Big international football matches are usually shown on terrestrial or even satellite television but the world cup qualifier this weekend between England and Ukraine is being streamed exclusively online in a move that is not going down too well with fans. The match is being streamed because broadcaster Setanta who had been due to screen the match have run into financial difficulty and none of the regular broadcasters have snapped up the rights due to the fact that England have already qualified and the match is not very important.

More and more people are watching sport online (mostly illegally through illegal streams) but is there a big enough market to make this a profitable business and more importantly do we have enough broadband capability for a whole nation to watch it without missing crucial moments during the game. The crucial difference is that once a broadcaster pays for the rights they can broadcast it into homes at no extra cost whereas the streaming costs will increase significantly as more people watch online. This is certainly a more flexible way for us consumers to watch sports as we can pick our location and stream as we choose but my feeling is that this is several years away from being a commonly used option by the man in the street.

So is Internet streaming the future? Would you be happy to pay £4.99 to see your country play and would you watch it online?

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