Compare to the Troyes webcast disaster. From The Guardian website today:

The new premiership season kicks off this Saturday, and apart from the prospect of the first real battle for the title in years, there will be one other significant difference. For the very first time, coverage of the matches will finally be on the internet.

Until now, video footage of premiership football has been limited to a handful of classic games. This is because rights to the coverage have been tied up in the league's contract with the television companies. But this summer a new deal was signed that carved off internet rights for the first time. As early as next week, clubs will start showing edited highlights of their matches - on both the clubs' growing number of digital TV channels and on their official websites.

This, alas, does not mean that you will be able to watch live matches on the net. To protect its lucrative TV contracts, the premier league has stipulated that all matches can only be streamed after a delay of between two and 48 hours after the final whistle.

For games played on Saturday, Sunday or Monday, the clubs now have the rights to broadcast up to 90 minutes of footage from midnight on Monday. For games played on other days, footage will be made available on midnight on the same day of the game - often just a couple of hours after the final whistle.

Not surprisingly, the league champions Manchester United are racing ahead. United - the richest club in the world - was the first club to launch its own digital TV channel, MUTV. Now, says United, the net is the next logical step for a club that is increasingly attracting a global following - estimated by some to be as large as 55m. This summer, it cut a deal with Sky to bring coverage of all its football matches to the net from the start of the season.

Beginning with its match against Aston Villa on August 25 (there will only be a "teaser" package for its earlier match against Fulham), United will broadcast a highlights package lasting around 15 minutes of each game they play in the premiership. It will be available as a broadband stream - or in downloadable form for those with slower connections. United says it is looking to charge between £2 and £3 per game.

"If you look at the arithmetic of the Sky contract," says Ben Hutton, director of business development at Manchester United. "Even accounting for the extra pay-per-view games [on digital television], that still leaves a minimum of 18 games that will only be available on either MUTV or in highlights form on the internet."

But there's more than that in the offing. To further whet the appetite of its millions of fans, United is currently digitalising every premiership match since 1992 that they have footage of. The club plans to release the archive on the web as early as October. Not only will fans be able to order up any match they desire, claims United, the archive will be fully searchable. This will allow fans to tailor footage of David Beckham goals or Roy Keane red cards. Eventually, this service will also be available on customisable DVDs.

The club will offer a "season ticket" priced between £35 and £40 per year. This will give full access to the searchable archive and every game in the premiership. There are no rights for Uefa champions league matches or the Worthington cup. However, United says that it is hopeful that it will get some rights to the FA cup this season. Again on a delayed basis.

"Four years ago, when the negotiations for the last TV deal were under way, the idea of streaming technology being available in a commercial sense wasn't part of anybody's thinking," says Hutton. "But there has been a natural evolution in the ability of the clubs themselves to be able to leverage those rights on an individual club basis."

Which means that a few miles down the East Lancs Road, Liverpool will be breathing hard down United's neck. Their old rivals may not have the same commercial clout, or global reach, but they do have the more developed website.

Earlier this year, the Audit Bureau of Circulations (ABC) reported that a staggering 1.385m unique users visited the LiverpoolFc.tv site in May - more than double the rate in September. During the day after the Uefa cup final, when Liverpool dramatically beat Deportivo Alavez 5-4, the site scored more than 1m page impressions - believed to be the first time a football club has hit a million in a day.

Liverpool's site has been created out of a joint venture between the club and the Granada Media Group. In April the site relaunched and asked its users to register if interested in a package of enhanced services. The club claims 120,000 registrations so far.

This season, Liverpool will add a similar highlights package to that offered by United. Initially Liverpool's service will be free, but early in the season it plans to introduce a subscription package. The club is looking at a price of between £3.99 and £5.99 per month for the service. It is aiming to have a highlights package available for its match against West Ham this Saturday.

For the last three games of last season, Liverpool began offering enhanced audio commentary from all games played at Anfield. This includes still photographs - updated every three seconds - live webcams from the players' tunnel and the Kop, and live footage of the post-match press conference. Since April, limited coverage of the Uefa games was also made available 48 hours after the final whistle.

"It's quite a commitment for people to buy a season ticket for a product that they haven't seen yet," says Adam Rhodes, chief executive of LiverpoolFC.tv. "It's important to give people the chance to take it on a trial basis."

Liverpool already offers videos of classic matches and reserve and youth games. The club hopes to extend its archive, but has no plans to attempt anything on the scale of United.

"The premier league archive goes back through the 1990s when Liverpool's success was not as great as it was in the 1970s and 1980s," says Rhodes. "But the international following of the club and the fact that we have just won three trophies combine to give us the opportunity to make this a very successful business."

In Scotland, fans will have to wait a wee bit longer. The current TV deal with the Scottish premier league does not expire until the end of this season. Negotiations are currently underway, and a spokesman confirmed that there was a "strong like lihood" that internet rights would be part of the new deal.

This hasn't stopped Glasgow Celtic experimenting. In September, Celtic became the first British club to broadcast a football match on the internet. It streamed three Uefa cup matches to narrowband users - all for free. The club then moved into broadband and in May streamed Tommy Boyd's testimonial live. The club also offered the pre-season friendly against Manchester United. Tellingly, it priced both games at $7.99 (not £5). The club claims that - although the audience was relatively low - the feedback from fans was "very positive".

This season, Celtic will offer its champions league qualifier against Ajax live on the net as a pay-per-view event. Celtic already has more than 100,000 registered users of their website - more than 40% of them outside the UK.

A spokesman for Celtic says: "We are looking at broadband streaming to provide a practical service for our fans worldwide. We see the internet as an ideal way of promoting our global brand to fans overseas."

Still - porn aside - there is no proven market for pay-per-view anywhere in the world. According to NetValue, only one in 32 UK homes has broadband access. But its advocates say that exclusive premiership football on the internet could change all that.

Of course, the sports portals are not very happy, claiming that the clubs now have an unfair advantage. What isn't in doubt is that the wider internet community will be watching the clubs very, very closely. If football cannot encourage users to pay for content, what can?

-- Anonymous, August 13, 2001

Answers

A-pologies for length of P-ost...but thought it was interesting enough to reproduce in full...

-- Anonymous, August 13, 2001

No apology needed - very interesting stuff.

Overkill? I guess this will be very good for supporters in different countries (ie MOST of Manure's fans).

-- Anonymous, August 13, 2001

Ya, this is exactly what at least I have been waiting for. I get to see 4-5 matches per season and now I might be able to see them all, dont really matter if they are live or not. Lets hope NUFC is not far behind Liverpool and Man U.

-- Anonymous, August 13, 2001

... meanwhile, NUFC - ably supported by media moguls NTL - struggle to provide a a preview of the correct opposition, or a cr@ppy audio broadcast of the correct game, occasionally putting out commentary on our biggest rivals.
Night and bloody day....!

We are a massive club...
We are a massive Club...
We are a massive Club...
We are a massive Club...
We are a massive Club...
We...

-- Anonymous, August 13, 2001

Exactly, Clarky. And I still take all this talk of how wonderful ppv on the net will be. The majority of users are still on dial-up connections and will not pay for a (very!) time-consuming and poor quality download. I do like Liverpool's idea of giving folks a preview before charging. Very smart. Hope they will keep some enhancements free for the dial-up disadvantaged. Goal and interview highlights would be nice. Their new version site is quite nice. Went to it yesterday to listen to the Charity Shield. They used real audio, and while I heard the entire broadcast, the sound quality dropped a few times. None of the problems with buffering or complete loss of connection we're used to at NUFC.

-- Anonymous, August 13, 2001