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You may remember this
subject from previous articles such as “All You Need Is … Greed”
(Issue 34), but we re-visit it for a valid reason and that is to try and
explain something to you. Wyart
Lane attempts to do so in the manner of a typewriter that hasn’t got a
working “e” key on it !!
First
thing on Tuesday 9th December 2003, an e-mail landed on the
electronic door-mat of MEHSTG’s inbox.
Another Christmas e-card from an organised person who reads the
fanzine or visits the site you might think ?
Another piece of junk mail eulogising over the advantages of
Viagra or tablets to increase the size of your penis ?
Well, no, nothing so welcoming really.
It was the dreaded knock from the people representing the company
who licence the fixtures for the FA Premier League (and a whole host of
other organisations you might have heard of).
I had been expecting this since Paul Smith of the Spurs Odyssey
website informed me that they had been onto him to ask for a large sum
of used fivers in return for being able to use the fixture list that
includes our club. Paul, as
I have decided, said “No Thanks” and has withdrawn that page from
his site. You will now not
be able to find out who Tottenham are due to play in up-coming matches
on either of our sites.
Not
only that, but we are not allowed to “refer to when and where any
upcoming games are being played in either a 'fixture list' or any other
method of displaying fixtures,” according to the man from NetResult, a
Division of Projector NetResult Ltd.
However, the news is not all bad, because we will be able to
mention games that have been played and record all the details about
them on the websites.
The
matter does cause some fundamental problems in my mind and whether they
fall within or outside the law, I am no expert, but in terms of common
sense, they seem ludicrous.
If
I hear someone talking in a pub and they say “Spurs are going to pay
£14 million for Danny Mills of Middlesbrough”, I am totally at
liberty to use that on the website, as far as I am aware.
However, if I hear two people talking in a pub and they are
discussing who will win the match between Elbion City and Norchester
Rovers on Sunday morning with a kick off at 11.15 a.m., I am not allowed
to repeat what I have heard, even though there is more truth to that
than there might be in the players transfer rumour.
Where
such information is already in the public domain … and I would
consider Tottenham Hotspur’s next fixture to be so as it is advertised
on a bloody great hoarding outside the ground each day of the season …
I am at a bit of a loss to see how that can only be used if you are a
licence holder for such intellectual property.
Maybe the law is an ass and the whole world is being turned
upside down, but it is just another example of the FA Premier League
trying to squeeze the last brass farthing out of those who fund the game
by turning up to pay through the nose and through the turnstile.
Why
else shoot the very people who are giving them free advertising unless
it was to eek some more cash out of us ?
The
whole commercial side of the game has gone to the heads of the marketing
men who sit in well padded leather reclining office chairs and also have
ideas well above their station now they have moved on from promoting
British Rail. What will be
their next money-making scheme as they thumb through the holiday
brochures planning the important moves during the available windows in
their diarised lives ?
I
know, you are all thinking “bitter and twisted.”
True, as I don’t see why some commercial manager should dictate
what sources fans get their information from, but it is not just me they
are closing in on.
The
Guardian reported on November 1st, that no football can be
broadcast between the hours of 2.45 p.m. and 5.15 p.m. on a Saturday
afternoon – and I hope I don’t need a licence to relay to you what
was in that particular newspaper. This
is designed to stop pub landlords showing live League football from a
ground five minutes walk from the pub you are in, but having it beamed
there from South Africa, Scandinavia or the Middle East.
The Premier League say that they have done studies to show that
people are gathering in public houses across the country in large
numbers to watch such football matches being screened.
Has
it not occurred to the people who are clamping down on this practice
that it provides a useful service to some members of the football
supporting populace ? Do
they ever consider those who live too far away; those who might not be
able to get a ticket because of the limited availability of them …
especially for away games; those who might not be able to afford it ??
The empty seats around the ground at White Hart Lane are not
caused by fans settling down in the Snug at their local hostelry to cast
an eye over the action at the Lane.
No. It’s because
people are fed up being ripped off and bled dry by those who think that
we should be supplying an unlimited source of funds to let them play
board members with it.
So
many fans have ditched their season tickets this season that it is no
surprise to me that the blue plastic shines out under the White Hart
Lane floodlights. What is
the need for a new stadium, when the prices will be the over-riding
consideration in those who are supposed to flock to fill the seats
rather than the quality on show. It
is not now just the younger elements in the crowd who are becoming more
discerning in what they spend their time doing.
It may not be the Playstation or computers that keep the older
generations away, but they will no doubt find that for the cost of a
season ticket, they can have a nice holiday somewhere warm in the world
instead of sitting in a recycled plastic bucket freezing their bits off
watching Tottenham struggle to overcome a side that we would have seen
of with panache in the past.
Hey
!! Then they won’t even
need to see a fixture list !! Problem solved !! |
