Effing tennis, and effing Eurosport!

neeb

So I was going to watch the 9:30 Dauphine highlights on Eurosport player and yet again, things have been significantly delayed by extended tennis coverage, this time by nearly an hour... 10:20 is 12:20 where I am, so a tricky option with a work day tomorrow. Someone needs to give Eurosport a kick up the arse, why on earth is overlapping coverage of a different sport a problem with an online player? Why not just spawn a different channel if stuff runs over schedule? And why do they never have highlights that you can watch on demand?

It certainly gives me no qualms in trying to rip off the bastards by downloading and distributing "illegal" stuff whenever I get the chance. If they won't sell it, they can't complain.

Beatmaker

It is utterly frustrating, and may result in the cancellation of Eurosport Player for me. Why they cannot stream additional channels online is a mystery to me.

JonS123

I had this set to record on my tivo... only had around 20 mins or something of coverage...

Would be nice if Sky did a dedicated cycling channel, similar to F1, probably living in a pipe dream here, but it would be nice

neeb

Tennis seems to be an intrinsically troublesome game when it comes to hogging airtime and going over schedule. Firstly, it's a series of lots of separate matches between two individuals, each of which needs its own airtime, often at the same time... Secondly, you can never predict the length of the games and matches because the games can end up going back and forward for ever from "advantage X" to "deuce" etc, and you also need tie-breaker games to decide sets sometimes.

I suggest changing the rules for TV. All of the competitors should just go onto the court at the same time, half on each side of the net. They could whack the ball back and forward as much as they want, gaining a point for each time they manage to get a chance to hit the ball over the net into the opposite area, and losing a point for each attempted hit which turns out to be a foul. The winner would simply be the person with the most points at the end of a specified time period. They could also be permitted to whack each other with the rackets to get at the ball, which would make the whole thing a lot more entertaining. And the audience could be allowed to throw strawberries at them.

shinyhelmut

Sod the cycling that sounds like great tv

Gazzetta67

Eurosport UK Channel 410
Eurosport UK Channel 411
Eurosport HD Channel 412 All Effin TENNIS !!!!!! :evil:

Can those idiots in the Eurosport centre not see that the 2 big Tour Fav's are in this race and yet we will have to do with effin "highlights" at 6pm or thereabouts. Cycling is prob eurosports biggest audience and yet we get treated like this THREE bloody channels all showing tennis it's a pish poor show. Rant over !!!

afx237vi

The Dauphiné was on Eurosport 2 as scheduled at 7.30pm.

Rolland Garros is one of the premier sporting events Eurosport holds the rights to, so why is anyone surprised they go wall-to-wall with it?

neeb

afx237vi wrote:

The Dauphiné was on Eurosport 2 as scheduled at 7.30pm.

Rolland Garros is one of the premier sporting events Eurosport holds the rights to, so why is anyone surprised they go wall-to-wall with it?

Yesterday the Dauphiné highlights were scheduled twice, I was out riding during the first one and had planned to watch the second, which was delayed by an hour.

No reason for Eurosport not to show wall-to-wall tennis, I just don't get why in this streaming digital age we have to be prevented from watching one thing because something else is happening at the same time, or have to watch non-live events at specified times instead of on demand. I guess it's because although I'm always watching online with Eurosport player through a UK VPN from abroad, Eurosport is still mostly set up for "TV sets" and "channels" (I haven't owned a TV in nearly 10 years).

My theory is that these days, this is just a way for Eurosport and others to exercise control. Because we all grew up with a finite number of real-time channels on terrestrial airwave broadcasts, we think of that as normal and put up with this rubbish. For Eurosport and others it's just a way of limiting duplication and distribution of the material. They are shooting themselves in the foot however, because if they just sold the stuff on demand I would happily pay a lot more for it than I am paying for Eurosport player, but as it is I am forced to get it for free via P2P, and am additionally left with a hostile attitude towards the company that will continue beyond the inevitable future implementation of more rational marketing and distribution strategies.

blazing_saddles

afx237vi wrote:

The Dauphiné was on Eurosport 2 as scheduled at 7.30pm.

