Paul Barber writes a rather magnificent letter to the FL re: Player's failings

[TWOCHOICEStom]

I would really love to see the club take control of the media side of things. They're a serious business now and with a fanbase like ours, this could turn into a great thing! We're being completely restricted at the moment by bullshit contracts and old crap tech. Nobody is accountable and the club suffers as a result.

I know this wouldn't all be possible, but I'd love to see it.

Scrap the shitheap of a website

• Honestly, it's terrible. Painful to use on mobile and generally unfit for purpose. Get a local company in to do a far better job.

A (paid?) YouTube Channel

• High bloody definition highlights. The reason we're not getting this now is due to some archaic filesize limit. What pixel is the ball again?
• More live content. Under 21 and Development Squad matches. Pre/post match interviews. Some match build up. It would be GREAT.

Live match commentary that WORKS

• Why can't the club just buy the rights to the BBC commentary? Is that not possible?
• If not, could we have our own commentary team and stream it via the website?

If all of the money that we the fans currently pay for player was put into the services above. Even if it was a quid or two more expensive per month, I could really see this turning into a good source of revenue for the club. The important thing though, is that the club is in CONTROL of this shit. Having SkyBet plastered all over the website for example, not just in ad banners (which I could understand) but in news articles and on the bloody page background? Come off it. People don't visit the website for that exact reason. It's a mess full of popups and adverts everywhere. If we made the site better, we'd get more hits and might be able to raise more money in ad revenue.

We're a big club and a big business now. If there was less red tape I'm sure we'd do a great job of it. I just wonder how tightly we're locked in to the services we have now?

 

[Davey Boy Smith]

Having thrown away more time than is sane on using other IP audio links, we keep going back to ISDN (although using an AAC codec, not an ISDN voice codec) in work - this being a mid-sized radio group that happens to own Talksport*. Once you introduce any form of "dedicated" IP link that runs over the general internet you're asking for trouble with anything that's latency dependent. And they need to get connectivity in 24 stadia at least per year, all of which will have ISDN lines fitted but god knows what net connection.

I strongly suspect the ISDN link is not the cause of any of the issues.

*although I've nothing to do with them at all, GB/Island of Ireland groups are 100% operationally seperate.

How will the feed from the away game get to the BBC Sussex transmitters? would this be broadcast wirelessly back-to-back via a chain of transmitters or via an ISDN line? If the latter, could this not be split one to BBC Sussex and the other to the Player servers? I assume the BBC's own connection is very resilient and something they are have to set up all the time?

 

[Davey Boy Smith]

Double post..

 

[Herr Tubthumper]

I would really love to see the club take control of the media side of things. They're a serious business now and with a fanbase like ours, this could turn into a great thing! We're being completely restricted at the moment by bullshit contracts and old crap tech. Nobody is accountable and the club suffers as a result.

I know this wouldn't all be possible, but I'd love to see it.

Scrap the shitheap of a website

• Honestly, it's terrible. Painful to use on mobile and generally unfit for purpose. Get a local company in to do a far better job.

A (paid?) YouTube Channel

• High bloody definition highlights. The reason we're not getting this now is due to some archaic filesize limit. What pixel is the ball again?
• More live content. Under 21 and Development Squad matches. Pre/post match interviews. Some match build up. It would be GREAT.

Live match commentary that WORKS

• Why can't the club just buy the rights to the BBC commentary? Is that not possible?
• If not, could we have our own commentary team and stream it via the website?

If all of the money that we the fans currently pay for player was put into the services above. Even if it was a quid or two more expensive per month, I could really see this turning into a good source of revenue for the club. The important thing though, is that the club is in CONTROL of this shit. Having SkyBet plastered all over the website for example, not just in ad banners (which I could understand) but in news articles and on the bloody page background? Come off it. People don't visit the website for that exact reason. It's a mess full of popups and adverts everywhere. If we made the site better, we'd get more hits and might be able to raise more money in ad revenue.

We're a big club and a big business now. If there was less red tape I'm sure we'd do a great job of it. I just wonder how tightly we're locked in to the services we have now?

Agree with the sentiment of this. Barber has indicated he would prefer to go it alone. He has a golden opportunity to do this at the moment; he should seize it.

 

[Simster]

Agree with the sentiment of this. Barber has indicated he would prefer to go it alone. He has a golden opportunity to do this at the moment; he should seize it.

Does he? Aren't we tied into contracts with the existing media suppliers?

 

[TWOCHOICEStom]

Does he? Aren't we tied into contracts with the existing media suppliers?

That's really the part I'm interested in. How tight are those contracts and if they're not providing the service they should be, could we leave?

 

[Notters]

[MENTION=8459]TWOCHOICEStom[/MENTION] please send your above post to Barber as an email and ask him about the contract situation whilst you're at it.

 

[Thunder Bolt]

Does he? Aren't we tied into contracts with the existing media suppliers?

Is the contract with Perform or with the Football League?

