Earlier in the week Twitter struck a deal with Premier League domestic rights holder Sky Sports to show ‘some’ live action during games in 2016/17.
The deal comes two years after the Premier League began warning fans that the sharing of live action on social media was a breach of copyright and against the law, and reminded fans that it applied to them filming at a game and then posting up live in game action, as much as it did filming a television and posting similar – or serving as a conduit for illegal streams of matches.
As ever in football, the legals come down to the ££££££’s and who seems to lose out on their share of the pie.
In any event, with Twitter signing a deal with Sky Sports – details undisclosed – it now means that Sky’s @SkyFootball account will be showing a selection of goals and ‘moments’ within minutes of them happening during match days.
The in ‘real time’ action will also be boosted with post match analysis from the broadcaster.
For the geeks amongst us who understand this kind of thing, the clips will be available through Twitter Amplify which is an ‘initiative’ to ‘unite broadcasters and advertisers’ to enable them to get ‘high quality, branded video content directly into people’s timelines’.
What kind of content, and how widely sourced or balanced it will be is not known, but at the moment it is Premier League based only and you would expect the more favoured Sky sides to be more predominant than others in the division – at least to begin with.
However, for the armchair fan, where producers dictate what game they should watch, and fans at grounds who’d like to see more than score updates of matches that might be important to their own club – this is a step in the right direction.
But how much of a step remains to be seen.
With the Premier League’s reliance on television money, and the technology available to enable fans to watch/record a game of their choice, live from kick off, without the need to inflate further the monthly fee with broadcasters and suppliers – and let’s face it thesedays with televisions capable of split screening two matches of importance at the very least – giving fans better options, and better in the moment updates is no bad thing, and long overdue.
David Gibbs, digital director of Sky Sports & Sky News, said.
‘We`re delighted to be working with Twitter to bring in-game clips to football fans across the UK & Ireland as part of our biggest ever season of football. With more than 30 million users across a variety of platforms, Sky Sports is already the number one digital destination for sports in the UK. By expanding our partnership with Twitter, we can bring even more great action to an even bigger audience.’
This is a social media shift as Twitter has recently agreed deals in the US for live broadcast rights with the NFL (National Football League), NHL (National Hockey League), and MLB (Major League Baseball).
So whatever step this proves to be for ‘real football’ it will no doubt be the first step on a long journey ahead.
