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In Italy something similar is happening: they have split the football game rights among different competitors, so that if you want to watch every game you have

In Italy something similar is happening: they have split the football game rights among different competitors, so that if you want to watch every game you have to spend >100€ monthly (that's very high for our economy). To this, add the facts that there has been a major hit to illegal streaming piracy and that football games are getting extremely boring in our country (compared to the Premier League or our Serie A of twenty years ago). The major effect of this is that newest generations aren't giving a shit anymore about football, much less than their parents and grandparents. These people are trying to milk a cow that will be dry in less than 5 years, unless a major revolution happens in FIGC (Italian Football Federation).

Hendrikto 1y ago
> they have split the football game rights among different competitors, so that if you want to watch every game you have to spend >100€ monthly Same in Germany. > newest generations aren't giving a shit anymore about football Also the same in Germany. But I am not sure which direction the causality goes. Maybe people are less interested in football because of the shenanigans they are constantly pulling. Or maybe they try to squeeze the remaining audience because people are less interested. It may also not be related at all.
- BoredPositron 1y ago
  >>Also the same in Germany. Just because you want something to be true to make your argument...doesn't make it true. Growth for memberships over the last few years are pretty strong especially in the under 16 age group with 9% yoy.[1] Attendance is also on a steady upwards trend.[2] The last EM also had new highs in viewership linear and streaming. As overall the non-linear media surrounding football is growing...[3] [1] https://www.dfb.de/news/dfb-mitgliederstatistik-mehr-schiris-mehr-qualifizierte-und-rekord-zum-jubilaeum https://www.dfb.de/news/dfb-mitgliederstatistik-mehr-schiris... [2] https://twocircles.com/gb/articles/2024-sports-attendance-germany https://twocircles.com/gb/articles/2024-sports-attendance-ge... [3] https://www.agf.de/en/services/press/press-release/tv-bilanz-2024-live-sport-tatort-und-ein-comeback-202 https://www.agf.de/en/services/press/press-release/tv-bilanz...
  - doublerabbit 1y ago
    > Attendance is also on a steady upwards trend > Professional sports in Germany attracted more fans than ever before in 2024; a trend not limited to just football.
    - BoredPositron 1y ago
      Come on dude it's on the same page just below the initial summary which seems to be the only thing you bothered to read. It's even big bullet pointy for the attention starved... >> German men’s football remains the most attended sport in the country by far. It is also a key driver of the overall attendance figures, with the top three professional leagues alone accounting for 46% of the growth since 2017/18.
      - doublerabbit 1y ago
        I'm bias. Born and raised in England, the nation of football, and I loathe football. The hooligan shenanigans we cause in other countries pisses me off. There is no respect. I got pushed on the subway the other day because of some local match. Some drunken twat thought I was someone who supported the rival opposition and nearly dragged me off the opposite escalator. I can't wait for football to die, I partake in sports too, I sword fence. While I can't vouch if it's the same for other countries where football isn't their thing. Generalizing for example Canada and Ice Hockey. But when I was in Canada coincidentally when national matches the vibe was holy different to that of Brits and football.
        BoredPositron 1y ago
        Totally fine. Still no need to spread FUD/misinformation.
        doublerabbit 1y ago
        Misrepresentation, yes. Neither FUD nor Misinformation when it's quoted out of the article
- wobfan 1y ago
  > Same in Germany. That's not right. Still expensive, but the dual abo for Sky Bundesliga + DAZN is 65€ per month.[1] 1 https://www.sky.de/pakete-produkte/sky-dazn https://www.sky.de/pakete-produkte/sky-dazn
  - mschuster91 1y ago
    Still doesn't give you the full Champions League. I get where the leagues came from, but the result for the customers has been worse.
  - ta12653421 1y ago
    65€ for watching _only_ football/soccer, Jesus :-D
  - Hendrikto 1y ago
    That’s not enough. You also need Prime and RTL+.
- madaxe_again 1y ago
  I think it’s most likely that football is honestly a bit shit, and there are many better things to do for entertainment that don’t require mortgaging a kidney to watch.
  - NickC25 1y ago