 

[Bozza]

That's really the part I'm interested in. How tight are those contracts and if they're not providing the service they should be, could we leave?

The impression given last night was no, as it's a collective agreement with the Football League. It was a contact for 10 years, although I'm not sure how long ago it was agreed - it was under Dick Knight though. You're free to escape upon promotion to the Premier League however.

I'm not sure there is huge appetite to escape anyway. Paul cited his experience at Spurs and how much money it can take to build all that stuff for yourself. He also spoke about the commercial benefit of the collective agreement that could be lost to a club going solo.

 

[Cian]

How will the feed from the away game get to the BBC Sussex transmitters? would this be broadcast wirelessly back-to-back via a chain of transmitters or via an ISDN line? If the latter, could this not be split one to BBC Sussex and the other to the Player servers? I assume the BBC's own connection is very resilient and something they are have to set up all the time?

I'd hazard a guess at ISDN. ISDN connections are point to point, not point to multipoint though, you'd still need two lines. As I said, I'm fairly sure the ISDN connection is not at issue. Its been years since we had an ISDN issue and you'll see upthread that other people in radio (Comedy Steve) would have similar experiences.

 

[Rugrat]

That's really the part I'm interested in. How tight are those contracts and if they're not providing the service they should be, could we leave?

I'm with this. You have to believe that there are minimum service levels within the contract and it's quite clear that these are consistently being missed - that will represent a breach.

If we were daft enough to sign agreements without service levels then there's enough evidence to show the service as not being fit for purpose anyway.

I think the club should say screw this and walk away. No doubt that will cause a ruck with the FL and their cronies but I struggle to see how it would end up in court and even if it did I'd think we would have a strong case.

I hope this isn't a case of just pandering to the old farts at FL HQ who are ultimately the ones who look like they screwed us here

 

[Thunder Bolt]

The impression given last night was no, as it's a collective agreement with the Football League. It was a contact for 10 years, although I'm not sure how long ago it was agreed - it was under Dick Knight though. You're free to escape upon promotion to the Premier League however.

It was when it changed from Seagulls World to Seagulls Player. I'm not sure of the exact year that was.

 

[Westdene Seagull]

After I posted it came to me that you would need bandwidth at each stadium as opposed to BBC offices. I had in mind a point to point circuit rather than DSL but 72 x charges for that are going to be too high. That said at the rate prices are coming down its possible long term.

My money is on some kind of incorrect infrastructure setting at the perform end.

Given the money in football I'd suggest P2P would be easily affordable. I used to manage the WAN contract for one of the UKs biggest outsourcers - a typical 100Mb dedicated link into the MPLS cloud was less than £2k a month - hardly a lot.

 

[Springal]

Given the money in football I'd suggest P2P would be easily affordable. I used to manage the WAN contract for one of the UKs biggest outsourcers - a typical 100Mb dedicated link into the MPLS cloud was less than £2k a month - hardly a lot.

The problem is, a lot of broadcast infrastructure, is standardised on ISDN, due to cost, reliability, and flexibility. Its easy enough to say football clubs need to do xyz (and what do you do about Crawleys, Aldershots etc), but BBC etc need to support it to.

 

[Barrel of Fun]

http://www.performgroup.co.uk/FootballCaseStudies

Perform also do Barcelona's website.

 

[Barrel of Fun]

http://www.performgroup.co.uk/FootballCaseStudies

Perform also do Barcelona's website.

 

[strings]

I guess that it would be very difficult to go alone because, even if we could break the contract with perform, I would assume perform would continue to hold the rights to broadcast live commentary of our matches over the internet.

 

[Westdene Seagull]

The problem is, a lot of broadcast infrastructure, is standardised on ISDN, due to cost, reliability, and flexibility. Its easy enough to say football clubs need to do xyz (and what do you do about Crawleys, Aldershots etc), but BBC etc need to support it to.

But that's the beauty of MPLS - each site can have it's own private link for very little cost. The BBC already use this technology for their streaming services and for their customer complaint services ( I know because I managed the orders ! ).

I struggle to believe that there are any clubs in the league couldn't afford £2k a month - and the small clubs could have smaller bandwidth ( 10mb is about £350 a month ).

 

[Gary Leeds]

It doesn't matter what the speed is for the feed from the commentary to the server, in theory an old 56k modem would be fast enough for one to one voice communication but the server is what shares it out to 1000s. It looks to me as if the server that is streaming that feed is not up to the job but I would imagine that the same server is streaming several clubs feeds. Is it possible that we share our server with a couple of bigger clubs and its not just when we are away that the issues occur but also when they are away too?

Also even when our stream drops normally the oppositions feed is fine coming from the same studio set up which again points to server issues rather than anything else.

Cant we go back to the radio stuck next to a microphone as a back up? that was better quality and more reliable

 

[Bwian]

http://www.performgroup.co.uk/FootballCaseStudies

Perform also do Barcelona's website.

That's really messi too.