New Television Set Up for 2006-2007 Season

As some of you may or may not know there are a few changes taking place this season in regards to showing Premiership matches on television.

The first main point is that there is no longer Pay-Per-View games each weekend. It is believed that little to no money was being made on this venture.

Therefore, the normal LIVE PPV matches at 10AM Eastern time on Saturday, and 11AM Eastern time on Sunday, will now be shown LIVE for FREE on Fox Soccer Channel.

However, Fox Soccer Channel will be losing the early Saturday morning match, 7:30AM kick off on the east coast, to Setanta Sports USA.

It is believed Fox Soccer Channel will still be airing tape delayed matches both Saturday and Sunday afternoons. Although as of now I cannot offiically say that.

For those like myself who want to get Setanta Sports USA, it is only available through DirecTV at present time. Dish Network, what I have, is supposedly in contract talks about getting this channel, but knowing how Dish works, the head honchos will drag their feet and get it squared away in about a year. Thus, I might switch to DirecTV before the season starts.

Anyways, as this will directly effect how we will watch our beloved Fulham Football Club, I thought I would give everyone a heads up on the TV situation. If I hear or read anything else, I will let everyone know.

 

As a decade-long subscriber to DirecTV, I heartily recommend it. The service is very good and in general, their sports are better.

Note to get FSC, you must get the "Sports Pack" (I don't know how much that is, but it includes the regional sports channels around the counrty and Gol TV). Setanta is not part of the sports pack and costs an additional $11.95/month I think.

 

I'll go into this later, but I HATE Setanta and the way the rip off their customers. Their 'pub network' is the biggest farce in the world, just an excuse for the bars to charge $10 a head!

 

RE: Re: New Television Set Up for 2006-2007 Season

Thanks for the information, Tom.

It is my understanding that they only showed one or two games a weekend last year on the Premiership package, I only saw Fulham listed once or twice for the entire season. I hope they are showed more on the Fox Soccer channel.

 

RE: Re: New Television Set Up for 2006-2007 Season

The pay-per-view package was a complete rip off if you ask me. I ordered it two seasons ago. I paid $300 for two matches a weekend all season. What sucked is that you had no choice what was being shown.

Therefore, you ended up with some garbage-ass matches like Bolton vs Norwich City and Birmingham City vs Tottenham. The big matches were usually shown on PPV, but there was not a big match every weekend.

I am pleased they are doing away with it. I am guessing no money was made on the venture.

Fulham was on occassionally, but not too often as you mentioned. Fox Soccer Channel did a nice job putting Fulham matches on their channel though. Hopefully this year we continue to see a good number of the matches on FSC.

 

RE: Re: New Television Set Up for 2006-2007 Season

Yeah that would be great, I'll have to order the sports pack for sure before the season starts. Question: are there any sites out there that have Espn 'Gamecast' type setups where you can follow the game online in a relatively real-time manner? I love ESPN's setup for the MLB and the World Cup games have been great too, but I have a feeling they won't go to such measures for weekly Fulham games during the season.

I admittedly haven't really looked into it closely, for all I know, Fulham's homepage has them, just wondering what you guys do when they aren't shown locally and you don't live within 300 miles of a bar that might show them.

 

RE: Re: New Television Set Up for 2006-2007 Season

Tibor,
Three things to help you out with following Fulham matches week in and week out.....

1. Soccernet.com (ESPN's Soccer website), has great gametrackers for all Premiership matches. You can use these to follow the action.

2. Fulham offers subscriptions to FulhamTV that comes to about $7-8/month for the season. This includes highlights of matches, interviews with players and also LIVE commentary via the Internet for all Fulham league and non-FA Cup matches.

3. FulhamUSA has a matchday chatroom set up for all Fulham supporters to go to for chatting about the match while listening and/or following on the net.

Thus, you have many options to choose from to follow Fulham this season and every season.

 

RE: Re: New Television Set Up for 2006-2007 Season

Thanks Tom, very helpful!

Is Fulham TV worth it? Seems pretty interesting. I wish more sports would do what MLBtv and MLSnet are doing and offer live streaming of games online for a monthly fee. The technology is there!

Thanks again,

-Tim

 

Hmmm.... I'm of two minds about this. It seems FSC will gain two matches and lose one per weekend. GOOD

However the matches not shown on FSC will transfer from something I had access to and used (PPV) to something I have no access to (Sententa). BAD

I liked the PPV system, I used it four or five times throughout the year for the various FFC games they showed. Most of the time I felt it was worth it. Exceptions include the collapse at M'bourgh and the 4-0 death at the hands of Arsenal. Nothing worse than watching your team lose in a miserable manner than having to come to grips with the fact that you paid $20 for the pleasure.

So hopefully very few FFC games will end up on Sententa or I'll have to go to a pub or just settle for Jim's call.

 

Re: RE: Re: New Television Set Up for 2006-2007 Season

Tim, I would say it is worth it. The play-by-play guy, Gentleman Jim is great! He is classic and hearing him alone is worth the price. In addition, the club is good about putting the higlights up within a day or two (there is a 24-hour rule that teams cannot show highlights of the match) after the match. The interviews are quite good and there are other things as well. Additionally, it is revenue for the club which being over here, we do not get to buy match tickets too often, so this could be our little way of helping fund the club.

 

RE: Re: RE: Re: New Television Set Up for 2006-2007 Season

I also support the notion of subscribing to FulhamTV, Gentleman Jim is a must. Highlights are up on time and the interviews are pretty good too.