    try going to germany, where you can get a season ticket at top club for a few hundred euros. i think Bayern Munich's cheapest season ticket is like $200 at the current exchange rate. that's manageable. i've paid more than that for a single NFL game in OK-ish seats.
    - pronik 1y ago
      You won't get a season ticket for most clubs in your lifetime, the queues are enormous, so the price point really doesn't matter.
- pjmlp 1y ago
  What pisses me off over here, is that for some strange reason, well not strange rather the whole thing that is being discussed, we hardly get any matches on the radio, whereas in the south this is a given, even in Spain. It is always some streaming service like Magenta Sport, and that's it.
- kwanbix 1y ago
  Most leagues face the same issue: just one to three wealthy clubs dominate, winning around 70–80% of the time, which makes the competition less exciting. The German Bundesliga is one of the starkest examples: Bayern Munich has taken 16 of the last 20 titles.
  - ta12653421 1y ago
    haha, andy why is that? Because of ridiculous transfer rules & markets - if these would be killed, there would be much more competition, and it was that way, 20-30+ years ago....
    - kwanbix 1y ago
      You can see this in most everything: 5 companies dominate IT, 3 companies dominate sodas, 3 companies dominate credit cards, etc. I think it is a byproduct of the way our current system works.
rootsu 1y ago
On the other hand, Serie A started streaming all matches free on YouTube for SEA countries. https://old.reddit.com/r/soccer/comments/1nf7ghg/serie_a_announces_that_all_matches_from_gw_3/ https://old.reddit.com/r/soccer/comments/1nf7ghg/serie_a_ann...
- zwirbl 1y ago
  So only a VPN is needed?
  - riffraff 1y ago
    the theory was that YT has pretty good VPN detection. But they stopped doing it immediately, so probably that didn't work out.
- average_r_user 1y ago
  They pulled the plug on the project almost right away. Apparently, it had something to do with YouTube not being able to limit the live stream to Southeast Asian countries without it leaking to the rest of the world—where you’d need a pricey subscription to watch the game.
  - rootsu 1y ago
    Oh, I didn't know that they pulled the plug.
lifestyleguru 1y ago
So it looks like a self resolving problem? As a bonus football hooligans and football vandalism will disappear, and hopefully kids will be encouraged to do more creative activities than kicking a ball.
- zokier 1y ago
  On the other hand kids (and adults) not getting enough exercise is a modern health crisis. More kids kicking a ball would be significant improvement over current status quo of kids staring at brainrot.
  - NickC25 1y ago
    agree. im american and i see a bunch of youth in major cities who are clearly unhealthy. sport should be encouraged. i get that not everyone likes it, and not everyone will enjoy it (and even fewer will be good enough to actually enjoy it), but encouraging physical activity instead of playing on phones is a good thing. i was a nerd growing up (still am) and i sucked at sports (still do). i still enjoyed doing them and knew that physical activity was beneficial.
- aeve890 1y ago
  I agree with all you said except the last part. Sport is good and team sport is better. A "lifestyle guru" should know that. Kicking a ball is maybe the lowest entry barrier sport in many countries. I'm from latin america and here you grow playing fútbol. Find a ball, gather your friends and you're ready to go.
- dnh44 1y ago
  you don't think kids should play sports? that seems like an unusual view and am kind of curious why you would think that.
  - lifestyleguru 1y ago
    Kick a ball, throw a ball, hit a ball, jump over the ball, stick a ball somewhere. A ball, a stick, a ring, a board. I hate that football is the default sport and was forced myself to play it in my childhood.
koakuma-chan 1y ago
> they have split the football game rights among different competitors, so that if you want to watch every game you have to spend >100€ monthly It's the same for anime, and guess what, I just pirate and pay no one.
- pfortuny 1y ago
  Yes, but the problem is that you want to watch football live, and LaLiga is harming lots of unrelated businesses with this approach.
  - koakuma-chan 1y ago
    Yeah, it's hilarious that, on the same planet, we have articles like "Nine things I learned in ninety years" come out, while the courts of an EU country give "LaLiga," which appears to be a private corporation (a football company), the authority to ban any IPs they want arbitrarily, for everyone, country-wide. People just don't care any more, if ever did.
  - xg15 1y ago
    Couldn't they sue LaLiga for damages? Only because a court grants you some power you aren't absolved from the responsibilities that come with that power, or are you?
    - piltdownman 1y ago
