Submitted by Oliver Tse, Dec 5, 2006 19:07

I have to agree with Mr. Gardner to some extent: the fear of relegation, plus the lack of a salary cap to create a less-tilted playing field, are likely the factors which are causing so many EPL clubs to play "anti-football" the way Italian clubs have done for years. The result is of course predictable: too many "garbage" games, i.e. games devoid of any entertainment value, end up on TV.

Realistically, only 3 or 4 EPL clubs each season have the resources to play attacking soccer without fear of relegation, with the current "Big 4" being Man Utd, Chelsea, Liverpool, and Arsenal.

Because FSC usually has at most one "decent" game each weekend out of the 4 it airs, I rarely watch the EPL matches on FSC with the exception of the Sunday 11am ET (4pm UK, 11pm or midnight in Singapore/Hong Kong/China depending on the time of the year) game on non-Champions League weeks, when a marquee matchup can take place in that particular time slot such as Man Utd vs Arsenal, Man Utd. vs Liverpool, or Man Utd vs Chelsea.

The other time slot for "marquee" EPL matchups, Saturdays at 7:45am ET (12:45pm UK, 7:45pm or 8:45pm in Singapore/Hong Kong/China depending on the time of the year), now belongs in the US exclusively to Setanta Sports USA because FSC can no longer afford exclusive video rights to the EPL in the US.

(The next US TV contract for the EPL will cost $20 million each year, which is about 100 times compared to what the rights fee were for the 1994-1995 season.)

As for the Saturday 10am ET (3pm UK) time slot, DirecTV subscribers have a choice of 3 games live: an "A" game on Setanta, a "B" game on FSC, and a "C" game on Setanta Xtra. Because Setanta has first pick, FSC is often left with a "garbage" game as its 2nd pick such as Reading-Bolton last Saturday, especially if two of the "big 4" are playing each other in one of the marquee time slots.

The US and Canadian TV markets are still small potatoes for the EPL, as the rights fees in East and Southeast Asia have reached obscene levels. For example, PCCW bid US$66 million per season for the video rights to EPL in Hong Kong, a territory with just over 2 million TV households. The situation in mainland China, with the GuangDong provincial government (which is still nominally controlled by the "Communist" Party) starting a new all-soccer TV channel and outbidding NewsCorp-managed ESPN STAR Sports (ESS), is either surreal or absurd depending on your point of view.

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