What are the Austadium forums thoughts on the coverage of football both domestic and overseas on Australian Pay and FTA TV?

If you look around we get quite a vast array of different football competitons from around the globe.

SBS despite being a bit of a lame duck in the FTA stakes has the rights to the World Cup and other FIFA international tournaments, the Australian national team,UEFA Champions league plus bits and pieces from around the world such as Brazilian and Argentinian highlights,the odd game from Europe plus it has what is Australia's only FTA football magazine show The World Game and considering they operate on a very tiny taxpayer funded budget they do an excellent job in keeping us informed with the footballing goings on around the world.

On the pay TV side we have of course Fox sports and ESPN.Fox have as we all know exclusive rights to the A-league and The English Premier League both of which form a big part of the Australian footballing public viewing and by all regards are now very much a big part of Foxsports programming.Whilst ESPN give us more UEFA Champions League,The FA Cup from England,The Spanish League and cup, a bit of Serie A,the Dutch League and MLS.Again a very good selection and for us football fans well worth the subscription fees.
All that is really missing is a residential version of Setanta like they get in the UK and USA which has other competitons and leagues like UEFA Cup,Carling Cup,Scottish League,German league, full Serie A coverage plus a lot of internationals from various countries.
Setant is currently only available in pubs and clubs within Australia but I look forward to the day when it is part of Foxrtel or Austar's channel line up.

So what are your thoughts on the ever increasing amount of football coverage on Australian tv screens?

Are we headed for individual football channels like GOL.TV and Fox Soccer in the USA or do you think we'll see the current format around for a while longer?

Will the other FTA TV companies jump aboard the footballing band waggon and look at perhaps adding the world game to their sporting schedules?

I think given a few more years we will end up with a football only channel on Foxsports and we will pay extra for it. I have been very happy to see ESPN improve their picture quality late last year. I would also be very happy if we could actually get Euro sport and not just the news channel.

Given the problems SBS have had getting football content this year I am a little surprised they ahve not purchased Channel 4 (UK) french football show. It's already in english.

There's 3 reasons to subscribe to Foxtel:

EPL

A League

Columbo

pfft

he's just a poor man's Maaatlock

I gotta agree I spent time in France when i was doing my 2 year working holiday.

The football over there is fantastic and some of the African players you see are wonderful footballers.

Saw a few games at O'M's velodrome and believe me you will not see a better atmosphere at a sporting event anywhere!!

Fox will be without the AFL soon, so a dedicated football channel might not be out of the equation.

If that ever happens I am subscribing pronto.

I don't think so. 7 & 10 will need Fox to show the games they don't. A deal will be done with Fox Sports before the contract starts in 2007. I did read a TV analyst feels Fox Footy will probably become Fox Sports 3 and lose its AFL dedication. Apparently it isn't driving subscriptions as much as hoped. This means more airtime to be filled with other sports eg more soccer.

The problem with that theory is it would require Fox Sports to buy more airtime off Foxtel, whereas Foxtel own Fox Footy.

It's not like Fox Sports and Fox Footy are owned by the same people.