This would seems to show Sky with 26 live matches a season plus one semi final, and ESPN with 43 live matches, one of the semi finals plus the final. With them already having Top 14 it looks like another expense from next season!
Great news I can bin my sky sports and get back to my Friday night rugby. If ESPN are going to show 43 games wunderbar!! Only downside is Nigel Stamming-Smith? Maybe he will be full of french plonk anyway and provide the caberet
The severity of the itch is inversely proportional to the reach
Hate to tell everyone...
If you have ever seen an NFL game live then that is the picture quality you can expect from espn... If you haven't seen any form of American sport recently, you will not know what i am describing...
Basically american sports provider espn have not changed their cameras in at least a decade, so when they bought rights to show British football, they just sent their old cameras to England.
More importantly what I'm saying is that picture quality is rubbish compared to sky sports
Well I certainly won't be paying any more money to sky. Who gets the HC Final, Espn or sky?
We only subscribed to sky sports this year for the Lions tour and the Guiness Prem matches if we are getting less matches through Sky Sports then we will unsubscribe as basically we only had sky sports for the rugby.
I cannot see many people paying ESPN to watch rugby so if it didn't work for Setanta how will it work for ESPN.
Last edited by g on Mon Dec 14, 2009 10:34 pm, edited 1 time in total.
I get ESPN with my Virgin cable package. They have an HD channel for live events such as UFC and french top 14 rugby and the quality is quite excellent.
I'm blowed if I'm spending the best part of £40 p/month for Sky - most of which I don't want, thankyou - (plus the commitment of a contract) to get the necessary Sky Sports 1,2 and 3 for the mere 26 GP matches a season.
ESPN £10 a month (and no minimum contract) for 43 matches, s/f and final. Have it for the season, don't have it for the close season. And apparently acceptable picture quality.
Seems great to me!
ST in new Clubhouse stand ... sadly, my back's no longer up to standing :-(
Are you saying then that you don't have to have the sky sports package to subscribe to ESPN? I thought you could only subscribe to ESPN if you had the full Sky sports package.
So if we cancel our sky sports package at the end of it's contract and go for the basic cheapest sky package then we can subscribe to ESPN at a cost of £10?
If thats the case I will gladly spend £10 a month for ESPN. I thought I would have to keep paying £40 + a month to sky sports and then pay again on top to get ESPN.
Sky have still retained the rights for some of the GP & all of the Heineken Cup so if you want to watch Tigers' European games on TV you won't be able to get rid of your Sky Sports.
ESPN have bought the rights to 43 GP games including 1 Semi & the final.
Sky will have the rights to 26 GP games including the other Semi (but no live coverage of the final) as well as the rights to the Heineken Cup pool & knockout stages and the AW Cup.