      Cloudflare are https://www.broadbandtvnews.com/2025/02/19/cloudflare-takes-legal-action-over-laligas-disproportionate-blocking-efforts/ https://www.broadbandtvnews.com/2025/02/19/cloudflare-takes-... What complicates it is that the ISP, Telefonica, is also a Soccer rights-holder. How they haven't sued La Liga for defamation is beyond me though; publicly condemning Cloudflare's role in enabling piracy by knowingly protecting criminal organisations for profit. https://www.laliga.com/en-GB/news/official-statement-in-relation-to-the-blocking-of-ips-during-the-recent-ea-sports-laliga-matchdays-linked-to-illegal-cloudflare-practices https://www.laliga.com/en-GB/news/official-statement-in-rela... Traditionally all soccer organisations from FIFA down are absolutely rife with corruption and other criminal activity. Best to view current events through that lense. For example, Fifa in 2015 were done for bribery, fraud and money laundering to corrupt the issuing of media and marketing rights for FIFA games in the Americas, estimated at $150 million. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2015_FIFA_corruption_case https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2015_FIFA_corruption_case
XCSme 1y ago
Best way to watch sports now is to go to a bar that broadcasts it. If you have a drink, it only costs you 5EUR/match. Maybe you watch 5-6 matches a month, so still cheaper than 100EUR/month and you get drinks and service included.
- codedokode 1y ago
  Also can shout without neighbours calling police.
mlinhares 1y ago
100 euros monthly is going to be very high anywhere, this is completely insane.
piltdownman 1y ago
In Ireland it's closer to €200/month just for Soccer depending on who you support. As a result 1 in 5 homes in Ireland admit to having a 'dodgy box' - i.e. an android or SoC box capable of running an IPTV Subscription pirating live Digital TV and various streaming services. These are usually sold as an annual subscription for €50-100 in pubs and on places like facebook marketplace. The Irish Legal Community has already raised issues with how Sky is going about tracking down infringement at the user level, as they have an appalling record in this area and are likely to try and emulate the egregious situation in Spain to mitigate or retaliate. https://www.lawsociety.ie/gazette/top-stories/2025/june/dodgy-box-moves-must-comply-with-data-law/ https://www.lawsociety.ie/gazette/top-stories/2025/june/dodg... https://www.rte.ie/news/ireland/2025/0619/1519317-data-protection-commission/ https://www.rte.ie/news/ireland/2025/0619/1519317-data-prote... What's even more ridiculous is the "3pm blackout" rule which prevents football matches from being shown on UK television between 14:45 and 17:15 on Saturdays when 50% of fixtures in the top two divisions are scheduled to kick off at 15:00. The policy was introduced in the 1960s to encourage fans to attend lower league games - and it remains in force even in the globalised streaming era. Sadly the rights-holders can't be bothered splitting the package for Ireland, so we get to pay more for SkySports and still have to buy additional services. In short, piracy is always a service issue. As a soccer fan going legit you'd possibly need to maintain a Sky Sports, BT Sport, TNT Sports and Premier Sports subscription. God forbid you want screen-casting support or 4K resolution. In Ireland you STILL can't purchase/watch UFC PPVs as one-offs, there isn't a way for you to watch it legally the next day or live as a single event. The only way would be to get a subscription to a big provider like SkyTV or NOW!
ratelimitsteve 1y ago
Currently having this fight with hockey in the US. If I want to watch all of my team's games it's $65/mo split across 3 separate services
- rascul 1y ago
  NFL and NASCAR are similar.
EbNar 1y ago
> newest generations aren't giving a shit anymore about football, much less than their parents and grandparents. These are good news, tbh.
pronik 1y ago
What pisses me off is that they've said (in Germany) that they are trying to avoid monopolies and the rights need to go to multiple rights owners. Instead of giving the same rights to multiple broadcasters as would be normal for real non-monopolies, they split up the rights and gave each part to a single broadcaster. Which means, the full broadcasting rights are held by multiple parties, e.g. it's not a monopoly, but each broadcaster has a monopoly over his part of the cake. Which means if you want to have the whole cake as a fan, you need to pay the cartel, i.e. all broadcasters at once.
bamboozled 1y ago
The main reason I don't watch any one it is because it's all locked away under expensive subscriptions and I don't really live in a place with great football matches, so yeah...I'd actually be into it if it was accessible, I just couldn't be bothered figuring out how to watch it, nor can I afford 100 euroes a month.