 

RE: Re: RE: Re: New Television Set Up for 2006-2007 Season

Thus far these are the matches that will definitely be shown on television here in the States:

Monday, October 2 - Fulham @ Watford, 3PM EDT/2PM CDT
Monday, October 16 - Fulham vs Charlton, 3PM EDT/2PM CDT
Saturday, November 4 - Fulham vs Manchester City, 7:45AM EST/6:45AM CST
Saturday, December 23 - Fulham vs West Ham United, 7:45Am EST/6:45AM CST
Wednesday, December 27 - Fulham @ Charlton, 3PM EST/2PM CST

I am sure there will be others announced and this does not include the many number of matches Fox Soccer Channel will be showing on a tape-delay basis. I am guessing Fulham's first match with Manchester United will be shown on tape-delay Sunday, August 20th at 1PM EDT/12PM CDT. Just a guess though.

 

RE: Re: RE: Re: New Television Set Up for 2006-2007 Season

I third the Gentleman Jim thing... he's a riot...

In fact he's so good that he should have his own highlight reel as he's absolutely animated during the matches.

I also agree with Tom with supporting the club in some manner. This makes me feel all warm and fuzzy. Even tho I've memorized Mike's password and have never paid for it myself.

Before they came out with this I was contributing by walking into Harrods, paying 30 dollars for a pizza, and paying a pound to back one out in the posh bathrooms.

 

RE: Re: RE: Re: New Television Set Up for 2006-2007 Season

Okay, I can finally confirm a few things about the TV set up for the upcoming season. While Setanta has not been officially named as "Channel TBA," by those producing the US TV schedules, it is 99.9% certain that Setanta will have Premiership games. Here is the schedule for the first weekend of matches:

Sheffield United vs Liverpool
"Channel TBA (US)"
Rogers Sportsnet (Canada) - ALL REGIONS
Sa Aug 19 7:30am ET/4:30am PT LIVE

Arsenal vs Aston Villa
"Channel TBA (US)"
Rogers Sportsnet (Canada) - EAST and ONTARIO
Sa Aug 19 10am ET/7am PT LIVE

Newcastle United vs Wigan Athletic
FOX Soccer Channel (US)
Rogers Sportsnet (Canada) - WEST and PACIFIC
Sa Aug 19 10am ET/7am PT LIVE
FOX Sports en Espanol
Sa Aug 19 2:30pm ET/11:30am PT LIVE

Bolton Wanderers vs Tottenham Hotspur
FOX Soccer Channel (US)
FOX Sports en Espanol (US)
Sa Aug 19 12noon ET/9am PT LIVE

Teams TBA (3rd choice match from 10am ET)
"Channel TBA (US)"
Sa Aug 19 Time TBA

Reading vs Middlesbrough (4th choice match from 10am ET)
FOX Soccer Channel (US)
Sa Aug 19 3pm ET/12noon PT SDD

Manchester United vs Fulham
"Channel TBA (US)"
TBA (Canada)
Su Aug 20 8:30am ET/5:30am PT LIVE

Chelsea vs Manchester City
FOX Soccer Channel (US)
FOX Sports World Canada
Su Aug 20 11am ET/8am PT LIVE
FOX Sports en Espanol (US)
Su Aug 20 5:10pm ET/2:10pm PT SDD

Thus, if you do not have Setanta, you will need to find a pub that does show it as Fulham will be on LIVE against Manchester United on August 20th.

What I find unbelievable is that 6 of the 10 weekend are on either Setanta (Channel TBA) or Fox Soccer Channel. Additionally for the first time those with both channels will get to pick which LIVE match he/she wants to watch.

For those wondering about the French Ligue 1 matches on television, it looks like Setanta will show two French matches on Sundays.

GolTV will have all the German Bundesliga matches.

Setanta will once again have Coca-Cola Championship matches on.

La Liga in Spain is on GolTV again this season.

 

RE: Re: RE: Re: New Television Set Up for 2006-2007 Season

I'm going to be in Bethany Beach, DE, on the 20th. Are there any soccer pubs out that way that would get Setanta and be open at 8:30 AM?

 

RE: Re: RE: Re: New Television Set Up for 2006-2007 Season

Dave,
Check out the link below, the top place is 13.5 miles from Bethany Beach. There is a website with this place so you might want to check it out and contact them. Other than that, the closest place is 97 miles away.

http://linux11744.dn.net/setanta/jsp/NA ... Code=19930

 

RE: Re: RE: Re: New Television Set Up for 2006-2007 Season

i can't take the wait anymore...at least the championship is starting this weekend to keep me busy. so what's the deal with Setanta? I have Directv and i have the sports pack...but this is something additional i have to order? give me the details friends.

 

RE: Re: RE: Re: New Television Set Up for 2006-2007 Season

Just call Setanta or go online to your "MyDirecTV" account and add Setanta to your programming package. It costs $11.99 a month. However, I like to think that if I did not have Setanta, I would go to the pub and easily spend $11.99 there watching Fulham's match against Manchester United so I am actually saving money! LOL!!

This is really quick and easy. If you have anymore questions let me know. I have had DTV now for a little over a week and thus far Setanta has had a lot of Rugby, and preseason friendlies on, but with seasons starting this weekend for some of the leagues, things will get amped up a bit more on the channel.

One last thing, if you decide you do not want the channel, you can cancel it after 30 days for no charge. It is an ala carte channel.

 

RE: Re: RE: Re: New Television Set Up for 2006-2007 Season

Well, "Channel TBA" is now officially Setanta:

http://www.setanta.com/portal/article/f ... c00060ffd4