Live for free on France 3 and even extended coverage (2 hours live) for free on Rai Sport 2.
Eurosport: The home of cycling..........sorry, make that tennis. The station is run by a bunch of ball boys/girls. What a racquet.

afx237vi wrote:

Rolland Garros is one of the premier sporting events Eurosport holds the rights to, so why is anyone surprised they go wall-to-wall with it?

True, but it's a pity that UKES can't break away from the franchise, just a little, when national tv channels are carrying the same thing.
ITV have blanket coverage too. As for snoozeker mucking up earlier season races......

andyrac

Eurosport1, 2 & HD with non stop tennis; ITV1 & 4 with the same......Er, c'mon...no live WTCC, Dauphin, et al...
Why can't they have a choice of watching on the red button?
Eurosport: The Home of Cycling (except for when there is snooker, or tennis)

redvee

Flicked on Eurosport in the vain hope of cycling being on this afternoon and when flicking between Eurosport 1 & Eurosport 2 I found Eurosport 3D. The picture on my 2D TV did look a little odd.

mroli

I'd like to know what the viewing figures are for the cycling v, say for example, the tennis. I would have thought they would have been much higher for the tennis.

rick_chasey

Pfft. The giro coverage was excellent - far more than I ever expected, and the whole of July will be basically only cycling, so I wouldn't complain too much.

Now showing a weirdo motorsport race half way through the Ronde...THAT was scandalous.

RichN95.

mroli wrote:

I'd like to know what the viewing figures are for the cycling v, say for example, the tennis. I would have thought they would have been much higher for the tennis.

I would think the same. Ask your (non-cycling) aquaintances who Rafa Nadal, Novak Djokovik, Cadel Evans and Alberto Contador are, and I know which two have the most name recognition.

Beatmaker

RichN95 wrote:

mroli wrote:

I'd like to know what the viewing figures are for the cycling v, say for example, the tennis. I would have thought they would have been much higher for the tennis.

I would think the same. Ask your (non-cycling) aquaintances who Rafa Nadal, Novak Djokovik, Cadel Evans and Alberto Contador are, and I know which two have the most name recognition.

I don't think anyone is disputing tennis having a higher profile than professional cycling in the UK. The main issue is the question of why one has to give way for the other on Eurosport Player. Surely they could stream both and capture a higher audience share, and generate increased ad revenue and subscription fees.

iainf72

Beatmaker wrote:

I don't think anyone is disputing tennis having a higher profile than professional cycling in the UK. The main issue is the question of why one has to give way for the other on Eurosport Player. Surely they could stream both and capture a higher audience share, and generate increased ad revenue and subscription fees.

I don't use the Player, so I don't know, but don't they just broadcast the same thing that's on the 3 ES TV channels via the player?

If so, doing "specials" would significantly change their cost model.

blazing_saddles

More good news. The Tour du Suisse is getting the usual Eurosport weekend shafting, too.
30 minutes late on, a week come Saturday and a hour sometime, somewhere on the Sunday.
Wall to wall Le Mans. Nothing quite like watching cars go round and round for 24 hours.....

neeb

iainf72 wrote:

I don't use the Player, so I don't know, but don't they just broadcast the same thing that's on the 3 ES TV channels via the player?

If so, doing "specials" would significantly change their cost model.

Yes, they pretty much just broadcast the ES channels with some additions, e.g. sometimes they have special channels for certain sports (don't know if there is anything equivalent on the TV?)

You could be right about the "cost model", in which case, that's the problem. I don't care about Eurosport's cost model, but I do think that if an organisation has a monopoly on the distribution rights for something, they have a responsibility to distribute it in a way that satisfies demand, at whatever price is necessary to cover their costs and make a reasonable but not excessive profit. If not, then they shouldn't have the distribution rights.