Hendrikto 1y ago

> they have split the football game rights among different competitors, so that if you want to watch every game you have to spend >100€ monthly Same in Germany. > newest generations aren't giving a shit anymore about football Also the same in Germany. But I am not sure which direction the causality goes. Maybe people are less interested in football because of the shenanigans they are constantly pulling. Or maybe they try to squeeze the remaining audience because people are less interested. It may also not be related at all.

BoredPositron 1y ago
>>Also the same in Germany. Just because you want something to be true to make your argument...doesn't make it true. Growth for memberships over the last few years are pretty strong especially in the under 16 age group with 9% yoy.[1] Attendance is also on a steady upwards trend.[2] The last EM also had new highs in viewership linear and streaming. As overall the non-linear media surrounding football is growing...[3] [1] https://www.dfb.de/news/dfb-mitgliederstatistik-mehr-schiris-mehr-qualifizierte-und-rekord-zum-jubilaeum https://www.dfb.de/news/dfb-mitgliederstatistik-mehr-schiris... [2] https://twocircles.com/gb/articles/2024-sports-attendance-germany https://twocircles.com/gb/articles/2024-sports-attendance-ge... [3] https://www.agf.de/en/services/press/press-release/tv-bilanz-2024-live-sport-tatort-und-ein-comeback-202 https://www.agf.de/en/services/press/press-release/tv-bilanz...
- doublerabbit 1y ago
  > Attendance is also on a steady upwards trend > Professional sports in Germany attracted more fans than ever before in 2024; a trend not limited to just football.
  - BoredPositron 1y ago
    Come on dude it's on the same page just below the initial summary which seems to be the only thing you bothered to read. It's even big bullet pointy for the attention starved... >> German men’s football remains the most attended sport in the country by far. It is also a key driver of the overall attendance figures, with the top three professional leagues alone accounting for 46% of the growth since 2017/18.
    - doublerabbit 1y ago
      I'm bias. Born and raised in England, the nation of football, and I loathe football. The hooligan shenanigans we cause in other countries pisses me off. There is no respect. I got pushed on the subway the other day because of some local match. Some drunken twat thought I was someone who supported the rival opposition and nearly dragged me off the opposite escalator. I can't wait for football to die, I partake in sports too, I sword fence. While I can't vouch if it's the same for other countries where football isn't their thing. Generalizing for example Canada and Ice Hockey. But when I was in Canada coincidentally when national matches the vibe was holy different to that of Brits and football.
      - BoredPositron 1y ago
        Totally fine. Still no need to spread FUD/misinformation.
        doublerabbit 1y ago
        Misrepresentation, yes. Neither FUD nor Misinformation when it's quoted out of the article
wobfan 1y ago
> Same in Germany. That's not right. Still expensive, but the dual abo for Sky Bundesliga + DAZN is 65€ per month.[1] 1 https://www.sky.de/pakete-produkte/sky-dazn https://www.sky.de/pakete-produkte/sky-dazn
- mschuster91 1y ago
  Still doesn't give you the full Champions League. I get where the leagues came from, but the result for the customers has been worse.
- ta12653421 1y ago
  65€ for watching _only_ football/soccer, Jesus :-D
- Hendrikto 1y ago
  That’s not enough. You also need Prime and RTL+.
madaxe_again 1y ago
I think it’s most likely that football is honestly a bit shit, and there are many better things to do for entertainment that don’t require mortgaging a kidney to watch.
- NickC25 1y ago
  try going to germany, where you can get a season ticket at top club for a few hundred euros. i think Bayern Munich's cheapest season ticket is like $200 at the current exchange rate. that's manageable. i've paid more than that for a single NFL game in OK-ish seats.
  - pronik 1y ago
    You won't get a season ticket for most clubs in your lifetime, the queues are enormous, so the price point really doesn't matter.
pjmlp 1y ago
What pisses me off over here, is that for some strange reason, well not strange rather the whole thing that is being discussed, we hardly get any matches on the radio, whereas in the south this is a given, even in Spain. It is always some streaming service like Magenta Sport, and that's it.
kwanbix 1y ago
Most leagues face the same issue: just one to three wealthy clubs dominate, winning around 70–80% of the time, which makes the competition less exciting. The German Bundesliga is one of the starkest examples: Bayern Munich has taken 16 of the last 20 titles.
- ta12653421 1y ago
  haha, andy why is that? Because of ridiculous transfer rules & markets - if these would be killed, there would be much more competition, and it was that way, 20-30+ years ago....
  - kwanbix 1y ago
    You can see this in most everything: 5 companies dominate IT, 3 companies dominate sodas, 3 companies dominate credit cards, etc. I think it is a byproduct of the way our current system works.

