Just when everything seemed to be running smoothly, they go and move the goalposts again. But we Premier League fans in Aotearoa are pretty used to that by now. Spark have announced that they’ve acquired the Premier League rights in this country for three years, starting at the beginning of next season, and will seek to offer it by subscription on their upcoming online sports platform. You know, the one that’s gonna carry the 2019 Rugby World Cup here. The one that’ll supposedly be launched early next year.

First things first, if you’re paying for BeIN on Sky this season then you’ll be all sweet for now. This won’t affect your PL viewing for the 2018-19 season, Spark only have it starting in August 2019. Which is nice because I don’t believe I’ll get too many complaints when I say that BeIN’s coverage is pretty fantastic at the moment. I was a fan of the old Premier League Pass model but having BeIN on Sky and online has been a couple steps up from that. That online platform certainly needs some tidying up and they took bloody long enough in getting it going but it does the trick at the moment.

Luckily the programming itself shouldn’t change once it moves to Spark either. BeIN are only the providers, all the actual programming stuff belongs to Premier League Productions. The excellent Kick-Off show with Leroy Rosenior and Don Hutchison yapping away, the regular news updates from the studio, all those little promos and features in between… all Premier League Productions. They’re responsible for most of the on-sold broadcasts outside of the United Kingdom around the globe (hence why the Fanzone messages are always from India or South Africa and never from Bolton or Birmingham).

In fact BeIN don’t do jack, to be honest. They bought the rights because they thought they could create this football broadcasting hub in the Asia/Pacific region… only to miss out on the Aussie rights (where Opta hold them, in a similar thing to Spark’s new deal but hopefully Spark won’t be nearly as chaotic about it). It’s sort of like when Crystal Palace signed Christian Benteke’s brother to help Big Chris settle at the club, only in this case Christian never signed and Palace/BeIN were stuck with his extremely average brother to no purpose.

Once a couple more countries zipped past them, BeIN basically gave up on the dream and cut a hasty deal with Sky NZ (at least that was the impression) to show the stuff they’d bought on their service. And I’m pretty sure the sub fees go straight to BeIN. Like, Sky aren’t getting anything directly from that deal other than maybe a little goodwill – much needed in their case. But I don’t really care about the corporate implications for a bunch of crooks as long as I can watch my footy.

Considering BeIN aren’t even bothered about their New Zealand service and have been fobbing it off on a local broadcaster so as to make a bit of their wasted money back, there was basically no chance they were going to renew those rights when they expired in a year’s time. They already don’t bother responding to customer tweets or whatever. So, sure, the current circumstance is pretty decent. You’ve got the option of online or telly. It’s not excessively expensive and there’s heaps of programming available (I’m trying to keep up with the latest Football League Show as I write this). But that situation was unsustainable with BeIN as apathetic about us as they are.

Sidebar to mention the Champions League coverage, which is up for grabs soon. BeIN have been hosting it on their second channel with games also on Sky Sports. That does include some BeIN in-studio previews and post-match… but that junk is garbage. A bunch of ex-players moaning about the next generation while egged on by the insufferable Richard Keys and his like. If somebody could step up and grab that all back then that’d be appreciated, cheers. Also Spark have inexplicably snapped up MUTV too, the Manchester United club channel, which is weird when it’s already available to viewers here through the Man United website and even Man United fans don’t usually want to hear the propaganda machine churning along trying to justify Jose Mourinho’s latest bus-parking effort.

The difference with Spark is that they’re trying to make a genuine expansion into sports broadcasting, something to add to the portfolio no doubt, another revenue stream in a small marketplace. More unsustainable capitalism. But they’re financially obligated to care about our interests so that’ll work out sweet for us (unless they go bankrupt, but you can assume they’ve done their research before branching out this far). Not only that but they need to prove that they’ve built an online platform with credibility. I believe them when they say this is about more than retaining broadband and mobile users. It’s about being taken seriously as a corporation and making some money in the process.

Aotearoa footy fans know how to traverse the online passage-ways already. We’ve had plenty of practice. It’s not only the Coliseum Sports thing of old but it’s finding dodgy streams for lower league games or cup ties, for games that didn’t make the broadcast schedule for the Champions League. Pre-season friendlies. All of that. We’re pretty good at it – you have to be to follow a sport from the other side of the world in this day and age. It’s a pain in the arse if your internet isn’t the sturdiest but at least you’ve now got another reason to cancel that Sky TV subscription. Spend the first month’s savings on an HDMI cable or maybe a wi-fi repeater if the lounge is too cold and you’ll be sweet.

My first thought with all this was how annoying it is that football in this country seems to get passed around with the casual ease of tiki-taka Barcelona in their prime. But that was a knee-jerk reaction. Realistically, they get this right and it’ll be no different than watching Netflix and nobody’s ever moaned about the convenience of Netflix. It’s 2018 after all.

Nah, where this gets really funky is with Spark’s acquisition of the Rugby World Cup for next year. Think of an old person in your life who digs a bit of rugger. Can you imagine them wrangling an online stream? TVNZ are covering seven of the 48 games free-to-air on telly but not necessarily every All Blacks game – this is extremely likely to cause a seismic culture shock and, keeping it a hundy, that’s going to be hilarious to watch. They can pass the football around like Xavi and Iniesta but don’t touch Uncle Brian’s rugby, mate, or you’ll hear all about it on Newstalk ZB when he rings up in a huff. Side note: don’t ever listen to talkback radio.

So at least it’s not just us football people affected here. We’re not being picked on or scapegoated. In fact the Premier League, being a nine-month competition, is pretty much the focal point of their coverage now. The RWC will last a month. That’s the biggest test for Spark’s online sports department but as things stand the PL is the backbone.

Rest assured there’ll be more sports picked up in the future but they chose the Premmy for a reason. It’s available, which always helps, plus it’s got a very large fanbase which but a fanbase which is still treated like a minority or a subculture… understandable since these games involve a max of two New Zealanders and take place usually at 3am in the morning. That’s not meant to be a jab, it’s a fact. Plus it’s a digitally native crowd thanks to past experience. Kind of perfect for what Spark is trying to do. But I seriously cannot wait until these buggers tread within the notoriously old-fashioned rugby crowd.

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