It's all very well to highlight the large amount of coverage of cycling on Eurosport, but does anyone who has a life really have the time to watch 3 or 4 hours of live coverage every day, during the day, during the major tour & classics seasons? What I need is an hour or 45mins of well-chosen highlights with good quality commentary that I can watch when I want, and maybe live coverage + longer highlights for the major grand tour mountain stages & the monuments etc. Cycling TV, for all their faults, used to do this pretty well a few years ago until Eurosport (I presume) used their commercial muscle to push them out of the game. Now I can't watch highlights on demand, and if I do organise my day around catching them at the scheduled time in the evening, chances are about 50/50 they will have been moved or delayed.

No_Ta_Doctor

iainf72 wrote:

Beatmaker wrote:

I don't think anyone is disputing tennis having a higher profile than professional cycling in the UK. The main issue is the question of why one has to give way for the other on Eurosport Player. Surely they could stream both and capture a higher audience share, and generate increased ad revenue and subscription fees.

I don't use the Player, so I don't know, but don't they just broadcast the same thing that's on the 3 ES TV channels via the player?

If so, doing "specials" would significantly change their cost model.

I imagine that live broadcast - on whichever platform, web or tv, costs quite a bit to do, certainly more than recording some footage and doing a bit of editing on it. Just chucking a second, third, fourth live broadcast out on the net isn't going to make that any cheaper or easier. On top of that, it's also possible that what Eurosport have bought for the Dauphine is an extended highlights package, not live broadcast rights.

iainf72

No tA Doctor wrote:

I imagine that live broadcast - on whichever platform, web or tv, costs quite a bit to do, certainly more than recording some footage and doing a bit of editing on it. Just chucking a second, third, fourth live broadcast out on the net isn't going to make that any cheaper or easier. On top of that, it's also possible that what Eurosport have bought for the Dauphine is an extended highlights package, not live broadcast rights.

Eurosport take the feeds from the host broadcaster for the most part. And then Harmon does his magic over the top of the picture. Fairly low production costs. If they start editing together packages or highlights shows that's a whole bunch of work.

dougzz

Yeah, Eurosport is rubbish in the UK. If only the had the quality and volume of cycling coverage that ITV and the BBC have :roll:

Tennis,various forms of motor racing mostly all bore me, but they're sports that typically don't last a defined time. Get over it, Eurosport is brilliant, especially if you only speak English. Can you imagine the blood spitting on this forum if a major mountain stage of a GT was slower than expected and they cut away 'on time' to show some sport deemed beneath humanity by some posters here?

I live in a block that had now provided centralised feeds for aerials. Found that on the Hotbird Sat, my Panasonic will tune to a million and one Arabic sex channels, but in amongst them is RAI sports 1 and 2, most excellent.

No_Ta_Doctor

iainf72 wrote:

No tA Doctor wrote:

I imagine that live broadcast - on whichever platform, web or tv, costs quite a bit to do, certainly more than recording some footage and doing a bit of editing on it. Just chucking a second, third, fourth live broadcast out on the net isn't going to make that any cheaper or easier. On top of that, it's also possible that what Eurosport have bought for the Dauphine is an extended highlights package, not live broadcast rights.

Eurosport take the feeds from the host broadcaster for the most part. And then Harmon does his magic over the top of the picture. Fairly low production costs. If they start editing together packages or highlights shows that's a whole bunch of work.

Yes, but you still need a live production team, dedicated up and down links and God knows what other technical stuff. And it's Eurosport, not Britsport, so you'll be doing it for more than just the one country... In contrast a bit of video chopping plus a voiceover, done at leisure after the race, is probably a fair bit simpler.

I'm just guessing though. My guess is that it's more about the live V highlights broadcast rights.

iainf72

No tA Doctor wrote:

I'm just guessing though. My guess is that it's more about the live V highlights broadcast rights.

Nah, it's live from Thursday. It's just being bumped for the tennis, which I completely understand.

disgruntledgoat

dougzz wrote:

I live in a block that had now provided centralised feeds for aerials. Found that on the Hotbird Sat, my Panasonic will tune to a million and one Arabic sex channels,

Tell me more...