rootsu 1y ago

On the other hand, Serie A started streaming all matches free on YouTube for SEA countries. https://old.reddit.com/r/soccer/comments/1nf7ghg/serie_a_announces_that_all_matches_from_gw_3/ https://old.reddit.com/r/soccer/comments/1nf7ghg/serie_a_ann...

zwirbl 1y ago
So only a VPN is needed?
- riffraff 1y ago
  the theory was that YT has pretty good VPN detection. But they stopped doing it immediately, so probably that didn't work out.
average_r_user 1y ago
They pulled the plug on the project almost right away. Apparently, it had something to do with YouTube not being able to limit the live stream to Southeast Asian countries without it leaking to the rest of the world—where you’d need a pricey subscription to watch the game.
- rootsu 1y ago
  Oh, I didn't know that they pulled the plug.

lifestyleguru 1y ago

So it looks like a self resolving problem? As a bonus football hooligans and football vandalism will disappear, and hopefully kids will be encouraged to do more creative activities than kicking a ball.

zokier 1y ago
On the other hand kids (and adults) not getting enough exercise is a modern health crisis. More kids kicking a ball would be significant improvement over current status quo of kids staring at brainrot.
- NickC25 1y ago
  agree. im american and i see a bunch of youth in major cities who are clearly unhealthy. sport should be encouraged. i get that not everyone likes it, and not everyone will enjoy it (and even fewer will be good enough to actually enjoy it), but encouraging physical activity instead of playing on phones is a good thing. i was a nerd growing up (still am) and i sucked at sports (still do). i still enjoyed doing them and knew that physical activity was beneficial.
aeve890 1y ago
I agree with all you said except the last part. Sport is good and team sport is better. A "lifestyle guru" should know that. Kicking a ball is maybe the lowest entry barrier sport in many countries. I'm from latin america and here you grow playing fútbol. Find a ball, gather your friends and you're ready to go.
dnh44 1y ago
you don't think kids should play sports? that seems like an unusual view and am kind of curious why you would think that.
- lifestyleguru 1y ago
  Kick a ball, throw a ball, hit a ball, jump over the ball, stick a ball somewhere. A ball, a stick, a ring, a board. I hate that football is the default sport and was forced myself to play it in my childhood.

koakuma-chan 1y ago

> they have split the football game rights among different competitors, so that if you want to watch every game you have to spend >100€ monthly It's the same for anime, and guess what, I just pirate and pay no one.

pfortuny 1y ago
Yes, but the problem is that you want to watch football live, and LaLiga is harming lots of unrelated businesses with this approach.
- koakuma-chan 1y ago
  Yeah, it's hilarious that, on the same planet, we have articles like "Nine things I learned in ninety years" come out, while the courts of an EU country give "LaLiga," which appears to be a private corporation (a football company), the authority to ban any IPs they want arbitrarily, for everyone, country-wide. People just don't care any more, if ever did.
- xg15 1y ago
  Couldn't they sue LaLiga for damages? Only because a court grants you some power you aren't absolved from the responsibilities that come with that power, or are you?
  - piltdownman 1y ago
    Cloudflare are https://www.broadbandtvnews.com/2025/02/19/cloudflare-takes-legal-action-over-laligas-disproportionate-blocking-efforts/ https://www.broadbandtvnews.com/2025/02/19/cloudflare-takes-... What complicates it is that the ISP, Telefonica, is also a Soccer rights-holder. How they haven't sued La Liga for defamation is beyond me though; publicly condemning Cloudflare's role in enabling piracy by knowingly protecting criminal organisations for profit. https://www.laliga.com/en-GB/news/official-statement-in-relation-to-the-blocking-of-ips-during-the-recent-ea-sports-laliga-matchdays-linked-to-illegal-cloudflare-practices https://www.laliga.com/en-GB/news/official-statement-in-rela... Traditionally all soccer organisations from FIFA down are absolutely rife with corruption and other criminal activity. Best to view current events through that lense. For example, Fifa in 2015 were done for bribery, fraud and money laundering to corrupt the issuing of media and marketing rights for FIFA games in the Americas, estimated at $150 million. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2015_FIFA_corruption_case https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2015_FIFA_corruption_case

