of the cable sports channels. I'd rather pay $30 for sport ONLY than pay $70 for a cable network for which I have to include a $30 "tier" for sport when I only want the sport.

Nothing wrong with user-pays.

And it means I can watch even when I'm not home (eg travelling) rather than wasting my subscription.

It also means people may get access to items/events that are covered in other markets but not their own, eg cricket could be shown in the US or Europe, Aussie Rules shown live in many parts of the world, and an England v Ukraine soccer match in Australia (or many other matches for which there are a small number of viewers - not enough to show live on cable or free tv, but someone would want to pay to see it.

And if a pub wanted to pay the $5 and connect a laptop to a projector (like is done in business meetings millions of times every day!) they can show it too!

Welcome to the future of television. Bring on a fibre internet conection!

I couldn't give a rat's arse about football. In fact I'm surprised and even a little disappointed in myself that I've gone to the trouble of writing about it.

I'm not interested whatsoever in football. Airing it exclusively online means that there will be a chance to broadcast something more worthwhile (hopefully) in the slot in the TV schedule.

I am completely disinterested.

However, for all those people whining about having to watch it on the laptop, or pubs not being able to get it- you CAN watch it through a TV, via various means, as long as you have an internet connection.

And this actually makes it more available, not less so. At the last count there were just under 32 million people with online access, between 70 and 80% of which are broadband. That's nearly 3 times that of Sky.

This is just another piece of News Corp propoganda because they want to rule the world and the internet frightens them. Bear in mind News Corp still retains a 7.5% stake in ITV and that they jointly control pretty much all the football viewing in the UK.

Couple this with the upcoming UK Hulu launch which will give ITV a 24% stake in the online entity to News Corp and NBC's 27 points each. Which means they'll be business partners both on air and online- and that you can expect some kind of mutually beneficial online offering for watching football in the future... I'm sure at that point they however they will hail it as 'the future of sporting TV'. Or some such nonsense.

I care, I'm a big football fan and I think its terrible that I won't be watching an England match because my COMPUTER sucks.
Why did the BBC not buy the rights? Gets me so angry.

I think that the people who will really miss out are the Pubs and the people who would spend their Saturday afternoon watching the match in them. Lots of pubs could rely on a England game to draw in crowds of punters, the internet broadcast will probably put a stop to that.

Yes, I care a little bit.

I care a little bit, but not that it's online. Only that it's not freely accessible to anyone who wants to watch it.

The only reason we're even getting the chance to watch it online is because Setanta went bust and the rights to this match were back up for grabs. I think international matches should fall under the same thing as the FA Cup and be shown on terrestrial TV all the time and not be put out to the highest bidder.

And will I be watching it on a grainy little laptop screen? Nope.