I'm asking for a friend.

No_Ta_Doctor

iainf72 wrote:

No tA Doctor wrote:

I'm just guessing though. My guess is that it's more about the live V highlights broadcast rights.

Nah, it's live from Thursday. It's just being bumped for the tennis, which I completely understand.

Damn you and your empirical evidence. You've no respect for a beautiful hypothesis.

Completely understand it getting bumped as well. The threads about the Dauphine all started with "they're all just training, aren't they, is anyone actually going to try to win?" Not exactly a firm basis for giving it priority over one of the biggest events in a sport that is globally far, far bigger than cycling.

afx237vi

neeb wrote:

You could be right about the "cost model", in which case, that's the problem. I don't care about Eurosport's cost model, but I do think that if an organisation has a monopoly on the distribution rights for something, they have a responsibility to distribute it in a way that satisfies demand, at whatever price is necessary to cover their costs and make a reasonable but not excessive profit. If not, then they shouldn't have the distribution rights.

In that case you should be complaining far more about ITV, who hold the rights to all of the ASO races and only show the Tour de France live.

neeb wrote:

It's all very well to highlight the large amount of coverage of cycling on Eurosport, but does anyone who has a life really have the time to watch 3 or 4 hours of live coverage every day, during the day, during the major tour & classics seasons? What I need is an hour or 45mins of well-chosen highlights with good quality commentary that I can watch when I want, and maybe live coverage + longer highlights for the major grand tour mountain stages & the monuments etc. Cycling TV, for all their faults, used to do this pretty well a few years ago until Eurosport (I presume) used their commercial muscle to push them out of the game. Now I can't watch highlights on demand, and if I do organise my day around catching them at the scheduled time in the evening, chances are about 50/50 they will have been moved or delayed.

As a former subscriber of Cycling TV I very much doubt Eurosport had anything to do with their failure. It was one of the most technically incompetent websites I have ever had the misfortune of using.

inkyfingers

afx237vi wrote:

As a former subscriber of Cycling TV I very much doubt Eurosport had anything to do with their failure. It was one of the most technically incompetent websites I have ever had the misfortune of using.

Great idea, terribly executed.

iainf72

Also, Eurosport don't have a monopoly. As Afx points out, ITV can also broadcast ASO races.

The teams get no revenue from the airing of the racing, so they want to shown as widely as possible. Which is why cycling isn't on pay channels (and something that tripped Sky up when they thought they'd be able to snap up the cycling)

Until a few years ago, there was no Dauphine at all on telly here.

afx237vi

inkyfingers wrote:

afx237vi wrote:

As a former subscriber of Cycling TV I very much doubt Eurosport had anything to do with their failure. It was one of the most technically incompetent websites I have ever had the misfortune of using.

Great idea, terribly executed.

Indeed. When it worked, it was pretty good, with decent picture quality and good commentary. When it worked.

mroli

iainf72 wrote:

The teams get no revenue from the airing of the racing, so they want to shown as widely as possible. Which is why cycling isn't on pay channels (and something that tripped Sky up when they thought they'd be able to snap up the cycling)

Not true I'm afraid Iain - Sky are more than happy for Eurosport to carry cycling - they don't have room in their schedules for it, it is still niche broadcasting and a robust Eurosport benefits Sky as they take an income from Eurosport. A robust Eurosport advertising Sky is ideal.

iainf72

mroli wrote:

Not true I'm afraid Iain - Sky are more than happy for Eurosport to carry cycling - they don't have room in their schedules for it, it is still niche broadcasting and a robust Eurosport benefits Sky as they take an income from Eurosport. A robust Eurosport advertising Sky is ideal.

There might be that, but Sky cannot take cycling, as they don't offer free to air. Which is a requirement of broadcasting it.

When they started the team someone "in the know" said they'd hoped to pick it up.