Alloa vs Ayr

[Guest]

51 minutes ago, Skyline Drifter said:

I'm not au fait enough with the technology to understand the hows and whys but would there not be illegal streams also available if the clubs just did it themselves without Pixelot?

It's certainly irritating me at the moment that I spend the majority of the hour before each home game and the first half hour of the game deleting links to dodgy streams from our Facebook page and banning the posters. There were very few last night when it was on tv anyway but usually it's dozens and dozens of them.

I have access to one of these "dodgy" apps myself, however I purchased a season ticket and generally pay for the away game stream as well, simply because I would never defraud my own club or indeed the other clubs in this league that we come up against, personally I'd reckon the majority of all our clubs fans are the same.

As for Comcast and their fellow fraudsters, well, that's another story.........

[Jazzar]

Although I've asked for a refund from Alloa for the non-invent first half stream, they seem to have got it sorted for the second half so I've contacted them again and asked for a partial refund. No way am I going to deprive decent clubs like Alloa of earned money in these hard times.  

[rgreig]

1 hour ago, diegomarahenry said:

Going live with streaming 15 minutes before kick-off means people are unsure if a stream is working until 14:45, some clubs have a holding image saying that a live stream will start shortly which at least gives confidence that you have access. Today, a lot of people didn't get a feed until 15:05

The picture quality was poor and it looked, much like the Ayr game a few weeks ago, that they waited until half time to reboot something or at least make changes. Telling people on social media, this isn't working, we'll reboot might help people understand there are issues and the provider is trying to fix things rather than having something unwatchable for the first half.

It looked like the problem with the quality of the streaming was separate to the one at the start, which was related to the linking of purchased content to accounts. So unfortunate for them they had two issues to deal with. The big challenge here is that in general clubs just won't have access to people with the skills required to run these services - or understand them sufficiently well to know what to do to resolve problems under pressure. This is a major problem in technology generally - there is a huge skills gap. But I agree with your point that they should start the live stream much earlier so that they can give themselves far longer to debug issues. I guess it it might cost them some more in bandwidth charges but not as much as paying out refunds. (As an aside, although I thought it was appalling there is no way I would even consider requesting a refund given that it is a small club who need the money).

1 hour ago, diegomarahenry said:

The pixelot system has been a poor addition, not just because of the ball tracking technology but also that there are now on-line "illegal" streams available of games. Clubs not getting it right will make more people seek out these streams rather than chance paying £10 - £15 - £18 for a stream that is potentially unwatchable. 

Are these actually illegal? I thought that Pixellot had the rights to sell the live stream to betting companies. Or are the betting companies not supposed to make the content available in the UK (which would make sense)? I think the fact that these streams were absolutely fine in terms of quality shows that the system has some merits now that it has operator-controlled PTZ cameras.

1 hour ago, diegomarahenry said:

With a decent service, there may be a market for PPV going forward after the pandemic, particularly for away that don't attend many away games, it may be a revenue stream we shouldn't close.

100% agree. I do think that there needs to be some thought given to how to run it more effectively across the league - it appears that many clubs rely on volunteers to get any kind of decent service and even where there are volunteers it is clear they don't all have the relevant skills.

[diegomarahenry]

12 minutes ago, rgreig said:

Are these actually illegal?

I may be talking out of my arse here but I think as a customer of certain  betting sites, possibly only overseas, you can view some live action for in-play betting, so have to be an active customer of a bookmakers site. I would assume that this would feed some sort of revenue back to clubs otherwise they wouldn't agree to it. Although if it happened, it would be a blanket fee to the SPFL/Clubs rather than on an individual viewer basis I'd imagine.

Broadcasting them through unofficial channels would breach some sort of regulation. Sky and the BBC have paid for the rights to the SPFL and would chase down the providers of links if they were losing revenue but individual clubs may find this cost prohibitive. as it looks like it is the footage captured by a broadcast partner, maybe the league can put pressure on them to fix it. 

With the rules against broadcasting domestically under normal circumstances, clubs can't offer the service and it is in their best interest to limit illegal/dodgy feeds. 

@Skyline Drifter will have a better (actual) knowledge of the financial side of matters on this. 

I have paid for every game this season and will do for all I watch, I understand people may be in a position where they can't afford to and illegal streams may be their only way to watch a game, I also understand that there are a lot of snide folk that would happily watch the game for free with absolutely no guilt. 

 

[Skyline Drifter]

The clubs have temporarily been given the right to sell domestic PPV on their own matches to raise revenue. It's a home team only right. Pixellot are providing streams to AMG to broadcast as part of betting company provision and also for overseas broadcast which is done through the SPFL platform. Anything else is decidedly illegal, yes. And anybody who pays them to provide a stream is denying the income to the home club (or both clubs in a cup game).

