Internet Firm Handed Live England 2010 Qualifier
With England safely qualified for the 2010 World Cup, the team’s upcoming qualifier away in Ukraine will be shown exclusively live to subscribers on the internet – the first time an England match has not been available to a TV audience.
Kentaro – an international agency appointed by the Ukrainian Football Federation – originally sold the UK rights for the game to Setanta.
However after the pay-TV firm collapsed, digital sport specialist Perform was appointed to stream the match online.
It is understood none of the traditional broadcasters were willing to pay the asking price to screen the game, which kicks off at 5.15pm on Saturday.
Subscribers are set to pay at least £4.99 to view the match which will be available on a dedicated website and viewers will be able to subscribe to it using PayPal, the electronic payment service.
Peter Silverstone, managing director of Kentaro, stated: ‘You will watch as you would any other streaming on the internet, like YouTube or the BBC iPlayer – there will be a pop-up player that will show the match in a very good quality stream.’
The cost of watching the game is currently being advertised as £4.99 if viewers signed up before midnight on Wednesday. Charges rise to £9.99 for those who subscribe on Thursday and Friday, and £11.99 on Saturday.
Silverstone insisted the project was ‘commercially viable’, stating: ‘We have a huge marketing effort behind us with the various newspaper groups that will promote the match on their websites.
‘Commercially this will work and genuinely offers an exciting opportunity for us. We wouldn’t embark on this project if we didn’t feel it had strategic long-term value, this isn’t a one-off shot.’
Silverstone said Kentaro would take a maximum of one million subscribers for the match – which he said equates to about 2.5 million viewers – because this would be the ‘safe number to stop at to ensure the optimal broadcast’.
The Odeon cinema chain will show the game live throughout the country, including at their flagship cinema at Leicester Square, but the match will not be available in pubs.
Football Association spokesman Adrian Bevington admitted: ‘We would obviously like to see the game broadcast to as many people as possible. However these are the rights of the Ukrainian FA and the agents they’ve appointed to sell them.
‘A traditional TV platform would be ideal to broadcast the game but it’s not the case. It’s not in our control.’
ITV has the rights to home England games and, under the terms of their contract, has taken over Setanta’s broadcast rights for away friendlies.
However, that aspect of the deal does not cover away qualifying games, and neither the BBC, ITV, Sky nor Channel Five made a successful bid for the match.
