A Wonder of Modern Communications Post

Arsenal lost 2-1 to Barcelona in an epic Champions League final played this evening in Paris. (If you don’t follow football as they call it over there, think the Super Bowl, only more important (more people in Europe; soccer has a bigger mind-share; plus national overtones (Arsenal is based in London and you know where Barcelona is)). Arsenal and Barcelona have some of the best footballers in the world (or at least the best that Chelsea money can’t buy). Arsenal goal-keeper Jens Lehmann (and the starting keeper for the German National team in the upcoming World Cup) was booted out of the game in the 18th minute, so Arsenal played 10 on 11 for most of the game, and with a second-string keeper to boot. Arsenal led 1-0 for most of the game, but Barcelona closed with two late goals to take the win.

Now for modern communications. Last year, a group of LLM students were nice enough to give me an Arsenal jersey (thanks again!), which I wore today (my 12-year old son is a big Arsenal fan). I “watched” the game at the Law School by reading the BBC’s text feed about the game (not video on demand as I did with March Madness). As I was walking home from work roughly an hour after the game was over, three people—I passed 10 or so—stopped me to tell me what a tough loss Arsenal had suffered. Three!

ESPN2 had the game on live today, and we taped it (actual VCR tape still works), so we will have to see if it was exciting as it seemed in text at the BBC.

Comments

[M Sew Hoy]

Professor Picker,

For future reference, ESPN Soccernet's "Gamecast" coverage is much better than BBC's live text feed. They're both similar, but Gamecast has a few more features that give it the advantage (like a graphic of the field where shots have been taken, goals scored, etc). Gamecast also covers more games than the BBC.

[Randy Picker]

Hello, Mr. Sew Hoy (and condolences on the Arsenal loss).

The BBC version had text commentary from a bunch of former Arsenal players. Anything like that on Gamecast?

[M Sew Hoy]

Ah, Gamecast does not have that feature. However, I've used the BBC live text feature many times before, and for most other games, perhaps all other games, it does not have commentary from actual players.

I actually watched the game at a rather pro-Arsenal place right near the courthouse, so I didn't check BBC that day. I suppose I should have.

Incidentally, a media company in Brazil has bought the rights to stream all the World Cup games online to "subscribers." I'm not sure if they're able to restrict content to only users in Brazil (sort of like how the BBC restrict live audio commentary of matches to computers in Britain).

http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2006/soccer/specials/world_cup/2006/05/22/bc.la.spt.soc.wcup.internet.ap/index.html

[Alan, school teacher]

I'm looking forward to the final of the world cup and bet that Spain will be there.
http://www.alpha-school.com

[Joan A. Conway]

Do European's do it better than American's do it in regards to football?