The Football League and Premier league are trying to negotiate various deals whereby they can make a huge amount of money from TV companies and the internet. The spectacular collapse of their £328 million pay-per-view deal with NTL gives an idea of the massive amounts we're talking about. The recent collapse of ITV Digital and the consequent near-bankrupty of the majority of the clubs in the FL only adds to the weight of evidence that suggests that none of the bastards know what they're doing, and it's ruining football. The FAPL and the FL are clearly trying to "maximise revenue potential" or some such grisly marketing speak. They've suddenly woken up to the fact that sites like mine are popular with the fans, and they don't like it. They've realised that there's money to be made from the Web, or at least there was until fairly recently. They're not alone in that - most of the media companies have also got into football websites big time in the last couple of years, but at least they're only trying to outgun us by spending millions on their own sites. What the FL don't understand is that people like me aren't trying to make money out our sites. We're doing it for the love of the club we support. The FL and FAPL are now forbidding any unofficial site from publishing fixtures, on the grounds that the fixture list is their "intellectual property". Therefore technically they can sue me for telling you that Chelsea play Arsenal on Wednesday 6th September. Conversations I've had with three separate lawyers, however, reveal the interesting opinion that any attempt to prosecute on the grounds that the fixtures list is the FAPL's intellectual property are extremely unlikely to hold up in court. In other words, they're trying a flanker, and their lawyers are in turn selling them a pup. What a mess. A spokesman for the FL gave the following reasons for trying to stop the unofficial sites from providing a list that can be published anywhere, by anyone, except by unofficial web sites: "The fixtures list takes considerable time, skill and effort to produce. Thus the League has the right to licence the list for a fee to any party it chooses to do business with." Fair enough. If they want to give the impression that the fixtures list is some kind of huge effort on their part, (instead of what it is - a computer program) then I've got no problem with that. So why don't I pay for a licence, then ? Read on: "It is the policy of the League not to licence fixtures to websites in direct competition with those of its member clubs. Our member clubs themselves would simply not want us to provide content to websites they, in effect, compete with." And there was me thinking that I was SUPPORTING Chelsea, not competing with them. That's the problem, you see: these grey little men only think in terms of maximising revenue. They see the unofficial sites as competition to the clubs they're supporting. They haven't got the first clue about what motivates the people who pay their wages, i.e. football fans, which is why football is going in the sad direction that it is. It's a game, after all. Pele called it "The Beautiful Game", but it's anything but, now that it's been hijacked by commercial interests, or greed, to give it its proper name. The FL, FAPL and to a lesser extent the clubs can only see as far as the the few quid that some of the unofficial sites generate (I don't make any money out of mine), but the truth is that unofficial sites are generating far more business for them than they're losing by allowing what they see as competition. I get hundreds of fans visiting this site, from all over the world, all wanting info on the club they love. They're free to go to the official site, and they do, but they also like the alternative, fan's viewpoint that I provide. This doesn't make them go away and start supporting Arsenal, nor does it stop them from buying Chelsea merchandise. In fact you could argue that having my site around reinforces their loyalty to Chelsea. It's hard, therefore, to see how I can be said to be competing with the club. I do this because I love Chelsea, not because I want to make money out of them. It'd be nice if we could say the same thing for the Football/Premier Leagues. Enough said ?
© 2000
Priesty's Chelsea FC Refuge.
