Back in 2009, I wrote this post, which eventually became one of my most commented on and viewed post. In the days of nascent social media, it connected me to a lot of fellow Spanish football fans most of who I am still in touch with. That was 9 years ago.
2009 was also the season when Cristiano came to La Liga, for the club I follow – Real Madrid. Since then, Real Madrid has won 2 league titles, 2 Spanish Cups, 2 Spanish Super Cups, 4 Champions League titles, 2 UEFA Super Cups and 3 Club World Cups. He finally moved out of Real Madrid, going to Juventus this season. Apart from all these trophies and awards, his stay at Madrid has been bookended by Indian broadcasters not doing the fans any favour.
Back in 2009 we had to make do with YouTube highlights (what is 1080p?), patchy live streams with 2009 internet in India. This year, won’t be as bad because Facebook has bought the official broadcast rights, so it won’t be completely absent. But given that most of India still doesn’t have streamable internet speeds and the fact that Facebook is evil, we lose again.
Not sure what La Liga is doing here though. The second largest population in the world, with slow internet, and EPL still being the most popular football property in the country, they should ideally have insisted on TV broadcast. Especially after losing one of the two most marketable footballer on the planet, you should be pushing it even more. You need more people watching Valencia, Villareal and the super entertaining Real Betis to make La Liga more popular and not give people an option to choose only what they want, which in most cases will only be the big 2 (maybe 3).
The league officially begins in 6 days, and Sony has confirmed they don’t have the rights. Inspite of consuming a lot of streamable content, I still do all of it on TV. Also, I have deactivated my Facebook account for over a year now, not sure if I can bear to go back to it. So unless one of the TV sports channels does something drastic, I might be stuck with minimum football again this year, especially after watching one of the best World Cups ever.
Ideal Musings 