[mugen_power]

I managed to watch most of the game on Bet365 with no issues other than the stream hanging up a couple of times

[Homer Thompson]

16 minutes ago, mugen_power said:

I managed to watch most of the game on Bet365 with no issues other than the stream hanging up a couple of times

Did you have commentary? Im guessing not and what you saw was the "raw" feed direct from the Pixellot camera

[mugen_power]

1 minute ago, Mr X said:

Did you have commentary? Im guessing not and what you saw was the "raw" feed direct from the Pixellot camera

No commentary, would have just been the pixellot stream - also found out i still have forty quid in my 365 account hahah, might need to make an illegal bet next week

 

[rgreig]

2 hours ago, Skyline Drifter said:

The clubs have temporarily been given the right to sell domestic PPV on their own matches to raise revenue. It's a home team only right. Pixellot are providing streams to AMG to broadcast as part of betting company provision and also for overseas broadcast which is done through the SPFL platform. Anything else is decidedly illegal, yes. And anybody who pays them to provide a stream is denying the income to the home club (or both clubs in a cup game).

Does the contract with AMG specify that they cannot distribute to UK betting companies? As far as I can gather from some googling, bet365 can legitimately show the coverage in the UK and all they require is a "funded" account.

[rgreig]

5 minutes ago, rgreig said:

Does the contract with AMG specify that they cannot distribute to UK betting companies? As far as I can gather from some googling, bet365 can legitimately show the coverage in the UK and all they require is a "funded" account.

Further research shows that it is not available in the UK (which makes complete sense).

[ryanayr1987]

I paid for the game but really struggled to get it to work so thought I’d try the dodgy stream! Which worked perfectly, I won’t ask for a refund but I don’t understand why the dodgy site ran as smooth as silk where the Alloa stream was rank rotten

[Hursty]

Any highlights available?

[printer]

24 minutes ago, Hursty said:

Any highlights available?

I'm sure there will be soon enough, with a link posted here.

[Homer Thompson]

10 hours ago, rgreig said:

Does the contract with AMG specify that they cannot distribute to UK betting companies? As far as I can gather from some googling, bet365 can legitimately show the coverage in the UK and all they require is a "funded" account.

As you've since posted, the betting companies are not allowed to show games in the UK.

The betting partner is IMG. They are the ones behind the Pixellot streaming, it was put in for their purposes. The streaming to fans is a side effect.

AMG are the streaming partner who provide the SPFL match centre, using feeds from Pixellot

9 hours ago, ryanayr1987 said:

I paid for the game but really struggled to get it to work so thought I’d try the dodgy stream! Which worked perfectly, I won’t ask for a refund but I don’t understand why the dodgy site ran as smooth as silk where the Alloa stream was rank rotten

My guess would be that the dodgy stream came from the direct Pixellot feed which goes to IMG and the SPFL match centre rather than the main stream for fans. Again, Im guessing there was no commentary?

[ryanayr1987]

24 minutes ago, Mr X said:

As you've since posted, the betting companies are not allowed to show games in the UK.

The betting partner is IMG. They are the ones behind the Pixellot streaming, it was put in for their purposes. The streaming to fans is a side effect.

AMG are the streaming partner who provide the SPFL match centre, using feeds from Pixellot

My guess would be that the dodgy stream came from the direct Pixellot feed which goes to IMG and the SPFL match centre rather than the main stream for fans. Again, Im guessing there was no commentary?

You would be correct

[Homer Thompson]

21 minutes ago, ryanayr1987 said:

You would be correct

Thats pretty disappointing and worrying from the clubs point of view. While the clubs are trying to make some money from streaming the system the SPFL has put in place is getting hacked by dodgy stream providers 

[callum-ayr]

From what I’ve been told, IPTV seem to be picking up Ayr home games, but again I don’t know if it’s the pixielott or the AUTV stream with the commentary. 

[itzdrk]

2 minutes ago, Mr X said:

Thats pretty disappointing and worrying from the clubs point of view. While the clubs are trying to make some money from streaming the system the SPFL has put in place is getting hacked by dodgy stream providers 

Yeah, although I'd wager that the majority of people watching the unofficial stream yesterday for this match were people who had paid for it and were getting a better service from it in the first half at least.  

[itzdrk]

Just now, callum-ayr said:

From what I’ve been told, IPTV seem to be picking up Ayr home games, but again I don’t know if it’s the pixielott or the AUTV stream with the commentary. 

It's the pixellot feed.   

[Trogdor]

The dodgy one I tried yesterday was about 1 min behind the Alloa feed. It had the same graphics with SPFL branding but no commentary. I'm pretty sure its the SPFL match centre one.

In the end, I didn't end up using it because Alloa's stream was watchable 2nd half without commentary. Also, it would have thrown me out of sync on Skype. We have to do a bit of spamming the live button so we are all at the same time.