XCSme 1y ago

Best way to watch sports now is to go to a bar that broadcasts it. If you have a drink, it only costs you 5EUR/match. Maybe you watch 5-6 matches a month, so still cheaper than 100EUR/month and you get drinks and service included.

codedokode 1y ago
Also can shout without neighbours calling police.

mlinhares 1y ago

100 euros monthly is going to be very high anywhere, this is completely insane.

piltdownman 1y ago

In Ireland it's closer to €200/month just for Soccer depending on who you support. As a result 1 in 5 homes in Ireland admit to having a 'dodgy box' - i.e. an android or SoC box capable of running an IPTV Subscription pirating live Digital TV and various streaming services. These are usually sold as an annual subscription for €50-100 in pubs and on places like facebook marketplace. The Irish Legal Community has already raised issues with how Sky is going about tracking down infringement at the user level, as they have an appalling record in this area and are likely to try and emulate the egregious situation in Spain to mitigate or retaliate. https://www.lawsociety.ie/gazette/top-stories/2025/june/dodgy-box-moves-must-comply-with-data-law/ https://www.lawsociety.ie/gazette/top-stories/2025/june/dodg... https://www.rte.ie/news/ireland/2025/0619/1519317-data-protection-commission/ https://www.rte.ie/news/ireland/2025/0619/1519317-data-prote... What's even more ridiculous is the "3pm blackout" rule which prevents football matches from being shown on UK television between 14:45 and 17:15 on Saturdays when 50% of fixtures in the top two divisions are scheduled to kick off at 15:00. The policy was introduced in the 1960s to encourage fans to attend lower league games - and it remains in force even in the globalised streaming era. Sadly the rights-holders can't be bothered splitting the package for Ireland, so we get to pay more for SkySports and still have to buy additional services. In short, piracy is always a service issue. As a soccer fan going legit you'd possibly need to maintain a Sky Sports, BT Sport, TNT Sports and Premier Sports subscription. God forbid you want screen-casting support or 4K resolution. In Ireland you STILL can't purchase/watch UFC PPVs as one-offs, there isn't a way for you to watch it legally the next day or live as a single event. The only way would be to get a subscription to a big provider like SkyTV or NOW!

ratelimitsteve 1y ago

Currently having this fight with hockey in the US. If I want to watch all of my team's games it's $65/mo split across 3 separate services

rascul 1y ago
NFL and NASCAR are similar.

EbNar 1y ago

> newest generations aren't giving a shit anymore about football, much less than their parents and grandparents. These are good news, tbh.

pronik 1y ago

What pisses me off is that they've said (in Germany) that they are trying to avoid monopolies and the rights need to go to multiple rights owners. Instead of giving the same rights to multiple broadcasters as would be normal for real non-monopolies, they split up the rights and gave each part to a single broadcaster. Which means, the full broadcasting rights are held by multiple parties, e.g. it's not a monopoly, but each broadcaster has a monopoly over his part of the cake. Which means if you want to have the whole cake as a fan, you need to pay the cartel, i.e. all broadcasters at once.

bamboozled 1y ago

The main reason I don't watch any one it is because it's all locked away under expensive subscriptions and I don't really live in a place with great football matches, so yeah...I'd actually be into it if it was accessible, I just couldn't be bothered figuring out how to watch it, nor can I afford 100 euroes a month.